THE HISTORY OF NATIONS ENGLAND e> < <3 I CQ k CE OF xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE George III. ..... , j ,., . . 570 Queen Victoria ..... , ,.. . 594 John Stuart Mill "[ Charles Robert Darwin J Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield ., , WI ,.. 624 612 TEXT MAPS PAGE Christian Missions . ., ,., . 26 Saxon England ........ 49 English Possessions in France ...... 129 Voyages of Discovery . . . . . . . 232 The British Isles During the Great Rebellion . . . 350 The South of England. 1685-1689 ..... 432 India ............ 503 Siege of Sebastopol ..... ; . : : . . 619 British Possessions. 1903 . mi ;#J L#1 ,., ,., . 631 PART I ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST HISTORY OF ENGLAND Chapter I PREHISTORIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN LEADING DATES Cesar's First Invasion, B.C. 55 Invasion of Aulus Plautius, A.D. 43 Recall of Agricola, A.D. 84 Severus in Britain, A.D. 208 End of the Roman Government, A.D. 410 COUNTLESS ages ago there was a period of time to which geologists have given the name of the Pleistocene Age. The part of the earth's surface afterwards called Britain was then attached to the Continent, so that animals could pass over on dry land. The climate was much colder than it is now, and it is known from the bones which have been dug up that the country was inhabited by wolves, bears, mammoths, woolly rhinoce- roses, and other creatures now extinct. No human remains have been found amongst these bones, but there is no doubt that men existed contemporaneously with their deposits, because, in the river drift, or gravel washed down by rivers, there have been discovered flints sharpened by chipping, which can only have been produced by the hand of man. The men who used them are known as Palaeolithic, or the men of ancient stone, because these stone implements are rougher and therefore older than others which have been discovered. This race was succeeded by another which dwelt in caves. They, as well as their predecessors, are known as Palaeolithic men, as their weapons were still very rude. They possessed a decided artistic power, which enabled them to indicate by a few vigorous scratches the forms of horses, mammoths, reindeer, and other animals. Vast heaps of rubbish still exist in various parts of Europe, which are found to consist of the bones, shells, and other refuse thrown out by these later Palaeolithic men, who had no reverence for the dead, casting out their relations to decay. Traces of Palaeolithic men of this type have been found as far 4 ENGLAND north as Derbyshire. Their descendants are no longer to be met with in these islands. The Eskimos of the extreme north of America, however, have the same artistic faculty and the same disregard for the dead, and it has therefore been supposed that the cave-dwelling men were of the race to which the modern Eskimos belong. Ages passed away, during which the climate became more tem- perate, and the earth's surface in these regions sank to a lower level. The seas afterwards known as the North Sea and the English Channel flowed over the depression ; and an island was thus formed out of land which had once been part of the continent. After this process had taken place a third race appeared, which must have crossed the sea in rafts or canoes, and which took the place of the Palaeolithic men. They are known as Neolithic, or men of the new stone age, because their stone implements were of a newer kind, being polished and more efficient than those of their predecessors. They had, therefore, the advantage of superior weapons, and per- haps of superior strength, and were able to overpower those whom they found in the island. With their stone axes they made clearings in the woods in which to place their settlements. They brought with them domestic animals, they spun thread and wove it, they grew corn and manufactured a rude kind of pottery. Each tribe lived in a state of war with its neighbors. There is little doubt that these men, whose way of life was so superior to that of their Eskimo-like predecessors, were of the race now known as Iberian, which at one time inhabited a great part of Western Europe, but which has since mingled with other races. The Basques of the Pyrenees are the only Iberians who still preserve anything like purity of descent. The Iberians were followed by a swarm of newcomers called Celts. The Celts belong to a group of races sometimes known as the Aryan group, to which also belong Teutons, Slavonians, Italians, Greeks, and the chief ancient races of Persia and India. The Celts were the first to arrive in the West, where they seized upon lands in Spain, in Gaul, and in Britain, which the Iberians had occupied before them. They did not, however, destroy the Iberians alto- gether. However careful a conquering tribe may be to preserve the purity of its blood, it rafely succeeds in doing so. Every European population is derived from many races. The Celts were fair-haired and taller than the Iberians, whom they conquered or ROMAN BRITAIN 5 330 B.C. displaced. They had the advantage of being possessed of weapons of bronze, for which even the polished stone weapons of the Iberians were no match. They burned instead of burying their dead, and raised over the ashes round barrows. The earliest known name given to this island was Albion. It is uncertain whether the word is of Celtic or of Iberian origin. The later name Britain is derived from a second swarm of Celts called Blythons or Britons, who after a long interval followed the first Celtic immigration. The descendants of these first immigrants are distinguished from the newcomers by the name of Goidels, and it is probable that they were at one time settled in Britain ; when history begins Goidels were only to be found in Ireland, though at a later time they colonized a part of what is now known as Scotland, and sent some offshoots into Wales. At present the languages derived from that of the Goidels are the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Manx of the Isle of Man, and the Erse of Ireland. The only language now spoken in the British Isles which is derived from that of the Britons is the Welsh; but the old Cornish language, which was spoken nearly up to the close of the eighteenth century, came from the same stock. It is therefore likely that the Britons pushed the Goidels northward and westward, as the Goidels had formerly pushed the Iberians in the same directions. It was most likely that the Britons erected the huge stone circle of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. The most civilized nations of the ancient world were those which dwelt round the Mediterranean Sea. It was long supposed that the Phoenicians came to Britain from the coast of Syria, or from their colonies at Carthage and in the south of Spain, for the tin which they needed for the manufacture of bronze, but the belief that Phoenicians visited Britain must be considered to be very doubt- ful. The first educated visitor who reached Britain was Pytheas, a Greek, who was sent by the merchants of the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles) about 330 b.c. to make discoveries which might lead to the opening across Gaul, of a trade-route between Britain and their city. It was probably in consequence of the infor- mation which he carried to Massalia on his return that there sprang up a trade in British tin. Another Greek, Posidonius, who came to Britain about two centuries after Pytheas, found this trade in full working order. During the time when this trade was being carried on, tribes 6 ENGLAND 55 B.C. of Gauls and Belgians landed in Britain. The Gauls were certainly, and the Belgians probably, of the same Celtic race as that which already occupied the island. Nothing is known of the relations between the newcomers and the older Celtic inhabitants. At all events, states of some extent were formed by the conquerors, thus the Cantii, the Trinobantes, the Iceni, and the Catuvellauni. Though there were other states in Britain, the tribes which have been named had the advantage of being situated on the southeastern part of the island, and therefore of being in commercial communication with the continental Gauls of their own race and language. Trade in- creased, and brought with it the introduction of some things which the Britons would not have invented for themselves. For instance, the inhabitants of the southeast of Britain began to use gold coins and decorations in imitation of those which were then common in Gaul. Yet, in spite of these improvements, even the most civilized Britons were still in a rude and barbarous condition. They had no towns, but dwelt in scattered huts. When they went out to battle they dyed their faces in order to terrify their enemies. Their warriors made use of chariots, dashing in them along the front of the enemy's line till they espied an opening in his ranks. They then leaped down and charged on foot into the gap. Their charioteers in the meanwhile drove off the horses to a safe distance, so as to be ready to take up their comrades if the battle went against them. The Celtic races worshiped many gods. In Gaul, the Druids, who were the ministers of religion, taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and even gave moral instruction to the young. In Ireland, and perhaps in Britain, they were conjurers and wizards. Both in Gaul and Britain they kept up the traditional belief which had once been prevalent in all parts of the world, that the gods could only be appeased by human sacrifices. Sometimes a Druid would cut open a single human victim, and would imagine that he could foretell the future by inspecting the size and appear- ance of the entrails. In the year 55 B.C. the Celts of southeastern Britain first came in contact with a Roman army. The Romans were a civilized people, and had been engaged for some centuries in conquering the peoples living round the Mediterranean. They possessed disci- plined armies, and a regular government. By the beginning of the year the Roman general, Gains Julius Crcsar, had made himself master of Gaul. To Ca?sar the idea of invading Britain was really ROMAN BRITAIN 7 54 B.C. to prevent the Britons from coming to the help of their kindred whom he had just subdued, and he would accomplish this object best by landing on their shores and showing them how formidable a Roman army was. Accordingly, towards the end of August, Caesar crossed the straits with about 10,000 men. He probably first ap- peared off the spot at which Dover now stands, and then, being alarmed at the number of the Britons who had crowded to defend the coast, made his way by sea to the site of the modern Deal. There, too, his landing was opposed, but he managed to reach the shore with his army. He soon found, however, that the season was too advanced- to enable him to accomplish anything and he returned to Gaul. Csesar had hitherto failed to strike terror into the Britons. In the following year he started in July, so as to have many weeks of fine weather before him, taking with him as many as 25,000 foot and 2,000 horse. After effecting a landing he pushed inland, de- feated the natives and captured one of their stockades. Caesar was recalled to the coast by the news that the waves had dashed to pieces a large number of his ships. As soon as he had repaired the damage he resumed his march. His principal opponent was Cassivelaunus, the chief of the tribe of the Catuvellauni, who had subdued many of the neighboring tribes, and whose stronghold was a stockade near the modern St. Albans. This chief and his followers harassed the march of the Romans with the rush of their chariots. If Cassivelaunus could have counted upon the continued support of all his warriors, he might perhaps have succeeded in forc- ing Csesar to retreat, as the country was covered with wood and difficult to penetrate. Many of the tribes, however, which now served under him longed to free themselves from his rule. First the Trinobantes and then four other tribes broke away from him and sought the protection of Caesar. Csesar, thus encouraged, dashed at his stockade and carried it by storm. Cassivelaunus abandoned the struggle, gave hostages to Csesar, and promised to pay a yearly tribute. On this Csesar returned to Gaul. Though the tribute was never paid, he had gained his object. He had sufficiently frightened the British tribes to make it unlikely that they would give him any annoyance in Gaul. For nearly a century after Csesar' s departure Britain .was left to itself. The Catuvellauni recovered the predominance which they had lost. The prosperity of the inhabitants of southeastern Britain 8 ENGLAND 54 B.C. -43 A.D. increased more rapidly than the prosperity of their ancestors had increased before Caesar's invasion. Traders continued to flock over from Gaul, bringing with them a knowledge of the arts and refinements of civilized life, and those arts and refinements were far greater now that Gaul was under Roman rule than they had been when its Celtic tribes were still independent. Yet, in spite of the growth of trade, Britain was still a rude and barbarous country. Its exports were but cattle and hides, corn, slaves, and hunting dogs, together with a few dusky pearls. The Roman state was now a monarchy. The emperor was the head of the army, as well as the head of the state. He, for the most part, sought to establish his power by giving justice to the provinces which had once been conquered by Rome, but were now admitted to share in the advantages of good government which the Empire had to give. One consequence of the conquest of nations by Rome was that there was now an end to cruel wars be- tween hostile tribes. An army was stationed on the frontier of the Empire to defend it against barbarian attacks. In the interior the Roman peace, as it was called, prevailed, and there was hardly any need of soldiers to keep order and to maintain obedience. One question which each emperor had to ask himself was whether he would attempt to enlarge the limits of the empire or not. For a time each emperor had resolved to be content with the frontier which Caesar had left. There had consequently for many years been no thought of again invading Britain. At last the Emperor Claudius reversed this policy. There is reason to suppose that some of the British chiefs had made an attack upon the coasts of Gaul. However this may have been, Claudius in 43 a. d. sent Aulus Plautius. Where one tribe has gained supremacy over others, it is always easy for a civilized power to gain allies among the tribes which have been subdued. Aulus Plautius now enlisted on his side the Regni, who dwelt in the present Sussex, and the Iceni, who dwelt in the present Norfolk and Suffolk. With their aid, Aulus Plautius, at the head of 40,000 men, defeated the Catuvel- launi. The Romans then took possession of their lands, and, step- ping into their place, established over the tribes chieftains who were now dependent on the emperor. Claudius himself came for a brief visit to receive the congratulations of the army on the victory which liis lieutenant had won. Aulus Plautius remained in Britain till 47 a. d. Before he left it the whole of the country to the south of ROMAN BRITAIN 9 47-58 A.D. a line drawn from the Wash to some point on the Severn had been subjugated. The mines of the Mendips and of the western penin- sula were too tempting to be left unconquered, and it is probably their attraction which explains the extension of Roman power at so early a date over the hilly country in the west. In 47 a. d. Aulus Plautius was succeeded by Ostorius Scapula. He disarmed the tribes dwelling to the west of the Trent, while he attempted to establish the Roman authority more firmly over those whose territory lay to the east of that river. He then sought to strengthen his hold upon the southeast of Britain by founding (51 a.d.) a Roman colony at Camulodunum, which had formerly been the headquarters of the Catuvellauni. Roman settlers for the most part discharged soldiers established themselves in the new city, bringing with them all that belonged to Roman life with all its conveniences and luxuries. Roman temples, theaters, and baths quickly rose, and Ostorius might fairly expect that in Britain, as in Gaul, the native chiefs would learn to copy the easy life of the new citizens, and would settle their quarrels in Roman courts of law instead of taking arms on their own behalf. Ostorius, however, was soon involved in fresh troubles. The tribes beyond the line which Ostorius held were constantly breaking through to plunder the Roman territory, and he soon found that he must either allow the lands of Roman subjects to be plundered, or must carry war among the hostile tribes. He naturally chose the latter alternative, and the last years of his government were spent in wars with the Ordovices of central Wales, and with the Silures of southern Wales. The mountainous region which these two tribes defended made it difficult to subdue them. The proof of his comparative failure lies in the fact that he established strong garrison towns along the frontier of the hilly region, which he would not have done unless he had considered it necessary to have a large number of soldiers ready to check any possible rising. At the northern end of the line was Deva (Chester), at the southern was Isca Silurum (Caerleon upon Usk), and in each of which was placed a whole legion, about 5,000 men. Between them was the smaller post of Uriconium, or more properly Viriconium (Wroxtcr), the city of the Wrekin. When Suetonius Paullinus arrived to take up the government he resolved to complete the conquest of the west by an attack on Mona (Anglesey). In Mona was a sacred place of the Druids, 10 ENGLAND 61-78 A.D who gave encouragement to the still independent Britons by their murderous sacrifices and their soothsayings. At first the soldiers were terrified and shrunk back. Then they recovered courage, and put to the sword or thrust into the flames the priests and their female rout. The Romans were tolerant of the religion of the peoples whom they subdued, but they could not put up with the continuance of a cruel superstition whose upholders preached resis- tance to the Roman government. At the very moment of success Suetonius was recalled hurriedly to the east. Roman officers and traders had misused the power which had been given them by the valor of Roman soldiers. Might had been taken for right, and the natives were stripped of their lands and property at the caprice of the conquerors. Those who resisted this oppression were treated as the meanest criminals. Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, who had been the chief of the Iceni, was publicly flogged, and her two daughters were subjected to the vilest outrage. She called upon the whole Celtic population of the east and south to rise against the foreign tyrants. Thou- sands answered to her call, and the angry host rushed to take vengeance upon the colonists of Camulodunum. The colonists had neglected to fortify their city, and the insurgents, bursting in, slew by the sword or by torture men and women alike. The massacre spread wherever Romans were to be found. A Roman legion hastening to the rescue was routed, and the small force of cavalry attached to it alone succeeded in making its escape. Every one of the foot soldiers was slaughtered on the spot. It is said that 70,000 Romans perished in the course of a few days. Suetonius was no mean general, and he hastened back to the scene of destruction. He won a decisive victory at some unknown spot, probably not far from Camulodunum, and 80,000 Britons are reported to have been slain by the triumphant soldiery. Boadicea committed suicide by poison. Suetonius had now restored the Roman authority in Britain, but it was to his failure to control his sub- ordinates that the insurrection had been due. and he was therefore promptly recalled by the Emperor Nero. From that time no more is heard of the injustice of the Roman government. Agricola, who arrived as governor in 78 a. d.. took care to deal fairly with all sorts of men, and to make the natives thoroughly satisfied with his rule. He completed the conquest of the country afterwards known as Wales, and thereby pushed the western ROMAN BRITAIN 11 78-208 A.D. frontier of Roman Britain to the sea. Yet from the fact that he found it necessary still to leave garrisons at Deva and Isca Silurum, it may be gathered that the tribes occupying the hill country were not so thoroughly subdued as to cease to be dangerous. Although the idea entertained by Ostorius of making a frontier on land towards the west had thus been abandoned, it was still necessary to provide a frontier towards the north. Agricola continued the work of conquest. He now governed the whole of the country as far north as to the Solway and the Tyne, and he made Eboracum, the name of which changed in course of time into York, the center of Roman power in the northern districts. A garrison was established there to watch for any danger which might come from the extreme north, as the garrisons of Deva and Isca Silurum watched for dangers which might come from the west. Agricola thought that there would be no real peace unless the whole island was subdued. For seven years he carried on warfare with this object before him. He had comparatively little difficulty in reducing to obedience the country south of the narrow isthmus which separates the estuary of the Clyde from the estuary of the Forth. Before proceeding further he drew a line of forts across that isthmus to guard the conquered country from attack during his absence. He then made his way to the Tay, but he had not marched far up the valley of that river before he reached the edge of the Highlands. He there met the Caledonians and gained a complete victory, but soon was recalled by the Emperor Domitian. It has often been said that Domitian was jealous of his success; but it is possible that the emperor really thought that the advantage to be gained by the conquest of rugged mountains would be more than counterbalanced by the losses which would certainly be incurred in consequence of the enormous difficulty of the task. Agricola, in addition to his line of forts between the Forth and the Clyde, had erected detached forts at the mouth of the valleys which issue from the Highlands, in order to hinder the Caledonians from plundering the lower country. In 119 the Emperor Hadrian visited Britain. He was more disposed to defend the empire than to extend it. and though he did not abandon Agricola's forts, he also built further south a continuous earthwork between the Solway and the Tyne. At a later time Antoninus Pius connected Agricola's forts between the Forth and Clyde by a continuous earthwork. In 208 the Emperor Severus arrived in Britain, and after 12 ENGLAND 208-233 strengthening still further the earthwork between the Forth and Clyde, and adding a stone wall to the more southern work of Ha- drian, attempted to carry out the plans of Agricola by conquering the land of the Caledonians. Severus, however, failed as com- pletely as Agricola had failed before him, and he died soon after his return to Eboracum. Very little is known of the history of the Roman province of Britain, except that it made considerable progress in civilization. The Romans were great road-makers, and though their first object was to enable their soldiers to march easily from one part of the country to another, they thereby encouraged commercial intercourse. Forests were to some extent cleared away by the sides of the new roads, and fresh ground was thrown open to tillage. Mines were worked and country houses built, the remains of which are in some places still to be seen, and bear testimony to the increased well-being of a population which, excepting in the southeastern part of the island, had at the arrival of the Romans been little removed from savagery. Cities sprang up in great numbers. Some of them were at first garrison towns, like Eboracum, Deva, and Isca Silurum. Aquae Sulis, the modern Bath, owes its existence to its warm medicinal springs. The chief port of commerce was Lon- dinium, the modern London. Attempts which have been made to explain its name by the Celtic language have failed, and it is there- fore possible that an inhabited post existed there even before the Celts arrived. Its importance was, however, owing to its position, and that importance was not of a kind to tell before a settled system of commercial intercourse sprang up. London was situated on the hill on which St. Paul's now stands. There first, after the Thames narrowed into a river, the merchant found close to the stream hard ground on which he could land his goods. The valley for some distance above and below it was then filled with a wide marsh or an expanse of water. An old track raised above the marsh crossed the river by a ford at Lambeth, but, as London grew in importance, a ferry was established where London Bridge now stands, and the Romans, in course of time, superseded the ferry by a bridge. It is, therefore, no wonder that the Roman roads both from the north and from the south converged upon London. Just as Eboracum was a fitting center for military opera- tions directed to the defense of the northern frontier, London was :he fitting center of a trade carried on with the Continent, and the ROMAN BRITAIN 13 208-288 place would increase in importance in proportion to the increase of that trade. The improvement of communications and the growth of trade and industry could not fail to influence the mind of the population. Wars between tribes, which before the coming of the Romans had been the main employment of the young and hardy, were now things of the past. The active and enterprising young men were attracted to the cities, at first by the novelty of the luxurious habits in which they were taught to indulge, but afterwards because they were allowed to take part in the management of local business. In the time of the Emperor Caracalla, the son of Severus, every freeman born in the empire was declared to be a Roman citizen, and long before that a large number of natives had been admitted to citizenship. In each district a council was formed of the wealthier and more prominent inhabitants, and this council had to provide for the building of temples, the holding of festivals, the erection of fortifications, and the laying out of streets. Justice was done between man and man according to the Roman law, which was the best law that the world had seen, and the higher Roman officials, who were appointed by the emperor, took care that justice was done between city and city. No one therefore wished to oppose the Roman government or to bring back the old times of barbarism. Great as was the progress made, there was something still wanting. A people is never at its best unless those who compose it have some object for which they can sacrifice themselves, and for which, if necessary, they will die. The Briton had ceased to be called upon to die for his tribe, and he was not expected to die for Britain. Britain had become a more comfortable country to live in, but it was not the business of its own inhabitants to guard it. It was a mere part of the vast Roman Empire, and it was the duty of the emperors to see that the frontier was safely kept. They were so much afraid lest any particular province should wish to set up for itself and to break away from the empire, that they took care not to employ soldiers born in that province for its protection. They sent British recruits to guard the Danube or the Euphrates, and Gauls, Spaniards, or Africans to guard the wall between the Solway and the Tyne and the entrenchment between the Forth and the Clyde. Britons, therefore, looked on their own defense as something to be done for them by the emperors, not as some- 14 ENGLAND 288-314 thing to be done by themselves. They lived on friendly terms with one another, but they had nothing of what we now call patriotism. The Emperor Diocletian (285 305) discovered that the whole empire, stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, was too extensive for one man to govern, and he therefore decreed that there should in future be four governors, two principal ones named emperors (Augusti), and two subordinate ones named Caesars. Constantius, first a Caesar and afterwards an emperor, was set to govern Spain, Gaul, and Britain, but he afterwards became emperor himself, and for some time established himself at Ebora- cum (York). Upon his death (306) his son Constantine, after much fighting, made himself sole emperor (325), overthrowing the system of Diocletian. Yet in one respect he kept up Diocle- tian's arrangements. He placed Spain, Gaul, and Britain together under a great officer called a vicar, who received orders from him- self and who gave orders to the officers who governed each of the three countries. Under the new system, as under the old, Britain was not treated as an independent country. It had still to look for protection to an officer who lived on the Continent, and was there- fore apt to be more interested in Gaul and Spain than he was in Britain. When the Romans put down the Druids and their bloody sacri- fices, they called the old Celtic gods by Roman names, but made no further alteration in religious usages. Gradually, however, Christianity spread among the Romans on the Continent, and merchants or soldiers who came from the Continent introduced it into Britain. Scarcely anything is known of its progress in the island. Alban is said to have been martyred at Verulamium, and Julius and Aaron at Isca Silurum. In 314 three British bishops attended a council held at Aries in Gaul. Little more than these few facts have been handed down, but there is no doubt that there was a settled Church established in the island. The Emperor Con- stantine acknowledged Christianity as the religion of the whole empire. The remains of a church of this period have recently been discovered at Silchester. The Roman Empire in the time of Constantine had the appear- ance rather than the reality of strength. Its taxation was very heavy, and there was no national enthusiasm to lead men to sacrifice themselves in its defense. Roman citizens became more and more ROMAN BRITAIN 15 325-383 unwilling to become soldiers at all, and the Roman armies were now mostly composed of barbarians. At the same time the bar- barians outside the Empire were growing stronger, as the tribes often coalesced into wider confederacies for the purpose of attack- ing the Empire. The assailants of Britain on the north and the west were the Picts and Scots. The Picts were the same as the Caledonians of the time of Agricola. They were probably Iberians, and at all events they were more savage than the Britons had been before they were influenced by Roman civilization. The Scots, who afterwards settled in what is now known as Scotland, at that time dwelt in Ireland. Whilst the Picts, therefore, assailed the Roman province by land, and strove, not always unsuccessfully, to break through the walls which defended its northern frontier, the Scots crossed the Irish Sea in light boats to plunder and slay before armed assistance could arrive. The Saxons, who were no less deadly enemies of the Roman government, were as fierce and restless as the Picts and Scots, and were better equipped and better armed. At first they were only known as cruel and merciless pirates. In their long flat-bottomed vessels they swooped down upon some undefended part of the coast and carried off not only the property of wealthy Romans, but even men and women to be sold in the slave-market. The provincials who escaped related with peculiar horror how the Saxons were ac- customed to torture to death one out of every ten of their captives as a sacrifice to their gods. The Saxons were the more dangerous because it was impossible for the Romans to reach them in their homes. They were men of Teutonic race, speaking one of the languages, afterwards known as Low German, which were once spoken in the whole of North Germany. The Saxon pirates were probably drawn from the whole of the sea coast stretching from the north of the peninsula of Jut- land to the mouth of the Ems, and if so, there were among them Jutes, whose homes were in Jutland itself; Angles, who inhabited Schleswig and Holstein ; and Saxons, properly so called, who dwelt about the mouth of the Elbe and further to the west. They could therefore only be successfully repressed by a power with a good fleet, able to seek out the aggressors in their own homes and to stop the mischief at its source. The Romans had always been weak at sea, and they were weaker now than they had been in 16 ENGLAND 383-410 earlier days. They were therefore obliged to content themselves with standing on the defensive. Since the time of Severus, Britain had been divided, for purposes of defense, into Upper and Lower Britain. Lower Britain in the early days of the Roman conquest had been in no special need of military protection. In the fourth century it was exposed more than the rest of the island to the attacks of the Saxon pirates. Fortresses were erected between the Wash and Beachy Head at every point at which an inlet of the sea afforded an opening to an invader. The whole of this part of the coast became known as the Saxon Shore, because it was subjected to attacks from the Saxons, and a special officer known as the Count of the Saxon Shore was appointed to take charge of it. An officer known as the Duke of the Britains (Dux Britanniarum) commanded the armies of Upper Britain; whilst a third, who was a civilian, and superior in rank over the other two, was the Count of Britain, and had a general supervision of the whole country. In 383 Maximus, who was probably the Duke of the Britains, was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers. Unhappily for the in- habitants of the island, Maximus, instead of remaining in Britain, carried a great part of his army across the sea to attempt a conquest of Gaul and Spain. Neither he nor his soldiers ever returned, and in consequence the Roman garrison in the island was deplorably weakened. Early in the fifth century an irruption of barbarians gave full employment to the army which defended Gaul, so that it was impossible to replace the forces which had followed Maximus by fresh troops from the Continent. The Roman Empire was in fact breaking up. The defense of Britain was left to the soldiers who remained in the island, and in 409 they proclaimed a certain Constantine Emperor. Constantine, like Maximus, carried his soldiers across the Channel in pursuit of a wider empire than he could find in Britain. He was himself murdered, and his soldiers, like those of Maximus, did not return. In 410 the Britons implored the Emperor Honorius to send them help. Honorius had enough to do to ward off the attacks of barbarians nearer Rome, and announced to the Britons that they must provide for their own defense. From this time Britain ceased to form part of the Roman Empire. Chapter II THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS LEADING DATES Landing of the Jutes in Thanet, A.D. 449? The West Saxons Defeated at Mount Badon, 520 The West Saxons Take Sorbio- dunum, 552 Battle of Deorham, 577 The West Saxons Defeated at Faddiley, 584 A FTER the departure of the Romans the Picts from the LI k north and the Scots from Ireland continued their ravages, X JL. but though they caused terrible misery by slaughtering or dragging into slavery the inhabitants of many parts of the country, they did not succeed in making any permanent conquests. The Britons were not without a government and an armed force ; and their later history shows that they were capable of carrying on war for a long time against enemies more formidable than the Picts and Scots. Their power of resistance was, however, weakened by the impossibility of turning their undivided attention to these marauders, as at the same time that they had to defend the Roman Wall and the western coast against the Picts and Scots, they were exposed on the eastern coast to the attacks of the Saxon pirates. In their misery the thoughts of the Britons turned to those Roman legions who had defended their fathers so well. In 446 they appealed to Aetius, the commander of the Roman armies, to deliver them from their destroyers. " The groans of the Britons " was the title which they gave to their appeal to him. ' The bar- barians," they wrote, " drive us to the sea ; the sea drives us back to the barbarians ; between them we are exposed to two sorts of death; we are either slain or drowned." Aetius had no men to spare, and he sent no help to the Britons. Before long the whole of Western Europe was overrun bv barbarian tribes. It had been the custom of the Roman Empire to employ bar- barians as soldiers in their armies, and Vortigern, the British ruler, now followed that bad example. In or about 449 a band of Jutish sea-rovers landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet. According to tradition their leaders were Hengist and Horsa, names signify- 17 18 ENGLAND 449 7-520 ing the horse and the mare. Vortigern took them into his service against the Picts, giving them the Isle of Thanet as a dwelling- place for themselves. With their help he defeated the Picts, but afterwards found himself unable to defend himself against his fierce auxiliaries. Thanet was still cut off from the mainland by an arm of the sea, and the Jutes were strong enough to hold it against all assailants. Their numbers rapidly increased as shiploads of their fellows landed, and they crossed the strait to win fresh lands from the Britons on the mainland of Kent. In several battles Vortigern was overpowered. His rival and successor drove back the Jutes in turn. He did not long keep the upper hand, and in 465 he was routed utterly. The defeat of the British army was followed by an attack upon the great fortresses which had been erected along the Saxon Shore in the Roman times. The Jutes had no means of carrying them by assault, but they starved them out one by one, and some twenty-three years after their first landing the whole of the coast of Kent was in their hands. A fresh pirate band not of Jutes, but of Saxons landed near Selsey, and fought its way eastwards, conquering the South Downs and the flat land between the South Downs and the sea, till it reached Anderida. Anderida was starved out after a long blockade, and the Saxons, bursting in, " slew all that dwelt therein, nor was there henceforth one Briton left." Its Saxon conquerors came to be known as the South Saxons, and their land as Sussex. Another swarm, also of Saxons, called Gewissas, landed on the shore of Southampton Water. After a time they were reinforced by a body of Jutes, and though the Jutes formed settlements of their own in the Isle of Wight and on the mainland, the difference of race and language between them and the Gewissas was not enough to prevent the two tribes from coalescing. Ultimately Gewissas and Jutes became known as West Saxons, and established themselves in a district roughly corresponding with the modern Hampshire. Then, having attempted to penetrate further west, they were defeated at Mount Badon. Their overthrow was so com- plete as to check their advance for more than thirty years. Whilst the coast line from the inlet of the sea now filled by Romney Marsh to the western edge of Hampshire had thus been mastered by Saxons, others of the same stock, known as East Saxons, seized upon the low coast to the north of the Thames. From them the land was called Essex. Neither Saxons nor Jutes, however, were ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS 19 4497-520 as yet able to penetrate far up the valley of the Thames, as the Roman settlement of London, surrounded by marshes, still blocked the way. The coast line to the north of the East Saxons was seized at some unascertained dates by different groups of Angles. Two of these groups were known as the North folk and the South folk. They gave their names to Norfolk and Suffolk, and at some later time combined under the name of East Anglians. North of these were the Lindiswara that is to say, the settlers about the Roman Lindum, the modern Lincoln, and beyond them, stretching to the Humber, were the Gainas, from whom is derived the name of the modern Gainsborough. To the north of the Humber the coast was fringed by Anglo settlements which had not yet coalesced into one. The three peoples who effected this conquest were afterwards known among themselves by the common name of English, a name which was originally equivalent to Angle, while among the whole of the remaining Celtic population they were only known as Saxons. The mode in which the English treated the Britons was very different from that of the Romans, who were a civilized people and aimed at governing a conquered race. The newcomers drove out the Britons in order to find homes for themselves, and they pre- ferred to settle in the country rather than in a town. No English- man had ever lived in a town in his German home, or was able to appreciate the advantages of the commerce and manufacture by which towns are supported. Nor were they inclined to allow the inhabitants of the Roman towns to remain unmolested in their midst. What took place in the country cannot be certainly known. Many of the British were no doubt killed. Many took refuge in fens or woods, or fled to those portions of the island in which their countrymen were still independent. It is difficult to decide to what extent the men who remained behind were spared, but it is impos- sible to doubt that a considerable number of women were preserved from slaughter. The conquerors at their landing must have been for the most part young men, and when they wanted wives it would be far easier for them to seize the daughters of slain Britons than to fetch women from the banks of the Elbe. When the newcomers planted themselves on British soil, each group of families united by kinship fixed its home in a separate village or township, to which was given the name of the kindred followed by " ham " or " tun," the first word meaning the home or 20 ENGLAND 4497-520 dwelling, the second the earthen mound which formed the defense of the community. Thus Wokingham is the home of the Wok- ings, and Wellington the " tun " of the Wellings. Each man had a homestead of his own, with a strip or strips of arable land in an open field. Beyond the arable land was pasture and wood, common to the whole township, every villager being entitled to drive his cattle or pigs into them according to rules laid down by the whole township. The population was divided into Eorls and Ceorls. The Eorl was hereditarily distinguished by birth, and the Ceorl was a simple freeman without any such distinction. How the difference arose we do not know, but we do know that the Eorl had privileges which the Ceorl had not. Below the Ceorls were slaves taken in war or condemned to slavery as criminals. There were also men known as Gesiths, a word which means " followers," who were the follow- ers of the chiefs or Ealdormen (Eldcrmen) who led the conquerors. The Gesiths formed the war-band of the chief. They were prob- ably all of them Eorls, so that though every settler was either an Eorl or a Ceorl, some Eorls were also Gesiths. This war-band of Gesiths was composed of young men who attached themselves to the chief by a tie of personal devotion. It was the highest glory of the Gesith to die to save his chief's life. Of one Gesith it is told that, when he saw a murderer aiming a dagger at his chief, he, not having time to seize the assassin, threw his body between the blow and his chief, and perished rather than allow him to be killed. It was even held to be disgraceful for a Gesith to return from battle alive if his chief had been slain. The word by which the chief was known was Hlaford (Lord), which means a giver of bread, because the Gesiths ate his bread. They not only ate his bread, but they shared in the booty which he brought home. They slept in his hall, and were clothed in the garments woven by his wife and her maidens. A continental writer tells how a body of Gesiths once approached their lord with a petition that he should take a wife, because as long as he remained unmarried there was no one to make new clothes for them or to mend their old ones. At the time of the English settlement, therefore, there were two sorts of warriors among the invaders. The Ceorls, having been accustomed to till land at home, were quite ready to till the lands which they had newly acquired in Britain. They were, how- ever, reacly to defend themselves and their lands if they were at- ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS 21 4497-520 tacked, and they were under the obligation of appearing in arms when needed for defense. This general army of the villagers was called the Fyrd. On the other hand, the Gesiths had not been accustomed to till land at home, but had made righting their busi- ness. War, in short, which was an unwelcome accident to the Ceorl, was the business of life to the Gesith. The exact relation- ship between the Gesiths and Ceorls cannot be ascertained with certainty. It is not improbable that the Gesiths, being the best warriors among their countrymen, sometimes obtained land granted them by their chiefs, and were expected in consequence to be specially ready to serve the chief whom they had followed from their homes. It was from their relation to their chief that they were called Gesiths, a name gradually abandoned for that of Thegns, or servants, when they as was soon the case ceased to live with their chief and had houses and lands of their own, though they were bound to military service. How these Thegns cultivated their lands is a question to which there is no certain answer. In later days they made use of a class of men known as bondmen or villeins. These bondmen were not, like slaves, the property of their masters. They had land of their own, which they were allowed to cultivate for themselves on condition of spending part of their time in culti- vating the land of their lords. It has been supposed by some writers that the Thegns employed bondmen from the earliest times of the conquest. If, however, this was the case, there arises a further question whether the bondmen were Englishmen or Britons. The whole subject is under investigation, and the evidence which exists is excessively scanty. It is at least certain that the further the conquest progressed westwards, the greater was the number of Britons preserved alive. The bulk of the population on the eastern and southern coasts was undoubtedly English. English institutions and English language took firm root. The conquerors looked on the Britons with the utmost contempt, naming them Welsh, a name which no Briton thought of giving to himself, but which Germans had been in the habit of applying somewhat contemptuously to the Celts on the Continent. So far as British words have entered into the English language at all, they have been words such as gozvn or curd, which are likely to have been used by women, or words such as cart or pony, which are likely to have been used by agri- cultural laborers, and the evidence of language may therefore be 22 ENGLAND 4497-520 adduced in favor of the view that many women and many agri- cultural laborers were spared by the conquerors. The smallest political community of the new settlers was the village, or, as it is commonly called, the township, which is still rep- resented by the parish, the parish being merely a township in which ecclesiastical institutions have been maintained whilst political insti- tutions have ceased to exist. The freemen of the township met to settle small questions between themselves, under the presidency of their reeve or headman. More important cases were brought before the hundred-moot, or meeting of the hundred, a district which had been inhabited, or was supposed to have been inhabited, either by a hundred kindred groups of the original settlers or by the families of a hundred warriors. This hundred-moot was held once a month, and was attended by four men and the reeve from every township, and also by the Eorls and Thegns living in the hundred. It not only settled disputes about property, but gave judgment in criminal cases as well. In early days, long before the English had left their lands beyond the sea, it was not considered to be the business of the community to punish crime. If anyone was murdered, it was the duty of the kinsmen of the slain man to put to death the murderer. In course of time men got tired of the continual slaughter produced by this arrangement, and there sprang up a system according to which the murderer might offer to the kinsmen a sum of money known as weregild, or the value of a man, and if this money was accepted, then peace was made and all thought of vengeance was at an end. At a later time, at all events after the arrival of the English in this country, charges of murder were brought before the hundred-moot whenever the alleged murderer and his victim lived in the same hundred. If the accused person did not dispute the fact the moot sentenced him to pay a weregild, the amount of which differed in proportion to the rank of the slain man, not in proportion to the heinousness of the offense. As there was a weregild for murder, so there was also a graduated scale of payments for lesser offenses. One who struck off a hand or a foot could buy off ven- geance at a fixed rate. A new difficulty was introduced when a person who was charged with crime denied his guilt. As there were no trained lawyers and there was no knowledge of the principles of evidence, the accused person was required to bring twelve men to be his ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS 23 1497-520 compurgators that is to say, to hear him swear to his own inno- cence, and then to swear in turn that his oath was true. If he could not find men willing to be his compurgators he could appeal to the judgment of the gods, which was known as the Ordeal. If he could walk blindfold over red-hot ploughshares, or plunge his arm into boiling water, and show at the end of a fixed number of days that he had received no harm, it was thought that the gods bore witness to his innocency and had as it were become his com- purgators when men had failed him. It is quite possible that all or most of those who tried the ordeal failed, but as nobody would try the ordeal who could get compurgators, those who did not succeed must have been regarded as persons of bad character, so that no surprise would be expressed at their failure. When a man had failed in the ordeal there was a choice of punishments. If his offense was a slight one, a fine was deemed sufficient. If it was a very disgraceful one, such as secret murder, he was put to death or was degraded to slavery; in most cases he was declared to be a " wolf's-head " that is to say, he was out- lawed and driven into the woods, where, as the protection of the community was withdrawn from him, anyone might kill him with- out fear of punishment. As the hundred-moot did justice between those who lived in the hundred, so the folk-moot did justice between those who lived in different hundreds, or were too important to be judged in the hundred-moot. The folk-moot was the meeting of the whole folk or tribe, which consisted of several hundreds. It was attended, like the hundred-moot, by four men and the reeve from each township, and it met twice a year, and was presided over by the chief or Ealdorman. The folk-moot met in arms, because it was a muster as well as a council and a court. The vote as to war and peace was taken in it, and while the chief alone spoke, the warriors signified their assent by clashing their swords against their shields. How many folks or tribes settled in the island it is impossible to say, but there is little doubt but many of them soon combined. The resistance of the Britons was desperate, and it was only by joining together that the settlers could hope to overcome it. The causes which produced this amalgamation of the folks produced the king. It was necessary to find a man always ready to take the command of the united folks, and this man was called King, a name which signifies the man of the kinship or race at the head of which 24 ENGLAND 520-577 he stood. His authority was greater than the Ealdorman's, and his warriors were more numerous than those which the Ealdorman had led. He must come of a royal family that is, of one supposed to be descended from the god Woden. As it was necessary that he should be capable of leading an army, it was impossible that a child could be king, and therefore no law of hereditary succession prevailed. On the death of a king the folk-moot chose his suc- cessor out of the kingly family. If his eldest son was a grown man of repute, the choice would almost certainly fall upon him. If he was a child or an invalid, some other kinsman of the late king would be selected. Thirty-two years passed away after the defeat of the West Saxons at Mount Badon in 520 before they made any further con- quests. Welsh legends represent this period as that of the reign of Arthur. Some modern inquirers have argued that Arthur's king- dom was in the north, whilst others have argued that it was in the south. It is quite possible that the name was given by legend to more than one champion; at all events, there was a time when an Ambrosius protected the southern Britons. His stronghold was at Sorbiodunum, the hill fort now a grassy space known as Old Sarum. Thirty-two years after the battle of Mount Badon the kingdom of Ambrosius had been divided amongst his successors, who were plunged in vice and were quarreling with one another. In 552 Cynric, the West Saxon king, attacked the divided Britons, captured Sorbiodunum, and made himself master of Salis- bury Plain. Step by step he fought his way to the valley of the Thames, and when he had reached it he turned eastwards to descend the river to its mouth. Here, however, he found himself anticipated by the East Saxons, who had captured London, and had settled a branch of their people under the name of the Middle Saxons in Middlesex. The Jutes of Kent had pushed westwards through the Surrey hills, but in 568 the W r est Saxons defeated them and drove them back. After this battle, the first in which the con- querors strove with one another, the West Saxons turned north- wards, defeated the Britons in 571 at Bedford, and occupied the valleys of the Thames and Cherwell and the upper valley of the Ouse. They are next heard of much further west, and it has been supposed that they turned in that direction because they found the lower Ouse already held by Angle tribes. They crossed the Cots- wolds in 577 under two brothers, Ceawlin and Cutha, and at ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS 25 584-597 Deorham defeated and slew three kings who ruled over the cities of Glevum {Gloucester), Corinium (Cirencester), and Aquae Sulis (Bath). They seized on the fertile valley of the Severn, and during the next few years they pressed gradually northwards. In 584 they destroyed and sacked the old Roman station of Viriconium. This was their last victory for many a year. They attempted to reach Chester, but were defeated at Faddiley by the Britons, who slew Cutha in the battle. After the defeat at Faddiley the West Saxons split up into two peoples. Those of them who settled in the lower Severn val- ley took the name of Hwiccan, and joined the Britons against their own kindred. ' The Britons, now allied with the Hwiccan, defeated Ceawlin at Wanborough. After this disaster, though the West Saxon kingdom retained its independence, it was independent within smaller limits than those which Ceawlin had wished to give to it. His people can hardly have been numerous enough to occupy in force a territory reaching from Southampton Water to Bedford on one side and to Chester on another. While the West Saxons were enlarging their boundaries in the south, the Angles were gradually spreading in the center and the north. The East Anglians were stopped on their way to the west by the great fen, but either a branch of the Lindiswara or some newcomers made their way up the Trent, and established them- selves first at Nottingham and then at Leicester, and called them- selves the Middle English. Another body, known as the Mercians, or men of the mark or border-land, seized on the upper valley of the Trent. North of the Humber the advance was still slower. In 547, five years before the West Saxons attacked Sorbiodunum, Ida, a chieftain of one of the scattered settlements on the coast, was accepted as king by all those which lay between the Tees and the Forth. His new kingdom was called Bernicia, and his prin- cipal fortress was on a rock by the sea at Bamborough. During the next fifty years he and his successors enlarged their borders till they reached that central ridge of moorland hill which is some- times known as the Pennine range. The Angles between the Tees and the Humber called their country Deira, but though they also united under a king, their progress was as slow as that of the Ber- nicians. Bernicia. and Deira together were known as North-hum- berland, the land north of the Humber, a much larger territory than that of the modern country of Northumberland. 26 ENGLAND 597 It is probable that the cause of the slow advance of the northern Angles lay in the existence of a strong Celtic state in front. This territory was inhabited by a mixed population of Britons and Goidels, with an isolated body of Picts in Galloway. A common danger from the English fused them together, and as a sign of the wearing out of old distinctions, they took the name of Kymry, or Comrades, the name by which the Welsh are known among one CHRISTIAN (MISSIONS another to this day, and which is also preserved in the name of Cumberland, though the Celtic language is no longer spoken there. During the sixth century the Kymry ceased to be governed by one ruler, but for purposes of war they combined together, and as the country which they occupied was hilly and easily defended, the northern English discovered that they too must unite among themselves if they were to overpower the united resistence of the Kymry. Chapter III THE STRIFE OF THE ENGLISH KINGDOMS LEADING DATES Augustine's Mission, A.D. 597 ^Ethelfrith's Victory at Chester, 613 Penda Defeats Eadwine at Heathfield, 633 Penda's Defeat at Winwved, 655 Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 668 Offa Defeats the West Saxons at Bensington, 779 Ecgberht Returns to England, 800 Death of Ecgberht, 839 WHATEVER may be the exact truth about the numbers of Britons saved alive by the English conquerors, there can be no doubt that English speech and English cus- toms prevailed wherever the English settled. In Gaul, where the German Franks made themselves masters of the country, a dif- ferent state of things prevailed. Roman officials continued to govern the country under Prankish kings, Roman bishops converted the conquerors to Christianity, and Roman cities maintained, as far as they could, the old standard of civilization. All commercial intercourse between Gaul, still comparatively rich and prosperous, and Britain was for some time cut off by the irruption of the Eng- lish. Gradually, however, trade again sprang up. The Gaulish merchants who crossed the straits found themselves in Kent, and the communications with the Continent had become so friendly that in 584, or a little later, yEthelberht, King of Kent, took to wife Bertha, the daughter of a Frankish king, Charibert. Bertha was a Christian, and brought with her a Christian bishop. She begged of her husband a forsaken Roman church for her own use. This church is now known as St. Martin's. Near it were the dwell- ings in which yEthelberht and his followers lived, which had been given the new name of Cantwarabyrig or Canterbury (the dwelling of the men of Kent). The English were heathen, but their heathenism was not intolerant. yEthelberht's authority reached far beyond his native Kent. Within a few years after his marriage he had gained a supremacy over most of the other kings to the south of the Humber. There 27 28 ENGLAND 597 is no tradition of any war between /Ethelberht and these kings, and he certainly did not thrust them out from the leadership of their own peoples. The exact nature of his supremacy is, how- ever, unknown to us, though it is possible that they were bound to follow him if he went to war with peoples not acknowledging his supremacy, in which case his position towards them was some- thing of the same kind as that of a lord to his Gesiths. ^Ethelberht's position as the over-lord of so many kings and as the husband of a Christian wife drew upon him the attention of Gregory, the Bishop of Rome, or Pope. Many years before, as a deacon, he had been attracted by the fair faces of some boys from Deira exposed for sale in the Roman slave-market. He was told that the children were Angles. " Not Angles, but angels," he replied. " Who,"' he asked, " is their king? " Hearing that his name was 7E\h, he continued to play upon the words. " Alleluia," he said, " shall be sung in the land of iElla." Busy years kept him from seeking to fulfill his hopes, but at last the time came when he became Pope. In those days the Pope had far less authority over the churches of Western Europe than he afterwards acquired, but he offered the only center round which the)?- could rally, now that the empire had broken up into many states ruled over by dif- ferent barbarian kings. The general habit of looking to Rome for authority, which had been diffused over the whole empire while Rome was still the seat of the Emperors, made men look to the Roman Bishop for advice and help as they had once looked to the Roman emperor. Gregory now sent Augustine to England as the leader of a band of missionaries. Augustine with his companions landed at Ebbsfleet. in Thanet, where /Ethelberht's forefathers had landed nearlv a century and a half before. After a while yEthelberht arrived. He welcomed tiie newcomers, and told them that they were free to convert those who would willingly accept their doctrine. A place was assigned to them in Canterbury, and they were allowed to use Bertha's church. In the end /Ethelberht himself, together with thousands of the Kentish men. received baptism. It was more by their ex- ample than by their teaching that Augustine's band won converts. The missionaries lived "after the model of the primitive Church, giving themselves to frequent prayers, watchings, and fastings ; preaching to all who were within their reach, disregarding all worldly things as matters with which they had nothing to do, STRIFE OF KINGDOMS 29 597 accepting from those whom they taught just what was necessary for livelihood, living themselves altogether in accordance with what they taught, and with hearts prepared to suffer every adversity, or even to die, for that truth which they preached." These missionaries were monks as well as preachers. The Christians of those days considered the monastic life to be the highest. In the early days of the Church, when the world was full of vice and cruelty, it seemed hardly possible to live in the world without being dragged down to its wickedness. Men and women, therefore, who wished to keep themselves pure, withdrew to hermit- ages or monasteries, where they might be removed from temptation, and might fit themselves for heaven bv prayer and fasting. In the fifth century Benedict of Nursia had organized in Italy a system of life for the monastery which he governed, and the Benedictine rule, as it was called, was soon accepted in almost all the monas- teries of Western Europe. The special feature of this rule was that it encouraged labor as well as prayer. It was a saying of Benedict himself that " to labor is to pray." He did not mean that labor was good in itself, but that monks who worked during some hours of the day would guard their minds against evil thoughts better than if they tried to pray all day long. Augustine and his companions were Benedictine monks, and their quietness and con- tentedness attracted the population amid which they had settled. The religion of the heathen English was a religion which favored bravery and endurance, counting the warrior who slaughtered most enemies as most highly favored by the gods. The religion of Augustine was one of peace and self-denial. Its symbol was the cross, to be borne in the heart of the believer. The message brought by Augustine was very hard to learn. If Augustine had expected the whole English population to forsake entirely its evil ways and to walk in paths of peace, he would probably have been rejected at once. It was perhaps because he was a monk that he did not expect so much. A monk was accustomed to judge laymen by a lower standard of self-denial than that by which lie judged himself. He would, therefore, not ask too much of the new converts. They must forsake the heathen temples and sacrifices, and must give up some particularly evil habits. The rest must be left to time and the example of the monks. After a short stay Augustine revisited Gain and came back as Archbishop of the English. /Ethelberht gave to him a ruined 30 ENGLAND 588-593 church at Canterbury, and that poor church was named Christ Church, and became the mother church of England. From that day the archbishop's see has been fixed at Canterbury. If Au- gustine in his character of monk led men by example, in his char- acter of Archbishop he had to organize the Church. With yEthel- berht's help he set up a bishopric at Rochester and another in Lon- don. London was now again an important trading city, which, though not in /Ethelberht's own kingdom of Kent, formed part of the kingdom of Essex, which was dependent on Kent. More than these three sees Augustine was unable to establish. An attempt to obtain the friendly cooperation of the Welsh bishops broke down because Augustine insisted on their adoption of Roman customs ; and Lawrence, who succeeded to the archbishopric after Augustine's death, could do no more than his predecessor had done. In 616 /Ethelberht died. The over-lordship of the kings of Kent ended with him, and Augustine's church, which had largely depended upon his influence, very nearly ended as well. Augustine's Church was weak, because it depended on the kings, and had not had time to root itself in the affections of the people. /Ethelberht's supremacy was also weak. The greater part of the small states which still existed Sussex, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, and most of the small kingdoms of central England were no longer bordered by a Celtic population. For them the war of conquest and defense was at an end. If any one of the kingdoms was to rise to perma- nent supremacy it must be one of those engaged in strenuous war- fare, and as yet strenuous warfare was only carried on with the Welsh. The kingdoms which had the W'elsh on their borders were three W T essex, Mercia, and North-humberland, and neither Wes- sex nor Mercia was as yet very strong. Wessex was too distracted by conflicts among members of the kingly family, and Mercia was as yet too small to be of much account. North-humberland was therefore the first of the three to rise to the foremost place. Till the death of /Ella, the king of Deira, from whose land had been carried off the slave-boys whose faces had charmed Gregory at Rome, Deira and Bernicia had been as separate as Kent and Essex. Then in 588 /Ethelric of Bernicia drove out /Ella's son and seized his kingdom of Deira, thus joining the two kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia into one, under the new name of North-humber- land. In 593, four years before the landing of Augustine, /Ethelric STRIFE OF KINGDOMS 31 593-613. was succeeded by his son ^Ethelfrith. iEthel frith began a fresh struggle with the Welsh. We know little of the internal history of the Welsh population, but what we do know shows that towards the end of the sixth century there was an improvement in their religious and political existence. The monasteries were thronged. St. David and other bishops gave examples of piety. In righting against yEthelfrith the warriors of the Britons were fighting for their last chance of independence. They still held the west from the Clyde to the Channel. Unhappily for them, the Severn, the Dee, and the Solway Firth divided their land into four portions, and if an enemy coming from the east could seize upon the heads of the inlets into which those rivers flowed he could prevent the defenders of the west from aiding one another. Already the West Saxons had split off the West Welsh of the southwestern peninsula. yEthelfrith had to do with the Kymry, whose territories stretched from the Bristol Channel to the Clyde, and who held an outlying wedge of land then known as Loidis and Elmet, which now together form the West Riding of Yorkshire. The long range of barren hills which separated ^Ethelfrith's kingdom from the Kymry made it difficult for either side to strike a serious blow at the other. In the extreme north, where a low valley joins the Firths of Clyde and Forth, it was easier for them to meet. Here the Kymry found an ally outside their own borders. Towards the end of the fifth century a colony of Irish Scots had driven out the Picts from the modern Argyle. In 603 their king invaded yEthelfrith's country, but was defeated. " From that time no king of the Scots durst come into Britain to make war upon the English." Having freed himself from the Scots in the north, yEthelfrith turned upon the Kymry. After a succession of strug- gles he forced his way in 613 to the western sea near Chester. The Kymry had brought with them the 2,000 monks of the great mon- astery Bangor-iscoed, to pray for victory while their warriors were engaged in battle. yEthelfrith bade his men to slay them all. " Whether they bear arms or no," he said, " they light against us when they cry against us to their God." The monks were slain to a man. Their countrymen were routed, and Chester fell into the hands of the English. The capture of Chester split the Kymric kingdom in two. The southern Kymry, in what is now called Wales, could no longer give help to the northern Kymry between the Clyde and the Kibble, who grouped themselves into the king- 32 ENGLAND 617-626 dom of Strathclyde. Three weak Celtic states, unable to assist one another, would not long be able to resist their invaders. Powerful as Ethelfrith was, he was overcome by young Ead- wine, a son of his father's rival, /Ella of Deira, who became king over the united North-humberland, and then completed and con- solidated the conquests of his predecessors. He conquered the Isle of Man and the greater island which was henceforth known as Anglesea, the island of the Angles. Eadwine assumed unwonted state. Wherever he went a standard was borne before him, as well as a spear decorated with a tuft of feathers, the ancient sign of Roman authority. It has been thought by some that his meaning was that he, rather than any Welshman, was the true Gwledig, that is, the successor of the Duke of the Britains (Dux Britanniarum) , and that the name of Bretwalda, or ruler of the Britons, which he is said to have borne, was only a translation of the Welsh Gwledig. It is true that the title of Bretwalda is given to other powerful kings before and after Eadwine, some of whom were in no sense rulers over Britons; but it is possible that it was taken to signify a ruler over a large part of Britain, though the men over whom he ruled were English, and not Britons. Eadwine's immediate kingship did not reach farther south than the Humber and the Dee. But before 625 he had brought the East Angles and the kingdoms of central England to submit to his over-lordship, and he hoped to make himself over-lord of the south as well, and thus to reduce all England to dependence on himself. In 625 he planned an attack upon the West Saxons, and with the object of winning Kent to his side, he married /Ethelburh, a sister of the Kentish king. Kent was still the only Christian king- dom, and Eadwine was obliged to promise to his wife protection for her Christian worship. He was now free to attack the West Saxons. He defeated them in battle and forced them to ac- knowledge him as their over-lord. He was now over-lord of all the English states except Kent, and Kent had become his ally in consequence of his marriage. Eadwine's over-lordship had been gained with as little diffi- culty as yEthelberht's had been. The ease with which each of them carried out their purpose can only be explained by the change which had taken place in the condition of the English. The small bodies of conquerors which had landed at different parts of the coast had been interested to a man in the defense of the lands which they had STRIFE OF KINGDOMS 33 626 seized. Every freeman had been ready to come forward to defend the soil which his tribe had gained. After tribe had been joined to tribe, and still more after kingdom had been joined to kingdom, there were large numbers who ceased to have any interest in re- sisting the Welsh on what was, as far as they were concerned, a distant frontier. The first result of this change was that the king's war-band formed a far greater proportion of his military force than it had formed originally. There was still the obligation upon the whole body of the freemen to take arms, but it was an obligation which had become more difficult to fulfill, and it must often have hap- pened that very few freemen took part in a battle except the local levies concerned in defending their own immediate neighborhood. A military change of this kind would account for the undoubted fact that the further the English conquest penetrated to the west the less destructive it was of British life. The thegns, or warriors personally attached to the king, did not want to plow and reap with their own hands. They would be far better pleased to spare the lives of the conquered and to compel them to labor. Every step in advance was marked by a proportionately larger Welsh ele- ment in the population. The character of the kingship was as much affected by the change as the character of the population. The old folk-moots still remained as the local courts of the smaller kingdoms, or of the districts out of which the larger kingdoms were composed, and continued to meet under the presidency of ealdormen appointed or approved by the king. Four men and a reeve, all of them humble cultivators, could not, however, be expected to walk up to York from the shores of the Forth, or even from the banks of the Tyne, whenever Eadwine needed their counsel. Their place in the larger kingdoms was therefore taken by the Witenagemot (the moot of the wise men), composed of the ealdormen and the chief thegns, together with the priests attached to the king's service in the time of heathendom, and, in the time of Christianity, the bishop or bishops of his kingdom. In one way the king was the stronger for the change. His counselors, like his fighting force, were more dependent on himself than before. He was able to plan greater designs, and to carry out military enterprises at a greater distance. In another way he was the weaker for the change. lie had less support from the bulk of his people, and was more likely to under- 34 ENGLAND . 627-635 take enterprises in which they had no interest. The over-lordships of ^Ethelberht and Eadwine appear very imposing, but no real tie united the men of the center of England to those of Kent at one time, or to those of North-humberland at another. Eadwine was supreme over the other kings because he had a better war-band than they had. If another king appeared whose war-band was better than his, his supremacy would disappear. In 62J Eadwine, moved by his wife's entreaties and the urgency of her chaplain, Paulinus, called upon his Witan to accept Christian- ity. Coifi, the priest, declared that he had long served his gods for naught, and would try a change of masters. " The present life of man, O king," said a thegn, " seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a spar- row through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, and a good fire in the midst, and storms of rain and snow without. ... So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before or what is to follow we are utterly ignorant. If therefore this new doctrine contains some- thing more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed." On this recommendation Christianity was accepted. Paulinus was ac- knowledged as Bishop of York, but as yet it was but a missionary station. He converted thousands in Deira, but the men of Bernicia were unaffected by his pleadings. Christianity, like the extension of all better teaching, brought at first not peace, but the sword. The new religion was contemptible in the eyes of warriors. The su- premacy of Eadwine was shaken. The worst blow came from Mercia. Hitherto it had been only a little state on the Welsh border. Its king, Penda, the stoutest warrior of his day, now gathered under him all the central states, and founded a new Mercia which stretched from the Severn to the Fens. He first turned on the West Saxons, defeated them at Cirencester, and in 628 brought the territory of the Hwiccas under Mercian sway. Penda called to his aid Csedwalla, the king of Gwynnedd, the Snowdonian region of Wales. The alliance was too strong for Eadwine, and in 633, at the battle of Heathfield, the great king was slain and his army routed. Penda was content to split up Bernicia and Deira into separate kingdoms, and to join East Anglia to his subject states. Csedwalla had all the wrongs of his race to avenge. He remained in North- humberland burning and destroying till 635, when Oswald, who STRIFE OF KINGDOMS 35 635-655 was a son of ^Ethelfrith and of Eadwine's sister, and therefore united the claims of the rival families, overthrew Csedwalla, and was gratefully accepted as king by the whole of North-humberland. In the days of Eadwine, Oswald, as the heir of the rival house of Bernicia, had passed his youth in exile, and had been converted to Christianity in the monastery of Hii, the island now known as Iona. The monastery had been founded by Columba, an Irish Scot. It sent its missionaries abroad, and brought Picts as well as Scots under the influence of Christianity. Oswald now requested its abbot, the successor of Columba, to send a missionary to preach the faith to the men of North-humberland in the place of Paulinus, who had fled when Eadwine was slain. The first who was sent came back reporting that the people were too stubborn to be con- verted. "Was it their stubbornness or your harshness?" asked the monk Aidan. " Did you forget to give them the milk first and then the meat?" Aidan was chosen to take the place of the brother who had failed. He established himself, not in an inland town, but in Holy Island. His life was spent in wandering among the men of the valleys opposite, winning them over by his gentleness and his self-denying energy. Oswald, warrior as he was, had almost all the gentleness and piety of Aidan. " By reason of his constant habit of praying or giving thanks to the Lord he was wont whenever he sat to hold his hands upturned on his knees." As a king Oswald based his power on the acknowledgment of his over-lordship by all the kingdoms which were hostile to Penda. In 635 Wessex accepted Christianity, and the acceptance of Christi- anity brought with it the acceptance of Oswald's supremacy. Penda was thus surrounded by enemies, but his courage did not fail him, and in 642 at the battle of Maserfield he defeated Oswald. Oswald fell in the battle, begging with his last words for God's mercy on the souls of his followers. After Oswald's fall Bernicia was ruled by his brother Oswiu, and Deira by Oswini, who acknowledged Penda as his over-lord. Penda had for some years been burning and slaughtering in Ber- nicia, till he had turned a quarrel between himself and Oswiu into a national strife. In 655 Oswiu and Penda met to fight, as it seemed for supremacy over the whole of England, by the river Winwaed, near the present Leeds. The heathen Penda was defeated and slain. For a moment it seemed as if England would be brought to- 36 ENGLAND 659-664 gether under the rule of Oswiu. After Penda's death Mercia ac- cepted Christianity, and the newly united Mercia was split up into its original parts ruled by several kings. The supremacy of Oswiu was, however, as little to be borne by the Mercians as the supremacy of Penda had been borne by the men of North-humberland. Under Wulfhere the Mercians rose in 659 against Oswiu. All hope of uniting England was for the present at an end. For about a century and a half longer there remained three larger kingdoms North-humberland, Mercia, and Wessex, whilst four smaller ones East Anglia, Essex, Kent, and Sussex were usually attached either to Mercia or to Wessex. The failure of North-humberland to maintain the power was, no doubt, in the first place owing to the absence of any common danger, the fear of which would bind together its populations in self-defense. The northern Kymry of Strathclyde were no longer formidable, and they grew less for- midable as years passed on. The southern Kymry of Wales were too weak to threaten Mercia, and the Welsh of the southwestern peninsula were too weak to threaten Wessex. It was most unlikely that any permanent union of the English states would be brought about till some enemy arose who was more terrible to them than the Welsh could any longer be. Some preparation might, however, be made for the day of union by the steady growth of the Church. The South Saxons, secluded between the forest and the sea, were the last to be con- verted, but with them English heathenism came to an end as an avowed religion, though it still continued to influence the multitude in the form of a belief in fairies and witchcraft. Monasteries and nunneries sprang up on all sides. Missionaries spread over the country. In their mouths, and still more in their lives, Christianity taught what the fierce English warrior most wanted to learn, the duty of restraining his evil passions, and above all his cruelty. Nowhere in all Europe did the missionaries appeal so exclusively as they did in England to higher and purer motives. Nowhere but in England were to be found kings like Oswald and Oswini, who bowed their souls to the lesson of the Cross, and learned that they were not their own, but were placed in power that they might use their strength in helping the poor and needy. The lesson was all the better taught because those who taught it were monks. Monasticism brought with it an extravagant view of the life of self-denial, but those who had to be instructed needed STRIFE OF KINGDOMS 37 664-668 to have the lesson written plainly so that a child might read it. The rough warrior or the rough peasant was more likely to abstain from drunkenness if he had learned to look up to men who ate and drank barely enough to enable them to live ; and he was more likely to treat women with gentleness and honor if he had learned to look up to some women who separated themselves from the joys of mar- ried life that they might give themselves to fasting and prayer. Yet. great as the influence of the clergy was, it was in danger of being lessened through internal disputes among themselves. A very large part of England had been converted by the Celtic mission- aries, and the Celtic missionaries, though their life and teaching was in the main the same as that of the Church of Canterbury and of the Churches of the Continent, differed from them in the shape of the tonsure and in the time at which they kept their Easter. These things were themselves unimportant, but it was of great importance that the young English Church should not be separated from the Churches of more civilized countries which had preserved much of the learning and art of the old Roman Empire. One of those who felt strongly the evil which would follow on such a separation was Wilfrid. He was scornful and self-satisfied, but he had traveled to Rome, and had been impressed with the ecclesi- astical memories of the great city, and with the fervor and learning of its clergy. He came back resolved to bring the customs of England into conformity with those of the churches of the Conti- nent. On his arrival, Oswiu, in 664, gathered an assembly of the clergy of the north to discuss the point. Learned arguments were poured forth on either side. Oswiu listened in a puzzled way. Wilfrid boasted that his mode of keeping Easter was derived from Peter, and that Christ had given to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Oswiu at once decided to follow Peter, lest when he came to the gate of that kingdom Peter, who held the keys, should lock him out. Wilfrid triumphed, and the English Church was in all outward matters regulated in conformity with that of Rome. In 668, four years after Oswiu's decision was taken, Theodore of Tarsus was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury at Rome by the Pope himself. When he arrived in England the time had come for the purely missionary stage of the English Church to come to an end. Hitherto the bishops had been few, only seven in all England. Their number was now increased, and they were set to work no longer merelv to convert the heathen, but to see that the 38 ENGLAND b65 clergy did their duty among' those who had been already con- verted. Gradually, under these bishops, a parochial clergy came into existence. The parish clergy attacked violence and looseness of life in a way different from that of the monks. The monks had given examples of extreme self-denial. Theodore introduced the penitential system of the Roman Church, and ordered that those who had committed sin should be excluded from sharing in the rites of the Church until they had done penance. They were to fast, or to repeat prayers, sometimes for many years, before they were readmitted to communion. Many centuries afterwards good men objected that these penances were only bodily actions, and did not necessarily bring with them any real repentance. In the seventh century the greater part of the population could only be reached by such bodily actions. They had never had any thought that a murder, for instance, was anything more than a dangerous action which might bring down on the murderer the vengeance of the relations of the murdered man, which might be bought off with the payment of a weregild of a few shillings. The murderer who was required by the Church to do penance was being taught that a murder was a sin against God and against himself, as well as an offense against his fellow-men. Gradually very gradually men would learn from the example of the monks and from the discipline of penance that they were to live for something higher than the gratification of their own passions. When a change is good in itself, it usually bears fruit in un- expected ways. Theodore was a scholar as well as a bishop. Un- der his care a school grew up at Canterbury, full of all the learning of the Roman world. The scholars learned architecture on the Continent in order to raise churches of stone in the place of churches of wood. Among these was Ealdhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury, a teacher of all the knowledge of the time. In the north, Caedmon, a rude herdsman on the lands of the abbey which in later days was known as Whitby, was vexed with himself because he could not sing. One night in a dream he heard a voice bidding him sing of the Creation. In his sleep the words came to him, and they remained with him when he woke. He had become a poet a rude poet, it is true, but still a poet. The gift which Casdmon had ac- quired never left him. He sang of the Creation and of the whole course of God's providence. To the end he was unable to compose any songs which were not religious. STRIFE OF KINGDOMS 39 673-779 Of all the English scholars of the time Breda, usually known as " the venerable Bede," was the most remarkable. He was a monk of Jarrow on the Tyne. From his youth up he was a writer on all subjects embraced by the knowledge of his day. One subject he made his own. He was the first English historian. The title of his greatest work was the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. He told how that nation had been converted, and of the fortunes of its Church ; but for him the Church included the whole nation, and he told of the doings of kings and people, as well as of priests and monks. In this he was a true interpreter of the spirit of the English Church. Its clergy did not stand aloof from the rulers of the state, but worked with them as well as for them. The bishops stepped into the place of the heathen priests in the Witen- agemots of the kings, and counseled them in matters of state as well as in matters of religion. Bede recognized in the title of his book that there was such a thing as an English nation long before there was any political unity. Whilst kingdom was fighting against kingdom, Theodore in 673 assembled the first English Church council at Hertford. From that time such councils of the bishops and principal clergy of all England met whenever any ecclesiastical question required them to deliberate in common. The clergy at least did not meet as West Saxons or as Mercians. They met on behalf of the whole English Church, and their united consultations must have done much to spread the idea that, in spite of the strife between the kings, the English nation was really one. Many years passed away before the kingdoms could be brought under one king. North-humberland stood apart from southern England, and during the latter half of the seventh century Wessex grew in power. Wessex had been weak because it was seldom thor- oughly united. Each district was presided over by an /Etheling, or chief of royal blood, and it was only occasionally that these yEthelings submitted to the king. From time to time a strong king compelled the obedience of the /Ethelings and carried on the old struggle with the western Welsh. King Ine in 726 gave up the struggle and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. /Ethelbald, king of the Mercians, took the opportunity to invade Wessex, and made himself master of the country and over-lord of all the other kingdoms south of the Humber. By 779 the Mercian frontier was pushed to the Thames. Then there was a contest lor the West 40 ENGLAND ^ m Saxon crown between Beorhtric and Ecgberht, and Ecgberht fled to the Continent. A great change had passed over Europe since the days when a Frankish princess, by her marriage with the Kentish Ethelberht, had smoothed the way for the introduction of Christianity into England. In the first part of the seventh century Mohammed had preached a new religion in Arabia. This had spread and seemed likely to overrun Europe till checked by Charles Martel in 732. The latter's grandson was Charles the Great, who before he died ruled over the whole of Gaul and Germany, over the north and center of Italy, and the northeast of Spain. In 800 the Pope placed the Imperial crown on the head of Charles as the successor of the old Roman Emperors. Though Charles did not directly govern England, he made his influence felt there. Offa of Mercia had claimed his protection, and Ecgberht took refuge at his court. Ecgberht doubtless learned something of the art of ruling from him, and in 802 he returned to England, and was accepted as king by the West Saxons. Before he died, in 839, he had made himself the over-lord of all the other kingdoms. He was never, indeed, directly king of all England. Kent, Sussex, and Essex were governed by rulers of his own family appointed by himself. Mercia, East Anglia, and Xorth-humberland retained their own kings, ruling under Ecgberht as their over-lord. Towards the west Ecgberht's direct government did not reach beyond the Tamar, though the Cornish Celts acknowledged his authority, as did the Celts of Wales. The Celts of Strathclyde and the Picts and Scots remained entirelv independent. Chapter IV THE ENGLISH KINGSHIP AND THE STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES LEADING DATES First Landing of the Danes, A.D. 787 Treaty of Wedmore, 878 Dependent Alliance of the Scots with Eadward the Elder, 925 Accession of Eadgar, 959 IT was quite possible that the power founded by Ecgberht might pass away as completely as did the power which had been founded by yEthelfrith of North-humberland or by Penda of Mercia. To some extent the danger was averted by the unusual strength of character which for six generations showed itself in the family of Ecgberht. It was no less important that these suc- cessive kings, with scarcely an exception, kept up a good under- standing with the clergy, and especially with the archbishops of Canterbury, so that the whole of the influence of the Church was thrown in favor of the political unity of England under the West Saxon line. The clergy wished to see the establishment of a strong national government for the protection of the national Church. Yet it was difficult to establish such a government un- less other causes than the good-will of the clergy had contributed to its maintenance. Peoples who have had little intercourse except by fighting with one another rarely unite heartily unless they have some common enemy to ward off", and some common leader to look to in the conduct of their defense. The common enemy came from the north. At the end of the eighth century the inhabitants of Norway and Denmark resembled the Angles and Saxons three or four centuries before. The North- men were heathen still, and their religion was the old religion of force. They held that the warrior who was slain in fight was re- ceived by the god Odin in Valhalla, where immortal heroes spent their days in cutting one another to pieces, and were healed of their wounds in the evening that they might join in the nightly feast, and be able to fight again on the morrow. He that died in 41 42 ENGLAND 787-866 bed was condemned to a chilly and dreary existence in the abode of the goddess Hela, whose name is the Norse equivalent of Hell. Since Englishmen had settled in England they had lost the art of seamanship. The Northmen therefore were often able to plunder and sail away. They could only be attacked on land, and some time would pass before the Ealdorman who ruled the district could gather together not only his own war-band, but the fyrd, or levy of all men of fighting age. When at last he arrived at the spot on the coast where the pirates had been plundering, he often found that they were already gone. Yet, as time went on, the Northmen took courage, and pushed far enough into the interior to be attacked before they could regain the coast. Their first landing had been in 787, before the time of Ecgberht. In Ecgberht's reign their attacks upon Wessex were so persistent that Ecgberht had to bring his own war-band to the succor of his Ealdormen. His son and successor, yEthelwulf, had a still harder struggle. The pirates spread their attacks over the whole of the southern and the eastern coast, and ventured to remain long enough on shore to fight a succession of battles. In 851 they were strong enough to remain during the whole winter in Thanet. The crews of no less than 350 ships landed in the mouth of the Thames and sacked Canterbury and London. They were finally de- feated by TEthelwulf at Aclea (Ockley), in Surrey. In 858 yEthel- wulf died. Four of his sons wore the crown in succession; the two eldest, ./Ethelbald and ^Ethelberht, ruling only a short time. The task of the third brother, /Ethelred, who succeeded in 866, was harder than his father's. Hitherto the Northmen had come for plunder, and had departed sooner or later. A fresh swarm of Danes now arrived from Denmark to settle on the land as conquerors. Though they did not themselves fight on horse- back, they seized horses to betake themselves rapidly from one part of England to the other. Their first attack was made on the north, where there was no great affection for the West Saxon kings. They overcame the greater part of North-humberland. Everywhere the Danes plundered and burned the monasteries, be- cause the monks were weak, and their houses were rich with jeweled service books and golden plate. They next turned upon Mercia, and forced the Mercian under-king to pay tribute to them. Only Wessex, to which the smaller eastern states of Kent and Sussex had by this time been completely annexed, retained its independence. STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES 43 866-886 In Wessex yEthelred strove hard against the invaders. He was succeeded by Alfred, his youngest brother. It was not the English custom to give the crown to the child of a king if there was any one of the kingly family more fitted to wear it. yElfred was no common man. In his childhood he had visited Rome, and had been hallowed as king by Pope Leo IV., though the ceremony could have had no weight in England. He had early shown a love of letters, and the story goes that when his mother offered a book with bright illuminations to the one of her children who could first learn to read it, the prize was won by Alfred. During yEthelred's reign he had little time to give to learning. He fought nobly by his brother's side in the battles of the day, and after he succeeded him he fought nobly as king at the head of his people. In 878 the Danish host, under its king, Guthrum, beat down all resistance. Alfred was no longer able to keep in the open country, and took refuge with a few chosen warriors in the little island of Athelney, in Somerset. After a few weeks he came forth, and with the levies of Somerset and Wilts and of part of Hants he utterly defeated Guthrum and stormed his camp. After this defeat Guthrum and the Danes swore to a peace with Alfred at Chippenham. They were afterwards baptized in a body. Guthrum with a few of his companions then visited yElfred at Wedmore, a village from which is taken the name by which the treaty is usually but wrongly known. By this treaty yElfred retained no more than Wessex, with its dependencies, Sus- sex and Kent, and the western half of Mercia. The remainder of England as far north as the Tees was surrendered to the Danes, and became known as the Danelaw, because Danish and not Saxon law prevailed in it. Beyond the Tees Bernicia maintained its independence under an English king. Though the English people never again had to struggle for its very existence as a political body, yet, in 886, after a successful war, yElfred wrung from Guth- rum a fresh treaty by which the Danes surrendered London and the surrounding district. Yet, even after this second treaty, it might seem as if /Elfred, who only ruled over a part of England, was worse off than his grandfather, Ecgberht, who had ruled over the whole. In reality he was better off. In the larger kingdom it would have been almost impossible to produce the national spirit which alone could have permanently kept the whole together. In the smaller kingdom it was possible, especially as there was a 44 ENGLAND 886-901 strong- West Saxon element in the southwest of Mercia. More- over, Alfred, taking care not to offend the old feeling of local independence which still existed in Mercia, appointed his son-in- law, yEthelred, who was a Mercian, to govern it as an ealdorman under himself. ^Elfred would hardly have been able to do so much unless his own character had been singularly attractive. Other men have been greater warriors or legislators or scholars than Alfred was, but no man has ever combined in his own person so much excellence in war, in legislation, and in scholarship. As to war, he was not only a daring and resolute commander, but he was an organizer of the military forces of his people. One chief cause of his defeat of the English had been the difficulty of bringing together in a short time the " fyrd." or general levy of the male population, or of keeping it long together when men were needed at home to till the fields. /Elfred did his best to overcome this difficulty by order- ing that half the men of each shire should be always ready to fight, while half remained at home. This new half-army, like his new half-kingdom, was stronger than the whole one had been before. To an improved army /Elfred added a navy, and he was the first English king who defeated the Danes at sea. ^Elfred was too great a man to want to make every one con- form to some ideal of his own choosing. It was enough for him to take men as they were, and to help them to become better. He took the old laws and customs, and then, suggesting a few improve- ments, submitted them to the approval of his Witenagemot, the assembly of his bishops and warriors. He knew also that men's conduct is influenced more by what they think than by what they are commanded to do. His whole land was steeped in ignorance. The monasteries had been the schools of learning ; and many of them had been sacked by the Danes, their books burned and their inmates scattered, while others were deserted. /Elfred did his best to remedy the evil. He called learned men to him wherever they could be found. Some of these were English ; others, like Asser, who wrote /Elfred's life, were Welsh ; others again were Germans from beyond the sea. Yet yElfred was not content. It was a great thing that there should be again schools in England for those who could write and speak Latin, the language of the learned, but his heart yearned for those who could not speak anything but their own native tongue. He set himself to be the teacher of these. STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES 45 886-901 He himself translated Latin books for them, with the object of imparting knowledge, not of giving, as a modern translator would do, the exact sense of the author. When, therefore, he knew any- thing which was not in the books, but which he thought it good for Englishmen to read, he added it to his translation. Even with this he was not content. The books of Latin writers which he trans- lated taught men about the history and geography of the Continent. They taught nothing about the history of England itself, of the deeds and words of the men who had ruled the English nation. That these things might not be forgotten, he bade his learned men bring together all that was known of the history of his people since the day when they first landed as pirates on the coast of Kent. The Chronicle, as it is called, is the earliest history which any European nation possesses in its own tongue. Yet, after all, such a man as iElfred is greater for what he was than for what he did. No other king ever showed forth so well in his own person the truth of the saying, " He that would be first among you, let him be the servant of all." In 901 ^Elfred died. He had already fortified London as an outpost against the Danes, and he left to his son, Eadward, a small but strong and consolidated kingdom. The Danes on the other side of the frontier were not united. Guthrum's kingdom stretched over the old Essex and East Anglia, as well as over the south- eastern part of the old Mercia. The land from the Humber to the Nen was under the rule of Danes settled in the towns known to the English as the five boroughs of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Stamford and Nottingham. In the old Deira or modern Yorkshire was a separate Danish kingdom. Danes, in short, settled wherever we now find the place-names, such as Derby and Whitby, ending in the Danish termination " by " instead of the English terminations " ton " or " ham," as in Luton and Chippenham. Yet even in these parts the bulk of the population was usually English, and the Eng- lish population would everywhere welcome an English conqueror. A century earlier a Mercian or a North-humbrian had preferred independence to submission to a West Saxon king. They now preferred a West Saxon king to a Danish master, especially as the old royal houses were extinct, and there was no one but the West Saxon king to lead them against the Danes. Eadward was not, like his father, a legislator or a scholar, but he was a great warrior. Step by step he won his way, not content 46 ENGLAND 901-945 with victories in the open country, but securing each district by the erection of " burns," or fortifications. Towns, small at first, grew up in and around the " burns," and were guarded by the cour- age of the townsmen themselves. Eadward, after his sister's death, took into his own hands the government of Mercia, and from that time all southern and central England was united under him. In 922 the Welsh kings acknowledged his supremacy. Tradition assigns to Eadward a wider rule shortly before his death. It is said that in 925 the king of the Scots, together with other northern rulers, chose Eadward " to father and lord." What was the precise form of the acknowledgment must remain uncer- tain. In 925 Eadward died. Three sons reigned in succession. The eldest was ^Ethelstan. The Danish king at York owned him as over-lord, and on his death in 926 ^Ethelstan took Danish North- humberland under his direct rule. The Welsh kings were reduced to make a fuller acknowledgment of his supremacy than they had made to his father. Great rulers on the Continent sought his alliance. The empire of Charles the Great had broken up. One of .ZEthelstan's sisters was given to Charles the Simple, the king of the Western Franks ; another to Hugh the Great, Duke of the French and lord of Paris, who, though nominally the vassal of the king, was equal in power to his lord, and whose son was after- wards the first king of modern France. A third sister was given to Otto, the son of Henry, the king of the Eastern Franks, from whom, in due time, sprang a new line of emperors. yEthelstan's great- ness drew upon him the jealousy of the king of the Scots and of all the northern kings. In 937 he defeated them all in a great battle at Brunanburh. His victory was celebrated in a splendid war-song. iEthelstan died in 940. He was succeeded by his young brother, Eadmund. Eadmund had to meet a general rising of the Danes of Mercia as well as of those of the north. After he had suppressed the rising he showed himself to be a great statesman as well as a great warrior. The relations between the king of the English and the king of the Scots had for some time been very uncertain. Eadmund took an opportunity of making it to be the interest of the Scottish king permanently to join the English. The southern part of the kingdom of Strathclyde had for some time been under the English kings. In 945 Eadmund overran the remainder, but gave it to Malcolm on condition that he should be STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES 47 946-955 his fellow-worker by sea and land. The king of Scots thus entered into a position of dependent alliance towards Eadmund. A great step was thus taken in the direction in which the inhabitants of Britain afterwards walked. The dominant powers in the island were to be English and Scots, not English and Danes. Eadmund thought it worth while to conciliate the Scottish Celts rather than to endeavor to conquer them. The result of Eadmund's states- manship was soon made manifest. He himself did not live to gather its fruits. In 946 an outlaw who had taken his seat at a feast in his hall slew him as he was attempting to drag him out by the hair. The next king, Eadred, the last of Eadward's sons, though sickly, had all the spirit of his race. He had another sharp struggle with the Danes, but in 954 he made himself their master. North-humberland was now thoroughly amalgamated with the English kingdom, and was to be governed by an Englishman, Oswulf, with the title of Earl, an old Danish title equivalent to the English Earldorman, having nothing to do, except philologically, with the old English word Eorl. In 955 Eadred died, having completed the work which Alfred had begun, and which had been carried on by his son and his three grandsons. England, from the Forth to the Channel, was under one ruler. Even the contrast between Englishmen and Danes was soon, for the most part, wiped out. They were both of the same Teutonic stock, and therefore their languages were akin to one another and their institutions very similar. The Danes of the north were for some time fiercer and less easily controlled than the English of the south, but there was little national distinc- tion between them, and what little there was gradually passed away. There were two ecclesiastics of prominence about this time, Dunstan and Oda. Dunstan in his boyhood had been attached to Eadmund's court, but he had been driven off by the rivalry of other youths. He was in no way fitted to be a warrior. He loved art and song, and preferred a book to a sword. For such youths there was no place among the fighting laymen, and Dunstan early found the peace which he sought as a monk at Glastonbury. Eadmund made him abbot, but Dunstan had almost to create his monastery before he could rule it. Monasteries had nearly vanished from England in the time of the Danish plunderings, and the few monks who remained had very little that was monastic about them. Dun- 48 ENGLAND 955 stan brought the old monks into order, and attracted new ones, but to the end of his days he was conspicuous rather as a scholar than as an ascetic. From Glastonbury he carried on the work of teach- ing an ignorant generation, just as iElfred had done in an earlier time. iElfred, however, was a warrior and a ruler first, and then a teacher. Dunstan was a teacher first, and then a ruler. Eadred took counsel with him, and Dunstan became thus the first example of a class of men which afterwards rose to power that, namely, of ecclesiastical statesmen. Up to that time all who had governed had been warriors. Another side of the Church's work, the maintenance of a high standard of morality, was, in the time of Eadred, represented by Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury. The accepted standard of morality differs in different ages, and, for many reasons, it was held by the purer minds in the tenth century that celibacy was nobler than marriage. If our opinion is changed now, it is because many things have changed. No one then thought of teaching a girl anything, except to sew and to look after the house, and an ignorant and untrained wife could only be a burden to a man who was intent upon the growth of the spiritual or intellectual life in himself and in others. At all times the monks, who were often called the regular clergy, because they lived according to a certain rule, had been unmarried, and attempts had frequently been made by coun- cils of the Church to compel the parish priests, or secular clergy, to follow their example. In England, however, and on the Con- tinent as well, these orders were seldom heeded, and a married clergy was everywhere to be found. Of late, however, there had sprung up in the monastery of Cluny, in Burgundy, a zeal for the establishment of universal clerical celibacy, and this zeal was shared by Archbishop Oda, though he found it impossible to over- come the stubborn resistance of the secular clergy. In its eagerness to set up a pure standard of morality, the Church had made rules against the marriage of even distant rela- tions. Eadwig, who had succeeded Eadred while still young, offended against these rules by marrying his kinswoman, ^Elfgifu. A quarrel arose on this account between Dunstan and the young king, and Dunstan was driven into banishment. Such a quarrel was sure to weaken the king, because the support of the bishops was usually given to him, for the sake of the maintenance of peace and order. The dispute came at a bad time, because there was also STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES 959 49 a quarrel among the ealdormen and other great men. At last the ealdormen of the north and center of England revolted and set up the king's brother, Eadgar, to be king of all England north SAXON ENGLAND of the Thames. Upon this, Oda, taking courage, declared Eadwig and his young wife to be separated as too near of kin. and even seized her and had her carried beyond sea. In 959 Eadwig died, and Eadgar succeeded to the whole kingdom. Chapter V EADGAR'S ENGLAND EADGAR was known as the Peaceful King. He had the ad- vantage, which Eadwig had not, of having the Church on his side. He maintained order, with the help of Dunstan as his principal adviser. Not long after his accession Dunstan be- came Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was that of a man who knows that he cannot do everything and is content to do what he can. The Danes were to keep their own laws, and not to have English laws forced upon them. The great ealdormen were to be concili- ated, not to be repressed. Everything was to be done to raise the standard of morality and knowledge. Foreign teachers were brought in to set up schools. More than this Dunstan did not attempt. It is true that in his time an effort was made to found monasteries, which should be filled with monks living after the stricter rule of which the example had been set at Cluny, but the man who did most to establish monasteries again in England was not Dunstan, but /Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester. ^Ethelwold, however, was not content with founding monasteries. He also drove out the secular canons from his own cathedral of Winchester and filled their places with monks. His example was followed by Oswold, Bishop of Worcester. Dunstan did not introduce monks even into his own cathedrals at Worcester and Canterbury. As far as it is now possible to understand the matter, the change, though it provoked great hostility, was for the better. The secular canons were often married, connected with the laity of the neigh- borhood, and lived an easy life. The monks were celibate, living according to a strict rule, and conforming themselves to what, according to the standard of the age, was the highest ideal of religion. By a life of complete self-denial they were able to act as examples to a generation which needed teaching by example more than by word. How completely monasticism was associated with learning is shown by the fact that the monks now established at Worcester took up the work of continuing the Chronicle which had begun under /Elfrcd. 50 EADGAR'S ENGLAND 51 959-975 Eadgar's title of Peaceful shows that at least he lived on good terms with his neighbors. There is reason to believe that he was able to do this because he followed out the policy of Eadmund in singling out the king of Scots as the ruler whom it was most worth his while to conciliate. Eadmund had given over Strathclyde to one king of Scots. Eadgar gave over Lothian to another. Lothian was then the name of the whole of the northern part of Bernicia, stretching from the Cheviots to the Forth. The long struggle with the Danes could not fail to leave its mark upon English society. The history of the changes which took place is difficult to trace ; in the first place because our informa- tion is scanty, in the second because things happened in one part of the country which did not happen in another. Yet there were two changes which were widely felt : the growth of the king's authority, and the acceleration of the process which was reducing to bondage the ceorl, or simple freeman. In the early days of the English conquest the kings and other great men had around them their war-bands, composed of gesiths or thegns, personally attached to themselves, and ready, if need were, to die on their lord's behalf. Very early these thegns were rewarded by grants of land on condition of continuing military service. Every extension of the king's power over fresh territory made their services more important. It had always been difficult to bring together the fyrd, or general army of the freemen, even of a small district, and it was quite impossible to bring together the fyrd of a kingdom reaching from the Channel to the Firth of Forth. The kings therefore had to rely more and more upon their thegns, who in turn had thegns of their own whom they could bring with them, and thus was formed an army ready for military service in any part of the kingdom. A king who could command such an army was even more powerful than one who could command the whole of the forces of a smaller territory. It is impossible to give a certain account of the changes which passed over the English freemen, but there can be little doubt that a process had been for some time going on which converted them into bondmen, and that this process was greatly accelerated by the Danish wars. When a district was being plundered the peasant holders of the strips of village land suffered most, and needed the protection of the neighboring thegn, who was better skilled in war than themselves, and this protection they could only 52 ENGLAND 959-975 obtain on condition of becoming bondmen themselves that is to say, of giving certain days in the week to work on the special estate of the lord. A bondman differed both from a slave and from a modern farmer. Though he was bound to the soil and could not go away if he wished to do so, yet he could not be sold as though he were a slave; nor, on the other hand, could he, like a farmer, be turned out of his holding so long as he fulfilled his obligation of cultivating his lord's demesne. The lord was almost invariably a thegn, either of the king or of some superior thegn, and there thus arose in England, as there arose about the same time on the Continent, a chain of personal relationships. The king was no longer merely the head of the whole people. He was the personal lord of his own thegns, and they again were the lords of other thegns. The serfs cultivated their lands, and thereby set them free to fight for the king on behalf of the whole nation. It seems at first sight as if the English people had fallen into a worse condition. An organization, partly military and partly servile, was substituted for an organization of freemen. Yet only in this way could the whole of England be amalgamated. The nation gained in unity what it lost in freedom. In another way the condition of the peasants was altered for the worse by the growth of the king's power. In former days land was held as " folkland," granted by the people at the original conquest, passing to the kinsmen of the holder if he died without children. Afterwards the clergy introduced a system by which the owner could grant the " bookland," held by book or charter, setting at naught the claim of his kinsmen, and in order to give validity to the arrangement, obtained the consent of the king and his Witenagemot. In time the king and his Witenagemot granted charters in other cases, and the new " bookland " to a great extent superseded the old " folkland," accompanied by a grant of the right of holding special courts. In this manner the old hundred- moots became neglected, people seeking for justice in the courts of the lords. Yet those who lived on the lord's land attended his court, appeared as compurgators, and directed the ordeal just as they had once done in the hundred-moot. The towns had grown up in various ways. Some were of old Roman foundation, such as Lincoln and Gloucester. Others, like Nottingham and Bristol, had come into existence since the English settlement. Others asfain irathered round monasteries, EADGAR'S ENGLAND 53 959-975 like Bury St. Edmunds and Peterborough. The inhabitants met to consult about their own affairs, sometimes in dependence on a lord. Where there was no lord they held a court which was com- posed in the same way as the hundred-moots outside. The towns- men had the right of holding a market. Every sale had to take place in the presence of witnesses who could prove, if called upon to do so, that the sale had really taken place, and markets were therefore usually to be found in towns, because it was there that witnesses could most easily be found. Shires, which were divisions larger than the hundreds, and smaller than the larger kingdoms, originated in various ways. In the south, and on the east coast as far as the Wash, they were either old kingdoms like Kent and Essex, or settlements forming part of old kingdoms, as Norfolk (the north folk) formed part of East Anglia, and Dorset or Somerset, the lands of the Dorsaetan or the Somerssetan, formed part of the kingdom of Wessex. In the center and north they were of more recent origin, and were probably formed as those parts of England were gradually reconquered from the Danes. The fact that most of these shires are named from towns as Derbyshire from Derby, and Warwickshire from War- wick shows that they came into existence after towns had become of importance. While the hundred-moot decayed, the folk-moot continued to flourish under a new name, as the shire-moot. This moot was still attended by the freemen of the shire, though the thegns were more numerous and the simple freemen less numerous than they had once been. Still the continued existence of the shire-moot kept up the custom of self-government more than anything else in England. The ordeals were witnessed, the weregild inflicted, and rights to land adjudged, not by an officer of the king, but by the landowners of the shire assembled for the purpose. These meet- ings were ordinarily presided over by the ealdorman, who ap- peared as the military commander and the official head of the shire, and by the bishop, who represented the Church. Another most important personage was the sheriff, or shire-reeve, whose business it was to see that the king had all his rights, to preside over the shire-moot when it sat as a judicial court, and to take care that its sentences were put in execution. During the long fight with the Danes commanders were needed who could lead the forces of more than a single shire. Before the 54 ENGLAND 959-975 end of Eadred's reign there were ealdormen who ruled over many shires. One of them for instance, yEthelstan, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and of the shires immediately to the west of East Anglia, was so powerful that he was popularly known as the Half-King. Such ealdormen had great influence in their own districts, and they also were very powerful about the king. The king could not perform any important act without the consent of the Witenage- mot, which was made up of three classes the Ealdormen, the bishops, and the greater thegns. When a king died the Witenage- mot chose his successor out of the kingly family; its members appeared as witnesses whenever the king " booked " land to any one; and it even, on rare occasions, deposed a king who was unfit for his post. In the days of a great warrior king like Eadward or Eadmund, members of the Witenagemot were but instruments in his hands, but if a weak king came upon the throne each member usually took his own way and pursued his own interests rather than that of the king's and kingdom. The cultivated land was surrounded either by wood or by pasture and open commons. Every cottager kept his hive of bees, to produce the honey which was then used as we now use sugar, and drove his swine into the woods to fatten on the acorns and beechnuts which strewed the ground in the autumn. Sheep and cattle were fed on the pastures, and horses were so abundant that when the Danish pirates landed they found it easy to set every man on horseback. Yet neither the Danes nor the English ever learned to fight on horseback. They rode to battle, but as soon as they approached the enemy they dismounted to fight on foot. The huts of the villagers clustered round the house of the lord. His abode was built in a yard surrounded for protection by a mound and fence, while very great men often established themselves in burhs, surrounded by earthworks, either of their own raising or the work of earlier times. Its principal feature was the hall, in which the whole family with the guests and the thegns of the lord met for their meals. The walls were covered with curtains worked in pat- terns of bright colors. The fire was lighted on the hearth, a broad stone in the middle, over which was a hole in the roof through which the smoke of the hall escaped. The windows were narrow, and were either unclosed holes in the wall, or covered with oiled linen which would admit a certain amount of light. In a great house at meal-time boards were brought forward EADGAR'S ENGLAND 55 959-975 and placed on tressels. Bread was to be had in plenty, and salt butter. Meat too, in winter, was always salted, as turnips and other roots upon which cattle are now fed in winter were wholly unknown, and it was therefore necessary to kill large numbers of sheep and oxen when the cold weather set in. There were dishes, but neither plates nor forks. Each man took the meat in his fingers and either bit off a piece or cut it off with a knife. The master of the house sat at the head of the table, and the lady handed round the drink, and afterwards sat down by her husband's side. She, however, with any other ladies who might be present, soon departed to the chamber which was their own apartment. The men con- tinued drinking long. The cups or glasses which they used were often made with the bottoms rounded so as to force the guests to keep them in their hands till they were empty. The usual drink was mead, that is to say, fermented honey, or ale brewed from malt alone, as hops were not introduced till many centuries later. In wealthy houses imported wine was to be had. English wine was not unknown, but it was so sour that it had to be sweetened with honey. It was held to be disgraceful to leave the company as long as the drinking lasted, and drunkenness and quarrels were not un- frequent. Wandering minstrels who could play and sing or tell stories were always welcome, especially if they were jugglers as well, and could amuse the company by throwing knives in the air and catching them as they fell, or could dance on their hands with their legs in the air. When the feast was over the guests and dependents slept on the floor on rugs or straw, each man taking care to hang his weapons close to his head on the wall, to defend himself in case of an attack by robbers in the night. The lord re- tired to his chamber, while the unmarried ladies occupied bowers, or small rooms, each with a separate door opening on to the yard. Their only beds were bags of straw. Neither men nor women wore night-dresses of any kind, but if they took off their clothes at all, wrapped themselves in rugs. Chapter VI ENGLAND AND NORMANDY LEADING DATES Death of Eadgar, A.D. 975 Accession of ^thelred, 979 Ac- cession of Cnut, 1016 Accession of Eadward the Confessor, 1035 Banishment of Godwtne, 1051 Accession of Harold and Battle of Senlac, 1066 EADGAR died in 975, leaving two boys, Eadward and /Ethelred. On his death a quarrel broke out among - the ealdormen, some declaring for the succession of Eadward and others for the succession of ^Ethelred. The political quarrel was complicated by an ecclesiastical quarrel. The supporters of Eadward were the friends of the secular clergy; the supporters of ^Ethelred were the friends of the monks. Dunstan, with his usual moderation, gave his voice for the eldest son, and Eadward was chosen king and crowned. After reigning four years he was mur- dered by some of the opposite party, and, as was commonly sup- posed, by his stepmother's directions. ^Ethelred, now a boy of ten, became king in 979. The epithet the Unready, which is usually assigned to him, is a mistranslation of a word which properly means the Rede-less, or the man without counsel. He was entirely without the qualities which befit a king. Eadmund had kept the great chieftains in subordination to himself because he was a successful leader. Eadgar had kept them in subordination because he treated them with respect. ^Ethelred could neither lead nor show respect. He was always picking quar- rels when he ought to have been making peace, and always making peace when he ought to have been fighting. What he tried to do was to lessen the power of the great ealdormen, and bring the whole country more directly under his own authority. In 985 he drove out JElfric, the ealdorman of the Mercians. In 988 Dunstan died, and /Ethelred had no longer a wise adviser by his side. It would have been difficult for /Ethelred to overpower the ealdormen even if he had had no other enemies to deal with. Un- ENGLAND AND NORMANDY 57 979-994 luckily for him, new swarms of Danes and Norwegians had already appeared in England. They began by plundering the country, without attempting to settle in it. JEthelred could think of no better counsel than to pay them 1 0,000/. , a sum of money which was then of much greater value than it is now, to abstain from plundering. It was not nec- essarily a bad thing to do. One of the greatest of the kings of the Germans, Henry the Fowler, had paid money for a truce to barbarians whom he was not strong enough to fight. But when the truce had been bought Henry took care to make himself strong enough to destroy them when they came again. /Ethelred was never ready to fight the Danes and Norwegians at any time. In 994 Olaf Trygvasson, who had been driven from the kingship of Norway, and Svend, who had been driven from the kingship of Denmark, joined forces to attack London. The London citizens fought better than the English king, and the two chieftains failed to take the town. " They went thence, and wrought the greatest evil that ever any army could do, in burning, and harrying, and in man-slaying, as in Essex, and in Kent, and in Sussex, and in Hamp- shire. And at last they took their horses and rode as far as they could, and did unspeakable evil." The plunderers were now known as " the army," moving about where they would. /Ethelred this time gave them 16,000/. He got rid of Olaf, who sailed away and was slain by his enemies, but he could not permanently get rid of Svend. Svend, about the year 1000, recovered his kingship in Denmark, and was more formidable than he had been before. Plunderings went on as usual, and /Ethelred had no resource but to pay money to the plunderers to buy a short respite. He then looked across the sea for an ally, and hoped to find one by con- necting himself with the Duke of the Normans. The country which lies on both sides of the lower course of the Seine formed, at the beginning of the tenth century, part of the dominions of Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks. Danes and Norwegians, known on the Continent as Normans, plundered Charles's dominions as they had plundered England, and at last settled in them as they had settled in parts of England. In 912 Charles the Simple ceded to their leader, Hrolf, a territory of which the capital was Rouen, and which became known as Normandy the land of the Normans. Hrolf became the first Duke of the Normans and his successors became the most powerful vassals of 58 ENGLAND 1002-1013 the Capetians who had made themselves kings of the French. In 1002 the duke was Richard II. the Good the son of Richard the Fearless. In that year iEthelred, who was a widower, married Richard's sister, Emma. It was the beginning of a connection with Normandy which never ceased till a Norman duke made himself by conquest king of the English. The causes which were making the English thegnhood a mili- tary aristocracy acted with still greater force in Normandy. The tillers of the soil, sprung from the old inhabitants of the land, were kept by their Norman lords in even harsher bondage than the English serfs. The Norman warriors held their land by military service, each one being bound to fight for his lord, and the lord in turn being bound, together with his dependents, to fight for a higher lord, and all at last for the Duke himself. In England, though in theory the relations between the king and his ealdormen were not very different from those existing between the Norman duke and his immediate vassals, the connection between them was far looser. The kingdom as a whole had no general unity. The king could not control the ealdormen, and the ealdormen could not control the king. Even when ealdormen, bishops, and thegns met in the Witenagemot they could not speak in the name of the nation. A nation in any true sense hardly existed at all, and they were not chosen as representatives of any part of it. Each one stood for himself, and it was only natural that men who during the greater part of the year were ruling in their own districts like little kings should think more of keeping up their own almost independent power at home than of the common interests of all England, which they had to consider when they met and that for a few days only at a time in the Witenagemot. yEthelred at least was not the man to keep them united. yEthelred, having failed to buy off the Danes, tried to murder them. In 1002, on St. Brice's Day, there was a general massacre of all the Danes not of the old inhabitants of Danish blood who had settled in Alfred's time but of the newcomers. Svend re- turned to avenge his countrymen. YEthelred had in an earlier part of his reign levied a land-tax known as the Danegeld to pay off the Danes the first instance of a general tax in England. He now called on all the shires to furnish ships for a fleet; but he could not trust his ealdormen. In 1013 Svend appeared no longer as a plunderer but as a conqueror. First the old Danish districts of the ENGLAND AND NORMANDY 59 1014-1016 north and east, and then the Anglo-Saxon realm of /Elfred Mer- cia and Wessex submitted to him to avoid destruction. In 1013 vEthelred fled to Normandy. In 1014 Svend died suddenly as he was riding at the head of his troops. His Danish warriors chose his son Cnut king of England. The English Witenagemot sent for /Ethelred to return. At last, in 1016, iEthelred died before he had conquered Cnut or Cnut conquered him. TEthelred's eldest son not the son of Emma Eadmund Ironside, succeeded him. He did all that could be done to restore the English kingship by his vigor. In a single year he fought six battles ; but the treachery of the ealdormen was not at an end, and he was completely overthrown. He and Cnut agreed to divide the kingdom, but before the end of the year the heroic Eadmund died, and Cnut the Dane became king of England without a rival. Cnut was one of those rulers who, like the Emperor Augustus, shrink from no barbarity in gaining power, but when once they have acquired it exercise their authority with moderation and gentleness. He began by outlawing or putting to death men whom he consid- ered dangerous, but when this had once been done he ruled as a thoroughly English king of the best type. The Danes who had hitherto fought for him had come not as settlers, but as an army, and soon after Eadmund's death he sent most of them home, re- taining a force, variously stated as 3,000 or 6,000, warriors known as his House-carls (House-men), who formed a small standing army depending entirely on himself. They were not enough to keep down a general rising of the whole of England, but they were quite enough to prevent any single great man from rebelling against him. Cnut therefore was, what /Ethelred had wished to be, really master of his kingdom. Under him ruled the ealdormen, who from this time were known as Earls, from the Danish title of Jarl, and of these earls the principal were the three who governed Mercia, North-humberland, and Wessex, the last named now including the old kingdoms of Kent and Sussex. There was a fourth in East Anglia, but the limits of this earldom varied from time to time, and there were sometimes other earldoms set up in the neighboring shires, whereas the first-named three remained as they were for some time after Quit's death. It is characteristic of Cnut that the one of the earls to whom he gave his greatest confidence was Godwine, an Englishman, who was Earl of the 60 ENGLAND 1016-1035 West Saxons. Another Englishman, Leofwine, became Earl of the Mercians. A Dane obtained the earldom of the North-humbrians, but the land was barbarous, and its Earls were frequently murdered. Sometimes there was one Earl of the whole territory, sometimes two. It was not till after the end of Cnut's reign that Siward became Earl of Deira, and at a later time of all North-humberland as far as the Tweed. The descendants of two of these Earls, God- wine and Leofwine, leave their mark on the history for some time to come. Beyond the Tweed Malcolm, king of the Scots, ruled. He defeated the North-humbrians at Carham, and Cnut ceded Lothian to him, either doing so for the first time or repeating the act of Eadgar, if the story of Eadgar's cession is true. At all events the king of the Scots from this time ruled as far south as the Tweed, and acknowledged Cnut's superiority. Cnut also became king of Denmark by his brother's death, and king of Norway by conquest. He entered into friendly relations with Richard II., Duke of the Normans, by marrying his sister Emma, the widow of /Ethelred. Cnut had thus made himself master of a great empire, and yet, Dane as he was, though he treated Englishmen and Danes as equals, he gave his special favor to Englishmen. He restored, as men said, the laws of Eadgar that is to say, he kept peace and restored order as in the days of Eadgar. He reverenced monks, and once as he was rowing on the waters of the fens, he heard the monks of Ely singing. He bade the boatmen row him to the shore that he might listen to the song of praise and prayer. He even went on a pilgrimage to Rome, to humble himself in that city which contained the burial places of the Apostles Peter and Paul. From Rome he sent a letter to his subjects. " I have vowed to God,*' he wrote, " to live a right life in all things; to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what is just, through headiness or negli- gence of youth, I am ready, with God's help, to amend it utterly." With Cnut these were not mere words. Cnut died in 1035. Godwine and the West Saxons chose Harthacnni, the son of Cnut and Emma, to take his father's place, while the north and center, headed by Leofwine' s son, Leofric, Earl of the Mercians, chose Harold, the son of Cnut by an earlier wife or concubine. Cnut's empire was, however, breaking up. The Norwegians chose Magnus, a king of their own race, and ENGLAND AND NORMANDY 61 1042-1051 Harthacnut remained in Denmark to defend it against the attacks of Magnus. As Harthacnut still remained in Denmark, the West Saxons deposed him and gave themselves to Harold, since which time England has never been divided. In 1040 Harold died, and Harthacnut came at last to England to claim the crown. He brought with him a Danish fleet, and with his sailors and his house- carls he ruled England as a conquered land. He raised a Danegeld to satisfy his men, and sent his house-carls to force the people to pay the heavy tax. In 1042 he died " as he stood at his drink " at a bridal. The English were tired of foreign rulers. "All folk chose Eadward king." Eadward, the son of ^Ethelred, though an Englishman on his father's side, was also the son of the Norman Emma, and had been brought up in Normandy from his childhood. The Normans were now men of French speech, and they were more polite and cultivated than Englishmen. Eadward filled his court with Normans. He disliked the roughness of the English, but in- stead of attempting to improve them as the great /Elfred had for- merly done, he stood entirely aloof from them. The name of the Confessor by which he was afterwards known was given him on account of his piety, but his piety was not of that sort which is associated with active usefulness. He was fond of hunting, but was not active in any other way, and he left others to govern rather than himself. For some years the real governor of England was Earl Godwine, who kept his own earldom of Wessex, and managed to procure other smaller earldoms for his sons. As yet he had no competitor to fear. In 1045 ne became the king's father-in-law by the marriage of Eadward with his daughter. Eadward, however. did his best for his Norman favorites, and between Godwine and the Normans there was no good-will. Though Godwine was him- self of fair repute, his eldest son, Swegen, a young man of brutal nature, alienated the good-will of his countrymen by seducing the Abbess of Leominster, and by murdering his cousin Beorn. God- wine, in his blind family affection, clung to his wicked son and insisted on his being allowed to retain his earldom. At last, in 105 1, the strife between the king and the earl broke out openly. Godwine refused to obey the king's orders and was summoned to Gloucester. Leofric of Mercia mediated, and it was arranged that the question should be settled at a Witenagemot to be held in London. In the end Godwine was outlawed and banished 62 ENGLAND 1051 with all his family. Swegen went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and died on the way back. In Godwine's absence Eadward received a visit from the Duke of the Normans, William, the bastard son of Duke Robert and the daughter of a tanner of Falaise. Robert was a son of Richard II., and William was thus the grandson of the brother of Eadward's mother, Emma. Such a relationship gave him no title whatever to the English throne, as Emma was not descended from the English kings, and as, even if she had been, no one could be lawfully king in England who was not chosen by the Witenagemot. Ead- ward, however, had no children or brothers, and though he had no right to give away the crown, he now promised William that he should succeed him. William, indeed, was just the man to attract one whose character was as weak as Eadward's. Since he received the dukedom he had beaten down the opposition of a fierce and dis- contended nobility at Val-es-dunes (1047). From that day peace and order prevailed in Normandy. Law in Normandy did not come as in England from the traditions of the shire-moot or the Witenagemot, where men met to consult together. It was the Duke's law, and if the Duke was a strong man he kept peace in the land. If he was a weak man, the lords fought against one another and plundered and oppressed the poor. William was strong and wily, and it was this combination of strength and wiliness which enabled him to bear down all opposition. An Englishman, who saw much of William in after-life, de- clared that, severe as he was, he was mild to good men who loved God. The Church was in his days assuming a new place in Europe. The monastic revival which had originated at Cluny had led to a revival of the Papacy. In 1049, f r tne fi rst time, a Pope, Leo IX., traveled through Western Europe, holding councils and inflicting punishments upon the married clergy and upon priests who took arms and shed blood. With this improvement in disci- pline came a voluntary turning of the better clergy to an ascetic life, and increased devotion was accompanied, as it always was in the Middle Ages, with an increase of learning. William, who by the strength of his will brought peace into the state, also brought men of devotion and learning into the high places of the Church. His chief confidant was Lanfranc, an Italian who had taken refuge m the abbey of Bee, and, having become its prior, had made it the central school of Normandy and the parts around. With the im- ENGLAND AND NORMANDY 63 1052-1057 provement of learning came the improvement of art, and churches arose in NormariHy, as in other parts of Western Europe, which still preserved the aid round arch derived from the Romans, though both the arches themselves and the columns on which they were borne were lighter and more graceful than the heavy work which had hitherto been employed. Of all this Englishmen as yet knew nothing. They went on in their old w r ays, cut off from the European influences of the time. It was no wonder that Eadward yearned after the splendor and the culture of the land in which he had been brought up, or even that, in defiance of English law, he now promised to Duke William the succession to the English crown. After William had departed, Englishmen became discontented at Eadward's increasing favor to the Norman strangers. In 1052 Godwine and his sons Swegen only excepted returned from exile. They sailed up the Thames and landed at Southwark. The foreigners hastily fied, and Eadward was unable to resist the popular feeling. Godwine was restored to his earldom, and an Englishman, Stigand, was made Archbishop of Canterbury in the place of Robert of Jumieges, who escaped to the Continent. As it was the law of the Church that a bishop once appointed could not be deposed except by the ecclesiastical authorities, offense was in this way given to the Pope. Godwine did not long outlive hi? restoration. He was struck down by apoplexy at the king's table in 1053. Harold, who, after Swegen's death, was his eldest son, succeeded to his earldom of Wessex, and practically managed the affairs of the kingdom in Eadward's name. Harold was a brave and energetic man, but Eadward preferred his brother Tostig, and on the death of Siward appointed him Earl of North-humberland. A little later Gyrth, another brother of Harold, became Earl of East Anglia, together with Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire, and a fourth brother, Leofwine, Earl of a district formed of the eastern shires on either side of the Thames. All the richest and most thickly populated part of England was governed by Harold and his brothers. Mercia was the only large earldom not under their rule. It became necessary to arrange for the succession to the throne, as Eadward was childless, and as Englishmen were not likely to acquiesce in his bequest to William. In 1057 the /Ethel ing Ead- ward, a son of Eadmund Ironside, was fetched back from Hungary, 64 ENGLAND 1063 where he had long 1 lived in exile, and was accepted as the heir. Eadward, however, died almost immediately after his arrival. He left but one son, who was far too young to be accepted as a king for many years to come. Naturally the thought arose of look- ing on Harold as Eadward's successor. It was contrary to all custom to give the throne to anyone not of the royal line, but the custom had been necessarily broken in favor of Cnut, the Danish conqueror, and it might be better to break it in favor of an English earl rather than to place a child on the throne, when danger threatened from Normandy. During the remainder of Eadward's reign Harold showed himself a warrior worthv of the crown. In 1063 he invaded Wales and reduced it to submission. About the same time rearrangements of the earldoms left England ruled by two great families. Eadwine and Morkere, the grandsons of Leofric, governed the Midlands and almost the whole of North- humberland. Harold and his brothers, the sons of Godwine, governed the south and the east. The two houses had long been rivals, and after Eadward's death there would be no one in the country to whom they could even nominally submit. Eadward, whose life was almost at an end, was filled with gloomy forebod- ings. His thoughts, however, turned aside from the contempla- tion of earthly things, and he was only anxious that the great abbey church of Westminster, which he had been building hard by his own new palace on what was then a lonely place outside London, should be consecrated before his death. The church, afterwards superseded by the structure which now stands there, was built in the new and lighter form of round-arched architecture which Eadward had learned to admire from his Norman friends. It was conse- crated on December 28, 1065, but the king was too ill to be present, and on January 5, 1066, he died, and was buried in the church which he had founded. Harold was at once chosen king, and crowned at Westminster. William, as soon as he heard of his rival's coronation, claimed the crown. He was now even mightier than he had been when he visited Eadward. In 1063 he had conquered Maine, and. secure on his southern frontier, lie was able to turn his undivided attention to England. According to the principles accepted in England, he had no right to it whatever; but he contrived to put together a good many reasons which seemed, in the eyes of those who were not Englishmen, to give him a good case. In the first place he had ENGLAND AND NORMANDY 65 1066 been selected by Eadward as his heir. In the second place the deprivation of Robert of Jumieges was an offense against the Church law of the Continent, and William was therefore able to obtain from the Pope a consecrated banner, and to speak of an attack upon England as an attempt to uphold the righteous laws of the Church. In the third place, Harold had at some former time been wrecked upon the French coast, and had been delivered up to William, who had refused to let him go till he had sworn solemnly, placing his hand on a chest which contained the relics of the most holy Norman saints, to do some act, the nature of which is diversely related, but which Harold never did. Consequently William could speak of himself as going to take vengeance on a perjurer. With some difficulty William persuaded the Norman barons to follow him, and he attracted a mixed multitude of adventurers from all the neighboring nations by promising them the plunder of Eng- land, an argument which everyone could understand. During the whole of the spring and the summer ships for the invasion of England were being built in the Norman harbors. All through the summer Harold was watching for his rival's coming. The military organization of England, however, was inferior to that of Normandy. The Norman barons and their vas- sals were always ready for war, and they could support on their estates the foreign adventurers who were placed under their orders till the time of the battle came. Harold had his house-carls, the con- stant guard of picked troops which had been instituted by Cnut, and his thegns, who, like the Norman barons, were bound to serve their lord in war. The greater part of his force, however, was composed of the peasants of the fyrd, and when September came they must needs be sent home to attend to their harvest, which seems to have been late this year. Scarcely were they gone when Harold received news that his brother Tostig, angry with him for having consented to his deposition from the North-humbrian earl- dom, had allied himself to Harold Hardrada, the fierce sea-rover, who was king of Norway, and that the two, with a mighty host, after wasting the Yorkshire coast, had sailed up the Humber. The two northern Earls, Eadwine and Morkere, were hard pressed. Harold had not long before married their sister, and, whatever might be the risk, he was bound as the King of all England to aid them. Marching swiftly northwards with his house-carls and the thegns who joined him on the way, he hastened to their succor. 66 ENGLAND 1066 On the way worse tidings reached him. The Earls had been de- feated, and York had agreed to submit to the Norsemen. Harold hurried on the faster, and came upon the invaders unawares as they lay heedlessly on both sides of the Derwent at Stamford Bridge. Those on the western side, unprepared as they were, were soon overpowered. The battle rolled across the Derwent, and when even- ing came Harold Hardrada, and Tostig himself, with the bulk of the invaders, had been slain. For the last time an English king overthrew a foreign host in battle on English soil. Harold had shown what an English king could do, who fought not for this or that part of the country, but for all England. It was the lack of this national spirit in Englishmen which caused his ruin. As Harold was feasting at York in celebration of his victory, a messenger told him of the landing of the Norman host at Peven- sey. He had saved Eadwine and Morkere from destruction, but Eadwine and Morkere gave him no help in return. He had to hurry back to defend Sussex without a single man from the north or the Midlands, except those whom he collected on his line of march. The House of Leofric bore no good-will to the House of Godwine. England was a kingdom divided against itself. Harold, as soon as he reached the point of danger, drew up his army on the long hill of Senlac on which Battle Abbey now stands. On October 14 William marched forth to attack him. The military equipment of the Normans was better than that of the English. Where the weapons on either side are unlike, battles are decided by the momentum that is to say. by the combined weight and speed of the weapons employed. The English fought on foot mostly with two-handed axes; the Normans fought not only on horseback with lances, but also with infantry, some of them being archers. A horse, the principal weapon of a horseman, has more momentum than an armed footman, while an arrow can reach the object at which it is aimed long before a horse. Harold, however, had in his favor the slope of the hill up which the Nor- mans would have to ride, and he took advantage of the lie of the ground by posting his men with their shields before them on the edge of the hill. The position was a strong one for purposes of defense, but it was not one that made it easy for Harold to change his arrangements as the fortunes of the day might need. William, on the other hand, had not only a better armed force, but a more flexible one. He had to attack, and, versed as he was in all the WILLIAM INK rOXOIEROR AM; HIS WIFE MATIIII.HA CHANT SI'KilAL l'KlVll.KfiKS TO TIIK iTIIZI-'.NH ill-' I.ONDD.N I'aiiitinx by ( '. Royal Ji.u-luuia,; I ondon ENGLAND AND NORMANDY 67 1068 operations of war, he could move his men from place to place and make use of each opportunity as it arrived. The English were brave enough, but William was a more intelligent leader than Harold, and his men were better under control. Twice after the battle had begun the Norman horsemen charged up the hill, only to be driven back. The wily William, finding that the hill was not to be stormed by a direct attack, met the difficulty by galling the English with a shower of arrows and ordering his left wing to turn and fly. The stratagem was successful. Some of the English rushed down the hill in pursuit. The fugitives faced round and charged the pursuers, following them up the slope. The English on the height were thus thrown into confusion; but they held out stoutly, and as the Norman horsemen now in occupation of one end of the hill charged fiercely along its crest, they locked their shields together and fought desperately for life, if no longer for victory. Slowly and steadily the Normans pressed on, till they reached the spot where Harold, surrounded by his house-carls, fought beneath his standard. There all their attacks were in vain, till William calling for his bowmen, bade them shoot their arrows into the air. Down came the arrows in showers upon the heads of the English warriors, and one of them pierced Harold's eye, stretching him lifeless on the ground. In a series of representa- tions in worsted work, known as the Bayeux Tapestry, which was wrought by the needle of some unknown woman and is now exhibited in the museum of that city, the scenes of the battle and the events preceding it are pictorially recorded. William had destroyed both the English king and the English army. It is possible that England, if united, might still have resisted. The great men at London chose for their king Eadgar the iEtheling, the grandson of Eadmund Ironside. Eadwine and Morkere were present at the election, but left London as soon as it was over. They would look after their own earldoms ; they would not join others, as Harold had done, in defending England as a whole. Divided England would sooner or later be a prey to William. He wanted, however, not merely to reign as conqueror, but to be lawfully elected as king, that he might have on his side law as well as force. He first struck terror into Kent and Sussex by ravaging the lands of all who held out against him. Then he marched to the Thames and burnt Southwark. He did not, how- ever, try to force his way into London, as he wanted to induce the 68 ENGLAND 1066 citizens to submit voluntarily to him, or at least in a way which might seem voluntary. He therefore marched westwards, crossed the Thames at Wallingford, and wheeled round to Berkhampstead. His presence there made the Londoners feel utterly isolated. Even if Eadwine and Morkere wished to do anything for them, they could not come from the north or northwest without meeting William's victorious army. The great men and citizens alike gave up all thought of resistance, abandoned Eadgar, and promised to take William for their king. On Christmas Day, 1066, William was chosen with acclamation in Eadward's abbey at Westminster, where Harold had been chosen less than a year before. The Normans outside mistook the shouts of applause for a tumult against their Duke, and set fire to the houses around. The English rushed out to save their property, and William, frightened for the only time in his life, was left alone with the priests. Not knowing what was next to follow, he was crowned king of the English by Ealdred, Archbishop of York, in an empty church, amid the crackling of flames and the shouts of men striving for the mastery. PART II THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS 1066-1087 Chapter VII WILLIAM I. 1066 1087 LEADING DATES William's Coronation, A.D. 1066 Completion of the Conquest, 1070 The Rising of the Earls, 1075 The Gemot at Salisbury, 1086 Death of William I., 1087 THOUGH at the time when 'William was crowned he had gained actual possession of no more than the southeastern part of England, he claimed a right to rule the whole as lawful king of the English, not merely by Eadward's bequest, but by election and coronation. In reality, he came as a conqueror, while the Normans by whose aid he gained the victory at Senlac left their homes not merely to turn their Duke into a king, but also to acquire lands and wealth for themselves. William could not act justly and kindly to his new subjects even if he wished. What he did was to clothe real violence with the appearance of law. He gave out that as he had been the lawful king of the English ever since Eadward's death, Harold and all who fought under him at Senlac had forfeited their lands by their treason to himself as their lawful king. These lands he distributed among his Normans. The English indeed were not entirely dispossessed. Sometimes the son of a warrior who had been slain was allowed to retain a small portion of his father's land. Sometimes the daughter or the widow of one of Harold's comrades was compelled to marry a Norman whom William wished to favor. Yet, for all that, a vast number of estates in the southern and eastern counties passed from English into Norman hands. The bulk of the population, the serfs or, as they were now called by a Norman name, the villeins were not affected by the change, except so far as they found a foreign lord less willing than a native one to hearken to their complaints. The changes which took place were limited as yet to a small part of England. In three months after his coronation William was still without authority beyond an irregular line running from the Wash 71 72 ENGLAND 1067-1069 to the western border of Hampshire, except that he held some out- lying posts in Herefordshire. It is true that Eadwine and Morkere had acknowledged him as king, but they were still practically inde- pendent. Even where William actually ruled he allowed all Eng- lishmen who had not fought on Harold's side to keep their lands, though he made them redeem them by the payment of a fine, on the principle that all lands in the country, except those of the Church, were the king's lands, and that it was right to fine those who had not come to Senlac to help him as their proper lord. In March, 1067. William returned to Normandy. In his absence the Normans left behind in England, oppressed the English, and were supported in their oppression by the two regents ap- pointed to govern in William's name, his half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had made Earl of Kent, and William Fitz- Osbern, Earl of Hereford. In some parts the English rose in rebellion. In December William returned, and after putting down resistance in the southeastern counties, set himself to conquer the rest of England. It took him more than two years to complete his task. Perhaps he would have failed even then if the whole of the unconquered part of the country had risen against him at the same time. Each district, however, resisted separately, and he was strong enough to beat them down one by one. In the spring of 1068 he subdued the West to the Land's End. When this had been ac- complished he turned northwards against Eadwine and Morkere, who had declared against him. William soon frightened them into submission, and seized on York and all the country to the south of York on the eastern side of England. In 1069 the English of the North rose once more and summoned to their aid the Danes. They burned and plundered York, but could do no more. William found no army to oppose him, and he not only regained the lands which he had occupied the year before, but added to them the whole country up to the Tweed. William was never cruel without an object, but there was no cruelty which he would not commit if it would serve his purpose. He resolved to make all further resistance impossible. The Vale of York, a long and wide stretch of fertile ground running north- wards from the city to the Tees, was laid waste by William's orders. The men who had joined in the revolt were slain. The stored-up crops, the plows, the carts, the oxen and sheep were destroyed by fire. Men. women, and children dropped dead of WILLIAM I. 73 1070-1072 starvation. William's work of conquest was almost over. Early in 1070 he crossed the hills amid frost and snow, and descended upon Chester. Chester submitted, and with it the shires on the Welsh border. The whole of England was at last subdued. Only one serious attempt to revolt was afterwards made, but this was no more than a local rising. The Isle of Ely was in those days a real island in the midst of the waters of the fens. Hereward, with a band of followers, threw himself into the island, and it was only after a year's attack that he was driven out. When the revolt was at its height Eadwine and Morkere fled from William's court to join the insurgents. Eadwine was murdered by his own attendants. Morkere reached Ely, and when resistance was at an end was banished to Normandy. No man ever deserved less pity than these two brothers. They had never sought anyone's advantage but their own, and they had been faithless to every cause which they had pretended to adopt. Before Hereward was overpowered, Malcolm, king of the Scots, ravaged northern Eng- land, carrying off with him droves of English slaves. In 1072 William, who had by that time subdued Hereward, marched into Scotland as far as the Tay. Macolm submitted to him at Aber- nethy, and acknowledged him to be his lord. Malcolm's acknowl- edgment was only a repetition of the acknowledgment made by his predecessors, the Scottish kings, to Edward and Cnut; but William was more powerful than Edward or Cnut had been, and was likely to construe the obligation more strictly. William, having conquered England, had now to govern it. His first object was to keep the English in subjection, and this he sought to accomplish in three ways. In the first place he continued to treat all who had resisted him as rebels, confiscating their land and giving it to some Norman follower. In almost every district there was at least one Norman landowner who was on the watch against any attempt of his English neighbors to revolt, and who knew that he would lose Ins land if William lost his crown. In the second place William built a castle in every town of importance, which he garrisoned with his own men. The most notable example of these castles is the Tower of London. In the third place, though the diffu- sion of Norman landowners and of William's castles made a general revolt of the English difficult, it did not make it impossible, and William took care to have an army always ready to put down a revolt if it occurred. No king in those days could have a constantly 74 ENGLAND 1072 paid army, such as exists in all European countries at the present day, because there was not much money anywhere. Some men had land and some men had bodily strength, and they bartered one for the other. The villein gave his strength to plow and reap for his lord, in return for the land which he held from him. The fighting man gave his strength to his lord, to serve him with his horse and his spear, in return for the land which he held from him. This system, which is known as feudal, had been growing up in England before the Conquest, but it was perfected on the Conti- nent, and William brought it with him in its perfected shape. The warrior who served on horseback was called a knight, and when a knight received land from a lord on military tenure that is to say, on condition of military service he was called the vassal of his lord. When he became a vassal he knelt, and placing his hands between those of his lord, swore to be his man. This act was called doing homage. The land which he received as sufficient to maintain him was called a knight's fee. After this homage the vassal was bound to serve his lord in arms, this service being the rent payable for his land. If the vassal broke his oath and fought against his lord, he was regarded as a traitor, or a betrayer of his trust, and could be turned out of his land. The whole land of England being regarded as the king's, all land was held from the king. Sometimes the knights held their fees directly from the king and did homage to him. These knights were known as tenants in chief (in capite), however small their estates might be. Usually, however, the tenants in chief were large landowners, to whom the king had granted vast estates ; and these when they did homage engaged not merely to fight for him in person, but to bring some hundreds of knights with them. To enable them to do this, they had to give out portions of their land to sub-tenants, each engaging to bring himself and a specified number of knights. There might thus be a regular chain of sub-tenants, A engaging to serve under B, B under C, C under D, and so on till the tenant- in-chief was reached, who engaged to bring them all to serve the king. Almost all the larger tenants-in-chief were Normans, though Englishmen were still to be found among the sub-tenants, and even among the smaller tenants-in-chief. The whole body, how- ever, was preponderantly Norman and William could therefore depend upon it to serve him as an army in the field in case of an English rising. WILLIAM I. 75 1072 William was not afraid only of the English. He had cause to fear lest the feudal army, which was to keep down the English, might be strong enough to be turned against himself, and that the barons as the greater tenants-in-chief were usually called might set him at naught as Eadwine and Morkere had set Harold at naught, and as the Dukes of Normandy had set at naught the kings of France. To prevent this he adopted various contrivances. In the first place he abolished the great earldoms. In most counties there were to be no earls at all, and no one was to be earl of more than one county. There was never again to be an Earl of the West Saxons like Godwine, or an Earl of the Mercians like Leofric. Moreover, the Estates were scattered. Not only did William diminish the official authority of the earls, but he also weakened the territorial authority of the barons. Even when he granted to one man estates so numerous that if they had been close together they would have extended at least over a whole county, he took care to scatter them over England, allowing only a few to be held by a single owner in any one county. If, therefore, a great baron took it into his head to levy war against the king, he would have to collect his vassals from the most distant counties, and his intentions would thus be known before they could be put in practice. Still more important was William's resolution to be the real head of the English nation. He had weakened it enough to fear it no longer, w but he kept it strong enough to use it, if need came, against the Norman barons. He won Englishmen to his side by the knowledge that he was ready to do them justice whenever they were wronged, and he could therefore venture to summon the fyrd when- ever he needed support, without having cause to fear that it would turn against him. Before the Conquest the English Church had been altogether national. Its bishops had sat side by side with the ealdormen or earls in the shire-moots, and in the Witenagemot itself. They had been named, like the ealdormen or earls, by the king with the consent of the Witenagemot. Ecclesiastical questions had been decided and ecclesiastical offenses punished, not by any special ecclesiastical court, but by the shire-moot or Witenagemot, in which the laity and the clergy were both to be found. William resolved to change all this. The bishops and abbots whom he found were Englishmen, and he replaced most of them by Normans. The 76 ENGLAND 1072 new Norman bishops and abbots were dependent on the king. They looked on the English as barbarians, and would certainly not support them in any revolt, as their English predecessors might have done. Thurstan, indeed, the Norman Abbot of Glastonbury, was so angry with his English monks because they refused to change their style of music that he called in Norman archers to shoot them down on the steps of the altar. Such brutality, how- ever, was exceptional, and, as a rule, even Norman bishops and abbots were well disposed towards their English neighbors, all the more because they were not very friendly with the Norman nobles, who often attempted to encroach on the lands of the Church. Many a king in William's position would have been content to fill the sees with creatures of his own, who would have done what they were bidden and have thought of no one's interest but his. William knew, as he had already shown in Normandy, that he would be far better served if the clergy were not only dependent on himself but deserving the respect of others. He made his old friend Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc had, like William, the mind of a ruler, and under him bishops and abbots were appointed who enforced discipline. The monks were compelled to keep the rules of their order, the canons of cathedrals were forced to send away their wives, and though the married clergy in the country were allowed to keep theirs, orders were given that in future no priest should marry. Everywhere the Church gave signs of new vigor. The monasteries became again the seats of study and learning. The sees of bishops were trans- ferred from villages to populous towns, as when the Bishop of Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, migrated to Lincoln, and the Bishop of Thetford to Norwich. New churches were built and the old ones restored after the new Continental style, which is known in England as Norman, and which Eadward had introduced in his abbey of Westminster. The Church, though made dependent on William, was independent, so far as its spiritual rights were con- cerned, of the civil courts. Ecclesiastical matters were discussed, not in the Witenagemot, but in a Church synod, and, in course of time, punishments w r ere inflicted by Church courts on ecclesiastical offenders. The power of William was strengthened by the change. That power rested on three supports the Norman conquerors, the English nation, and the Church, and each one of these three had reason to distrust the other two. WILLIAM I. 77 1073 The strength which William had acquired showed itself in his bearing towards the Pope. In 1073 Archdeacon Hildebrand, who for some years had been more powerful at Rome than the Popes themselves, himself became Pope under the name of Gregory VII. Gregory was as stern a ruler of the Church as William was of the State. His object was to moderate the cruelty and sinful- ness of the feudal warriors of Europe by making the Church a light to guide the world to piety and self-denial. He was an uncompromising champion of the Cluniac reforms, which demanded celibacy, and refraining from simony. A third demand was added later, that bishops and abbots should not receive from laymen the ring and staff which were the signs of their authority the ring as the symbol of marriage to their churches ; the staff or crozier, in the shape of a shepherd's crook, as the symbol of their pastoral authority. The Church, in fact, was to be governed by its own laws in perfect independence, that it might become more pure itself, and thus capable of setting a better example to the laity. As might have been expected, though the internal condition of the Church was greatly improved, yet when Gregory attempted entirely to free ecclesiastics from the influence and authority of the State, he found himself involved in endless quarrels, as with the Emperor Henry IV. It is remarkable that such a Pope as Gregory never came into conflict with William. William appointed bishops and abbots by giving them investiture, as the presenting of the ring and staff was called. He declared that no Pope should be obeyed in England who was not acknowledged by himself, that no papal bulls or letters should have any force till he had allowed them, and that the decrees of an ecclesiastical synod should bind no one till lie had con- firmed them. When, at a later time, Gregory required William to do homage to the see of Rome, William refused, on the ground that homage had never been rendered by his predecessors. To all this Gregory submitted. No doubt Gregory was prudent in not provoking William's anger; but that he should have refrained from even finding fault with William may perhaps be set down to the credit of his honesty. He claimed to make himself the master of kings because as a rule they did not care to advance the purity of the Church. William did care to advance it. He chose virtuous and learned bishops, and defended the clergy against ag- gression from without and corruption within. Gregory may well 78 ENGLAND 1075 have been content to leave power over the Church in the hands of a king who ruled it in such a fashion. Of the three classes of men over which William ruled, the great Norman barons imagined themselves to be the strongest, and were most inclined to throw off his yoke. The chief feature of the reigns of William and of his successors for three generations was the struggle which scarcely ever ceased between the Norman barons on the one side and the king supported by the English and the clergy on the other. It was to the advantage of the king that he had not to contend against the whole of the Normans. Nor- mans with small estates clung for support, like their English neigh- bors, to the crown. The first of many risings of the barons took place in 1075. Roger, Earl of Hereford, and Ralph Warder, Earl of Norfolk, plotted a rising against William and the revivals of the old independent earldoms. They took arms and were beaten. Ralph fled the country, and Roger was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. His followers were blinded or had their feet cut off. It was the Norman custom not to put criminals to death. To this rule, however. William made one exception. Waltheof, the last earl of purely English race, though he had listened to the plottings of the conspirators, had revealed all that he knew to William. His wife, Judith, a niece of the Conqueror, accused him of actual treason, and he was beheaded at Winchester. By the English he was regarded as a martyr, and it was probably his popularity among them which made William resolve upon his death. Only once did William cause misery among his subjects for the sake of his own enjoyment. Many kings before him had taken pleasure in hunting, but William was the first who claimed the right of hunting over large tracts of country exclusively for himself. He made, as the chronicler says. " mickle deer-frith " a tract, that is to say, in which the deer might have peace. He for- bade, in short, all men. except those to whom he gave permission, to hunt within the limits of the royal forests. In the southwest of Hampshire, near his favorite abode at Winchester, he enlarged the New Forest. The soil is poor, and it can never have been covered by cultivated fields, but here and there, by the sides of streams, there were scattered hamlets, and these were destroyed and the dwellers in them driven off bv William's orders. Tradition told how the New Forest was accursed for William's family. In his WILLIAM I. 79 1085 own lifetime a son and a grandson of his were cut off within it by unknown hands, probably falling before the vengeance of some who had lost home and substance through the creation of the Forest, and in due time another son, who succeeded him on the throne, was to meet with a similar fate. It was to William's credit that his government was a strong one. In William's days life and property and female honor were under the protection of a king who knew how to make himself obeyed. Strong government, however, is always expensive, and William and his officers were always ready with an excuse for get- ting money. "... They reared up unright tolls, and many other unright things they did that are hard to reckon." Other men, in short, must observe the law; William's government was a law to itself. It was, however, a law, and not a mere scramble for money. Though there were no Danish invaders now, William continued to levy the Danegeld, and he had rents and payments due to him in many quarters which had been due to his predecessors. In order to make his exactions more complete and more regular, he resolved to have set down the amount of taxable property in the realm that his full rights might be known, and in 1085, " He sent over all England into ilk shire his men, and let them find out how many hundred hides were in the shire, or what the king himself had of land or cattle in the land, or whilk rights he ought to have. . . . Eke he let write how mickle of land his archbishops had, and his bishops, and his abbots and his earls, and what or how mickle ilk man had that landholder was in England in land and in cattle, and how mickle fee it was worth. So very narrowly he let speer it out that there was not a single hide nor a yard of land, nor so much as it is a shame to tell, though he thought it no shame to do an ox nor a cow nor a swine was left that was not set in his writ.*' The chronicler who wrote these words was an English monk of Peterborough. Englishmen were shocked by the new regularity of taxation. They could hardly be expected to under- stand the advantages of a government strong enough through regular taxation to put down the resistance of rebellious earls at home and to defy invasion from abroad. The result of the in- quiries of the king's commissioners was embodied in Domesday Book, so called because it was no more possible to appeal from it than from the Last Judgment. Though William was himself the true ruler of England, he 80 ENGLAND T086 kept up the practice of his predecessors in summoning the Witen- agemot from time to time. In his days, however, the name of the Witenagemot was changed into that of the Great Council, and, to a slight extent, it changed its nature with its name. The members of the Witenagemot had attended because they were officially con- nected with the king, being ealdormen or bishops or thegns serving in some way under him. Members of the Great Council attended because they held land in chief from the king. The difference, however, was greater in appearance than in reality. No doubt men who held very small estates in chief might, if they pleased, come to the Great Council, and if they had done so the Great Council would have been much more numerously attended than the Witenagemot had been. The poorer tenants-in-chief, however, found that it was not only too troublesome and expensive to make the journey at a time when all long journeys had to be made on horseback, but that when they arrived their wishes were disre- garded. They therefore stayed at home, so that the Great Council was regularly attended only by the bishops, the abbots of the larger abbeys, and certain great landowners who were known as barons. In this way the Great Council became a council of the wealthy landowners, as the Witenagemot had been, though the two assem- blies were formed on different principles. In 1086, after Domesday Book had been finished, William summoned an unusually numerous assembly, known as the Great Gemot, to meet at Salisbury. At this not only the tenants-in-chief appeared, but also all those who held lands from them as sub- tenants. " There came to him," wrote the chronicler, " . . . all the landowning men there were over all England, whose soever men they were, and all bowed down before him and became his men, and swore oaths of fealty to him, that they would be faithful to him against all other men." It was this oath which marked the difference between English and Continental feudalism, though they were now in other respects alike. On the Continent each tenant swore to be faithful to his lord, but only the lords who held directly from the crown swore to be faithful to the king. The consequence was that when a lord rebelled against the king, his tenants followed their lord and not the king. In England the tenants swore to forsake their lord and to serve the king against him if he forsook his duty to the king. Nor was this all. Many men break their oaths. William, however, was strong enough WILLIAM I. 81 1087 in England to punish those who broke their oaths to him, while the king of France was seldom strong enough to punish those who broke their oaths to him. The oath taken at Salisbury was the completion of William's work in England. To contemporaries he appeared as a foreign conqueror, and often as a harsh and despotic ruler. Later genera- tions could recognize that his supreme merit was that he made England one. He did not die in England. In 1087 he fought with his lord, the king of France, Philip I. In anger at a jest of Philip's he set fire to Mantes. As he rode amid the burning houses his horse shied and threw him forward on the pommel of his saddle. He was now corpulent and the injury proved fatal. On September 9 he died. When the body was carried to Caen for burial in the abbey of St. Stephen, which William himself had reared, a knight stepped forward and claimed as his own the ground in which the grave had been dug. It had been taken, he said, by William from his father. " In the name of God,"' he cried, " I forbid that the body of the robber be covered with my mold, or that he be buried within the bounds of my inheritance." The bystanders acknowledged the truth of his accusation, and paid the price demanded. Chapter VIII WILLIAM II. 1087 i ioo LEADING DATES Accession of William II., A.D. 1087 Norman Rebellion Against William II., 1088 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1093 The Council of Rockingham, and the First Crusade, 1095 Conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, 1099 Death of William II., 1100 IN Normandy the Conqueror was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert. Robert was sluggish and incapable, and his father had expressed a wish that England, newly conquered and hard to control, should be ruled by his more energetic second son, William. To the third son, Henry, he gave a sum of money. There was as yet no settled rule of succession to the English crown, and William at once crossed the sea and was crowned king of the English at Westminster, by Lanfranc. William Rufus, or the Red King, as men called him, feared not God nor regarded man. Yet the English rallied round him, because they knew that he was strong-willed, and because they needed a king who would keep the Norman barons from oppressing them. For that very reason the more turbulent of the Norman barons declared for Robert, who would be too lazy to keep them in order. In the spring of 1088 they broke into rebellion in his name. William called the English people to his help. He would not, he said, wring money from his subjects or exercise cruelty in defense of his hunting grounds. On this the English rallied round him. At the head of a great army he marched to attack the rebels, and finally laid siege to Rochester, which was held against him by his uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had released from the imprisonment in which the Con- queror had kept him. William called upon yet greater numbers of the English to come to his help. Everyone, he declared, who failed him now should be known forever by the shameful name of Nithing, or worthless. The English came in crowds. When at last Odo surrendered, the English pleaded that no mercy should be shown him. ''Halters, bring halters!"' they cried; "hang up 82 WILLIAM II. 83 1086 the traitor bishop and his accomplices on the gibbet." William, however, spared him, but banished him forever from England. William had crushed the Norman rebels with English aid. When the victory was won he turned against those who had helped him. It was not that he oppressed the English because they were English, but that he oppressed English and Normans alike, though the English, being the weaker, felt his cruelty most. He broke aU his promises. He gathered round him mercenary soldiers from all lands to enforce his will. He hanged murderers and robbers, but he himself was the worst of robbers. William allowed no law to be pleaded against his own will. His life, and the life of his courtiers, was passed in the foulest vice. He was as irre- ligious as he was vicious. It was in especial defiance of the Chris- tian sentiment of the time that he encouraged the Jews, who had begun to come into England in his father's days, to come in greater numbers. They grew rich as money-lenders, and William protected them against their debtors, exacting a high price for his protection. His mouth was filled with outrageous blasphemies. The chief minister of the Red King was Ranu.lf Flambard, whom he ultimately made Bishop of Durham. He was one of the clerks of the king's chapel. The word "clerk'' properly sig- nified a member of the clergy. The only way in which men could work with their brains instead of with their hands was by becom- ing clerks, the majority of whom, however, only entered the lower orders, without any intention of becoming priests or even deacons. Few, except clerks, could read or write, and whatever work demanded intelligence naturally fell into their hands. They acted as physicians or lawyers, kept accounts, and wrote letters. The clerks of the king's chapel were the king's secretaries and men of business. Of all the clerks Ranulf Flambard was the most un- scrupulous; therefore he rose into the greatest favor. The first William had appointed high officers, known as Justiciars, to act in his name from time to time when he was absent from England, or was from any cause unable to be present when important business was transacted. Flambard was appointed Justiciar by the second William, and in his hands the office became permanent. The Justiciar was now the king's chief minister, acting in his name whether he was present or absent. Flambard used his power to gather wealth for the king on every side. 84 ENGLAND 1088-1089 It was Flambard who systematized, if he did not invent, the doctrine that the king was to profit by his position as supreme land- lord. In practice this meant he exacted to the full the consequences of feudal tenure. If a man died who held land by knight service from the crown, leaving a son who was a minor, the boy became the ward of the king, who took the profits of his lands till he was twenty-one, and forced him to pay a relief or fine for taking them into his own hands when he attained his majority. If the land fell to an heiress the king claimed the right of marrying her to whom he would, or of requiring of her a sum of money for permission to take a husband at her own choice, or, as was usually the case, at the choice of her relations. Under special circumstances the king exacted aids from his tenants-in-chief. If he were taken prisoner they had to pay to ransom him from captivity. When he knighted his eldest son or married his eldest daughter they had to contribute to the expense. It is true that this was in accordance with the principle of feudality. Neither a boy nor a woman could render service in the field, and it was therefore only fair that the king should hold the lands at times when no service was rendered to him for them; and it was also fair that the dependents should come to their lord's help in times of special need, especially as all that the king took from them they in turn took from their own sub-tenants. Flambard, however, did not content himself with a moderately harsh exaction of these feudal dues. The grievance against him was that he so stripped and exhausted the land belonging to the king's wards as to make it almost worthless, and then demanded reliefs so enormous that when the estate had at last been restored, all its value had passed into the hands of the king. When a bishop or an abbot died, the king appointed no successor, and appropriated the revenues of the vacant see or monastery till someone chose to buy the office from him. The king alone grew rich, while his vassals were impoverished. In 1089 Lanfranc died, and the archbishopric of Canterbury was then left vacant for nearly four years. The Archbishop of Canterbury was more than the first of English bishops. He was not only the maintainer of ecclesiastical discipline, but also the mouthpiece of the English people when they had complaints to make to the king. .Men turned their thoughts to Anselm, the Abbot of Bee. Anselm was a stranger from Aosta, on the Italian side of the Alps. He was the most learned man of the age, and WILLIAM II. 85 1093-1095 had striven to justify the theology of the day by rational arguments. He was as righteous as he was learned, and as gentle as he was righteous. Tender to man and woman, he had what was in those days a rare tenderness to animals, and had caused astonishment by saving a hunted hare from its pursuers. In 1092 the king's vassals assembled in the Great Council urged William to choose a successor to Lanfranc. In the spring of 1093 William fell sick. Believing himself to be a dying man, he promised to amend his life, and named Anselm archbishop. On his refusal to accept the nomination, Anselm was dragged to the king's bedside, and the pastoral staff, the symbol of the pastoral office of a bishop, was forced into his hands by the bystanders. To this well-meant violence Anselm submitted unwillingly. He was, he said, a weak old sheep to be yoked with an untamed bull to draw the plow of the English Church. Yet, gentle as he was, he was possessed of indomitable courage in resistance to evil. William recovered, and returned to his blasphemy and his tyranny. In vain Anselm warned him against his sins. A fresh object of dispute soon arose between the king and the new arch- bishop. Two Popes claimed the obedience of Christendom. An- selm declared that Urban II. was the true Pope, and that he would obey none other. William asserted that his father had laid down a rule that no Pope should be acknowledged in England without the king's assent, and he proposed to act upon it by acknowledging neither. His object was, perhaps, to prevent the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline by temporarily getting rid of the papal authority. Anselm wanted the authority of the Pope to check vice and disorder. The question was set aside for a time, but in 1095 Anselm, tired of witnessing William's wicked actions, asked leave to go to Rome to fetcli from Urban the pallium, a kind of scarf given by the Pope to archbishops in recognition of their office. William replied that he did not acknowledge Urban as Pope. A Great Council was summoned to Rockingham to discuss the question. The lay barons, who liked to see the king resisted, were on Anselm's side. The bishops, many of whom were creatures of William, appointed from among his clerks, took the side of the king. Anselm stated his case firmly and moderately, and then, caring nothing for the angry king, retired into the chapel and went quietly to sleep. The king, finding that the barons would give him no support, was unable to punish Anselm. Two years 86 ENGLAND 1091-1095 later, in 1097, Anselm betook himself to Rome, and William at once seized on his estates. Normandy under Robert was even worse off than England under William. Robert was too easy-tempered to bring anyone to justice. The land was full of violence. Robert's own life was vicious and wasteful, and he was soon in debt. He sold the Cotentin and the territory of Avranches to his youngest brother, Henry. Henry was cool-headed and prudent, and he kept order in his new possession better than either of his elder brothers would have done. The brothers coveted the well-ordered land, and in 109 1 they marched together against Henry, who was in the end forced to surrender. In 1095 Henry was again in Normandy, and driving out the cruel Lord of Domfront ruled its people with justice, and soon recovered the possessions from which his brothers had driven him. William's attention was at this time drawn to the North. Early in his reign he annexed Cumberland, and had secured it against the Scots by fortifying Carlisle, which had been desolate since the Danish invasion in the reign of /Elfred. Malcolm, king of the Scots, was a rude warrior who had been tamed into an outward show of piety by his saintly wife, Margaret, the sister of Eadgar the yEtheling. In 1093 Malcolm burst into Northum- berland, plundering and burning, till an Englishman slew him at Alnwick. Queen Margaret died broken-hearted at the news, and was before long counted as a saint. For the moment the Scottish Celts were weary of the English queen and her English ways. They set up Malcolm's brother, Donald Bane, as their king, refusing to be governed by any of Margaret's sons. Donald at once " drave out all the English that before were with King Malcolm." In 1094 Duncan, Margaret's stepson, gained the crown from Donald with the aid of a troop of English and Norman followers. The Celts soon drove out his followers, and alter a while they slew him and restored Donald. William had as yet too much to do at home to interfere further in Scotland. The Norman barons hated him, and in 1095 Robert of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, refused obedience. William at once marched against him, and took from him the new castle which he had built in 1080, and which has ever since been known as Newcastle-on-Tyne. Robert held out long in his strong for- tress of Bamborough, which was only taken at last by fraud. He WILLIAM II. 87 1095-1100 was condemned to a lifelong imprisonment. Mowbray's rebellion, like the conspiracy of the earls against the Conqueror, shows how eagerly the Norman barons longed to shake off the yoke of the king, and how readily Englishmen and the less powerful Normans sup- ported even a tyrannical king rather than allow the barons to have their way. These petty wars were interrupted by a call to arms from the Pope. For centuries Christians had made pilgrimages to Beth- lehem and Jerusalem, the holy places where their Lord had been born and had been crucified. The Holy Land was now under the dominion of the Mohammedan Turks, who either put the pilgrims to death or subjected them to torture and ill-usage. In 1095 Pope Urban II. came to Clement to appeal to the Christians of the West to set out on a Crusade a war of the Cross to deliver the Holy City from the infidel. The first Crusaders under Peter the Hermit perished on the way. A better equipped body of knights and nobles set out later under Godfrey of Bouillon and in 1099 the Holy City was taken by storm. Robert was among the Crusaders. To raise money for his expedition he pledged Normandy to his brother William. William had no wish to take part in a holy war, but he Avas ready to make profit out of those who did. Normandy was the better for the change. It is true that William oppressed it himself, but he saved the people from the worse oppression of the barons. The remaining years of William's reign were years of varying success. An English force set up Eadgar, the son of Malcolm and Margaret, as king of the Scots, and Eadgar consented to hold his crown as William's vassal. William's attempts to reduce the Welsh to submission ended in failure, and he was obliged to con- tent himself with hemming them in with castles. He had trouble also with the province of Maine in Normandy. On August 2, 1 100, the Red King went out to hunt in the New Forest. In the evening his body was found pierced by an arrow. W T ho his slayer was is unknown. The blow may have been accidental. It is more likely to have been intentional. In every part of England were men who had good cause to hate William, and nowhere were his enemies in greater numbers than round the New Forest. Chapter IX HENRY I., iioo 1 135. STEPHEN, 1 135 1 154 LEADING DATES The Accession of Henry I., A.D. noo Battle of Tinchebrai, 1106 Death of Henry I. and Accession of Stephen, 1135 The Civil War, i 1 39 Treaty of Wallingford, 1153 Death of Stephen, 1154 WHEN the news spread that the Red King- had heen slain in the New Forest, his younger brother, Henry, hastened to Winchester, where he was chosen king by the barons who happened to be there. At his coronation at Westminster he swore to undo all the evil of his brother's reign. The name by which he came to be known the Lion of Justice shows how well he kept his promise. He maintained order as his father had done, and his brother had not done. Flambard, the wicked minister of the Red King, was imprisoned in the Tower, and Anselm, the good archbishop, recalled to England. Henry's chief strength lay in the support of the English. To please them he married Eadgyth, the daughter of Malcolm and Margaret, the descendant through her mother of the old English kings. Through Eadgyth the blood of Alfred and Ecgberht was transmitted to the later kings. It was, however, necessary that she should take another name. Everyone at Henry's court talked French, and " Eadgyth " was unpronounce- able in French. The new queen was therefore known as Matilda, or Maud. The English called her the good queen. The Normans mocked her husband and herself by giving them the English nick- names of Godric and Godgifu. One danger at least Henry had to face. The Norman barons yearned after the weak rule of Robert, who was again in possession of Normandy. Flambard. having escaped from prison, fled to Normandy, and urged Robert to claim England as the heritage of the eldest son of the Conqueror. Robert listened to the tempter and sailed for England. When he landed at Dorchester he found HENRY I. STEPHEN 89 1102-1106 that the Church and the English had rallied to Henry. Robert's position was hopeless, and he made a treaty with his brother, aban- doning - all claim to the crown. Henry knew that the great barons wished well to Robert, and on one pretext or another he stripped most of them of power. Robert of Belleme, the strongest and wickedest of them all, rose in revolt. After capturing many of his castles, Henry laid siege to his great fortress at Bridgenorth. The barons who served under Henry urged him to spare a rebel who was one of their own class. The Englishmen and the inferior Norman knights thought other- wise. Bridgenorth was taken, and Robert of Belleme, having been stripped of his English land, was sent off to Normandy. Henry was now, in very truth, king of the English. " Rejoice, King Henry," ran a popular song, " and give thanks to the Lord God, because thou art a free king since thou hast overthrown Robert of Belleme, and hast driven him from the borders of thy kingdom." Never again during Henry's reign did the great Norman lords dare to lift hand against him. It was impossible for Henry to avoid interference in Nor- mandy. Many of his vassals in England possessed lands in Nor- mandy as well, where they were exposed to the violence of Robert of Belleme and of others who had been expelled from England. The Duke of the Normans would do nothing to keep the peace, and Henry crossed the sea to protect his own injured subjects. Duke Robert naturally resisted him, and at last, in 1 106, a great battle was fought at Tinchebrai, in which Robert was utterly de- feated. Duke Robert was kept for the remainder of his life a prisoner in Cardiff Castle, where he died after an imprisonment of twenty-eight years. Henry became Duke of the Normans as well as king of the English, and all Normandy was the better for the change. Robert of Belleme was thrown into prison, and the cruel oppressor thus shared the fate of the weak ruler whose remissness had made his oppressions possible. Though Anselm had done everything in his power to support Henry against Robert of Belleme, he was himself engaged in a dis- pute with the king which lasted for some years. A bishop in Anselnrs time was not only a great Church officer, whose duty it was to maintain a high standard of religion and morality among the clergy. He was also one of the king's barons, because he was possessed of large estates, and was therefore bound like any other 90 ENGLAND 1106-1107 baron to send knights to the king when they were needed. Conse- quently, when Anselm became archbishop he had not only received investiture from William II. by accepting from him the ring and the staff which were the signs of ecclesiastical authority, but also did homage, thus acknowledging himself to be the king's man, and obliging himself, not indeed to fight for him in person, but to send knights to fight under his orders. When, however, Henry came to the throne and asked Anselm to repeat the homage which he had done to William, Anselm not only refused himself to comply with the king's request, but also refused to consecrate newly-chosen bishops who had received investiture from Henry. During the time of his exile Anselm had taken part in a council of the Church, in which bishops and abbots had been forbidden by the Pope and the council either to receive investiture from laymen or to do homage to them. These decrees had not been issued merely to serve the pur- pose of Papal ambition. At that time all zealous ecclesiastics thought that the only way to stop the violence of kings in their dealings with the Church was to make the Church entirely independent. Though the dispute was a hot one, it was carried on without any of the violence which had characterized the dispute between Anselm and the Red King, and it ended in a compromise. Henry aban- doned all claim to give the ring and the pastoral staff which were the signs of a bishop's or an abbot's spiritual jurisdiction, while Anselm consented to allow the new bishop or abbot to render the homage which was the sign of his readiness to employ all his tem- poral wealth and power on the king's behalf. The bishop was to be chosen by the chapter of his cathedral, the abbot by the monks of his abbey, but the election was to take place in the king's presence, thus giving him influence over their choice. Whether this settle- ment would work in favor of the king or the clergy depended on the character of the kings and the clergy. If the kings were as riotous as the Red King and the clergy as self-denying as Anselm, the clergy would grow strong in spite of these arrangements. If the kings were as just and wise as Henry, and the clergy as wicked as Ralph Flambard, all advantage would be on the side of the king. After the defeat of the Norman barons the Great Council ceased for a time to have any important influence on the government. Henry was practically an absolute king, and it was well that he should be so, as the country wanted order more than discussion. Henry, however, loved to exercise absolute power in an orderly HENRY I. STEPHEN 91 1107-1135 way, and he chose for his chief minister Roger, whom he made Bishop of Salisbury. Roger had first attracted his notice when he was going out hunting, by saying mass in a shorter time than any other priest, but he retained his favor by the order and system which he introduced into the government. A special body of offi- cials and councilors was selected by the king perhaps a similar body had been selected by his predecessor to sit in judgment over cases in which tenants-in-chief were concerned, as well as over other cases which were, for one reason or another, transferred to it from the Baronial Courts. This council or committee was called the Curia Regis (the King's Court). The members of this Curia Regis met also in the Exchequer, so called from the chequered cloth which covered the table at which they sat. They were then known as Barons of the Exchequer, and controlled the receipts and out- goings of the treasury. The Justiciar presided in both the Curia Regis and the Exchequer. Among those who took part in these proceedings was the Chancellor, who was then a secretary and not a judge, as well as other superior officers of the king. A regular system of finance was introduced, and a regular system of justice accompanied it. At last the king determined to send some of the judges of his court to go on circuit into distant parts of the kingdom. These itinerant Justices (Justitiarii crrantcs) brought the royal power into connection with the local courts. Their business was of a very miscellaneous character. They not only heard the cases in which the king was concerned the pleas of the crown, as they were called but they made assessments for purposes of taxation, listened to complaints, and conveyed the king's wishes to his people. Though Henry's severe discipline was not liked, yet the law and order which he maintained told on the prosperity of the coun- try, and the trade of London flourished so much as to attract citizens from Normandy to settle in it. Flemings, too, trained in habits of industry, came in crowds, and with the view of providing a bulwark against the Welsh, Henry settled a colony of them in South Pem- brokeshire, which has since been known as the Little England beyond Wales. The foreigners were not popular, but the Jews, to whom Henry continued the protection which William had given them, were more unpopular still. In the midst of this busy life the Benedictine monasteries were still harbors of refuge for all who did not care to fight or trade. They were now indeed wealthier than they had once been, as gifts, 92 ENGLAND 1107-1135 usually of land, had been made to the monks by those who rever- enced their piety. Sometimes the gifts took a shape which after- wards caused no little evil. Landowners who had churches on their lands often gave to a monastery the tithes which had hitherto been paid for the support of the parish priest, and the monastery stepped into the place of the parish priest, sending a vicar to act for it in the performance of its new duties. As the monks themselves grew richer they grew less ascetic. Their life, however, was not spent in idleness. They cared for the poor, kept a school for the children, and managed their own property. Some of their numbers studied and wrote, and our knowledge of the history of these times is mainly owing to monastic writers. When Henry I. came to the throne the Chronicle was still being written in the English tongue by the monks of Worcester, and for some years after his death was still carried on at Peterborough. The best historical compositions were, however, in Latin, the language understood by the clergy over all Western Europe. Among the authors of these Latin works, the foremost was William of Malmesbury. Useful as the Benedictines were, there were some monks who complained that the extreme self-denial of their founder, St. Bene- dict, was no longer to be met with, and the complainants had lately originated a new order, called the Cistercian. The Cistercians made their appearance in England in 1128. Their buildings and churches were simpler than those of the Benedictines, and their life more austere. They refused to receive gifts of tithes lest they should impoverish the parish clergy. They loved to make their homes in solitary places far from the haunts of men, while the Benedictines had either planted themselves in towns or had allowed towns to grow up round their monasteries. Henry, in consequence of the possession of Normandy, had been frequently involved in war with France. In these wars Henry was usually successful, and at last, in 1127, his rival in Nor- mandy was killed, and Henry freed from danger. His own son, also named William, had already been drowned on the voyage be- tween Normandy and England in 1120. It is said that no man dared tell Henry that his son was drowned, and that at last a little child was sent to inform him of his misfortune. Henry had many illegitimate children, but after William's death the only lawful child left to him was Matilda. She had been married as a child to the Emperor Henry V., but her husband HENRY I. STEPHEN 93 1135-1138 had died before she was grown up, and she then returned to her father, as the Empress Matilda. There had never been a queen of England, and it would have been very hard for a woman to rule in those times of constant war and bloodshed. Yet Henry per- suaded the barons to swear to accept her as their future sovereign. He then married her to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, who came of a brave and active race, and whose lands, which lay to the south of Normandy, would enlarge the French possessions of Henry's de- scendants. In 1 135 Henry died. The great merit of his English government was that he forsook his brother's evil ways of violence, and maintained peace by erecting a regular administrative system, which kept down the outrages of the barons. One of the English chroniclers in recording his death prayed that God might give him the peace that he loved. Among the barons who had sworn to obey Matilda was Stephen of Blois, a son of the Conqueror's daughter Adela, and a nephew of Henry I. As soon as Henry's death was known Stephen made his way to London, where he was joyfully received as king. The London citizens felt that their chief interests lay in the maintenance of peace, and they thought that a man would be more likely than a woman to secure order. The barons chose Stephen king at Win- chester, where his brother, Henry of Blois, was the bishop. Shortly afterwards some of these very barons rose against him, but their insurrection was soon repressed. More formidable was the hostility of David, king of the Scots. David was closely connected with the family of Henry I., his sister having been Henry's wife, the Em- press Matilda being consequently his niece. He also held in right of his own wife the earldom of Huntingdon. Under the pretext of taking up Matilda's cause he broke into the north of England. In 1 137 Stephen drove David back. In 11 38 David reappeared and the battle which ensued has been known as the battle of the Stand- ard. The Scots were completely defeated, but Stephen, in spite of the victory gained for him, found himself obliged to buy peace at a heavy price. He agreed that David's son, Henry, should hold Northumberland, with the exception of the fortresses of Bam- borough and Newcastle, as a fief of the English crown. David himself was also allowed to keep Cumberland without doing homage. It would have been well for Stephen if he had learned from the men of the North that his strength lay in rallying the English people 94 ENGLAND 1138-1139 round him against the great barons, as the Red King and Henry I. had done when their right to the crown had been challenged by Robert. Instead of this, he brought over mercenaries from Flanders, and squandered treasure and lands upon his favorites so as to have little left for the hour of need. He made friends easily, but he made enemies no less easily. One of the most powerful of the barons was Robert, Earl of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of Henry I., who held the strong fortress of Bristol, and whose power ex- tended over both sides of the lower course of the Severn. In 1138 Stephen, who distrusted him, ordered his castles to be seized. Robert at once declared his half-sister Matilda to be the lawful queen, and a terrible civil war began. Robert's garrison at Bristol was a terror to all the country round. He, too, gathered foreign mercenaries, who knew not what pity was. Other barons imitated Robert's example, fighting only for themselves whether they nomi- nally took the part of Stephen or of Matilda, and the southern and midland counties of England were preyed upon by the garrisons of their castles. Evil as were the men who fought on either side, it was to Stephen and not to Matilda and Robert that men as yet looked to restore order. The port towns, London, Yarmouth and Lynn, clung to him to the last. Unfortunately Stephen did not know how to make good use of his advantages. The clergy, like the traders, had always been in favor of order. Some of them, with the Jus- ticiar, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, at their head, had organized the Exchequer of Henry I., had gathered in the payments due to the crown, or had acted as judges. Yet with all their zeal in the service of the crown, they had not omitted to provide for their own inter- ests. Roger in particular had been insatiable in the pursuit of wealth for himself and of promotion for his family. In 1139 Stephen, rightly or wrongly, threw him into prison with his son and Alexander Lincoln. Every priest of England turned against Stephen. His own brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, de- clared against him, and Stephen was obliged to do penance. The administration of the Exchequer was shattered, and though it was not altogether destroyed, and money was brought to it for the king's use even in the worst times, Stephen's financial resources were from henceforth sadly diminished. The war now lapsed into sheer anarchy. The barons on either side broke loose from all restraint. " They fought amongst them- HENRY I. STEPHEN 95 1139-1148 selves with deadly hatred; they spoiled the fairest lands with fire and rapine; in what had been the most fertile of counties they destroyed almost all the provision of bread." All goods and money they carried off, and if they suspected any man to have concealed treasure they tortured him to oblige him to confess where it was. " They hanged up men by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke ; some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by their head, and coats of mail were hung on to their feet. Many thousands they starved with hunger. . . . Men said openly that Christ and His saints were asleep." In the autumn of 1139 Matilda appeared in England, and in 1 141 there was a battle at Lincoln, in which Stephen was taken prisoner. Henry of Winchester acknowledged Matilda as queen, and all England submitted to her, London giving way most reluctantly. Her rule did not last long. She was as much too harsh as Stephen was too good-natured. She seized the lands of the Church, and ordered the Londoners to pay a heavy fine for having supported Stephen. On this the Londoners rang their bells, and the citizens in arms swarmed out of their houses " like bees out of a hive." Matilda fled to Winchester before them. Bishop Henry then turned against her. Robert of Gloucester was taken prisoner, and after awhile Matilda was obliged to set free King Stephen in exchange for her brother. Fighting continued for some time. On all sides men were longing for peace. The fields were untilled because no man could tell who would reap the harvest. Thousands perished of starvation. If peace there was to be, it could only come by Stephen's victory. It was now known that Matilda was even less fit to govern than Stephen. Stephen took one castle after another. In 1 147 Earl Robert died, and in 1 148 Matilda gave up the struggle and left England. While Matilda had been losing England her husband had been conquering Normandy, and for a little while it seemed possible that England and Normandy would be separated ; England remaining under Stephen and his heirs, and Normandy united with Anjou under the Angevin Geoffrey and his descendants. That the separa- tion did not yet take place was partly owing to the different character of the two heirs. Stephen's son, Eustace, was rough and overbear- ing. Geoffrey's son, Henry, was shrewd and. prudent. Henry had already been in England when he was still quite young, and had learned something of English affairs from his uncle, Robert of 96 ENGLAND 1149-1154 Gloucester. He returned to his father in 1147, and in 1149 Geoffrey gave up to him the duchy of Normandy. He was then sent to try his fortune in England in his mother's stead, but he was only a boy of sixteen, and too young to cope with Stephen. In 11 50 he aban- doned the struggle for a time. In his absence Stephen had still rebels to put down and castles to besiege, but he had the greater part of the kingdom at his back, and if Henry had continued to leave him alone he would probably have reduced all his enemies to submission. In 1 1 50 Geoffrey died, and Henry became Count of Anjou as well as Duke of Normandy. Before long he acquired a much wider territory than either Anjou or Normandy. Louis VII. of France had to wife Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine, and through her had added to his own scanty dominions the whole of the lands between the Loire and the Pyrenees. Louis, believing that she was unfaithful to him. had divorced her on the pretext that she was too near of kin. Henry was not squeamish about the character of so great an heiress, and in 1152 married the Duchess of Aquitaine for the sake of her lands. Thus strengthened, he again returned to England. He was now a young man of nineteen ; his vigor was as great as that of Stephen, and his skill greater. He won fortress after fortress. Before the end of 1 153 Eustace died and Stephen had no motive for prolonging the strife if his personal in- terests could be saved. It was arranged by the treaty of Walling- ford that Stephen should retain the crown for life, and that Henry should be his heir. The castles which had sprung up during the civil war without the license of the king the "adulterine castles,'' as they were called and there were no less than 356 of them were to be destroyed, and order and good government were to return. For five months Henry remained in England. The robber barons could not hold out against the two rivals now united. Many of the castles were demolished, and " such good peace as never was here " was established. In t 154 Stephen died, and young Henry ruled England in his own name. Chapter X HENRY II. 11541189 LEADING DATES Accession of Henry II., A.D. 11 54 Thomas, Archbishop of Canter- bury., 1 1 62 The Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164 Murder of Archbishop Thomas, 1172 The Assize of Arms, 1181 Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1187 Death of Henry II., 1189 HENRY II. was but twenty-one when he returned, after Stephen's death, to govern England. He had before him the difficult task of establishing order where anarchy had prevailed, but it was a task for which he was especially suited. His frame was strong and thick-set, and he was as active as he was strong. His restlessness was the dismay of his courtiers. Eager to see everything for himself, and having to rule a territory extend- ing from the Pyrenees to the Scottish border, he was always on the move. His followers were not allowed to know till he started in the morning where he intended to sleep at night, and he frequently changed his mind even after he had set out. He was as busy with his mind as he was with his body, as fond of a book as of a horse, and ready to chat with anyone of whatever rank. Even when he was at mass he either drew pictures to amuse himself or conversed in whispers with his neighbors. His ceaseless energy was com- bined with a strong will, a clear perception of the limits beyond which action would be unwise, a good eye for ability in others, and a power of utilizing their ability in his own sen-ice. On the Con- tinent his sagacity appeared in his resolution to be content with his dominions which he had acquired without making further conquests. In England his main object was the same as that of his predecessors, to establish the king's authority over the great barons. What espe- cially distinguished him was his clear perception of the truth that he could only succeed by securing, not merely the passive good-will, but the active cooperation of those who, whether they were of Norman or of English descent, were inferior in wealth and position to the great barons. 97 98 ENGLAND 1154-1162 Henry's first year was spent in completing the work which he had begun after the treaty of Wallingford. He sent Stephen's mercenaries over the sea and completed the destruction of the " adulterine castles." One great rebel after another was forced to submit and have his strong walls pulled down. There were to be no more dens of robbers in England, but all men were to obey the king and the law. What castles remained were the king's, and as long as they were his rebellions would not be likely to be successful. Henry even regained from Malcolm IV., king of the Scots, North- umberland and Cumberland, which had been surrendered by Stephen. In his government Henry did his best to carry out the plans of his grandfather, Henry I. It was perhaps because he was afraid that one Justiciar would be too powerful, that he appointed two, Richard De Lucy and the Earl of Leicester, to see that justice was executed and the government maintained whether the king were absent or present. The old Bishop Nigel of Ely was reappointed Treasurer, and presided over the Exchequer at Westminster. Thomas of London, known in later times by the name of Becket, an active and vigorous man, fifteen years older than the king, who had been ordained a deacon, but had nothing clerical about him except the name, was made Chancellor. Thomas was the king's chosen friend, and the two together delighted in the work of restoring order. Thomas liked sumptuous living, and the magnificence of his housekeeping and of his feasts was the talk of the whole country. Yet though he laughed and jested in the midst of his grandeur, he kept himself from every kind of vice. It was principally with Thomas the Chancellor that Henry consulted as to the best means of establishing his authority. He resolved not only to renew but to extend the administrative system of Henry I. The danger which threatened him came from the great barons, and as the great barons were as dangerous to the lesser ones and to the bulk of the people as they were to the king, Henry was able to strengthen himself by winning the affections of the people. Feudality in itself was only a method of owning land; but it was always threatening to pass into a method of gov- ernment. In France the great feudal lords ruled their own ter- ritories with very little regard for the wishes of the king, and the smaller feudal lords had their own courts in which they hanged and imprisoned their villeins. In Stephen's time an attempt had been made to introduce this system into England, with evil consequences HENRY II. 99 1154-1162 both to king and people. Before the Conquest great landowners had often received permission from the king to exercise criminal jurisdiction in the Manor Courts on their own estates, while the vast extent of their landed property gave them a preponderant voice in the proceedings of the shire-moots now known by the Normans as County Courts. Henry resolved to attack the evil at both ends : in the first place, to make the barons support the king's government instead of setting up their own; in the second place, to weaken the Manor and County Courts and to strengthen courts directly pro- ceeding from himself. Henry in the early years of his reign revived the importance of the Great Council, taking care that it should be attended not only by the great barons, but by vassals holding smaller estates, and therefore more dependent on himself. He summoned the Great Council oftener than his predecessors had done. In this way even the greater barons got the habit of sharing in the government of England as a whole, instead of seeking to split up the country, as France was split up, into different districts, each of which might be governed by one of themselves. It was in consequence of the increasing habit of consulting with the king that the Great Council, after many changes, ultimately grew into the modern Parliament. It was of no less importance that Henry II. strengthened the Curia Regis, which had been established in the reign of Henry I. to collect the king's revenue, to give him political advice, and to judge as many questions as it could possibly get hold of. It was especially by doing justice that the Curia Regis was likely to acquire strength, and the strength of the Curia Regis was in reality the strength of the king. If Henry was to carry out justice everywhere it would be necessary for him to weaken still further the power of the barons. He reintroduced a plan which had been first adopted by his grand- father, which had the double merit of strengthening the king upon the Continent and of weakening the barons in England. Henry needed an army to defend his continental possessions against the king of France. The fyrd, or general levy of Englishmen, was not bound to fight except at home, and though the feudal vassals were liable to serve abroad, they could only be made to serve for forty days in the year, which was too short a time for Henry's purposes. He accordingly came to an agreement with his vassals. The owner of every knight's fee was to pay a sum of money known as 100 ENGLAND 1154-1162 scutage (shield-money) in lieu of service. Both parties gained by the arrangement. The king got money with which he paid mer- cenaries abroad, who would fight for him all the year round, and the vassal escaped the onerous duty of fighting in quarrels in which he took no interest. Indirectly the change weakened the feudal vassals, because they had now less opportunity than before of acquiring a military training in actual war. Henry, who meditated great judicial reforms, foresaw that the clergy would be an obstacle in his way. He was eager to establish one law for his whole kingdom, and the clergy, having been ex- empted by the Conqueror from the jurisdiction of the ordinary law courts in all ecclesiastical matters, had, during the anarchy of Stephen's reign, encroached on the royal authority, and claimed to be responsible, even in criminal cases, only to the ecclesiastical courts, which were unable to inflict the penalty of death, so that a clerk who committed a murder could not be hanged like other mur- derers. As large numbers of clerks were only in the lower orders, and as many of them had only taken those orders to escape from the hardships of lay life, their morals were often no better than those of their lay neighbors. A vacancy occurring in the arch- bishopric of Canterbury, Henry, who wished to make these clerks punishable by his own courts, thought that the arrangement would easily be effected if Thomas, who had hitherto been active as a reformer in his service, were archbishop as well as Chancellor. It was in vain that Thomas remonstrated. " I warn you," he said to Henry, " that if such a thing should be, our friendship would soon turn to bitter hate." Henry persisted in spite of the warning, and Thomas became archbishop. The first act of the new archbishop was to surrender his chan- cellorship. He was unable, he said, to serve two masters. It is not difficult to understand his motives. The Church, as the best men of the twelfth century believed, was divinely instituted for the guidance of the world. It was but a short step for the nobler spirits among the clergy to hold it necessary that, in order to secure the due performance of such exalted duties, the clergy should be ex- empted from the so-called justice of laymen, which was often only another name for tyranny, even if the exemption led to the infliction upon wicked clerks of lesser punishments than were mete. In this way the clergy would unconsciously fall into the frame of mind which might lead them to imagine it more to the honor of God that HENRY II. 101 1162-116-* a wicked clerk should be insufficiently punished than that he should be punished by a layman. Of all men Archbishop Thomas was the most likely to fall into this mistake. He was, as Chancellor, prone to magnify his office, and to think more of being the originator of great reforms than of the great reforms themselves. As archbishop he would also be sure to magnify his office, and to think less, as Anselm would have thought, of reconciling the true interests of the kingdom with the true interests of the Church, than of making the archbishop's authority the center of stirring movement, and of rais- ing the Church, of which he was the highest embodiment in Eng- land, to a position above the power of the king. All this he would do with a great, if not complete, sincerity. He would feel that he was himself the greater man because he believed that he was fight- ing in the cause of God. Between a king eager to assert the right of the crown and an archbishop eager to assert the rights of the clergy a quarrel could not be long deferred. Thomas's first stand, however, was on behalf of the whole country. At a Great Council at Woodstock he resisted the king's resolution to levy the old tax of Danegeld, and in conse- quence Danegeld was never levied again. Henry had for some time been displeased because, without consulting him, the archbishop had seized upon lands which he claimed as the property of the see of Canterbury, and had excommunicated one of the king's tenants. Then a clerk who had committed a rape and a murder had been acquitted in an ecclesiastical court. On this, Henry called on the bishops to promise to obey the customs of the realm. Thomas, being told that the king merely wanted a verbal promise to save his dignity, with some reluctance consented. He soon found that he had been tricked. In 1164 Henry summoned a Great Council to meet at Clarendon, and directed some of the oldest of his barons to set down in writing the customs observed by his grandfather. Their report was intended to settle all disputed points between the king and the clergy and was drawn up under sixteen heads known as the Constitutions of Clarendon. The most important of them de- clared that beneficed clergy should not leave the realm without the king's leave; that no tenant-in-chief of the king should be excommunicated without the king's knowledge; that no villein should be ordained without his lord's consent; that a criminous clerk should be sent to the ecclesiastical court for trial, and that after he had been there convicted or had pleaded guilty the Church 102 ENGLAND 1164 should deprive him and leave him to the lay court for further punish- ment. It was for the Curia Regis to determine what matters were properly to be decided by the ecclesiastical courts ; and no appeal to Rome was to be allowed without its permission. To all this Thomas was violently opposed, maintaining that the sentence of deprivation, which was all that an ecclesiastical court was em- powered to inflict, was so terrible, that one who had incurred it ought not to be sentenced to any further penalty by a lay court. After six days' struggle he left the Council, refusing to assent to the Constitutions. Unluckily for himself, Henry could not be content firmly and quietly to enforce the law as it had been declared at Clarendon. He had in his character much of the orderly spirit of his grandfather, Henry I., but he had also something of the violence of his great- uncle, William II. A certain John the Marshal had a suit against the archbishop, and when the archbishop refused to plead in a lay court, the king's council sentenced him to a fine of 500/. Then Henry summoned the archbishop to his castle at Northampton to give an account of all the money which, when he was Chancellor, he had received from the king a claim which is said to have amounted to 30,000/, a sum equal in the money of those days to not much less than 400,000/ now. Thomas, with the crucifix in his hand, awaited in the hall the decision of Henry, who with the council was discussing his fate in an upper chamber. When the Justiciar came out to tell him that he had been declared a traitor he refused to listen, and placed himself under the Pope's protection. Hot words were bandied on either side as he walked out of the hall. " This is a fearful day," said one of his attendants. " The Day of Judgment," replied Thomas, " will be more fearful." Thomas made his way to the coast and fled to France. Henry in his wrath banished no less than four hundred of the archbishop's kins- men and friends. Thomas found less help in France than he had expected. There were once more two rival Popes Alexander III., who was acknowledged by the greater part of the clergy and by the kings of England and France, and Calixtus III., who had been set up by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Alexander was too much afraid lest Henry should take the part of Calixtus to be very eager in supporting Thomas. He therefore did his best to effect a reconciliation between Thomas and Henry, but for some years his efforts were of no avail. HENRY II. 103 1166 Henry, being temporarily disembarrassed of Thomas's rivalry, was able to devote his time to carrying out still further the judicial organization of the country. In 1166 he held a Great Council at Clarendon, and with its approval issued a set of decrees known as the Assize of Clarendon. By this assize full force was given to a change which had for some time been growing in the judicial sys- tem. The old English way of dealing with criminals had been by calling on an accused person to swear to his own innocence and to bring compurgators to swear that his oath was true. If the ac- cused failed to find compurgators he was sent to the ordeal. Ac- cording to the new way there was to be in each county juries con- sisting of twelve men of the hundred and of four from each town- ship in it to present offenses felonies, murders, and robberies and to accuse persons on common report. They were sworn to speak the truth, so that their charges were known as verdicts {vere dicta). No compurgators were allowed, but the accused, after his offense had been presented, had to go to the ordeal, and even if he succeeded in this he was, if his character was notoriously bad, to abjure the realm that is to say, to be banished, swearing never to return. If he came back he was held to be an outlaw, and might be put to death without mercy by anyone. A very similar system to that which was thus adopted in crim- inal cases had already in the early part of Henry's reign been widely extended in civil cases. When, before the Conquest, disputes oc- curred among the English as to the possession of property, each party swore to the justice of his own case, brought compurgators, and summoned witnesses to declare in his favor. There was, however, no method of cross-examination, and if the hundred or shire court was still unsatisfied, it had recourse to the ordeal. The Normans introduced the system of trial by battle, under the belief that God would intervene to give victory to the litigant whose cause was just. This latter system, however, had never been popular with the English, and Henry favored another which had been in existence in Normandy before the Conquest, and was fairly suited to English habits. This was the system of recognitions. Any freeholder who had been dispossessed of his land might apply to the Curia Regis, and the Curia Regis ordered the sheriff of the county in which was the land in dispute to select four knights of that county, by whom twelve knights were chosen to serve as Recognitors. It was the business of these Recognitors to find out 104 ENGLAND 1166 either by their own knowledge or by private inquiry the truth of the matter. If they were unanimous their verdict was accepted as final. If not, other knights were added to them, and when at last twelve were found agreeing, their agreement was held to settle the question. Thus, while in criminal cases the local knowledge of sworn accusers was treated as satisfactory evidence of guilt, in civil cases a system was growing up in which is to be traced the germ of the modern jury. The Recognitors did not indeed hear evidence in public or become judges of the fact, like the modern jury ; they were rather sworn witnesses, allowed to form an opinion not merely, like modern witnesses, on what they had actually seen or heard, but also on what they could gather by private inquiry. To carry out this system Henry renewed his grandfather's experiment of sending members of the Curia Regis as itinerant justices visiting the counties. They held what they called the pleas of the crown that is to say, trials which were brought before the king's judges instead of being tried either in the county courts or the manorial courts. Both these judges and the king had every interest in getting as much business before their courts as possible. Offenders were fined and suitors had to pay fees, and the best chance of increasing these profits was to attract suitors by adminis- tering justice better than the local courts. The more thronged were the king's courts, the more rich and powerful he became. The con- sequent growth of the influence of the itinerant justices was no doubt offensive to the lords of the manor, and especially to the greater landowners, as diminishing their importance, and calling them to account whenever they attempted to encroach on their less powerful neighbors. It was not long before Henry discovered another way of diminishing the power of the barons. In the early part of his reign the sheriffs of the counties were still selected from the great landowners, and the sheriff was not merely the collector of the king's revenue in his country, but had, since the Conquest, assumed a new importance in the county court, over which in the older times the ealdorman or earl and the bishop had presided. Since the Conquest the bishop, having a court of his own for ecclesiastical matters, had ceased to take part in its proceedings, and the earl's authority, which had been much lessened after the Conquest, had now disappeared. The sheriff, therefore, was left alone at the HENRY II. 105 1170 head of the county court, and when the new system of trial grew up he as well as the itinerant justices was allowed to receive the presentments of juries. When, in the spring of 1170, the king returned to England, after an absence of four years, he held a strict inquiry into the conduct of them all, and deposed twenty of them. In many cases, no doubt, the sheriffs had done things to displease Henry, but there can be no doubt that the blow thus struck at the sheriffs was, in the main, aimed at the great nobility. The suc- cessors of those turned out were of lower rank, and therefore more submissive. From this time it was accepted by the kings of England as a principle of government that no great noble should serve as sheriff. Henry knew well that the great nobles were indignant, and that it was possible that they might rise against him, as at one time or another they had risen against every king since the Conquest. He knew too that his predecessors had found their strongest support against the nobles in the Church, and that the Church was no longer unanimously on his side. He could indeed count upon all the bishops save one. Bishops who were or had been his officials, bishops envious of Thomas or afraid of himself, were all at his disposal, but they brought him no popular strength. Thomas alone among them had a hold on the imagination of the people through his austerities and his daring. Moreover, as the champion of the clergy, he was regarded as being also the champion of the people, from whose ranks the clergy were recruited. At the moment of Henry's return to England he had special need of the Church. He wished the kingdom of England to pass at his death to his eldest son, Henry, and since the Conquest no eldest son had ever succeeded his father on the throne. Pie there- fore determined to adopt a plan which had succeeded with the kings of France, of having the young Henry chosen and crowned in his own lifetime, so that when lie died he might be ready to step into his father's place. Young Henry was chosen, and on June 14, 1170, he was crowned by Roger, Archbishop of York ; but on the day be- fore the coronation Roger received from Thomas a notice of his excommunication of all bishops taking part in the ceremony, on the ground that it belonged only to an Archbishop of Canterbury to crown a king, and this excommunication had been ratified by the Pope. It was therefore possible that the whole ceremony might go for nothing. 106 ENGLAND 1170 To obviate this clanger Henry again sought to make peace with Thomas. An agreement was come to on the vague terms that the past should be forgotten on both sides. Henry perhaps hoped that when Thomas was once again in England he would be too wise to rake up the question of his claim to crown the king. If it was so he was soon disappointed. On December i, 1170, Thomas landed at Sandwich and rode to Canterbury amid the shouts of the people. He refused to release from excommunication the bishops who had taken part in young Henry's coronation unless they would first give him satisfaction for the wrong done to the see of Canterbury, thus showing that he had forgotten nothing. The aggrieved bishops at once crossed the sea to lay their com- plaint before Henry. " What a parcel of fools and dastards," cried Henry impatiently, " have I nourished in my house, that none of them can be found to avenge me on one upstart clerk !" Four of his knights took him at his word, and started in all haste for Canter- bury. The archbishop before their arrival had given fresh offense in a cause more righteous than that of his quarrel with the bishops. Ranulf de Broc and others who had had the custody of the lands in his absence refused to surrender them, robbed him of his goods, and maltreated his followers. On Christmas Day he excommuni- cated them and repeated the excommunication of the bishops. On December 29 the four knights sought him out. They do not seem at first to have intended to do him bodily harm. The excommuni- cation of the king's servants before the king had been consulted was a breach of the Constitutions of Clarendon, and they bade him, in the king's name, to leave the kingdom. After a hot altercation the knights retired to arm themselves. The archbishop was per- suaded by his followers to take refuge in the church. In rushed the knights crying, "Where is the traitor? Wliere is the arch- bishop?" "Behold me," replied Thomas, " no traitor, but a priest of God." The assailants strove to lay hands upon him. He strug- gled and cast forth angry words upon them. In the madness of their wrath they struck him to the ground and slew him as he lay. Archbishop Thomas did not die as a martyr for any high or sacred cause. He was not a martyr for the faith, like those who had been thrown to the lions by the Roman emperors. He was not a martyr for righteousness. He was a martyr for the privileges of his order and of his see. Yet if he sank below the level of the great martyrs, he did not sink to that lowest stage at which men cry HENRY II. 107 1171-1172 out for the preservation of their privileges, after those privileges have ceased to benefit any but themselves.' The sympathy of the mass of the population shows the persistence of a widespread belief that in maintaining the privileges of the clergy Thomas was main- taining the rights of the protectors of the poor. This sentiment was only strengthened by his murder. All through Europe the news was received with a burst of indignation. Of that indigna- tion the Pope made himself the mouthpiece. In the summer of 1 171 two Papal legates appeared in Normandy to excommunicate Henry unless he was able to convince them that he was guiltless of the mur- der. Henry was too cautious to abide their coming. He crossed first to England and then to Ireland, resolving to have something to offer the Pope which might put him in a better humor. In the domain of art, Ireland was inferior to no European na- tion. In political development it lagged far behind. Tribe warred with tribe and chief with chief. The Church was as disorganized as the State, and there was little discipline exercised outside the monasteries. For some time the Popes and the Archbishops of Canterbury had been anxious to establish a better regulated Church system, and in 11 54 Adrian IV. the only Englishman who was ever Pope hoping that Plenry would bring the Irish Church under Papal order, had made him a present of Ireland, on the ground that all islands belonged to the Pope. Henry, however, had too much to do during the earlier years of his reign to think of conquering Ireland. In 1166 the chief of Leinster appealed to Henry for aid. Henry gave him leave to carry over to Ireland any English knights whom he could persuade to help him. Several went and were victorious, but the rule of these knights was a rule of cruelty and violence, and, what was more, it might well become dangerous to Henry himself. When Henry landed in Ireland in 1171 he set himself to restore order. The Irish and the invaders both acknowledged him because they dared not resist him. He gathered a synod of the clergy at Cashel, arranged for the future discipline of the Church, and showed the Pope that his friendship was worth having. Unhappily lie could not remain long in Ireland, and when he left it the old anarchy and violence blazed up again. Though Henry had not served Ireland, he had gained his own personal ends. In the spring of 11 72 Henry was back in Normandy. The English barons were longing to take advantage of his quarrel with 108 ENGLAND 1172-1181 the Church, and his only chance of resisting them was to propitiate the Church. He met the Papal legates, swore that he was inno- cent of the death of Thomas, and renounced the Constitutions of Clarendon. He then proceeded to pacify Louis VII., whose daughter was married to the younger Henry, by having the boy re- crowned in due form. Young Henry was a foolish lad, and took it into his head that because he had been crowned his father's reign was at an end. In 1173 he fled for support to his father-in-law and persuaded him to take up his cause. The great English barons of the north and center rose in insurrection, and William the Lion, king of the Scots, joined them. De Lucy, the Justiciar, stood up for Henry ; but, though he gained ground, the war was still rag- ing in the following year, 1174. In the spring of that year the rebels were gaining the upper hand, and the younger Henry was preparing to come to their help. In July the elder Henry landed in England. For the first and only time in his life he brought to England the mercenaries who were paid with the scutage money. At Canterbury he visited the tomb of Thomas, now acknowledged as a martyr, spent the whole night in prayer and tears, and on the next morning was, at his own request, scourged by the monks as a token of his penitence. That night he was awakened by a mes- senger with good news. Ranulf de Glanvile had won for him a great victory at Alnwick, had dispersed the barons' host, and had taken prisoner the Scottish king. About the same time the fleet which was to bring his son over was dispersed by a storm. Within a few weeks the whole rebellion was at an end. It was the last time that the barons ventured to strive with the king till the time came when they had the people and the Church on their side. William the Lion was carried to Normandy, where, by the treaty of Falaise, he acknowledged himself the vassal of the king of England for the whole of Scotland. In September, 1174, there was a general peace. In 1181 Henry issued the Assize of Arms, organizing the old fyrd in a more serviceable way. Every English freeman was bound by it to find arms of a kind suitable to his property, that he might be ready to defend the realm against rebels or invaders. The Assize of Arms is the strongest possible evidence as to the real nature of Henry's government. He had long ago sent back to the Continent the mercenaries whom he had brought with him in the peril of 1174, and he now intrusted himself not to a paid standing army, but to HENRY II. 109 1172-1185 the whole body of English freemen. He was in truth, king of the English not merely because he ruled over them, but because they were ready to rally round him in arms against those barons whose ancestors had worked such evil in the days of Stephen. England was not to be given over either to baronial anarchy or to military despotism. In England Henry ruled as a national king over a nation which, at least, preferred his government to that of the barons. The old division between English and Norman was dying out, and though the upper classes, for the most part, still spoke French, intermarriages had been so frequent that there were few among them who had not some English ancestors and who did not under- stand the English language. Henry was even strong enough to regain much that he had surrendered when he abandoned the Con- stitutions of Clarendon. In his continental possessions there was no such unity. The inhabitants of each province were tenacious of their own laws and customs, and this was especially the case with the men of Aquitaine. Henry, in 1172, having appointed his eldest son, Henry, as the future ruler of Normandy and Anjou as well as of England, gave to his second son, Richard, the immediate possession of Eleanor's duchy of Aquitaine. In 1.181 he provided for his third son, Geoffrey, by a marriage with Constance, the heiress of Brittany, over which country he claimed a feudal superiority as Duke of the Normans. Yet, though he gave away so much to his sons, he wished to keep the actual control over them all. The arrangement did not turn out well. He had set no good example of domestic peace. His sons knew that he had married their mother for the sake of her lands, that he had subse- quently thrown her into prison and had been faithless to her with a succession of mistresses. Besides this, they were torn away from him by the influence of the men whom they were set to rule. John, the fourth son, who was named Lackland from having no territory assigned to him, was, as yet, too young to be troublesome. Both Richard and Geoffrey had taken part with their brother Henry in the great revolt of 1 173. In 1177 they were again quarreling with their father and with each other. Henry loved his children, and could never bring himself to make war very seriously against them. Henry died young in 1183, and Geoffrey in 1185. Rich- ard was now the heir of all his father's lands, from the Tweet- to the Pyrenees. Henry made an effort to provide for John m 110 ENGLAND 1185-1189 Ireland, and in 1185 he sent the youth now eighteen years old to Dublin to rule as king of Ireland. John soon showed his in- competence. Before the end of the year his father was obliged to recall him. The divisions in Henry's family were stirred up afresh by the new king of France, Philip II. , who had succeeded his father, Louis VII., in 1179. Philip was resolved to enlarge his narrow dominions at the expense of Llenry. He was Henry's feudal lord, and he was crafty enough to know that by assisting Henry's sons he might be able to convert his nominal lordship into a real power. News, however, arrived in the midst of the strife which for a little time put an end to the discords of men and peoples. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was attacked by the Mohammedan warrior Saladin, who in 1187 took Jerusalem and almost every city still held by the Christians in the East. Tyre alone held out, and that, too, would be lost unless help came speedily. For a moment the rulers of the West were shocked at the tidings from the East. In 1188 Philip, Henry, and Richard had taken the cross as the sign of their resolution to recover the Holy City from the infidel. To enable him to meet the expenses of a war in the East, Henry imposed upon England a new tax of a tenth part of all movable property, which is known as the Saladin tithe, but in a few months those who were pledged to go on the crusade were fighting with one another first Henry and Richard against Philip, and then Philip and Richard against Henry. At last, in 1 189, Henry, beaten in war, was forced to submit to Philip's terms, receiving in return a list of those of his own barons who had engaged to support Richard against his father. The list reached him when he was at Chinon, ill and worn out. The first name on it was that of his favorite son John. The old man turned his face to the wall. " Let things go now as they will," he cried bitterly. " I care no more for myself or for the world." After a few days of suffering he died. The last words which passed his lips were, " Shame, shame upon a conquered king." The wisest and most powerful ruler can only assist the forces of nature ; he cannot work against them. Those who merely glance at a map in which the political divisions of France are marked as they existed in Henry's reign, cannot but wonder that Henry did not make himself master of the small territory which was directly governed, in turn, by Louis VII. and Philip II. A HENRY II. Ill 1189 careful study of the political conditions of his reign shows, how- ever, that he was not really strong enough to do anything of the kind. His own power on the Continent was purely feudal, and he held authority over his vassals there because they had personally done homage to him. Henry, however, had also done homage to the king of France, and did not venture, even if he made war upon his lord, the king of France, to push matters to extremities against him, lest his sons as his own vassals might push matters to ex- tremities against himself. He could not, in short, expel the king of France from Paris, lest he should provoke his own vassals to follow his examples of insubordination and expel him from Bordeaux or Rouen. Moreover, Henry had too much to do in England to give himself heart and soul to continental affairs, while the king of France, on the contrary, who had no foreign possessions, and was always at his post, would be the first to profit by a national French feeling whenever such a feeling arose. Eng- land under Henry II. was already growing more united and more national. The crown which Henry derived from the Conqueror was national as well as feudal. Henry, like his predecessors, had two strings to his bow. On the one hand he could call upon his vassals to be faithful to him because they had sworn homage to him, while he himself, as far as England was concerned, had sworn homage to no one. On the other hand, he could rally round him the national forces. To do this lie must do justice and gain the good-will of the people at large. It was this that he had attempted to do, by sending judges round the country and by improving the law, by establishing scutage to weaken the power of the barons, and by strengthening the national forces by the Assize of Arms. No doubt he had little thanks for his pains. Men could feel the weight of his arm and could complain of the heavy fines exacted in his courts of justice. It was only a later generation, which enjoyed the benefits of his hard discipline, which understood how much England owed to him. Chapter XI RICHARD I. 1 189 1 199 LEADING DATES Accession of Richard I., A.D. 1189 Richard's Return to England from the Crusade, i 194 Death of Richard I., 1199 RICHARD was accepted without dispute as the master of the whole of the Angevin dominions. He was a warrior, . not a statesman. Impulsive in his generosity, he was also impulsive in his passions. Having determined to embark on the crusade, he came to England eager to raise money for its expenses. With this object he not only sold offices to those who wished to buy them, and the right of leaving office to those who wished to retire, but also, with the Pope's consent, sold leave to remain at home to those who had taken the cross. Regardless of the dis- tant future, he abandoned for money to William the Lion the treaty of Falaise, in which William had engaged to do homage to the English king. To secure order during his absence Richard appointed two Justiciars Hugh of Puiset, Bishop of Durham, and William of Longchamps, Bishop of Ely. At the same time he attempted to conciliate all who were likely to be dangerous by making them lavish grants of land, especially giving what was practically royal authority over five shires to his brother John. Such an arrange- ment was not likely to last. Before the end of 1189 Richard crossed to the Continent. Scarcely was he gone when the popu- lace in many towns turned savagely on the Jews and massacred them in crowds. The Jews lived by money-lending, and money- lenders are never popular. In York they took refuge in the castle, and when all hope of defending themselves failed, slew their wives and children, set fire to the castle, and perished in the flames. The Justiciars were too much occupied with their own quarrels to heed such matters. Hugh was a stately and magnificent prelate. William was lame and misshapen, quick of wit and unscrupulous. 112 RICHARD I. 113 1191-1194 In a few weeks he had deprived his rival of all authority. His own power did not last long. He had a sharp tongue, and did not hesitate to let all men, great and small, know how meanly he thought of them. Those whom he despised found a leader in John, who was anxious to succeed his brother, and thought that it might some day be useful to have made himself popular in England. In the autumn of 1191 William of Longchamps was driven out of the country. Richard threw his whole heart his lion's heart, as men called it into the crusade. Alike by sea and by land, he knew better than any other leader of his age how to direct the operations of war. He was too impetuous to guard himself against the in- trigues and personal rancor of his fellow-crusaders. His own vigor greatly contributed to the fall of Acre and twice he brought the crusading host to within eight miles of the Holy City. Each time he was driven to retreat by the crusaders failing to support him. In 1 192 there was nothing for it but to return home. Ene- mies were watching for him on every shore. Landing at the head of the Adriatic, he attempted to make his way in disguise through Germany. He was captured and delivered up to the Emperor, Henry VII. The imprisonment of Richard was joyful news to Philip of France, and John. John did his best to get into his hands all the English and Continental dominions of his brother. His meanness was, however, by this time well known, and he was repelled on all sides. At last, in 1 193, the emperor consented to let Richard go on payment of what was then the enormous ransom of 150,000 marks, or 100,000/. " Beware," wrote Philip to John, " the devil is loose again." Philip and John tried to bribe the emperor to keep his prisoner, but in February, 1194, Richard was liberated, and set out for England. Before Richard reappeared in England each tenant-in-chief had to pay the aid which was due to deliver his lord from prison, but this was far from being enough. Besides all kinds of irregular expedients the Danegeld had been practically revived, and to it was now given the name of carucage, a tax of two shillings on every plow-land. Another tax of a fourth part of all movable goods had also been imposed, for which a precedent had been set by Henry II. when he levied the Saladin tithe. Richard had now to gather in what was left unpaid of these 114 ENGLAND 1194-1198 charges. Yet so hated was John that Richard was welcomed with every appearance of joy, and John thought it prudent to sub- mit to his brother. Philip, however, was still an open enemy, and as soon as Richard had gathered in all the money that he could raise in England he left the country never to return. On the Continent he could best defend himself against Philip, and, besides this, Richard was at home in sunny Aquitaine, and had no liking for his English realm. For four years the administration of England was in the hands of a new Justiciar, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter. He was a statesman of the school of Henry II., and he carried the jury system further than Henry had done. The immense increase of taxation rendered it the more necessary to guard against unfairness, and Hubert Walter placed the selection of the juries of presentment in the hands of four knights in every shire, who, as is probable, were chosen by the freeholders in the County Court, instead of being named by the sheriff. This was a further step in the direction of allowing the counties to manage their own affairs, and a still greater one was taken by the frequent employment of juries in the assessment of the taxes paid within the county, so as to enable them to take a prominent part in its financial as well as in its judicial business. In 1 198 there was taken a new survey of England for taxable pur- poses, and again elected juries were employed to make the returns. Archbishop Hubert's administration marks a great advance in constitutional progress, though it is probable that his motive was only to raise money more readily. The main constitutional problem of the Norman and Angevin reigns was how to bring the national organization of the king's officials into close and con- stant intercourse with the local organization of the counties. Henry I. and Henry II. had attacked the problem on one side by sending the judges round the country to carry the king's wishes and commands to each separate county. It still remained to devise a scheme by which the wishes and complaints of the counties could be brought to the king. Hubert Walter did not contrive that this should be done, but he made it easy to be done in the next genera- tion, because before he left office he had increased the powers of the juries in each county and had accustomed them to deal inde- pendently with all the local matters in which the king and the county were both interested. It only remained to bring these RICHARD I. 115 1199 juries together in one place where they might join in making the king aware of the wishes and complaints of all counties alike. When this had been accomplished there would, for the first time, be a representative assembly in England. It was not only Richard's love for his old home which fixed him on the Continent. He knew that the weakest part of his dominions was there. His lands beyond sea had no natural unity. Normans did not love Angevins, neither did Angevins love the men of Poitou or Guienne. Philip was willingly obeyed in his own dominions, and he had all the advantage which his title of king of the French could give him. Richard fought desperately, and for the most part successfully, against the French king, and formed alliances with all who were opposed to him. In 1199 he died, being shot with an arrow. During the forty-five years of the reigns of Richard and his father the chief feature of English history is the growth of the power of the state. There was more justice and order, and also more taxation, at the end of the period than at the beginning. During the same period the influence of the Church grew less. The character of Thomas's resistance to the king was lower than that of Anselm, and not long after Thomas's murder Henry indi- rectly regained the power which he had lost, and filled the sees with officials and dependents who cared little for the higher aims of religion. The evil consequences of making the Church dependent on the king were at least as great as those of freeing the political and social life of the clergy from the control of the State. Even monasticism ceased to afford a strong example of self-denial. The very Cistercians, who had begun so well, had fallen from their original purity. They were now owners of immense tracts of pasture-land, and their keenness in money-making had become notorious. They exercised great influence, but it was the influence of great landlords, not the influence of ascetics. The decay of asceticism was to some extent brought about by the opening of new careers into which energetic men might throw themselves. They were needed as judges, as administrators, as councilors. A vigorous literature sprung up in the reign of Henry II., but at the end of the reign most of it was connected with the court rather than with the monasteries. Henry's Justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvile, wrote the first English law-book. His Treasurer, Richard Fitz-Nigel, set forth in the " Dialogus de Scac- 116 ENGLAND 1154-1199 cario " the methods of his financial administration, and also pro- duced " The Deeds of King Henry and King Richard." William of Newburgh, indeed, the best historian of these reigns, wrote in a small Yorkshire monastery, but Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto pursued their historical work under the influence of the court. Still more striking is the universality of the intellectual inquisitiveness of Walter Map. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with shrewd humor and extensive knowledge. There was already in England a place where learning was cherished for its own sake. For some time there had been grow- ing up on the Continent gatherings for the increase of learning, which ultimately were known as universities, or corporations of teachers and scholars. One at Bologna had devoted itself to the study of the civil or Roman law. Another at Paris gave itself to the spread of all the knowledge of the time. In these early uni- versities there were no colleges. Lads, very poor for the most part, flocked to the teachers and lodged themselves as best they could. Such a university, though the name was not used till later, had been gradually forming at Oxford. Its origin and early his- tory is obscure, but in 1186 Giraldus, wishing to find a cultivated audience for his new book on the topography of Ireland, read it aloud at Oxford, where, as he tells us, " the clergy in England chiefly flourished and excelled in clerkly lore." It appears that there were already separate faculties or branches of study, and persons recognized as doctors or teachers in all of them. Intellectual progress was accompanied by material progress. In the country the old system of cultivation by the labor service of villein-tenants still prevailed, but in many parts the service had been commuted, either for a money payment or for payments in kind, such as payments of a fixed number of eggs or fowls, or of a fixed quantity of honey or straw. Greater progress was made in the towns. At the time of the Conquest there were about eighty towns in England, most of them no larger than villages. The largest towns after London were Winchester, Bristol, Norwich, York, and Lincoln, but even these had not a population much above 7,000 apiece. In the smaller towns trade was sufficiently provided for by the establishment of a market to which country people brought their grain or their cattle, and where they pro- vided themselves in turn with such rude household necessaries as RICHARD I. 117 1154-1199 they required. Even before the Conquest port towns had grown up on the coast, but foreign trade was slight, imports being almost entirely confined to luxuries for the rich. The order introduced by the Normans and the connection between England and the king's continental possessions was followed by an increase of trade, and there arose in each of the larger towns a corporation which was known as the Merchant Gild, and which was, in some in- stances at least, only a development of an older association existing in the times before the Conquest. No one except the brothers of the Merchant Gild was allowed to trade in any article except food, but anyone living in the town might become a brother on payment of a settled fee. The first Merchant Gild known was constituted in 1093. A little later, Henry I. granted charters to some of the towns, conferring on them the right of managing their own affairs ; and his example was followed, in far greater profusion, by Henry II. and Richard I. Though the organization of the Merchant Gild was originally distinct from the organization of the town, and the two were in theory kept apart, the Merchant Gild, to which most of the townsmen belonged, usually encroached upon the authorities of the town, regulated trade to its own advantage, and practically controlled the choice of officers, the principal officer being usually styled an Alderman, with power to keep order and generally to provide for the well-being of the place. In this way the trades- men and merchants of the towns prepared themselves unconsciously for the time when they would be called on to take part in managing the affairs of the country. Even in these early times, however, the artisans in some of the trades attempted to combine together. Of all the towns London had been growing most rapidly in wealth and population, and during the troubles in which John had been pitted against William of Longchamps it had secured the right of being governed by a Mayor and Aldermen of its own, instead of being placed under the jurisdiction of the King's sheriff. The Mayor and Aldermen, however, did not represent all the townsmen. In London, though there is no evidence of the exist- ence of a Merchant Gild, there was a corporation composed of the wealthier traders, by which the city was governed. The Mayor and Aldermen were chosen out of this corporation, as were the juries elected to assess the taxes. Artisans soon came to believe that these juries dealt unfairly with the poor. One of the Alder- men, William Longbeard, made himself the mouthpiece of their 118 ENGLAND 1154-1199 complaints and stirred them up against the rest. Hubert Walter sent a messenger to seize him, but William Longbeard slew the messenger and fled into the church of Mary-at-Bow. Here, ac- cording to the ideas of his age, he should have been safe, as every church was considered to be a sanctuary in which no criminal could be arrested. Hubert Walter, however, came in person to seize him, set the church on fire, and had him dragged out. William Longbeard was first stabbed, and then tried and hanged, and for the time the rich tradesmen had their way against the poorer artisans. Even in the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should be carried outside the town and burned. Here and there, however, as in the case of the so-called Jews' house at Lincoln, stone houses were erected. In the larger houses the arrangements were much as they had been before the Conquest, the large hall being still the most conspicuous part, though another apartment, known as the solar, to which an ascent was made by steps from the outside, and which served as a sitting-room for the master of the house, had usually been added. The castles reared by the king or the barons were built for defense alone, and it was in the great cathedrals and churches that the skill of the architect was shown. An enormous number of parish churches of stone were raised by Norman build- ers to supersede earlier buildings of wood. For some time the round-arched Norman architecture which had been introduced by Eadward the Confessor was alone followed. Gradually the pointed arch of Gothic architecture took its place, and after a period of transition the graceful style now known as Early English was first used on a large scale in 1192 in the choir of the cathedral of Lincoln, PART III THE GROWTH OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUTION. 11991399 Chapter XII JOHN. 1 199 1216 LEADING DATES Accession of John, A.D. 1199 Loss of Normandy, 1204 England Under an Interdict, 1208 Magna Carta, 121 5 Death of John, 1216 A FTER Richard's death there were living but two descend- /-\ ants of Henry II. in the male line John, Richard's only JL 3l surviving brother, and Arthur, the young son of John's elder brother, Geoffrey. The English barons had to make their choice between uncle and nephew, and they preferred the grown man to the child. It was the last time when that principle of election was confessedly acted on. Archbishop Hubert in announcing the result used words which seem strange now: " Forasmuch," he declared to the people assembled to wit- ness John's coronation, " as we see him to be prudent and vigorous, we all, after invoking the Holy Spirit's grace, for his merits no less than his royal blood, have with one con- sent chosen him for our king." In reality, John was of all men most unworthy. He was without dispute the worst of the English kings. Like William II. he feared not God nor regarded man. Though William indeed was more vicious in his private life, John's violence and tyranny in public life was as great as William's, and he added a meanness and frivolity which sank him far below him. On the Continent John had a difficult game to play. Nor- mandy and Aquitaine submitted to him, but Anjou and its dependent territories declared for Arthur. Philip II. now supported Arthur, but in 1200 peace was made. Philip acknowledged John as Rich- ard's heir, but forced him in return to pay a heavy sum of money, and to make other concessions. John did not know how to make use of the time of rest which he had gained, and next fell into trouble in Poitou. The Poitevin barons appealed to Philip as John's over-lord, and in 1202 Philip summoned John to answer their complaints before his peers. John not only did not 121 122 ENGLAND 1202-1209 appear, but made no excuse for his absence; and Philip after- wards pretended that the peers had condemned him to forfeit his lands. After this Philip, in alliance with Arthur, invaded Normandy. John's aged mother, Eleanor, defended it until John came to her help and captured Arthur. The latter died in 1203, and, it is said, by his uncle's own hands. The murderer was the first to suffer from the crime. Philip at once invaded Normandy. The Norman barons had long ceased to respect John, and very few of them would do anything to help him. Philip took castle after castle. John was incapable of sus- tained effort, and now looked sluggishly on. Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, together with part of Poitou, had submitted to Philip before the end of 1204. It was not owing to John's vigor that Aquitaine was not lost as well as Normandy and Anjou. Philip had justified his attack on John as being John's feudal lord, and as being therefore bound to take the part of John's vassals whom he had injured. Hitherto the power of the king over his great vassals, which had been strong in England, had been weak in France. Philip made it strong in Nor- mandy and Anjou because he had the support there of the vassals of John. Normans and Angevins had been growing more like the Frenchmen of Paris. Their language, manners, and characters were similar. In Aquitaine it was otherwise. The language and manners there, though much nearer to those of the French than they were to those of the English, differed considerably from the language and manners of the Frenchmen, Normans, and Angevins. What the men of Aquitaine really wanted was independence. They there- fore now clung to John against Philip as they had clung to Richard against Henry II. They resisted Henry II. because Henry II. ruled in Anjou and Normandy, and they wished to be free from any connection with Anjou and Normandy. They resisted Philip because Philip now ruled in Anjou and Normandy. They were not afraid of John any longer, because they thought that now that England alone was left to him, he would be too far off to interfere with them. In England John had caused much discontent by the heavy taxation which he imposed, not with the regularity of Henry II. and Hubert Walter, but with unfair inequality. In 1205 /Wchbishop Hubert Walter died. The right of choosing a new archbishop lay with the monks of the monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury, of JOHN 123 1205-1208 which every archbishop, as the successor of St. Augustine, was the abbot. This right, however, had long been exercised only accord- ing to the wish of the king, who practically named the archbishop. This time the monks, without asking John's leave, hurriedly chose their subprior Reginald, and sent him off with a party of monks to Rome, to obtain the sanction of the Pope. Reginald was directed to say nothing of his election till he reached Rome ; but he was a vain man, and had no sooner reached the Continent than he babbled about his own dignity as an archbishop. When John heard this, he bade the monks choose the Bishop of Norwich, John de Grey, the king's treasurer; and the monks, thoroughly frightened, chose him as if they had not already made their election. John had, however, forgotten to consult the bishops of the province of Canterbury, who had always been consulted by his father and brother, and they too sent messengers to the Pope to complain of the king. The Pope was Innocent III., who at once determined that John must not name bishops whose only merit was that they were good state officials. Being an able man, he soon discovered that Reginald was a fool. He therefore in 1206 sent for a fresh deputation of monks, and, as soon as they arrived in Rome, bade them make a new choice in the name of their monastery. At Innocent's sug- gestion they chose Stephen Langton, one of the most pious and learned men of the day, whose greatness of character was hardly suspected by anyone at the time. The choice of an archbishop in opposition to the king was undoubtedly something new. The archbishopric of Canterbury was a great national office, and a king as skillful as Henry II. would probably have succeeded in refusing to allow it to be disposed of by the Pope and a small party of monks. John was unworthy to be the champion of any cause whatever. In 1207, after an angry corre- spondence with Innocence, he drove the monks of Christchurch out of the kingdom. Innocence in reply threatened England with an interdict, and in the spring of 1208 the interdict was published. An interdict carried with it the suppression of all the sacra- ments of the Church except those of baptism and extreme unction. Even these were only to be received in private. No words of solemn import were pronounced at the burial of the dead. The churches were all closed, and to the men of that time the closing of the church-doors was like the closing of the very gate of heaven. In the choice of the punishment inflicted there was some sign that the 124 ENGLAND 1208-1213 Papacy was hardly as strong in the thirteenth as it had been in the eleventh century. Gregory VII. had smitten down kings by per- sonal excommunication ; Innocent III. found it necessary to stir up resistance against the king by inflicting sufferings on the people. Yet there is no evidence of any indignation against the Pope. The clergy rallied almost as one man round Innocent. John, taking no heed of the popular feeling, seized the property of the clergy who obeyed the interdict. Yet he was not without fear lest the barons should join the clergy against him, and to keep them in obedience he compelled them to intrust to him their eldest sons as hostages. In 1209 Innocent excommunicated John himself. John cared nothing for being excluded from the services of the Church, but he knew that if the excommunication were published in England few would venture to sit at table with him, or even to speak with him. For some time he kept it out of the country, but it became known that it had been pronounced at Rome, and even his own dependents began to avoid his company. He feared lest the barons whom he had wearied with heavy fines and taxes might turn against him, and he needed large sums of money to defend himself against them. First he turned on the Jews, then the abbots and the wealthy Cistercians. In 121 1 some of the barons declared against John, but they were driven from the country, and those who remained were harshly treated. Some of their sons who had been taken as hostages were hanged or starved to death. In 12 12 Innocent's patience came to an end, and he announced that he would depose John if he still refused to give way, and would transfer his crown to his old enemy, Philip II. The English clergy and barons were not likely to oppose the change. Philip gathered a great army in France to make good the claim which he expected Innocent to give him. John, indeed, was not entirely without resource. The Emperor Otto IV. was John's sister's son, and as he too had been excommuni- cated by Innocent, he made common cause with John against Philip. Early in 12 13 John gathered an army of 60,000 men to resist Philip's landing, and if Otto with his Germans were to attack France from the east, a French army would hardly venture to cross into England, unless indeed it had no serious resistance to fear. John, however, knew well that he could not depend on his own army. Many men in the host hated him bitterly, and he feared deposition, and per- haps death, at the hands of those whom he had summoned to his help. JOHN 125 1213 Under these circumstances John preferred submission to the Pope to submission to Philip or his own barons. He invited Pan- dulf, the Pope's representative, to Dover. He swore to admit Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, to restore to their rights all those of the clergy or laity whom he had banished, and to give back the money which he had wrongfully exacted. Two days later he knelt before Pandulf and did homage to the Pope for England and Ireland. He was no longer to be an independent king but the Pope's vassal. In token of his vassalage he agreed that he and his successors should pay to Innocent and his successors 1,000 marks a year, each mark being equal to 13^. 4c?., or two-thirds of a pound. Innocent had reached his aim as far as John was con- cerned. In his eyes the Papacy was not merely the guide of the Church, it was an institution for controlling kings and forcing them to act in accordance with the orders of the Popes. It remained to be seen whether the Popes' orders would always be unselfish, and whether the English barons and clergy would submit to them as readily as did this most miserable of English kings. At first John seemed to have gained all that he wanted by sub- mission. Pandulf bade Philip abandon all thought of invading England, and when Philip refused to obey, John's fleet fell upon the French fleet off the coast of Flanders and destroyed it. John even proposed to land with an army in Poitou and to reconquer Nor- mandy and Anjou. His subjects thought that he ought to begin by fulfilling his engagements to them. John having received absolution, summoned four men from each county to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy which he had bound himself to make good. The meeting thus summoned was the germ of the future House of Commons. It was not a national political assem- bly, but it was a national jury gathered together into one place. The exiled barons were recalled, and John now hoped that his vas- sals would follow him to Poitou. They refused to do so, alleging their poverty. They had in fact, no interest in regaining Normandy and Anjou for John, for thev cared for England alone. John turned furiously on the barons, and was only hindered from attack- ing them by the new Archbishop, who threatened to excommunicate everyone who took arms against them. It was time for all English- men who loved law and order to resist John. Stephen Langton put himself at the head of the movement, and at a great assembly at St. Paul's produced a charter of Henry I., by which the king had 126 ENGLAND 1214 promised to put an end to the tyranny of the Red King, and declared amid general applause that it must be renewed by John. It was a memorable scene. Up to this time it had been necessary for the clergy and the people to support the king against the tyranny of the barons. Now the clergy and people offered their support to the barons against the tyranny of the king. John had merely the Pope on his side. Innocent's view of the situation was very simple. John was to obey the Pope, and all John's subjects were to obey John. A Papal delegate arrived in England, fixed the sum which John was to pay to the clergy, and refused to listen to the complaints of those who thought themselves defrauded. In 12 14 John succeeded in carrying his barons and their vassals across the sea. With one army he landed at Rochelle, and recovered what had been lost to him on the south of the Loire, but failed to make any permanent conquests to the north of that river. Another army, under John's illegitimate brother, the Earl of Salisbury, joined the Emperor Otto in an attack on Philip from the north. The united force of Germans and English was, however, routed by Philip at Bouvines, in Flanders. " Since I have been reconciled to God," cried John, when he heard the news, " and submitted to the Roman Church, nothing has gone well with me." He made a truce with Philip, and temporarily renounced all claims to the lands to the north of the Loire. When John returned he called upon all his vassals who had remained at home to pay an exorbitant scutage. In reply they met at Bury St. Edmunds. The charter of Henry I., which had been produced at St. Paul's the year before, was again read, and all pres- ent swore to force John to accept it as the rule of his own govern- ment. John asked for delay, and attempted to divide his antagonists by offering to the clergy the right of free election to bishoprics and abbacies. Then he turned against the barons. Early in 12 15 he brought over a large force of foreign mercenaries, and persuaded the Pope to threaten the barons with excommunication. His attempt was defeated by the constancy of Stephen Langton. The demands of the barons were placed in writing by the archbishop, and, on John's refusal to accept them, an army was formed to force them on the king. The army of God and the Holy Church, as it was called, grew rapidly. London admitted it within its walls, and the acces- sion of London to the cause of the barons was a sign that the traders of England were of one mind with the barons and the clergy. K1X<; rOTl N OX THE I'IKI.l RF.AT much the humility of Francis as his loving heart which distinguished him among men. HENRY III. 133 1209-1224 Not only all human beings but all created things were dear to him. Once he is said to have preached to birds. He called the sun and the wind his brethren, the moon and the water his sisters. When he died the last feeble words which he breathed were, " Welcome, sister Death ! " Another order arose about the same time in Spain. Dominic, a Spaniard, was appalled, not by the misery, but by the ignorance of mankind. The order which he instituted was to be called that of the Friars Preachers, though they have in later times usually been known as Dominicans. Like the Franciscans they were to be Friars, or brothers, because all teaching is vain, as much as all charitable acts are vain, unless brotherly kindness be at the root. Like the Franciscans they were to be mendicants, because so only could the world be convinced that they sought not their own good, but to win souls to Christ. In 1 220 the first Dominicans arrived in England. Four years later, in 1224, the first Franciscans followed them. Of the work of the early Dominicans in England little is known. They preached and taught, appealing to those whose intelligence was keen enough to appreciate the value of argument. The Franciscans had a differ- ent work before them. The misery of the dwellers on the outskirts of English towns was appalling. The townsmen had made pro- vision for keeping good order among all who shared in the priv- ileges of the town ; but they made no provision for good order among the crowds who flocked to the town to pick up a scanty living as best they might. These poor wretches had to dwell in miserable hovels outside the walls by the side of fetid ditches into which the filth of the town was poured. Disease and starvation thinned their numbers. No man cared for their bodies or their souls. The priests who served in the churches within the town passed them by, nor had they any place in the charities with which the brethren of the guilds assuaged the misfortunes of their own members. It was among these that the Franciscans lived and labored, sharing in their misery and their diseases, counting their lives well spent if they could bring comfort to a single human soul. The work of the friars was a new phase in the history of the Church. The monks had made it their object to save their own souls; the friars made it their object to save the bodies and souls of others. The friars, like the monks, taught by the example of self-denial; but the friars added active well-doing to the passive 134 ENGLAND 1236-1238 virtue of restraint. Such examples could not fail to be attended with consequences of which those who set them never dreamed, all the more because the two new orders worked harmoniously towards a common end. The Dominicans quickened the brain while the Franciscans touched the heart, and the whole nation was the better in consequence. In 1236 Henry married Eleanor, the daughter of the Count of Provence. The immediate consequence was the arrival of her four uncles with a stream of Provengals in their train. Among these uncles William, bishop-elect of Valence, took the lead. Henry submitted his weak mind entirely to him, and distributed rank and wealth to the Provengals with as much profusion as he had distrib- uted them to the Poitevins in the days of Peter des Roches. The barons, led now by the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall, re- monstrated when they met in the Great Council, which was grad- ually acquiring the right of granting fresh taxes, though all reference to that right was dropped out oi all editions of the Great Charter issued in the reign of Henry. For some time they granted the money which Henry continually asked for, coupling, however, with their grant the demand that Henry should confirm the Charter. The king never refused to confirm it. He had no difficulty in making promises, but he never troubled himself to keep those which he had made. Strangely enough, Simon de Montfort, the man who was to be the chief opponent of Henry and his foreign favorites, was himself a foreigner. He was sprung from a family established in Normandy, and his father, the elder Simon de Montfort, had been the leader of a body of Crusaders from the north of France, who had poured over the south to crush a vast body of heretics, known by the name of Albigeois, from Albi, a town in which they swarmed. The elder Simon had been strict in his orthodoxy and unsparing in his cruelty to all who were unorthodox. From him the younger Simon inherited his unswerving religious zeal and his constancy of purpose. There was the same stern resolution in both, but in the younger man these qualities were coupled with a states- manlike instinct, which was wanting to the father. Norman as he was, he had a claim to the earldom of Leicester through his grand- mother. In 1236 he returned to England to be present at the king's marriage. He was at once taken into favor, and in 1238 married the king's sister, Eleanor. His marriage was received by the barons HENRY III. 135 1239-1243 and the people with a burst of indignation. It was one more in- stance, it was said, of Henry's preference for foreigners over his own countrymen. In 1239 Henry turned upon his brother-in-law, brought heavy charges against him, and drove him from his court. In 1240 Simon was outwardly reconciled to Henry, but he was never again able to repose confidence in one so fickle. In 1242 Henry resolved to undertake an expedition to France to recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had no sym- pathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France, not only rated him soundly for his folly, but, for the first time, abso- lutely refused to make him a grant of money. Simon told him to his face that the Frenchman was no lamb to be easily subdued. Simon's words proved true. Henry sailed for France, but in 1243 he surrendered all claims to Poitou, and returned discomfited. If he did not bring home victory he brought with him a new crowd of Poitevins, who were connected with his mother's second husband. All of them expected to receive advancement in England, and they seldom expected it in vain. Disgusted as were the English landowners by the preference shown by the king to foreigners, the English clergy were no less disgusted by the exactions of the Pope. The claim of Innocent III. to regulate the proceedings of kings had been handed down to his successors and made them jealous of any ruler too powerful to be controlled. As the king of England was the Pope's vassal in conse- quence of John's surrender, he looked to him for aid against the Emperor Frederick more than to others, especially as England, enjoying internal peace more than other nations, was regarded as especially wealthy. In 1237 Pope Gregory IX. sent Cardinal Otho as his legate to demand money from the English clergy. The clergy- found a leader in Robert Grossetete, Bishop of Lincoln, a wise and practical reformer of clerical disorders : but though they grumbled, they could get no protection from the king, and were forced to pay. Otho left England in 1241, carrying immense sums of money with him, and the promise of the king to present three hundred Italian priests to English benefices before he presented a single English- man. In 1243 Gregory IX. was succeeded by Innocent IV., who was even more grasping than his predecessor. Against these evils the Great Council strove in vain to make head. It was now beginning to be known as Parliament, though 136 E N G L A N D 1243-1254 no alteration was yet made in its composition. In 1244 clergy and barons joined in remonstrating with the king, and some of them even talked about restraining his power by the establishment of a Justiciar and Chancellor, together with four councilors, all six to be elected by the whole of the baronage. Without the consent of the Chancellor thus chosen no administrative act could be done. The scheme was a distinct advance upon that of the barons who, in 121 5, forced the Great Charter upon John. The barons had then proposed to leave the appointment of executive officials to the king, and to appoint a committee of twenty-five, who were to have nothing to do with the government of the country, but were to compel the king by force to keep the promises which he had made. In 1244 they proposed to appoint the executive officials themselves. It was the beginning of a series of changes which ultimately led to that with which we are now familiar, the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament. It was too great an innovation to be accepted at once, especially as it was demanded by the barons alone. The clergy, who were still afraid of the disorders which might ensue if power were lodged in the hands of the barons, refused to support it, and for a time it fell to the ground. At the same time Richard of Cornwall abandoned the baronial party. But on the other hand Earl Simon was found on the side of the barons. The clergy also had to learn by bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons that they could preserve themselves from wrong. Money was wrung from them, and the Pope, moreover, continued to present his own nominees to English benefices. For a time even Henry made complaints, but in 1254 Innocent IV. won him over to his side by offering the crown of Sicily and Naples to his son Edmund. Henry leaped at the offer, hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarreled with Simon more bitterly than before. In 1254 Henry crossed the sea to restore order in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of the expedition. During the king's absence the queen and Earl Richard, who were left as regents, and who had to collect money as best they HENRY III. 137 1254-1258 might, gathered a Great Council, to which, for the first time, rep- resentative knights, four from each shire, were summoned. They were merely called on to report what amount of aid their constitu- ents were willing to give, and the regents were doubtless little aware of the importance of the step which they were taking. It was only, to all appearances, an adaptation of the summons calling on the united jury to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy in the reign of John. It might seem as if the regents had only summoned a united jury to give evidence of their con- stituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved insoluble the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place. It was certain that the representatives of the free- holders in the counties would not use their influence for the destruction of order. At the end of 1254 Henry returned to England. In 1255 a new Pope demanded more money from England. Immense sums were wrung from the clergy, who were powerless to resist Pope and king combined. Their indignation was the greater, not only because they knew the Pope's effort was to secure his political power in Italy, but also because the Papal court was known to be hopelessly corrupt. The clergy indeed were less than ever in a condition to resist the king without support. Grossetcte was dead, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whose duty it was to maintain the rights of the Church, was a man who cared nothing for England except on account of the money he drew from it. Other bishoprics as well were held by foreigners. The result of the weakness of the clergy was that they were now ready to unite with the barons, whom they had deserted in 1244. Henry's misgovernment, in fact, had roused all classes against him, as the townsmen and the smaller land- owners had been even worse treated than the greater barons. In 1257 one obstacle to reform was removed. Richard of Corn- wall, the king's brother, was chosen king of the Romans by the German electors, an election which would make him Emperor as soon as he had been crowned by the Pope. The crisis in England came in 1258, while Richard was still abroad. Though thousands were clving of starvation in conse- 138 ENGLAND 1258 quence of a bad harvest, Henry demanded for the Pope the monstrous sum of one-third of the revenue of all England. Then the storm burst. At a Parliament at Westminster the barons ap- peared in arms and demanded, first, the expulsion of all foreigners, and, secondly, the appointment of a committee of twenty-four twelve from the king's party and twelve from that of the barons to reform the realm. The king unwillingly consented, and the committee was appointed. Later in the year Parliament met again at Oxford to receive the report of the new committee. The Mad Parliament, as it was afterwards called in derision, was re- solved to make good its claims. The scheme of reinforcing Par- liament by the election of knights of the shire had indeed been suffered to fall into disuse since its introduction in 1254, yet every tenant-in-chief had of old the right of attending, and though the lesser tenants-in-chief had hitherto seldom or never exercised that right, they now trooped in arms to Oxford to support the barons. To this unwonted gathering the committee produced a set of pro- posals which have gone by the name of the Provisions of Oxford. There was to be a council of fifteen, without the advice of which the king could do no act, and in this council the baronial party had a majority. The offices of state were filled in accordance with the wishes of the twenty-four, and the barons thus entered into pos- session of the authority which had hitherto been the king's. The danger of the king's tyranny was averted, but it remained to be seen whether a greater tyranny would not be erected in its stead. One clause of the Provisions of Oxford was not reassuring. The old Parliaments, which every tenant-in-chief had at least the cus- tomary right of attending, were no longer to exist. Their place was to be taken by a body of twelve, to be chosen by the barons, which was to meet three times a year to discuss public affairs with the council of fifteen. The first difficulty of the new government was to compel the foreigners to surrender their castles. The barons swore that no danger should keep them back till they had cleared the land of foreigners and had obtained the good laws which they needed. Earl Simon set the example by surrendering his own castles at Kenilworth and Odiham. The national feeling was with Simon and the barons, and at last the foreigners were driven across the sea. For a time all went well. The committee of twenty-four continued its work and produced a further series of reforms. All HENRY III. 139 1259-1263 persons in authority were called on to swear to be faithful to the Provisions of Oxford, and the king and his eldest son, Edward, complied with the demand. Early in 1259 Richard came back to England, and gave satis- faction by swearing to the Provisions. Before long signs of danger appeared. The placing complete authority in the hands of the barons was not likely to be long popular, and Earl Simon was known to be in favor of a wider and more popular scheme. Hugh Bigod, who had been named Justiciar by the barons, gave offense by the way in which he exercised his office. Simon was hated by the king, and he knew that many of the barons did not love him. The subtenants the Knights Bachelors of England as they called themselves doubting his power to protect them, complained, not to Simon, but to Edward, the eldest son of the king, that the barons had obtained the redress of their own grievances, but had done nothing for the rest of the community. Edward was now a young man of twenty, hot-tempered and impatient of control, but keen-sighted enough to know, what his father had never known, that the royal power would be increased if it could establish itself in the affections of the classes whose interests were antagonistic 10 those of the barons. He therefore declared that he had sworn to the Provisions, and would keep his oath ; but that if the barons did not fulfill their own promises, he would join the community in compelling them to do so. The warning was effectual, and the barons issued orders for the redress of the grievances of those who had found so high a patron. Simon had no wish to be involved in a purely baronial policy, and had already fallen out with the leader of the barons who had resisted the full execution of the promises made at Oxford in the interest of the people at large. The king fomented the rising quarrel, and in 1261 announced that the Pope had declared the Provisions to be null and void, and had released him from his oath to observe them. Henry now ruled again in his own fashion. Both leaders of the barons joined Simon in inviting a Parliament to meet, at which three knights should appear for each county, thus throwing over the unfortunate narrowing of Parliament to a baronial committee of twelve, which had been the worst blot on the Provisions of Oxford. In 1263 Simon, now the acknowledged head of the barons and of the nation, rinding that the king could not be brought to keep the Provisions, took arms against him. He 140 ENGLAND 1264-1265 was a master in the art of war, and gained one fortified post after another. The war was carried on with doubtful results, and by the end of the year both parties agreed to submit to the arbitration of the king of France. The king of France, Louis IX., afterwards known as St. Louis, was the justest and most unselfish of men. Yet, well-intentioned as Louis was, he had no knowledge of England, and in France, where the feudal nobility was still excessively tyrannical, justice was only to be obtained by the maintenance of a strong royal power. He therefore thought that what was good for France was also good for England, and in the beginning of 1264 he relieved Henry from all the restrictions which his subjects had sought to place upon him. The decision thus taken was known as the Mise, or settlement, of Amiens, from the place at which it was issued. The Mise of Amiens required an unconditional surrender of England to the king. The Londoners and the trading towns were the first to reject it. Simon put himself at the head of a united army of barons and citizens. In the early morning of May 14 he caught the king's army half asleep at Lewes. Edward charged at the Londoners, against whom he bore a grudge, and cleared them off the field with enormous slaughter. When he returned the battle was lost. Henry himself was captured, and Richard, king of the Romans, was found hiding in a windmill. Edward, in spite of his success, had to give himself up as a prisoner. Simon followed up his victory by an agreement called the Mise of Lewes, according to which all matters of dispute were again to be referred to arbitration. In the meantime there were to be three Electors, Earl Simon himself, the Earl of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester. These were to elect nine councilors, who were to name the ministers of state. To keep these councilors within bounds a Parliament was called, in which with the barons, bishops, and abbots there sat not only chosen knights for each shire, but also for the first time two representatives of certain towns. This Parliament met in 1265. It was not, indeed, a full parliament, as only Simon's partisans among the barons were summoned, but it was the fullest representation of England as a whole which had yet met, and not a merely baronial committee like that proposed in 1258. The views of Simon were clearly indicated in an argumentative Latin poem written after the battle of Lewes by one of his supporters. In this the king's claim to do as he liked HENRY III. 141 1265-1270 with his own was met by a demand that he should rule according to law. The difficulty still remained of ascertaining what the law was. The poet held that the law consisted in the old customs, and that the people themselves must be appealed to as the witnesses of what those old customs were. Parliament was a national jury, whose duty it was to give evidence on the laws and customs of the nation in the same way that a local jury gave evidence on local matters. Simon's constitution was premature. Men wanted a patriotic king who could lead the nation instead of one who, like Henry, used it for his own ends. The new rulers were sure to quarrel with one another. If Simon was still Simon the Righteous, his sons acted tyrannically. The barons began again to distrust Simon himself, and the young Earl of Gloucester, like his father before him, put himself at the head of the dissatisfied barons, and went over to the king. Edward escaped from confinement, and he and Gloucester combined forces, and, falling on Earl Simon at Evesham, defeated him utterly. Simon was slain in the fight and his body barbarously mutilated; but his memory was treasured, and he was counted as a saint by the people for whom he had worked. The storm which had been raised was some time in calming down. Some of Earl Simon's followers continued to hold out against the king. When at last they submitted, they were treated leniently, and in 1267, at a Parliament at Marlborough, a statute was enacted embodying most of the demands for the redress of grievances made by the earlier reformers. The kingdom settled down in peace, because Henry now allowed Edward to be the real head of the government. Edward, in short, carried on Earl Simon's work in ruling justly, with the advantage of being raised above jealousies by his position as heir to the throne. In 1270 England was so peaceful that Edward could embark on a crusade. In 1272 Henry III. died and his son, though in a distant land, was quietly accepted as his successor. In spite of the turmoils of Henry's reign the country made progress in many ways. Men busied themselves with replacing the old round-arched churches by large and more beautiful ones, in that Early English style of which Lincoln Cathedral was the first example on a large scale. In T220 it was followed by P>everley Minster. The nave of Salisbury Cathedra! was begun in 1240, 142 ENGLAND 1240-1272 and a new Westminster Abbey grew piecemeal under Henry's own supervision during the greater part of the reign. Mental activity accompanied material activity. At Oxford there were reckoned 15,000 scholars. Most remarkable was the new departure taken by Walter de Merton, Henry's Chancellor. Hitherto each scholar had shifted for himself, lived where he could, and been subjected to little or no discipline. In founding Merton College, the first college which existed in the University, Merton proposed not only to erect a building in which the lads who studied might be boarded and placed under supervision, but to train them with a view to learning for its own sake, and not to prepare them for the priest- hood. The eagerness to learn things difficult was accompanied by a desire to increase popular knowledge. For the first time since the Chronicle came to an end, which was soon after the accession of Henry II., a book Layamon's " Brut " appeared in the reign of John in the English language, and one at least of the songs which witness to the interest of the people in the great struggle with Henry III. was also written in the same language. Yet the great achievement of the fifty-six years of Henry's reign was to use the language of the smith who refused to put fetters on the limbs of Hubert de Burgh the " giving of England back to the English." In 12 16 it was possible for Englishmen to prefer a French-born Louis as their king to an Angevin John. In 1272 England was indeed divided by class prejudices and conflicting in- terests, but it was nationally one. The greatest grievance suffered from Henry III. was his preference of foreigners over his own countrymen. In resistance to foreigners Englishmen had been welded together into a nation, and in their new king Edward they found a leader who would not only prove a wise and thoughtful ruler, but who was every inch an Englishman. Chapter XIV EDWARD I., 1272 1307. EDWARD II., 1307 1327 LEADING DATES Accession of Edward I., A.D. 1272 Death of Alexander III., 1285 The Award of Norham, 1292 The Model Parliament, 1295 The First Conquest of Scotland, 1296 Confirmatio Cartarum, 1297 Completion of the Second Conquest of Scotland, 1304 The Incorporation of Scotland with England, 1305 The Third Con- quest of Scotland, 1306 Accession of Edward II., 1307 Execution of Gaveston, 1312 Battle of Bannockburn, 1314 Deposition of Edward II., 1327 DWARD I., though he inherited the crown in 1272, did not return to England till 1274, being able to move in a leisurely -A fashion across Europe without fear of disturbance at home. He fully accepted those articles of John's Great Charter which had been set aside at the beginning of the reign of Henry III., and which required that the king should only take scutages and aids with the consent of the Great Council or Parliament. The further require- ment of the barons that they should name the ministers of the crown was allowed to fall asleep. Edward was a capable ruler, and knew how to appoint better ministers than the barons were likely to choose for him. It was Edward's peculiar merit that he stood forward not only as a ruler but as a legislator. He succeeded in passing one law after another, because he thoroughly understood that useful legislation is only possible when the legislator on the one hand has an intelligent perception of the remedies needed to meet existing evils, and on the other hand is willing to content himself with such remedies as those who are to be benefited by them are ready to accept. The first condition was fulfilled by Edward's own skill as a lawyer, and by the skill of the great lawyers whom he employed. The second condition was fulfilled by his determination to authorize no new legislation without the counsel and consent of those who were most affected by it. He did not, indeed, till late in his reign, call a whole Parliament together, as Earl Simon had done. But he called the barons together in any matter which affected the 143 1L4 ENGLAND 1274-1284 barons, and he called the representatives of the towns together in any matter which affected the townsmen, and so on with the other classes. Outside England Edward's first difficulty was with the Welsh, who, though their princes had long been regarded by the English kings as vassals, had practically maintained their independence in the mountainous regions of north Wales of which Snowdon is the center. The Welshmen made forays and plundered the English lands, and the English retorted by slaughtering Welshmen whenever they could come up with them among the hills. Naturally the Welsh took the side of any enemy of the English kings with whom it was possible to ally themselves. Llewelyn. Prince of Wales, had joined Earl Simon against Henry III., and had only done homage to Henry after Simon had been defeated. After Henry's death he refused homage to Edward till 1276. In 1282 he and his brother David renewed the war. and Edward, determined to put an end to the independence of such troublesome neighbors, marched against them. Before the end of the year Llewelyn was slain, and David was captured in 1283, anc ^ executed in 1284. Wales then came fully under the dominion of the English kings. Edward's second son, afterwards King Edward II., was born at Carnarvon in 1284, and soon afterwards, having become heir to the crown, upon the death of his elder brother, was presented to the Welsh as Prince of Wales, a title from that day usually bestowed upon the king's eldest son. At the same time, though Edward built strong castles at Con- way and Carnarvon to hold the Welsh in awe, he made submission easier by enacting suitable laws for them, under the name of the Statute of Wales, and by establishing a separate body of local offi- cials to govern them, as well as by confirming them in the possession of their lands and goods. Though Edward I. was by no means extravagant, he found it impossible to meet the expenses of government without an increase of taxation. In 1275 he obtained the consent of Parliament to the increase of the duties on exports and imports which had hitherto been levied without Parliamentary sanction. He was now to receive by a Parliamentary grant a fixed export duty of 6s. 8d. on every sack of wool sent out of the country, and of a corresponding duty on wool-fells and leather. Under ordinary circumstances it is useless for any government to attempt to gain a revenue by export duty. On the Continent men could not produce much wool or leather for CARNARVON C /' ;ti.k the i 'nting by V 1'0 THE ASSKMl'.I.KI) NORT.ES AT r PRINCE OF WALKS r EDWARD 1. EDWARD II. Ii5 1285-1290 sale, because private wars were constantly occurring, and the fight- ing men were in the habit of driving off the sheep and the cattle, while in England under the king's protection sheep and cattle could be bred in safety. There were now growing up manufactures of cloth in the fortified towns of Flanders, and the manufacturers there were obliged to come to England for the greater part of the wool which they used. They could not help paying not only the price of the wool, but the king's export duty as well, because if they refused they could not get sufficient wool in any other country. Every king of England since the Norman Conquest had exer- cised authority in a two-fold capacity. On one hand he was the head of the nation, on the other hand he was the feudal lord of his vassals. Edward laid more stress than any former king upon his national headship. Early in his reign he organized the courts of law, completing the division of the Curia Regis into the three courts which existed till recent times : the Court of King's Bench, to deal with criminal offenses reserved for the king's judgment, and with suits in which he was himself concerned ; the Court of Ex- chequer, to deal with all matters touching the king's revenue ; and the Court of Common Pleas, to deal with suits between subject and subject. Edward took care that the justice administered in these courts should as far as possible be real justice, and in 1289 he dis- missed two chief justices and many other officials for corruption. In 1285 he improved the Assize of Arms of Henry IT., so as to be more sure of securing a national support for his government in time of danger. It was in accordance with the national feeling that Edward, in 1290, banished from England the Jews, whose presence was most profitable to himself, but who were regarded as cruel tyrants by their debtors. On the other hand, Edward took care to assert his rights as a feudal lord. In 1279, by the statute Dc rcligiosis, commonly known as the Statute of Mortmain, he forbade the gift of land to the clergy, because in their hands land was no longer liable to the feudal dues. In 1290, by another statute, Quia emptorcs, he forbade all new sub-infeudation. If from henceforth a vassal wished to part with his land, the new tenant was to hold it, not under the vassal who gave it up, but under that vassal's lord, whether the lord was the king or anyone else. The object of this law was to increase the number of tenants-in-chief, and thus to bring a larger number of land-owners into direct relations with the king. 146 ENGLAND 1285 In his government of England Edward had sought chiefly to strengthen his position as the national king of the whole people, and to depress legally and without violence the power of the feudal nobility. He was, however, ambitious, with the ambition of a man conscious of great and beneficent aims, and he was quite ready to enforce even unduly his personal claims to feudal obedience when- ever it served his purpose to do so. His favorite motto, " Keep troth" {Pactum serva), revealed his sense of the inviolability of a personal engagement given or received, but his legal mind often led him into construing in his own favor engagements in which only the letter of the law was on his side, while its spirit was against him. It was chiefly in his relations with foreign peoples that he fell into this error, as it was here that he was most strongly tempted to lay stress upon the feudal tie which made for him, and to ignore the impor- tance of a national resistance which made against him. In dealing with Wales, for instance, he sent David to a cruel death, because he had broken the feudal tie which bound him to the king of England, feeling no sympathy with him as standing up for the independence of his own people. In the earlier part of Edward's reign Alexander III. was king of Scotland. Alexander's ancestors, indeed, had done homage to Edward's ancestors, but in 1189 William the Lion had purchased from Richard I. the abandonment of all the claim to homage for the crown of Scotland which Henry II. had acquired by the treaty of Falaise. William's successors, however, held lands in England, and had done homage for them to the English kings. Ed- ward would gladly have restored the old practice of homage for Scotland itself. There was something alluring in the pros- pect of being lord of the whole island, as it would not only strengthen his own personal position, but would bring two nations into peaceful union. Between the southern part of Scotland, indeed, and the northern part of England, there was no great dissimilarity. On both sides of the border the bulk of the population was of the same Anglian stock, while, in consequence of the welcome offered by the Scottish kings to persons of Norman descent, the nobility was as completely Norman in Scotland as it was in England, many of the nobles indeed possessing lands on both sides of the border. A prospect of effecting a union by peaceful means offered itself to Edward in 1285, when Alexander III. was killed by a fall from his horse near Kinghorn. Alexander's only descendant was Margaret, EDWARD I. EDWARD II. 147 1290-1293 a child of his daughter and King Eric of Norway. In 1290 it was agreed that she should marry the Prince of Wales, but that the two kingdoms should remain absolutely independent of one another. Unfortunately, the Maid of Norway, as the child was called, died on her way to Scotland, and this plan of establishing friendly rela- tions between the two countries came to naught. If it had suc- ceeded three centuries of war and misery might possibly have been avoided. The death of Edward's wife, Eleanor of Castile, which hap- pened in the same year, brought sorrow into Edward's domestic life. He, sorrowing as he was, was unable to neglect the affairs of State. On the death of the Maid of Norway there was a large number of claimants to the Scottish crown. Every one of the three chief claimants was an English baron. The only escape from a desolating civil war seemed to be to appeal to Edward's arbitration, and in 1291 Edward summoned the Scots to meet him at Norham. He then demanded as the price of his arbitration the acknowledg- ment of his position as lord paramount of Scotland, in virtue of which the Scottish king, when he had once been chosen, was to do homage to himself as king of England. Edward appears to have thought it right to take the opportunity of Scotland's weakness to renew the stricter relationship of homage which had been given up by Richard. At all events, the Scottish nobles and clergy accepted his demand, though the commonalty made some objection, the nature of which has not been recorded. Edward then in- vestigated carefully the points at issue, and in 1292 decided in favor of Balliol, as the baron whose descent was through the eldest line. The new king of Scotland did homage to Edward for his whole kingdom. If Edward could have contented himself with enforcing the ordinary obligations of feudal superiority all might have gone well. Unfortunately for all parties, he attempted to stretch them by insisting in 1293 that appeals from the courts of the king of Scotland should lie to the courts of the king of England. Suitors found that their rights could not be ascertained till they had under- taken a long and costly journey to Westminster. A national feeling of resistance was roused among the Scots, and though Edward pressed his claims courteously, he continued to press them. A tem- per grew up in Scotland which might be dangerous to him if Scot- land could find an ally. Edward now had some trouble with Philip 148 ENGL A N D 1295-1296 IV. of France and in 1295 a league was made between France and Scotland, which lasted for more than three hundred years. Its permanence was owing to the fact that it was a league between nations more than a league between kings. Edward, attacked on two sides, threw himself for support on the English nation. Towards the end of 1295 he summoned a Par- liament which was in most respects the model for all succeeding Parliaments. It was attended not only by bishops, abbots, earls, and barons, by two knights from every shire, and two burgesses from every borough, but also by representatives of the chapters of cathe- drals and of the parochial clergy. It cannot be said with any ap- proach to certainty whether the Parliament thus collected met in one House or not. As. however, the barons and knights offered an eleventh of the value of their movable goods, the clergy a tenth, and the burgesses a seventh, it is not unlikely that there was a separation into what in modern times would be called three Houses, at least for purposes of taxation. At all events, the representatives of the clergy subsequently refused to sit in Parliament, preferring to vote money to the Crown in their own convocations. In 1296 Edward turned first upon Scotland. After he crossed the border Balliol sent to him renouncing his homage. " Has the felon fool done such folly ? " said Edward. " If he will not come to us, we will go to him." He won a decisive victory over the Scots at Dunbar. Balliol surrendered his crown, and was carried off, never to reappear in Scotland. Edward set up no more vassal kings. He declared himself to be the immediate king of Scotland, Balliol having forfeited the crown by treason. The Scottish nobles did homage to him. On his return to England he left behind him the Earl of Surrey and Sir Hugh Cressingham as guardians of the kingdom, and he carried off from Scone the stone of destiny on which the Scottish kings had been crowned, and concerning which there had been an old prophecy to the effect that wherever that stone was Scottish kings should rule. The stone was placed, where it still remains, under the coronation-chair of the English kings in Westminster Abbey, and there were those long afterwards who deemed the prophecy fulfilled when the Scottish king James VI. came to take his seat on that chair as James I. of England. The dispute with France and the conquest of Scotland cost much money, and Edward, finding his ordinary revenue insufficient, had been driven to increase it by unusual means. He gathered EDWARD I. ED W All D II. 149 1296-1297 assemblies of the merchants, and persuaded them without the leave of Parliament to increase the export duties, and he also induced the clergy in the same way to grant him large sums. The clergy were the first to resist. In 1296 Boniface VIII., a Pope who pushed to the extreme the Papal claims to the independence of the Church, issued the bull, Clericis laicos, in which he declared that the clergy were not to pay taxes without the Pope's consent ; and when at the end of the year Edward called on his Parliament to grant him fresh sums, Winchelsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, refused, on the ground of this Bull, to allow a penny to be levied from the clergy. Edward, instead of arguing with him, directed the chief justice of the King's Bench to announce that, as the clergy would pay no taxes, they would no longer be protected by the king. The clergy now found themselves in evil case. Anyone who pleased could rob them or beat them, and no redress was to be had. They soon therefore evaded their obligation to obey the Bull, and paid their taxes, under the pretense that they were making presents to the king, on which Edward again opened his courts to them. In the days of Henry I. or Henry II. it would not have been possible to treat the clergy in this fashion. The fact was, that the mass of the people now looked to the king instead of to the Church for protection, and therefore respected the clergy less than they had done in earlier days. In 1297 Edward, having subdued the Scots in the preceding year, resolved to conduct one army to Flanders, and to send another to Gascony to maintain his rights against Philip IV. He therefore called on his barons to take part in these enterprises. Among those ordered to go to Gascony were Roger Bigod, Earl of Nor- folk, and Humfrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford. They declared that they were only bound to follow the king himself, and that as Edward was not going in person to Gascony they would not go. The two earls soon found support. The barons were sore because Edward's reforms had diminished their authority. The clergy were sore because of their recent treatment. The merchants were sore because of the exactions to which they had been subjected. Archbishop Winchelsey bound the malcontents together by asking Edward to confirm Magna Carta and other charters granted by his predecessors, and by adding other articles now proposed for the first time, so as to preclude him from demanding taxes not granted by Parliament. Edward found that the new articles restricted his action more than it had been restricted by the older charters. He was deeply vexed, 150 ENGLAND 1297-1298 as he thought that he deserved to be trusted, and that, though he had exacted illegal payments, he had only done so out of necessity. He saw, however, that he must yield, but he could not bring himself to yield in person, and he therefore crossed the sea to Flanders, leaving the Prince of Wales to make the required concession. On October 10, 1297, the Confirmatio Cartarum, as it was called, was issued in the king's name. It differed from Magna Carta in this, that whereas John had only engaged not to exact feudal revenue from his vassals without consent of Parliament, Edward I. also engaged not to exact custom duties without a Parliamentary grant. From that time no general revenue could be taken from the whole realm without a breach of the law, though the king still continued for some time to raise tallages, or special payments, from the tenants of his own demesne lands. While Edward was contending with his own people his officers had been oppressing the Scots. They had treated Scotland as a conquered land, not as a country joined to England by equal union. Resistance began in 1297, and a rising was headed by Wallace. In the autumn an English army advancing into Scotland reached the south bank of the Forth near Stirling. In the battle which ensued, Wallace's victory was complete, and he then invaded England, rav- aging and slaughtering as far as Hexham. In 1298 Edward, who had been unsuccessful on the Continent, made a truce with Philip. Returning to England, he marched against Wallace, and came up with him at Falkirk. The battle which ensued, like William's victory at Senlac, was a triumph of inventive military skill over valor content to rest upon ancient methods. At Falkirk the long-bow was tried for the first time in any considerable battle. The effect was overwhelming : a shower of arrows poured upon a single point in the ring of the spearmen soon cleared a gap. Edward's cavalry dashed in before the enemy had time to close, and the victory was won. Wallace had had scarcely one of the Scottish nobles with him either at Stirling or at Falkirk, and unless all Scotland combined he could hardly be expected to succeed against such a warrior as Edward. Wallace's merit was that he did not despair of his country, and that by his patriotic vigor lie prepared the minds of Scotsmen for a happier day. He himself fled to France, but Scotland struggled on without him. Some of the nobles, now that Wallace was no longer present to give them cause of jealousy, took part in the resistance, and only in 1304 EDWARD I. EDWARD II. 151 1304-1305 did Edward after repeated campaigns complete his second conquest of the country. Edward then proceeded to incorporate Scotland with England. Scotland was to be treated very much as Wales had been treated before. There was to be as little harshness as possible. Nobles who had resisted Edward were to keep their estates on payment of fines, the Scottish law was to be observed, and Scots were to be chosen to represent the wishes of their fellow-countrymen in the Par- liament at Westminster. On the other hand, the Scottish nobles were to surrender their castles, and the country was to be governed by an English lieutenant, who, together with his council, had power to amend the laws. Edward's dealings with Scotland, mistaken as they were, were not those of a self-willed tyrant. If it be once admitted that he was really the lord paramount of Scotland, everything that he did may be justified upon feudal principles. First, Balliol forfeited his vassal crown by breaking his obligations as a vassal. Secondly, Edward, through the default of his vassal, took possession of the fief which Balliol had forfeited, and thus became the immediate lord of Balliol's vassals. Thirdly, those vassals rebelled so at least Edward would have said against their new lord. Fourthly, they thereby forfeited their estates to him, and he was therefore, according to his own view, in the right in restoring their estates to them if he restored them at all under new conditions. Satisfactory as this argument must have seemed to Edward, it was weak in two places. The Scots might attack it at its basis by retorting that Edward had never truly been lord paramount of Scotland at all ; or they might assert that it did not matter whether he was so or not, because the Scottish right to national independence was superior to all feudal claims. It is this latter argument which has the most weight at the present day, and it seems to us strange that Edward, who had done so much to encourage the national growth of England, should have entirely ignored the national growth of Scotland. All that can be said to palliate Edward's mistake is that it was, at first, difficult to perceive that there was a Scottish nationality at all. Changes in the political aspect of affairs grow up unobserved, and it was not till after his death that all classes in Scotland were completely welded together in resistance to an English king. At all events, if he treated the claim of the Scots to national independence with contempt, he at least strove, according to his own notions, to benefit Scots and Eng- 152 ENGLAND 1306-1307 lish alike. He hoped that one nation, justly ruled under one gov- ernment, would grow up in the place of two divided peoples. It was better even for England that Edward's hopes should fail. Scotland would have been of little worth to its more powerful neighbor if it had been cowed into subjection; whereas when, after struggling and suffering for her independence, she offered herself freely as the companion and ally of England to share in common duties and common efforts, the gift was priceless. That Scotland was able to shake off the English yoke was mainly the work of Robert Bruce. The Bruces, like Balliol, were of Norman descent, and as Balliofs rivals they had attached themselves to Edward. The time was now come when all chances of Balliol's restoration were at an end, and thoughts of gaining the crown stirred in the mind of the younger Bruce. His one powerful rival among the nobles was done away with and Bruce made for Scone and was crowned king of Scotland in the presence of many of the chief nobil- ity. Edward now conquered Scotland for a third time, and Bruce's supporters were carried off to English prisons, and their lands divided among English noblemen. Bruce almost alone escaped. He knew now that he had the greater part of the nobility as well as the people at his side, and even in his lonely wanderings and hair- breadth escapes he was, what neither Balliol nor Wallace had been, the true head of the Scottish nation. Before the end of 1306 he reappeared and inflicted heavy losses on the English garrisons. In 1307 Edward once more set out for Scotland; but he was now old and worn out, and lie died at Burgh on Sands, a few miles on the English side of the border. The new king, Edward IT., was as different as possible from his father. He was not wicked, like William II. and John, but he detested the trouble of public business, and thought that the only advantage of being a king was that he would have leisure to amuse himself. During his father's life he devoted himself to Piers Gaves- ton, a Gascon, who encouraged him in his pleasures and taught him to mistrust his father. Edward I. banished Gaveston ; Edward II., immediately on his accession, not only recalled him, but made him regent when he himself crossed to Erance to be married to Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV. The barons, who were already inclined to win back some of the authority of which Edward I. had deprived them, were very angry at the place taken over their heads by an up- start favorite, especially as Gaveston was ill-bred enough to make EDWARD I. EDWARD II. 153 1308-1314 jests at their expense. The barons found a leader in Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. He was an ambitious man, who tried to play the part which had been played by Earl Simon without any of Simon's qualifications for the position. In 1308 the king yielded to the barons so far as to send Gaveston out of the country to Ireland as his lieutenant. In 1309 he recalled him. The barons were exasper- ated, and in the Parliament of 13 10 they brought forward a plan for taking the king's government out of his hands, very much after the fashion of the Provisions of Oxford. Twenty-one barons were appointed Lords Ordainers, to draw up ordinances for the govern- ment of the country. In 131 1 they produced the ordinances. Gaveston was to be banished for life. The king was to appoint officers only with the consent of the barons, without which he was not to go to war nor to leave the kingdom. The ordinances may have been justified in so far as they restrained the authority of a king so incapable as Edward II. Constitutionally their acceptance was a retrograde step, as, like the Provisions of Oxford, they placed power in the hands of the barons, passing over Parliament as a whole. Edward agreed to the ordinances, but refused to sur- render Gaveston. The barons took arms to enforce their will, and in 1 3 12, having captured Gaveston, they beheaded him near War- wick without the semblance of a trial. While Edward and the barons were disputing, Bruce gained ground rapidly. In 13 13 Stirling was the only fortress of impor- tance in Scotland still garrisoned by the English, and Edward II. put himself at the head of an army to relieve it. On June .24, 13 14, Edward reached Bannockburn, within sight of Stirling. After a bat- tle, the vast English host turned and fled. Stirling at once surren- dered, and all Scotland was lost to Edward. Materially, both Eng- land and Scotland suffered grievously from the result of the battle of Bannockburn. English invasions of southern Scotland and Scot- tish invasions of northern England spread desolation far and wide, stifling the germs of nascent civilization. Morally, both nations were in the end the gainers. The hardihood and self-reliance of the Scottish character is distinctly to be traced to those years of Struggle against a powerful neighbor. England, too, was the better for being balked of its prey. No nation can suppress the liberty of another without endangering its own. Edward was thrown by his defeat entirely under the power of Lancaster, who took the whole authority into his hands and placed 154 ENGLAND 1321-1326 and displaced ministers at his pleasure. Lancaster, however, was a selfish and incompetent ruler. It was rather by good luck than by good management that Edward was at last able to resist him. Edward could not exist without a personal favorite, and he found one in Hugh le Despenser. Despenser was at least an Englishman, which Gaveston had not been, and his father, Hugh le Despenser the elder, did his best to raise up a party to support the king. In 1 32 1, however, Parliament, under Lancaster's influence, declared against them, and sentenced them to exile. Edward took arms for his favorites, and in 1322 defeated Lancaster at Boroughbridge, and then had him tried and beheaded at Pontefract. Favorites as they were, the Despensers had at least the merit of seeing that the king could not overpower the barons by the mere assertion of his personal authority. At a Parliament held at York in 1322 the king obtained the revocation of the ordinances, and a declaration that " matters to be established for the estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parlia- ments by our lord the king, and by the consent of the prelates, earls and barons, and commonalty of the realm, according as hath been hitherto accustomed." Edward I. had in 1295 gathered a full Parliament, including the commons. But there was no law to prevent him or his successors excluding the commons on some future occasion. Edward II. by this declaration, issued with con- sent of Parliament, confirmed his father's practice by a legislative act. Unless the law were broken or repealed, no future statute could come into existence without the consent of the commons. For some years after the execution of Lancaster, Edward, or rather the Despensers, retained power, but it was power which did not work for good. Edward was entirely unable to control his favorites. The elder Despenser was covetous and the younger Despenser haughty, and they both made enemies for themselves and the king. Queen Isabella was alienated from her husband, partly by his exclusive devotion to the Despensers and partly by the contempt which an active woman is apt to feel for a husband without a will of his own. In 1325 she went to France, and was soon followed by her eldest son, named Edward after his father. From that moment she conspired against her husband. In 1326 she landed, accompanied by her paramour, Robert Mortimer, and bringing with her foreign troops. The barons rose in her favor. EDWARD I. EDWARD II. 155 1327 London joined them, and all resistance was speedily beaten down. The elder Despenser was hanged by the queen at Bristol. The younger was hanged, after a form of trial, at Hereford. Early in 1327 a Parliament met at Westminster. It was filled with the king's enemies, and under pressure from the queen and Mortimer Edward II. was compelled to sign a declaration of his own wrong-doing and incompetency, after which he formally resigned the crown. He was allowed to live for eight months, at the end of which he was brutally murdered in Berkeley Castle. The deposition of Edward II. for his enforced resignation was practically nothing less than that was the work of a faithless wife and of unscrupulous partisans, but at least they clothed their vengeance in the forms of Parliamentary action. It was by the action of Parliament in loosing the feudal ties by which vassals were bound to an unworthy king that it rose to the full position of being the representative of the nation, and at the same time virtually proclaimed that the wants of the nation must be satisfied at the expense of the feudal claims of the king. The national headship of the king would from henceforward be the distinguish- ing feature of his office, while his feudal right to personal service would grow less and less important every year. Chapter XV FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD III. TO THE TREATY OF BRETIGNT. 1327 1360 LEADING DATES Reign- of Edward III., A.D. 1 327-1 377 Accession of Edward III., 1327 Beginning of the War with France, 1337 Battle of Crecy, 1346 The Black Death, 1348 Battle of Poitiers, 1356 Treaty of Bretigni, 1360 EDWARD III. was only fourteen at his accession. For three years power was in the hands of his mother's paramour. Mortimer. Robert Bruce, though old and smitten with leprosy, was still anxious to wring from England an acknowledg- ment of Scottish independence, and, in spite of the existing truce, sent an army to ravage the northern counties of England. Morti- mer was at his wits' end. and in 1328 agreed to a treaty acknowl- edging the complete independence of Scotland. It was a wise thing to do, but no nation likes to acknowledge failure, and Mortimer became widely unpopular. He succeeded indeed in breaking up a conspiracy against himself, and in 1330 even executed Edmund, Earl of Kent, a brother of Edward II. The discontented barons found another leader in the king, who, young as he was. had been married at fifteen to Philippa of Hainault. Though he was already a father, he was still treated by Mortimer as a child, and virtually kept a prisoner. Edward rebelled, seized Mortimer and hanged him, and Queen Isabella was never again allowed to take part in public affairs. Isabella's three brothers. Louis X.. Philip V., and Charles IV., had successively reigned in France. Had not Salic Law prohib- ited the rule of a woman Isabella would have been in the line of succession. At the time of the death of Charles IV. England was still under the control of Mortimer and Isabella, and though Isabella, being the sister of Charles IV., thought of claiming the crown, not for herself, but for her son, Mortimer did not press the 156 EDWARD III. 157 1329-1337 claim. In 1329 he sent Edward to do homage to Philip VI. for his French possessions, but Edward only did it with certain reservations, and in 1330 preparations for war were made in England. In 1331, after Mortimer's fall, when Edward was his own master, he again visited France, and a treaty was concluded between the two kings in which he abandoned the reservations on his homage. On his return, Edward looked in another direction. In 1329 Robert Bruce died, leaving his crown to his son, David II., a child five years old. Certain English noblemen had in the late treaty been promised restoration of the estates of their ancestors in Scotland, and in 1332 some of them, finding the promise unful- filled, offered English forces to John Balliol's son, Edward, to help him to the Scottish crown. Edward III. supported these, and in 1333 he laid siege to Berwick, then in the hands of the Scots. The Scots were thrown into confusion, and their whole army was almost destroyed. Edward not only set up Balliol as his vassal, but compelled him to yield all Scotland south of the Forth to be annexed to England. Such a settlement could not last. Edward invaded Scotland again and again, and as long as he was in the country he was strong enough to keep his puppet on the throne, but whenever he returned to England David Bruce's supporters regained strength. The struggle promised to be lengthy unless help came to the Scots. Philip VI., of France, like Philip IV. in the days of Edward I., had his own reasons for not allowing the Scots to be crushed. He pursued the settled policy of his predecessors in attempting to bring the great fiefs into his power, and especially that part of Aquitaine which was still held by the most powerful of his vassals, the king of England, by secret intrigues and legal chicanery. Ill-feeling increased on both sides. Philip welcomed David Bruce, and in 1336 French sailors attacked English shipping and landed plunderers in the Isle of Wight. In 1337 Edward determined to resist, and the long war roughly known as the Hundred Years' War began. It was in reality waged to discover by an appeal to arms whether the whole of Aquitaine was to be incorporated with France and whether Scotland was to be incorporated with England. That which gave it its peculiar bitterness was, however, not so much the claims of the kings, as the passions of their sub- jects. The national antagonism aroused by the plunderings of 158 ENGLAND 1337 French sea-rovers would be invigorated by the plunderings of Englishmen in the fields of France. To Edward it was merely a question of defending, first England, and then Aquitaine, against aggression. He won over, with large offers of money, the alliance of the princes of the em- pire whose lands lay round the French frontier to the north and east, and even gained the support of the Emperor Lewis the Ba- varian. His relations with Flanders were even more important. In Flanders there had sprung up great manufacturing towns, such as Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, which worked up into cloth the wool which was the produce of English sheep. These wealthy towns claimed political independence, and thus came into collision with their feudal lord, the Count of Flanders. Philip, unlike his wiser predecessors, despised the strength which he might gain from the good-will of citizens in a struggle against their lords, and took the part of the Count, and for a time crushed the citizens at the battle of Cassel. After a while the cities recovered themselves, and formed an alliance under the leadership of Jacob van Arteveldt, a Flemish nobleman, who had ingratiated himself with them by enrolling himself among the brewers of Ghent, and who was now successful in urging his countrymen to enter into friendship with Edward. In the long run Edward's cause would be found a losing one, but there were circumstances which made it prevail for a time. In France, there was a broad distinction between gentlemen on the one side and citizens and peasants on the other. The gentlemen despised all who were not of their own class. This broad distinc- tion of ranks told upon the military strength of the crown. The fighting force of the French king was his feudal array of armor- protected cavalry, composed entirely of gentlemen, and aiming at deciding battles in the old fashion by the rush of horsemen. If foot soldiers were brought at all into the field they were, for the most part, ill-armed and ill-trained peasants, exposed to be help- lessly slaughtered by the horsemen. In England, on the other hand, the various orders of society had been welded together into a united people. War had become in England the affair of the nation and no longer the affair of a class. It must be waged with efficient archers as well as with efficient horsemen, the archers being drawn from the class of yeomen or free landed proprietors of small plots of land, which EDWARD III. 159 1337-1340 was entirely wanting- in France. Such an army needed pay, and the large sums required for the purpose could only be extracted from a nation which, like the English, had grown comparatively rich because it was at peace within its own borders. Edward was compelled, if he wanted to fight, to encourage trade, though it is only fair to remember that he showed himself ready to encourage trade without any such ulterior object. He brought Flemish weavers into England, and did his best to improve the feeble woolen manufacture of the Eastern counties. His great resource, however, for purposes of taxation, was the export of wool to the Flemish manufacturing towns. Some- times he persuaded Parliament to raise the duties upon exported wool ; sometimes he raised them, by an evasion of the law, after making a private compact with the merchants without consulting Parliament at all ; sometimes he turned merchant himself and bought wool cheaply in England to sell it dear in Flanders. Great as was Edward's advantage in having a united nation at his back, it hardly seemed in the first years of the war as though he knew how to use it. Though he had declared war against Philip in 1337, he did not begin hostilities till the following year. In 1338, after landing at Antwerp, he obtained from the Emperor Lewis the title of Imperial Vicar, which gave him a right to the military services of the vassals of the Empire. Crowds of German and Low Country lords pressed into his ranks, but they all wanted high pay, and his resources, great as they were, were soon ex- hausted, and he had to pawn his crowns to satisfy their needs. These lords proved as useless as they were expensive. In 1339 Edward could not induce Philip to fight, and was obliged to return to England. He then attempted to fall back on the support of the Flemings, but was told by them that unless he formally took the title of King of France, which he had only occasionally done before, they could not fight for him, as the king of France, who- ever he might be, was their superior lord, and as such had a claim to their services. After some hesitation, in the beginning of 1340, Edward satisfied their scruples by reviving the claim which he had formerly abandoned, declaring himself to be, in right of his mother, the lawful king of France; and quartering the French arms with his own. A third territorial question was thus added to the other two. Practically Edward's answer to Philip's effort to absorb all 160 ENGLAND 1340-1346 Aquitaine in France was a counter demand that all France should be absorbed in England. Edward had not yet learned to place confidence in those Eng- lish archers who had served him so well at Halidon Hill. In 1340, however, he found himself engaged in a conflict which should have taught him where his true strength lay. The French navy held the Channel, and had burnt Southampton. The fleet of the Cinque Ports was no longer sufficient to cope with the enemy. Edward proudly announced that he, like his progenitors, was the lord of the English sea on every side, and called out every vessel upon which he could lay hands. The result was a naval victory at Sluys, in which well-nigh the whole French fleet was absolutely destroyed. It was by the English archers that the day was won. So complete was the victory that no one dared to tell the ill news to Philip, till his jester called out to him, " What cowards these English are ! " "Because," he explained, " they did not dare to leap into the sea as our brave Frenchmen did." If Edward was to obtain still greater success, he had but to fight with a national force behind him on land as he had fought at sea ; but he was slow to learn the lesson. For six more years he frittered away his strength. There was a disputed succession in Brittany, and one of the claimants ranged himself on the side of the English. Up to the end of 1345 there was no decisive result on either side. In Scotland, too, things had been going so badly for Edward that in 1341 David Bruce had been able to return, and was now again ruling over his own people. Surprising as Edward's neglect to force on a battle in France appears to us, it must be remembered that in those days it was far more difficult to bring on an engagement than it is in the present day. Fortified towns and castles were then almost impregnable, except when they were starved out; and it was therefore seldom necessary for a commander on other grounds unwilling to fight to risk a battle in order to save an important post from capture. Edward, however, does not appear to have thought that there was anything to be gained by fighting. In 1346 he led a large English army into Normandy, taking with him his eldest son, afterwards known as the Black Prince, at that time a lad of sixteen. Edward now deliberately ravaged Normandy. He then marched on, appar- ently intending to take refuge in Flanders, but had to march far inland to cross the rivers whose bridges had been broken down EDWARD III. 161 1346 by the French. From a point of honor not to continue his retreat further, Edward halted on a gentle slope near the village of Creey facing eastward, as Philip's force had swept round to avoid difficulties in the ground, and was approaching from that direction. Great as was Edward's advantage in possessing an arm}'- so diverse in its composition as that which he commanded, it would have availed him little if he had not known how to order that army for battle. At once it appeared that his skill as a tactician was as great as his weakness as a strategist. He drew up his line of archers between the two villages of Cregy and Vadicourt, though his force was not large enough to extend from one to the other. He then ordered the bulk of his horsemen to dismount and to place themselves with leveled spears in bodies at intervals in the line of archers. The innovation was thoroughly reasonable, as spearsmen on foot would be able to check the fiercest charge of horse, if only the horse could be exposed to a shower of arrows. The English army was drawn up in three corps, two of them in the front line. The Black Prince was in command of one of the two bodies in front, while the king himself took charge of the third corps, which acted as a reserve in the rear. When Philip drew nigh in the evening his host was weary and hungry. He ordered his knights to halt, but each one was thinking, not of obeying orders, but of securing a place in the front, where he might personally distinguish himself. Those in the rear pushed on, and in a few minutes the whole of the French cavalry became a disorganized mob. Philip had 15,000 Genoese crossbow- men, but a heavy shower of rain had wetted the strings of the un- lucky Genoese. The English drove the Genoese back. Then the French horsemen charged the English lines. The French were driven off with terrible slaughter, and the victory was won. It was a victory of foot soldiers over horse soldiers of a nation in which all ranks joined heartily together over one in which all ranks except that of the gentry were despised. Edward III. had con- tributed a high spirit and a keen sense of honor, but it was to the influence of Edward I. to his wide and far-reaching statesman- ship, and his innovating military genius that the victory of Crecv was really due. While Edward was fighting in France, the Scots invaded England, but they were defeated at Nevill's Cross, and their king, 162 ENGLAND 1347 David Bruce (David II.), taken prisoner. Edward, when the news reached him, had laid siege to Calais. In this siege cannon, which had been used in earlier stages of the war, were employed, but they were too badly made and loaded with too little gunpowder to do much damage. In 1347 Calais was starved into surrender, and Edward, who regarded the town as a nest of pirates, ordered six of the principal burgesses to come out with ropes round their necks, as a sign that they were to be put to death. It was only at Queen Philippa's intercession that he spared their lives, but he drove every Frenchman out of Calais, and peopled it with his own sub- jects. A truce with Philip was agreed on, and Edward returned to England. Edward III. had begun his reign as a constitutional ruler, and on the whole he had no reason to regret it. In his wars with France and Scotland he had the popular feeling with him, and he showed his reliance on it when, in 1340, he consented to the abolition of his claim to impose tallage on his demesne lands the sole frag- ment of unparliamentary taxation legally retained by the king after the Confirmatio Cartarum. In 1341 the two Houses of Parliament finally separated from one another, and when Edward picked a quarrel with Archbishop Stratford, the Lords successfully insisted that no member of their House could be tried excepting by his peers. The Commons, on the other hand, were striving not always successfully to maintain their hold upon taxation. In 1341 they made Edward a large money grant on condition of his yielding to their demands, and Edward (whose constitutional intentions were seldom proof against his wish to re- tain the power of the purse) shamelessly broke his engagement after receiving the money. On other occasions the Commons were more successful; yet, after all, the composition of their House was of more importance than any special victory they might gain. In it the country members or knights of the shire sat side by side with the burgesses of the towns. In no other country in Europe would this have been possible. The knights of the shire were gen- tlemen, who on the Continent were reckoned among the nobility, and despised townsmen far too much to sit in the same House with them. In England there was the same amalgamation of classes in Parliament as on the battlefield. When once gentlemen and burgesses formed part of the same assembly, they would come to have common interests ; and, in any struggle in which the merchants EDWARD III. 163 *348 were engaged, it would be a great gain to them that a class of men trained to arms would be inclined to take their part. Edward's return after the surrender of Calais was followed by an outburst of luxury. As the sea-rovers of Normandy and Calais had formerly plundered Englishmen, English landsmen now plun- dered Normandy and Calais. " There was no woman who had not gotten garments, furs, feather-beds, and utensils from the spoils." Edward surrounded himself with feasting and jollity. About this time he instituted the Order of the Garter, and his tournaments were thronged with gay knights and gayer ladies in gorgeous attires. The very priests caught the example, and decked themselves in unclerical garments. Even architecture lent itself to the prevail- ing taste for magnificence. The beautiful Decorated style which had come into use towards the end of the reign of Edward I. was, in the reign of Edward III., superseded by the Perpendicular style, in which beauty of form was abandoned for the sake of breadth. Roofs became wide, and consequently halls were larger and better adapted to crowded gatherings. In the midst of this luxurious society arrived, in 1348, a terri- ble plague which had been sweeping over Asia and Europe, and which in modern times has been styled the Black Death. No plague known to history was so destructive of life. Half of the population certainly perished, and some think that the number of those who died must be reckoned at two-thirds. This enormous destruction of life could not fail to have im- portant results on the economic conditions of the country. The process of substituting money rents for labor service, which had begun some generations before, had become very general at the accession of Edward III. so that the demesne land which the lord kept in his own hands was on most estates cultivated by hired labor. Now, when at least half of the laborers had disap- peared, those who remained having less competition to fear, de- manded higher wages, while at the same time the price of the produce of the soil was the same or less than it had been before. The question affected not merely the great lords but the smaller gentry as well. The House of Commons, which was filled with the smaller gentry and the well-to-do townsmen who were also employers of labor was therefore as eager as the House of Lords to keep down wages. In 1349 the Statute of Laborers was passed, fixing a scale of wages at the rates which had been paid before the 164 ENGLAND 1349-1356 Black Death, and ordering punishments to be inflicted on those who demanded more. It is not necessary to suppose that the legis- lators had any tyrannical intentions. For ages all matters relating to agriculture had been fixed by custom ; and the laborers were out- rageously violating custom. Custom, however, here found itself in opposition to the forces of nature, and though the statute was often renewed with increasing penalties, it was difficult to secure obedience to it in the teeth of the opposition of the laborers. The chief result of the statute was that it introduced an element of dis- cord between two classes of society. In 1352 was passed the Statute of Treasons, by which the offenses amounting to treason were defined, the chief of them be- ing levying war against the king. As no one but a great noble- man was strong enough even to think of levying war against the king, this statute may be regarded as a concession to the wealthier landowners rather than to the people at large. In 1350 Philip VI. of France died, and was succeeded by his son John. The truce was prolonged, and it was not till 1355 that war was renewed. Edward himself was recalled to England by fresh troubles in Scotland, but the Black Prince landed at Bordeaux and marched through the south of France, plundering as he went. Neither father nor son seems to have had any idea of gaining his ends except by driving the French by ill-treatment into submission. In 1356 the Black Prince swept over central France in another similar plundering expedition. He was on his way back with his plunder to Bordeaux with no more than 8,000 men to guard it when he learned as he passed near Poitiers that King John was close to him with 50,000. He drew up his little force on a rising ground amid thick vineyards, with a hedge in front of him behind which he could shelter his archers. As at Cregy, the greater part of the English horsemen were dismounted, and John, thinking that therein lay their secret of success, ordered most of his horsemen to dis- mount as well, not having discovered that though spearmen on foot could present a formidable resistance to a cavalry charge, they were entirely useless in attacking a strong position held by archers. Then he sent forward 300 knights who retained their horses, bidding a strung body of dismounted horsemen to support them. The horsemen, followed by the footmen, charged at a gap in the hedge, but the hedge on either side was lined with English bowmen, and men and horses were struck down. Those who survived lied EDWARD III. 165 1357-1360 and scattered their countrymen behind. Seeing- the disorder, the Black Prince ordered the few knights whom he had kept on horse- back to sweep round and to fall upon the confused crowd in the flank. The archers advanced to second them, and, gallantly as the French fought, their unhorsed knights could accomplish nothing against the combined efforts of horse and foot. King John was taken prisoner and the battle was at an end. After the astounding victory of Poitiers, the Black Prince, instead of marching upon Paris, went back to Bordeaux. In 1357 he made a truce for two years and returned to England with his royal captive. In 1356, the year in which the Black Prince fought at Poitiers, his father ravaged Scotland. Edward, however, gained nothing by this fresh attempt at conquest. In his retreat he suffered heavy loss, and in 1357, changing his plan, he replaced David Bruce on the throne, and strove to win the support of the Scots instead of exasperating them by violence. In the meanwhile the two years' truce brought no good to France. The nobles wrung from the peasants the sums needed to redeem their relatives, and the disbanded soldiers formed themselves into free companies and plundered the country. The French peasants broke into a rebellion known as the Jacquerie. After committing unheard-of cruelties the peasants were repressed and slaughtered. An attempt of the States- General a sort of French Parliament which occasionally met to improve the government failed. Peace with England was talked of, but Edward's terms were too hard to be accepted, and in 1359 war began again. So miserably devasted was France that Edward, when he in- vaded the country in 1359, had to take with him not only men and munitions of war, but large stores of provisions. " I could not be- lieve," wrote an Italian who revisited France after an absence of some years, "that this was the same kingdom that I had once seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an extreme poverty, land uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even the neighborhood of Paris manifested everywhere marks of destruction and conflagration. The streets were de- serted; the roads overgrown with weeds; the whole a vast soli- tude." In the spring of 1360 Edward moved on towards die banks of the Loire, hoping to find sustenance there. Near Char- tres he was overtaken by a terrible storm of hail and thunder, and in the roar of the thunder he thought that he heard the voice of 166 ENGLAND 1360 God reproving him for the misery which he had caused. He abated his demands and signed the treaty of Bretigni. By the treaty of Bretigni John was to be ransomed for an enormous sum; Edward was to surrender his claim to the crown of France and to the provinces north of Aquitaine, receiving in return the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine together with the districts round Calais and Ponthieu, all of them to be held in full sovereignty, without any feudal obligation to the king of France. Probably it cost Edward little to abandon his claim to the French crown, which had only been an afterthought; and it was a clear gain to get rid of those feudal entanglements which had so frequently been used as a pretext of aggression against the Eng- lish kings. It was hardly likely, however, that England would long be able to keep a country like Aquitaine, which was geo- graphically part of France and in which French sympathies were constantly on the increase. " We will obey the English with our lips," said the men of Rochelle, when their town was surrendered, " but our hearts shall never be moved towards them." Chapter XVI REIGN OF EDWARD III. AFTER THE TREATY OF BRETIGNI. 1360 1377 LEADING DATES Reign of Edward III., A.D. 1327-1377 Battle of Navarrete, A.D. 1367 Renewal of War with France, 1369 Truce with France, I37S The Good Parliament, 1376 Death of Edward III., 1377 TO hold his new provinces the better, Edward sent the Black Prince to govern them in 1363 with the title of Duke of Aquitaine. King John had been liberated soon after the making of the peace, and had been allowed to return to France on payment of part of his ransom, and on giving hostages for the pay- ment of the remainder. John's eldest son and successor, Charles V., known as the Wise, or the Prudent, was less chivalrous, but more cautious than his father, and soon found an opportunity of stirring up trouble for the Black Prince without exposing his own lands to danger. Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile, who had for some time been the ally of England, was opposed by Henry of Tras- tamara to whom Charles V. sent help. The tyrannical Pedro begged the Black Prince to help him. Despite the pleadings of the Gascon nobles, he did so, only to find Pedro as false as he was cruel. Sickness broke out in the English ranks, and the Black Prince re- turned to Bordeaux with only a fifth part of his army, and with his own health irretrievably shattered. In 1368 Henry made his way back to Spain, defeated and slew Pedro, and undid the whole work of the Black Prince to the south of the Pyrenees. Worse than this was in store for the Black Prince. As his soldiers clamored for their wages, he levied a hearth tax to supply their needs. The Aquitanian Parliament declared against the tax, and appealed to the king of France to do them right. In 1369 Charles, who knew that the men of Aquitaine would be on his side, summoned the Black Prince to Paris to defend his conduct. Edward, by the advice of Parliament, resumed the title of King 167 168 ENGLAND 1369-1375 of France, and war broke out afresh in 1369. The result of the first war had been owing to the blunders of the French in attack- ing the English archers with the feudal cavalry. Charles V. and his commander, Du Guesclin, resolved to fight no battles. Their troops hung about the English march, cut off stragglers, and cap- tured exposed towns. The English marched hither and thither, plundering and burning, but their armies, powerful as they were when attacked in a defensive position, could not succeed in forcing a battle, and were worn out without accomplishing anything worthy of their fame. The Black Prince, soured by failure and ill-health, in 1371 was back in England. His eldest sur- viving brother, John of Gaunt or Ghent Duke of Lancaster, continued the war in France. In 1372 the English lost town after town. In 1373 John of Gaunt set out for Calais. He could plunder, but he could not make the enemy fight. " Let them go/' wrote Charles V. to his commanders; "by burning they will not become masters of your heritage. Though storms rage over a land, they disperse of themselves. So will it be with these Eng- lish." When the English reached the hilly center of France food failed them. The winter came, and horses and men died of cold and want. A rabble of half-starved fugitives was all that reached Bordeaux after a march of six hundred miles. Aquitaine, where the inhabitants were for the most part hostile to the English, and did everything in their power to assist the French, was before long all but wholly lost, and in 1375 a truce was made which put an end to hostilities for a time, leaving only Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and Bordeaux in the hands of the English. The antagonism between England and France necessarily led to an antagonism between England and the Papacy. Since 1305 the Popes had fixed their abode at Avignon, and Avignon was near enough to be under the control of the king of France. The Popes were regarded in England as the tools of the French enemy. The Papal court, too, became distinguished for luxury and vice, and its vast expenditure called for supplies which England was in- creasingly loth to furnish. By a system of provisions, as they were called, the Pope provided or appointed beforehand his nominees to English benefices, and expected that his nominees would be allowed to hold the benefices to the exclusion of those of the patrons. In 135 1 the Statute of Provisors 1 attempted to put an end to the system, but it was not immediately successful, and had 1 Provisors are the persons provided or appointed to a benefice. AFTER BRETIGNI 169 1353-1362 to be reenacted in later years. In 1353 a Statute of Prccmnnire 2 was passed, in which, though the Pope's name was not mentioned, an attempt was made to stop suits being carried before foreign courts in other words, before the Papal court of Avignon. An- other claim of the Popes was to the 1,000 marks payable annually as a symbol of John's vassalage, a claim most distasteful to Eng- lishmen as a sign of national humiliation. Since 1333, the year in which Edward took the government into his own hands, the pay- ment had not been made, and in 1366 Parliament utterly rejected a claim made by the Pope for its revival. The national spirit which revealed itself in an armed struggle with the French and in a legal struggle with the Papacy showed itself in the increasing predominance of the English language. In 1362 it supplanted French in the law courts, and in the same year Parliament was opened with an English speech. French was still the language of the court, but it was becoming a foreign speed:, pronounced very differently from the " French of Paris." Cruel as had been the direct results of the English victories in France, they had indirectly contributed to the overthrow of that feudalism which weighed heavily upon France ami upon all Con- tinental Europe. The success of the English had been the success of a nation strong in the union of classes. The cessation of the war drove the thoughts of Englishmen back upon themselves. The old spiritual channels had been, to a great extent, choked up. P>isbops were busy with the king's affairs; monks had long ceased to be specially an example to the world ; and even the friars had fallen from their first estate, and had found out that, though they might personally possess nothing, their order might be wealthy. The men who won victories in France came home to spend their booty in show and luxury. Yet, for all the splendor around, there was a general feeling that the times were out of joint, and this was strengthened by a fresh inroad of the Black Death in 1 361. To the prevalent yearning for a better life, a voice was given by William Langland. whose " Vision of Piers the Plowman " appeared in its first shape in 1362. In the opening of his poem he shows to his readers the supremacy of the Maiden Meed bribery over all sorts and conditions of men., lay and clerical. Then he turns to the purification of this wicked world. The way to Truth lies not through the inventions of the official Church, the pardons and in- 2 So called from the first words of the writs appointed to be issued under it, Prcemitnirc facias; the first of these words being a corruption of Pramoncri. 170 ENGLAND 1371-1374 diligences set up for sale. " They who have done good shall go into eternal life, but they who have done evil into eternal fire." He looks for help to the despised peasant. No doubt his peasant was idealized, as no one knew better than himself ; but it was hon- esty of work in the place of dishonest idleness which he venerated. It was the glory of England to have produced such a thought far more than to have produced the men who, heavy with the plunder of unhappy peasants, stood boldly to their arms at Crecj and Poi- tiers. He is as yet hardly prepared to say what is the righteousness which leads to eternal life. It is not till he issues a second edition in 1377 that he can answer. To do well, he now tells us, is to act righteously to all in the fear of God. To do better is to walk in the way of love : " Behold how good a thing it is for brethren to dwell in unity." To do best is to live in fellowship with Christ and the Church, and in all humility to bring forth the fruits of the Divine communion. Langland wished to improve, not to overthrow, existing in- institutions, but for all that his work was profoundly revolutionary. They who call on those who have left their first love to return to it are seldom obeyed, but their voice is often welcomed by the cor- rupt and self-seeking crowd which is eager, after the fashion of birds of prey, to tear the carcass from which life has departed. A large party was formed in England, especially among the greater barons, which w T as anxious to strip the clergy of their wealth and power, without any thought for the better fulfillment of their spiritual functions. In the Parliament of 1371 bishops were declared unfit to hold offices of state. Among others who were dismissed was William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. He was a great architect and administrator, and having been de- prived of the Chancellorship used his wealth to found at Winches- ter the first great public school in England. By this time a Chan- cellor was no longer what he had been in earlier days, a secretary to the king. He was now beginning to exercise equitable juris- diction that is to say, the right of deciding suits according to equity, in cases in which the strict artificial rules of the ordinary courts stood in the way of justice. In 1374, as soon as the Duke of Lancaster returned from his disastrous campaign, he put himself at the head of the baronial and anti-clerical party. He was selfish and unprin- cipled, but he had enormous wealth, having secured the vast es- AFTER BRETIGNI 171 1374-1376 tates of the Lancaster family by his marriage with Blanche, the granddaughter of the brother of Thomas of Lancaster, the oppo- nent of Edward II. Rich as he was he wished to be richer ; he was now practically the first man in the state. The king was suffer- ing from softening of the brain, and had fallen under the influence of a greedy and unscrupulous mistress, Alice Perrers. A bargain was struck between the Duke and Alice Perrers, who was able to obtain the consent of the helpless king to anything she pleased. If Lancaster's character had been higher, he might have se- cured a widespread popularity, as the feeling of the age was ad- verse to the continuance of a wealthy clergy. Even as things were, he had on his side John Wycliffe, the most able reasoner and de- voted reformer of his age. Wycliffe had distinguished himself at Oxford, and had attracted Lancaster's notice by the ability of his argument against the Pope's claim to levy John's tribute. In 1374 he had been sent to Bruges to argue with the representatives of the Pope on the question of the provisions, and by 1376 had either issued, or was preparing to issue, his work " On Civil Lordship," in which, by a curious adaptation of feudal ideas, he declared that all men held their possessions direct from God, as a vassal held his estate from his lord ; and that as a vassal was bound to pay certain military services, failing which he lost his estate, so everyone who fell into mortal sin failed to pay his service to God, and forfeited his right to his worldly possessions. In this way dominion, as he said, was founded on grace that is to say, the continuance of man's right to his possessions depended on his remaining in a state of grace. It is true that Wycliffe qualified his argument by alleg- ing that he was only announcing theoretical truth, and that no man had a right to rob another of his holding because he believed him to be living in sin. It is evident, however, that men like Lancaster would take no heed of this distinction, and would welcome Wycliffe as an ally in the work of despoiling the clergy for their own purposes. Ordinary citizens, who cared nothing for theories which they did not understand, were roused against Lancaster by the unblush- ing baseness of his rule. Nor was this all. The anti-clerical party was also a baronial party, and the country gentry and townsmen had learned the lesson that they would be the first to suffer from the un- checked rule of the baronage. They now had the House of Com- mons to represent their wishes, but as yet the House of Commons 172 ENGLAND 1376-1377 was too weak to stand alone. At last it was rumored that when the Black Prince died his young son Richard was to be set aside, and that Lancaster was to claim the inheritance. The Black Prince awoke from his lethargy, and stood forward as the leader of the Commons. A Parliament, known as the Good Parliament, met in 1376, and, strong through the Black Prince's support, the Commons re- fused to grant supply till an account of the receipts and expenditure had been laid before them. The Commons obtained a new Council, in which Wykeham was included and from which Lancaster was shut out. They then proceeded to accuse before the House of Lords Richard Lyons and Lord Latimer of embezzling the king's revenue. Lyons, accustomed to the past ways of the court, packed 1,000/. in a barrel and sent it to the Black Prince. The Black Prince returned the barrel and the money, and the Lords con- demned Lyons to imprisonment. Latimer was also sentenced to imprisonment, but he was allowed to give bail and regained his liberty. These two cases are the first instances of the exercise of the right of impeachment that is to say, of the accusation of politi- cal offenders by the Commons before the Lords. Alice Perrers was next driven from court. While Parliament was still sitting the Black Prince, worn out by his exertions, died. His son, young Richard, was at once recognized as heir to the throne. Lancaster, however, regained his influence over his doting father. Alice Perrers and Lord Latimer found their way back to court. The Speaker of the House of Com- mons was thrown into prison. In 1377 a new Parliament, elected under Lancaster's influence, reversed all the proceedings of the Good Parliament, and showed how little sympathy the baronial party had with the people by imposing a poll tax of A,d. a head on all except beggars, thus making the payment of a laborer and a duke equal. The bishops, unable to strike at Lancaster, struck at Wycliffe, as his creature. Wycliffe was summoned to appear be- fore an ecclesiastical court at St. Paul, presided over by Courtenay, the Bishop of London. He came supported by Lancaster and a troop of Lancaster's followers. Hot words were exchanged be- tween them and the Bishop. The London crowd took their Bishop's part and the Duke was compelled to flee for his life. In the summer of 1377 Edward III. died, deserted by everyone, Alice Perrers making off, after robbing him of his finger-rings. Chapter XVII RICHARD II. AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION, 1377 1381 LEADING DATES Reign of Richard II., A.D. 1 377-1399 Accession of Richard II., 1377 The Peasants' Revolt, 1381 OE to the land," quoted Langland from Ecclesiastes, in the second edition of " Piers the Plowman/' " when the king is a child." Richard was but ten years of age when he was raised to the throne. The French plundered the coast, and the Scots plundered the Borders. In the presence of such clangers Lancaster and Wykeham forgot their differences, and as Lancaster was too generally distrusted to allow of his acting as regent, the council governed in the name of the young king. Lancaster, how- ever, took the lead, and renewed the war with France with but little result beyond so great a waste of money as to stir up Parliament to claim a control over the expenditure of the Crown. In 1378 began the Great Schism. For nearly half a century from that date there were two Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome. Wycliffe had been gradually losing his reverence for a single Pope, and he had none left for two. He was now busy with a translation of the Bible into English, and sent forth a band of " poor priests " to preach the simple gospel which he found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions of the priest- hood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on which their authority was based. In 1381 he declared his disbelief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests that power " of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an announcement would have cost Wycliffe the hearts of large num- bers of his supporters. It was the more fatal to his influence as it was coincident with social disorders, the blame for which was certain, rightly or wrongly, to be laid at his door. The disastrous war with France made fresh taxation unavoid- 173 174 ENGLAND 1379-1381 able. In 1379 a poll-tax was imposed by Parliament on a graduated scale, reaching from the 61. 135. 4^/., required of a duke, to the groat, or 4c?., representing in those days at least the value of 4^. at the present day, required of the poorest peasant. A second poll-tax in 1380 exacted no less than three groats from every peasant, and from every one of his unmarried children above the age of fifteen. In 1 38 1 a tiler at Dartford in Kent struck dead a collector. His neighbors took arms to protect him. In an incredibly short time the peasants of the east and south of England rose in insurrection. The peasants had other grievances besides the weight of taxa- tion thrown on them by a Parliament in which they had no repre- sentatives. The landlords, finding it impossible to compel the ac- ceptance of the low wages provided for by the Statute of Laborers, had attempted to help themselves in another way. Before the Black Death the bodily service of villeins had been fre- quently commuted into a payment of money. The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to have been unfair, and com- pelled the villeins to render once more the old bodily service. The discontent that prevailed everywhere was fanned not merely by the attacks made by Wycliffe's poor priests upon the idle and inefficient clergy, but by itinerant preachers unconnected with Wycliffe, who denounced the propertied classes in general. One of these, John Ball, a notorious assailant of the gentry, had been thrown into prison. His favorite question was : When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then a gentleman? From one end of England to another the revolt spread. The parks of the gentry were broken into, the deer killed, the fish-ponds emptied. The court-rolls which testified to the villeins' services were burned, and lawyers as well as others connected with the courts were put to death without mercy. From Kent and Essex 100,000 enraged peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, released John Ball from jail and poured along the roads to London. They hoped to place the young Richard at their head against their enemies the gentry. The boy was spirited enough, and in spite of his mother's entreaties insisted on leaving the Tower, and being rowed across the Thames to meet the insurgents on the Surrey shore. Those who were with him, however, refused to allow him to land. The peasants had sympathizers in London itself, who allowed them to break into the city. Lancaster's palace and the houses of law- RICHARD II. 175 1381-1384 yers and officials were sacked and burned. All the lawyers who could be found were murdered, and others who were not lawyers shared their fate. The mob broke into the Tower, and beheaded Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had, as Chan- cellor, proposed the obnoxious taxes to Parliament. The boy king met the mob at Mile-End, and promised to abolish villeinage in England. Charters of manumission were drawn out and sealed, and a great part of the insurgents returned contentedly home. About 30,000, however, remained behind. When Richard came among them at Smithfield, Wat Tyler threat- ened him, and the Mayor of London slew W T at Tyler with his dag- ger. A shout for vengeance was raised. With astonishing pres- ence of mind Richard rode forward. "I am your king," he said; " I will be your leader." His boldness inspired the insurgents with confidence, and caused them to desist from their threats and to return to their homes. In the country the gentry, encouraged by the failure of the insurgents in London, recovered their courage. The insurrection was everywhere vigorously suppressed. Richard ordered the payment of all services due, and revoked the charters he had granted. The judges on their circuits hanged the ring- leaders without mercy. When Parliament met it directed that the charters of manumission should be canceled. Lords and Com- mons alike stood up for the rich against the poor, and the boy king was powerless to resist them, and it is possible that he did not wish to do so. The revolt of the peasants strengthened the conservative spirit of the country. The villeinage into which the peasants had been thrust back could not, indeed, endure long, because service un- willingly rendered is too expensive to be maintained. Men were, however, no longer in a mood to listen to reformers. Great noble- men, whose right to the services of their villeins had been denied, now made common cause with the great churchmen. The prop- ertied classes, lay and clerical, instinctively saw that they must hang together. Wycliffe's attacks on transubstantiation finding little response, he was obliged to retire to his parsonage at Lutterworth, where he labored with his pen till his death in 1384. His followers, known by the nickname of Lollards, were, however, for some time still popular among the poorer classes. A combination between the great nobles and the higher clergy might, at the end of the fourteenth century, meet with temporary success; but English society was too diversified, and each separate 176 ENGLAND 1381-1399 portion of it was too closely linked to the other to make it possible for the higher classes to tyrannize over the others for any long 'time. What that society was like is best seen in Chaucer's " Canter- bury Tales." Chaucer was precursor of modern literature as Wyck- liffe was the precursor of modern religion. He was an inimitable story-teller, with an eye which nothing could escape. He was ready to take men as he found them, having no yearning for the purification of a sinful world. Heroic examples of manly constancy and of womanly purity and devotion are mingled in his pages with coarse and ribald tales ; still, coarse and ribald as some of his nar- ratives are, Chaucer never attempts to make vice attractive. He takes it rather as a matter of course, calling, not for reproof, but for laughter, whenever those who are doing evil place themselves in ridiculous situations. While, however, there is not one of the " Canterbury Tales " which fails to bring vividly before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day, it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close connection which existed between differ- ent ranks of society. Men and women of various classes are there represented as riding together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and beguiling the way by telling stories to one another. No baron, indeed, takes part in the pilgrimage, and the villein class is represented by the reeve, who was him- self a person in authority, the mere cultivator of the soil being ex- cluded. Yet, within these limits, the whole circle of society is admirably represented. The knight, just returned from deeds of chivalry, is on the best of terms with the rough-spoken miller and the reeve, while the clerk of Oxford, who would gladly learn and gladly teach, and who followed in his own life those precepts which he commended to his parishioners, has no irreconcilable quarrel with the begging friar or with the official of the ecclesiastical courts, whose only object is to make a gain of godliness. In his representation of the clergy, Chaucer shows that, like Langland, he had no reverence for the merely official clergy. His " poor parson of a town," indeed, is a model for all helpers and teachers. The final character given to him is : A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is. He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him a spiced conscience; But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, and ferst lie folwed it himselve. RICHARD II. 177 1381-1399 The majority among Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his duty ; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading ; the friar who is ready to grant absolution to anyone who will give money to the friars; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics. Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evi- dently much room for a reformer. Such men as these latter did not go on pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were " bound to the soil." and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the classes above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge, had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in 1176 in the reign of Henry II. It was completed in 1209, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay for keeping it in good condi- tion. Local taxes were sometimes levied to maintain the roads and bridges, and in default of these, it was held to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open. In spite of these precautions, roads were often neglected, so that those who were not obliged to go on foot traveled almost entirely on horseback, women almost always riding astride like men. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century that a few ladies rode sideways. Kings and queens and exceedingly great people occasionally used lumbering but gorgeously ornamented carriages; but this was to enable them to appear in splendor, as this way of traveling must, at least in fine weather, have been far less agreeable than the ordinary ride. The only other wheeled vehicles in existence were the peasant's carts on two wheels, roughly made in the form of a square box either of boards or of a lighter framework. It was one of the grievances of the peasants that when the king moved from one manor to another his purveyors seized their carts to carry his property, and that though the purveyors were bound by frequently repeated statutes to pay for their hire, these statutes were often broken, and the carts sent back without payment for their use. The same purveyors often took corn and other agriculture produce, for which they paid little or nothing. 178 ENGLAND 1381-1399 When the king arrived in the evening at a town his numerous attendants were billeted upon the townsmen, without asking leave. Monasteries were always ready to offer hospitality to himself or to any great person, and even to provide rougher fare for the poorest stranger in a special guest-house provided for the purpose. In castles, the owner was usually glad to see a stranger of his own rank. The halls were still furnished with movable tables, as in the days before the Conquest, and at night mattresses were placed for persons of inferior rank on the floor, which was strewn with rushes; while a stranger of high rank had usually a bed in the solar with the lord of the castle. Travelers of the middle class were not thought good enough to be welcomed in monasteries and castles, and were not poor enough to be re- ceived out of charity; and for them inns were provided. These inns provided beds, of which there were several in each room, and the guests then bought their provisions and fuel from the host, instead of being charged for their meals as is now the custom. From a manual of French conversation, written at the end of the fourteenth century for the use of Englishmen, it appears that cleanliness was not always to be found in these inns. By the roadside were alehouses for temporary refreshment, known by a bunch of twigs at the end of a pole, from which arose the saying that " Good wine needs no bush." The ale of the day was made without hops, which was still unknown in England, and ale would therefore only keep good for about five days. Besides the better class of travelers, the roads were fre- quented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels, jug- glers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and even great lords took pleasure in amusements which are now only to be heard of at country fairs. Anyone who could play or sing was always welcome, and the verses sung were often exceedingly coarse. Tumblers and peddlers also went from place to place. The roads, indeed, were not always safe. Outlaws who had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes took refuge in the broad tracts of forest land which occupied much of the soil which has since been cultivated, shot the king's deer, and robbed mer- chants and wealthy travelers, leaving the poor untouched, like the legendary Robin Hood of an earlier date. Such robbers were highly esteemed by the poor, as the law from which they suffered was cruelly harsh, hanging being the penalty for thefts amounting R I C H A R D 1 1 . 179 1381-1399 to a shilling. Villeins who fled from service could be reclaimed by their masters, unless they could succeed in passing a year in a town, and consequently were often found among vagabonds who had to live as best they might, often enough by committing fresh crimes. Prisons in which even persons guilty of no more than harmless vagabondage were confined reeked with disease, and those who were, as wanderers or drunkards, put in the stocks, had, if an unpleasant, at least a less dangerous experience than the prisoner. One means of escape, indeed, was available to some, at least, of these unfortunates. They could take refuge in the sanctu- aries to be found in the churches, from which no officer of the law could take them, and, though the Church preserved some guilty ones from just punishment, she also saved many who were either inno- cent or who were exposed to punishments far too severe for their slight offenses. Even harshness is less dangerous than anarchy, and from time to time measures were taken to provide against anarchy. Be- fore the Conquest order had been kept by making either the kindred or the township liable to produce offenders, and this system was maintained by the Norman kings. In the time of Richard I. all men were required to swear to keep the peace, to avoid crime, and to join in the hue and cry in pursuit of criminals. In the time of Henry III. persons called guardians of the peace were occasionally appointed to see that order was kept, and at the accession of Ed- ward III. these officials were established for a time by Act of Parlia- ment as conservators of the peace. In 1360, the year of the Treaty of Bretigni, they were permanently continued, and the name of Justices of the Peace was given to them. They were to keep the peace in each county, and their number was to be made up of a lord, three or four gentlemen, and a lawyer, who was in those days always a cleric. They were to seize and imprison, and even to try persons accused of crime. The king named these jnstices, but he had to name all of them except the lawyer from among the local landowners. In every way, in the fourteenth century, the chief local landowners were becoming prominent. The kings at- tempted to govern with their help, both in Parliament and in the counties. Chapter XVIII RICHARD II. AND THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION 1382 1399 LEADING DATES Reign of Richard II., A.D. 1377-1399 The Impeachment of Suf- folk, 1385 The Merciless Parliament, 1388 Richard Begins His Constitutional Government, 1389 Richard's Coup-d'&tat, 1397 Deposition of Richard, 1399 IN 1382 Richard at the early age of fifteen was married to Anne of Bohemia. Though he was a young husband he was at all events old enough to be accused of disasters which he could not avoid. Not only was the war with France not prosper- ing, but English influence was declining in Flanders, and that country in 1383 fell under the control of France. In 1385 Richard, indeed, invaded Scotland, ravaged the country and burned Edin- burgh, though without producing any permanent result. In 1386 a French fleet and army was gathered at Sluys, and an invasion of England was threatened. When the king returned from Scotland in 1385 he made a large creation of peers. His Chancellor, Suffolk, was an able and apparently an honest administrator, who upheld the king's pre- rogative against the encroachments of Parliament. Oxford, his favorite, was a gay and heedless companion of Richard's pleasures, who encouraged him in unnecessary expense, and thereby provoked to resistance those who might have put up with an extension of the royal authority. That resistance, however, was to a great extent due to causes not of Richard's own making. Though the French in 1386 abandoned their attempt at invasion, the preparations to resist them had been costly, and Englishmen were in an unreasonable mood. Things, they said, had not gone so in the days of Edward III. A cry for reform and retrenchment, for more victories and less expense, was loudly raised. The discontented found a leader in Gloucester, the youngest of the king's uncles. Wealthy, turbulent, and ambitious, he put himself at the head of all who had a grievance against the king. 180 RICHARD II. 181 1386-1388 Lancaster had just sailed for Spain to prosecute a claim in right of his second wife to the throne of Castile, and as York was with- out ambition, Gloucester had it all his own way. Under his guid- ance a Parliament demanded the dismissal of Richard's ministers, and, on his refusal, impeached Suffolk. Suffolk, though probably innocent of the charges brought against him, was condemned and driven from power, and commissioners of regency were appointed for a year to regulate the realm and the king's household, as the Lords Ordainers had done in the days of Edward II. In one way the commissioners of regency satisfied the desire of Englishmen. In 1387 they sent the Earl of Arundel to sea, and Arundel won a splendid victory over a combined fleet of French, Flemings, and Spaniards. Richard, on the other hand, fearing that they would prolong their power when their year of office was ended, consulted upon the legality of the commission with the judges in the presence of Suffolk and others of his principal supporters, among whom was the Duke of Ireland. With one voice the judges declared that Parliament might not put the king in tutelage. Richard then made preparations to prevent by force the renewal of the commission, and to punish as traitors those who had originated it. His intention got abroad, and five lords, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of Arundel, Nottingham, Warwick, and Derby, the latter being the son of the absent Lancaster, ap- peared at the head of an overwhelming force against him. The five lords appellant, as they were called, appealed, or accused of treason five of Richard's councilors before a Parliament which met at Westminster in 1388, by flinging down their gloves as a token that they were ready to prove the truth of their charge in single combat. The Parliament, called by its admirers the Won- derful, and by its opponents the Merciless Parliament, was entirely subservient to the lords appellant, who, instead of meeting their antagonists in single combat, accused them before the House of Lords. The Duke of Ireland, Suffolk, Chief Justice Tresilian, and Brember, who had been Mayor of London, were condemned to be hanged. The two first named had escaped to the Continent, but the others were put to death. The fifth councilor, the Arch- bishop of York, escaped with virtual deprivation by the Pope. Four other knights were also put to death. Richard was allowed nominally to retain the crown, but in reality he was subjected to a council in which Gloucester and his adherents were supreme. 182 ENGLAND 1389-1390 Richard's entire submission turned the scale in his favor. England had been dissatisfied with him,, but it had never loved the rule of the great feudal lords. Gloucester's council was no more popular than had been the committees named in the Provisions of Oxford in the reign of Henry III., or of the Lords Ordainers in the reign of Edward II., and it fell more easily than any govern- ment, before or afterwards. Suddenly, on May 3, 1389, Richard asked his uncle in full council how old he was. " Your highness," replied Gloucester, " is in your twenty-second year." " Then," said Richard, " I must be old enough to manage my own affairs, as every heir is at liberty to do when he is twenty-one." No at- tempt having been made to confute this argument, Richard dis- missed the council, and ruled once more in person. This sudden blow was followed by seven years of constitu- tional government. It seemed as if Richard had solved the prob- lem of the relations between Crown and Parliament which had perplexed so many generations of Englishmen. In 1389 he ap- pointed ministers at his own pleasure, but when Parliament met in 1390 he commanded them to lay down their offices in order that no one should be deterred from bringing charges against them; and it was only upon finding that no one had any complaint to bring against them that he restored them to their posts. Nor did he show any signs of irritation against those by whom he had been outraged. Not only did he forbear to recall Suffolk and his other exiled favorites, but after a little time he admitted Gloucester and his supporters to sit in council alongside of his own adherents. During the fourteenth century the importance of the House of Commons had been steadily growing, and the king on the one hand and the great nobles on the other had been sorely tempted to influence the elections unduly. Just as the king now fought with paid soldiers of every rank instead of fighting with vassals bound by feudal tenure, so the great nobles surrounded themselves with re- tainers instead of vassals. The vassal had been on terms of social equality with his lord, and was bound to follow him on fixed terms. The retainer was an inferior, who was taken into service and professed himself ready to fight for his lord at all times and in all causes. In return his lord kept open house for his retainers, supplied them with coats, known as liveries, marked with his badge, and undertook to maintain them against all men, either by RICHARD II. 183 1390-1397 open force or by supporting them in their quarrels in the law courts ; and this maintenance, as it was called, was seldom limited to the mere payment of expenses. The lord, by the help of his retainers, could bully witnesses and jurors, and wrest justice to the profit of the wrongdoer. It was sufficiently developed to draw down upon it in 1390 a statute prohibiting maintenance and the granting of liveries. Such a statute was not merely issued in defense of private persons against intimidation ; it also helped to protect the Crown against the violence of the great lords. The growth of the power of the House of Commons was a good thing as long as the House of Commons represented the wishes of the community. It would be a bad thing if it merely represented knots of armed retainers who either voted in their own names according to the orders of their lords, or who frightened away those who came to vote for candidates whom their lords opposed. It was therefore well for the community that there should be a strong and wise king capable of making head against the ambition of the lords. For some years Richard showed himself wise. Not only did he seek, by opening the council to his op- ponents, to win over the lords to take part in the peaceable gov- ernment of the country instead of disturbing it, but he forwarded legislation which carried out the general wishes of the country. The Statute of Provisors was re-enacted and strengthened in 1390, the Statute of Mortmain in 1391, and the Statute of Praemunire in 1393. Richard's foreign policy was based upon a French alliance. In 1389 he made a truce with France for three years, although negotiations for a permanent truce were frustrated. The truce was, however, prolonged from time to time, and in 1396. when Richard, who was by that time a widower, married Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI., a child of eight, it was prolonged for twenty-eight years. Wise as this policy was, it was distasteful to Englishmen, and their dissatisfaction rose when they learned that Richard had surrendered Brest and Cherbourg to the French, which had been pledged to him for money, and they fancied that he was equally readv to surrender Calais and Bordeaux. Richard 'knew' that Gloucester was ready to avail himself of any widespread dissatisfaction, and that he had recently been allying himself with Lancaster against him. To please Lancaster, who had married his mistress, Catherine Swynford, as his third 184 ENGLAND 1397-1398 wife, Richard had legitimatized the Beauforts, his children by her, for all purposes except for succession of the crown, thus giving personal offense to Gloucester. Lancaster's son Derby, and Not- tingham, another of the lords appellant, were now favorable to the king, and when rumors reached Richard that Gloucester was plotting against him, he resolved to anticipate the blow. He arrested the three of the lords appellant whom he still distrusted, Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel, and charged them before Parliament, not with recent malpractices, of which he had probably no sufficient proof, but with the slaughter of his ministers in the days of the Merciless Parliament. Warwick was banished to the Isle of Man, Arundel was executed, and Gloucester im- prisoned at Calais, where he was secretly murdered, as was gener- ally believed, by the order of the king. Archbishop Arundel, brother of the Earl of Arundel, was also banished. In such con- tradiction was this sudden outburst of violence to the prudence of Richard's recent conduct, that it has sometimes been supposed that he had been dissimulating all the time. It is more probable that, without being actually insane, his mind had to some extent given way. He was always excitable, and in his better days his alertness of mind carried him forward to swift decisions, as when he met the mob at Smithfield, and when he vindicated his authority from the restraint of his uncle. Signs had not been wanting that his native energy was no longer balanced by the restraints of prudence. In 1394 he had actually struck Arundel in Westminster Abbey. In 1397 there was much to goad him to hasty and ill- considered action. The year before complaints had been raised against the extravagance of his household. The peace which he had given his country was made the subject of bitter reproach against him. and he seems to have believed that Gloucester was plotting to bring him back into the servitude to which he had been subjected by the commissioners of regency. Whether Richard was mad or not, he at all events acted like a madman. In 139(8 lie summoned a packed Parliament to Shrews- bury, which declared all die acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on the king. It then delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the king's friends. Richard was thus made an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again. He had freed RICHARD II. 185 1398-1399 himself not merely from turbulent lords, but also from all constitu- tional restraints. Richard had shown favor to the two lords appellant who had taken his side. Derby became Duke of Herford, and Nottingham Duke of Norfolk. Before long Herford came to the king with a strange tale. Norfolk, he said, had complained to him that the king still distrutsed them, and had suggested that they should guard themselves against him. Norfolk denied the truth of the story, and Richard ordered the two to prove their truthfulness by a single combat at Coventry. When the pair met in the lists in full armor Richard stopped the fight, and to preserve peace, as he said, banished Norfolk for life and Herford for ten years, a term which was soon reduced to six. There was something of the un- wise cunning of a madman in the proceeding. Richard, freed from all control, was now, in every sense of the w r ord, despotic. He extorted money without a semblance of right, and even compelled men to put their seals to blank promises to pay, which he could fill up with any sum he pleased. He too, like the lords, gathered round him a vast horde of retainers, who wore his badge and ill-treated his subjects at their pleasure. He threatened the Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and his son, Harry Hotspur, with exile, and sent them off discontented to their vast possessions in the North. Early in 1399 the Duke of Lan- caster died. His son, the banished Hereford, was now Duke of Lancaster. Richard, however, seized the lands which ought to have descended to him from his father. Every man who had prop- erty to lose felt that Lancaster's cause was his own. Richard at this inopportune moment took occasion to sail to Ireland. He had been there once before in 1394 in the vain hope of protecting the English colonists. His first expedition had been a miserable fail- ure: his second expedition was cut short by bad news from England. Lancaster, with a small force, landed at Ravenspur, in York- shire, a harbor wmich has now disappeared in the sea. At first he gave out that he had come merely to demand his own inheritance. Then he alleged he had come to redress the wrongs of the realm. Northumberland brought the Percies to his help. Armed men flocked to his support in crowds. The Duke of York, who had been left behind by Richard as regent, accepted this statement and joined him with all his forces. When Richard heard what 186 ENGLAND 1399 had happened, he sent the Earl of Salisbury from Ireland to Wales to summon the Welshmen to his aid. The Welshmen rallied to Salisbury, but the king was long in following, and when Richard landed they had all dispersed. Richard found himself almost alone in Conway Castle, while Lancaster had a whole kingdom at his back. By lying promises Lancaster induced Richard to place himself in his power at Flint. " My lord," said Lancaster to him, " I have now come before you have sent for me. The reason is that your people commonly say you have ruled them very rigorously for twenty or two and twenty years: but, if it please God, I will help you to govern better." The pretense of helping the king to govern was soon abandoned. Richard was carried to London and thrown into the Tower. He consented, probably not till after he had been threatened with the fate of Edward II., to sign his abdication. On the following morning the act of abdication was read in Parlia- ment. The throne was empty. Then Lancaster stepped forward. " In the name," he said. " of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, and the crown with all its members and appurtenances, as I am descended by right line of blood coming from the good lord King Henry the Third, and through that right God of his grace hath sent me, with help of my kin and of my friends, to recover it, the which realm was in point to be undone for default of governance and undoing of the good laws." The assent of Parliament was given, and Lancaster took his seat in Richard's throne as King Henry IV. The claim which Henry put forward would certainly not bear investigation. It laid stress on right of descent, and it has since been thought that Henry intended to refer to a popular belief that his ancestor Edmund, the second son of Henrv III., was in reality the eldest son, but had been set aside in favor of his younger brother, Edward I., on account of a supposed physical deformity from which he was known as Edmund Crouchback. As a matter of fact the whole story was a fable, and the name of Crouchback had been given to Edmund not because his back was crooked, but because he had worn a cross on his back as a crusader. That Henry should have thought it necessary to allude to this story, if such was really his meaning, shows the hold which the idea of hereditary succession had taken on the minds of Englishmen. In no other way could he claim hereditary right as a descendant '- i .- ; / i 4