Yv'.^'- 
 
 
 !tllill!lliUijLU!!i!inilliliti!L:.LWl^amiiliiUlUlUliL;_LliiiJ
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 MRS. EDWIN CORLE 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 MRS. HORACE ARMSTRONG
 
 JOAM OF ARC
 
 Edition De Luxe 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE 
 ENGLISH PEOPLE 
 
 By 
 JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M. A. 
 
 Volume One 
 
 From 449 to 1461 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 THE NOTTINGHAM SOCIETY 
 New York Philadelphia Chicago
 
 INTEODUCTIOK. 
 
 The story of how the History of the English People came tc be 
 written would be the story of ilr. Green's life, from the time wb^n his 
 boyish interest was first awakened by the world beyond himselr until 
 his work was done. So closely are the work and the worker bound 
 together that unless the biography be fully written no real account of 
 the gorwth of the book can indeed be given. But in issuing a New 
 Edition of the History, a slight sketch of the historical progress of the 
 writer's mind, and of the gradual way in which the plan of his work 
 grew up, may not seem out of place. 
 
 John Richard Green, who was born at Oxford in December, 1837, 
 was sent at eight years old to Magdalen Grammar School, then held in 
 a small room within the precincts of the College, The Oxford world 
 about him was full of suggestions of a past which very early startled 
 his curiosity and fired his imagination. The gossiping tales of an old 
 dame who had seen George the Third drive through the town in a 
 coach and six were his first lessons in history. Year after year he took 
 part with excited fancy in the procession of the ]\Iagdalen choir boys to 
 the College tower on May Day, to sing at the sunrisiug a Hymn to the 
 Trinity which had replaced the ^lass chanted in pre-Reformation days, 
 and to "jangle" the bells in recognition of an immemorial festival. 
 St. Giles' fair, the "beating of the bounds," even the name of "Penny- 
 farthing Street," where no less records of a mysterious past than Chapel 
 or College or the very trees of Magdalen Walk; and he once received, 
 breathless and awe-struck, a prize from the hands of the centenarian 
 President of the College, Dr. Routh, the last man who ever wore a wig 
 in Oxford, a man who had himself seen Dr. Johnson stand ia the High 
 Street with one foot on either side of the kennel that ran down in the 
 middle of the way, the street boys standing round, "none daring to 
 interrupt the meditations of the great lexicographer." "You are a 
 clever boy," said the old man as he gave the prize and shook him by 
 the hand. 
 
 His curiosity soon carried him beyond Oxford; and in very early 
 days he learned to wander on Saints' days and holidays to the churches 
 of neighboring villages, and there shut himself in to rub brasses and 
 study architectural moldings. Other interests followed on his eccle- 
 siastical training. He remembered the excitement which w-as produced 
 in Oxford by Layard's discovery of the Nestorians in the Euphrates 
 valley. One day Mr. Ramsay gathered round him the boys who were 
 at play in Magdalen Walk and told them of his journey to see these 
 people; and one at least of his hearers plunged eagerly into problems 
 then much discussed of the relations of orthodox believers to Mono- 
 physites, and the distinctions between heresy and schism, questions 
 which occupied him many years. Knowledge of this kind, be said 
 long afterwards, had been a real gain to him. "The study of what 
 the Monophysites did in Syria, and the Monothelites in Egypt, has 
 taught me w'hat few historians know — the intimate part religion playa
 
 H HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 in !i niition's history, aud how closely it joins itself to a people's 
 
 Living ill a strictly Conservative atmosphere, he had been very dili- 
 gently brought up as a Tory aud a High Churchman. But when he 
 was about fourteen, orthodox- Conservatism and school life came to a 
 close which then seemed to him very tragic. A school essay was set on 
 Charles the First; and as the boy read earnestly every book he could 
 ■.ud on the subject, it suddenly burst on him that Charles was wrong. 
 I he essay, written with a great deal of feeling tmder this new and 
 ■ii.rong conviction, gained the prize over the heads of boys older and 
 \ill tlien reputed abler; but it drew down on him unmeasured disap- 
 onnal. Canon Mozley, who examined, remonstrated in his grave way : 
 "" Your essay is very good, but remember 1 do not agree with your con- 
 clusions, aud you will in all prol)ability see reason to change them as 
 you grow older." The head-master took a yet more severe view of 
 such a change of political creed. But the impulse to Liberalism had 
 been definitely given; and had indeed brought with it many other 
 grave questionings. When at the next examination he shot up to the 
 bead of the school, his master advised that he should be withih-awn 
 from ]Magdalen, to the dismay both of himself and of the uncle with 
 whom he lived. The uncle indeed had his own grounds of alarm. 
 John had one day stood at a tailor's window in Oxford where Lord 
 John Russell's Durham Letter was spread out to view, and, as he read 
 it, had come to his own conclusions as to its wisdom. He even declared 
 the Ecclesiastical Titles Act to be absurd. His uncle, horrified at so 
 extreme a heresy, with angry decision ordered him to find at once 
 another home: aud when after a time the agitation had died away and 
 he was allowed to come back, it was on the condition of never again 
 alluding to so painful a subject. The new-found errors clung to him, 
 however, when he went shortly afterwards to live in the country with 
 a tutor. "I wandered about the fields thinking," he said, "but I 
 never went back from the opinions I had begun to form." 
 
 It was when he was about sixteen that Gibbon fell into his hands; 
 and from that moment the enthusiasm of history took hold of him. 
 "Man and man's history" became henceforth the dominant interest of 
 Ids life. When he returned to Oxford with a scholarship to Jesus 
 College, an instinct of chivalrous devotion inspired his resolve that the 
 stud}' of history sliould never become with him "a matter of classes or 
 fellowships," nor sliould be touched by the rivalries, the conventional 
 methods, the artificial limitations, and the utilitarian aims of the Schools. 
 College work and history work went on apart, with much mental fric- 
 tion and difficulty of adjustment and sorrow of heart. Without any 
 advisers, almost without friends, he groped his way, seeking in very 
 solitary fashion after his own particular vocation. His first historical 
 efforts were spent on that which lay immediately about him; and the 
 series of papers which he sent at this time to the Oxford Chronicle on 
 " Oxford in the last Century " are instinct with all the vivid imagination 
 of his later work, and tell their tale after a method and in a style 
 which was already perfectly natural to him. He read enormously, but 
 history was never to him wholly a matter of books. The Town was still 
 lis teacher. There was then little help to be had for the history of Oxford 
 or any other town. " So wholly had the story of the towns," he wrote 
 later, " passed out of the minds of men that there is still not a history 
 of our country which devotes a single page to it, and there is hardly
 
 INTRODUCTION. m 
 
 an antiquary Avho Las cared to disentomb the tragic records of fights 
 fought for Ireedoiu in this narrow theater from the archives which still 
 contain them. The treatise of Brady written from a political, that of 
 Madox from a narrow antiquarian, point of view; the summaries of 
 charters given by the Commissioners under the Municipal Reform Act; 
 the volunies of Stephens and Merewether; and here and there a little 
 treatise on isolated towns are the only printed materials for the stuciv 
 of the subject." Other materials were abundant. St. Giles Fair was 
 full of lessons for him. He has left an amusing account of how, on a 
 solemn day which came about once in eight years, he marc hed with 
 ]\Iayor and Corporation round the city boundaries. He lingered over 
 the memory of St. Martin's Church, the center of the town lite, the 
 folk-mote within its walls, the low shed outside where mayor and 
 bailiff administered justice, the bell above which rang out its answer to 
 the tocsin of the gownsmen in St. j\Iary's, the butchery and spiccry and 
 vintnery which clustered round in the narrow streets. "In a walk 
 through Oxford one may find illustrations of every period of our annals. 
 The cathedral still preserves the memory of the Mercian St. Frideswide; 
 the tower of the Korman Earls frowns down on the waters of the Mill ; 
 around Merton hang the memories of the birth of our Constitution; the 
 New Learning and the Reformation mingle in Christ Church ; a ' grind ' 
 along the i\Iarston Road follows the track of the army of Fairfax; the 
 groves of Magdalen preserve the living traditions of the last of the 
 Stewarts." 
 
 Two years, however, of solitary effort to work out problems of 
 education, of life, of history, left him somewhat disheartened and 
 bankrupt in energy. A mere accident at last brought the first counsel 
 and encouragement he had ever known. Some chance led him one day 
 to the lecture-room where Stanley, then Canon of Christ Church, was 
 speaking on the history of Dissent. Startled out of tlie indifference 
 with which he had entered the room, he suddenly found himself listening 
 with an interest and wonder which nothing in Oxford had awakened, 
 till the lecturercloscd with the words, " ' Magna est Veritas ci\pravalebit,' 
 words so great that I could almost prefer them to the motto' of our own 
 University, ' Dominiis illnminatio mea.' " In his excitement he ex- 
 claimed, as Stanley, on leaving the hall, passed close by him, " Do you 
 know, sir, that the words you quoted, ' Magna est Veritas et proevalebit,' 
 are the motto of the Town V " " Is it possible 1 How interesting 1 
 When will you come and see me and talk about it V " cried Stanley; 
 and from that moment a warm friendship sprang up. ' • Then and after, ' 
 Mr. Green wrote, " I heard you speak of work, not as a thing of classes 
 and fellowships, but as something worthy for its own sake, worthy 
 bocause it made us like the great AVorker. ' If you cannot or will not 
 work at the work which Oxford gives you, at any rate work at some- 
 thing.' I took up my old boy-dreams of history again. I think I have 
 been a steady worker ever since." 
 
 It was during these years at Oxford that his first large historical 
 schemes were laid. His plan took the shape of a History of the Arch- 
 bishops of Canterbury; and seeking in Augustine and his followers a 
 clue through the maze of fifteen centuries, he projiosed under this title 
 to write in fact the whole story of christian civilization in England. 
 "No existing liLstoriiins help me," he declared in his early days of 
 planning; " rather I have been struck by the utter blindness of one and 
 all to the subject which they profess to treat — the national growth and
 
 Iv HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 development of our country." When in 1860 be left Oxford for the 
 work he had choseu as curate in one of the poorest parishes of East 
 Ltindon. he carried with him thoughts of history. Letters full of 
 ardent discussion of the theological and social problems about him still 
 tell of hours saved here and "there for the British Museum, of work 
 doue on Cuthbert, on Columba. on Irish Church History— of a scheme 
 for a history of Somerset, which bid fair to extend far, and which led 
 direct to Glastonbury, Dustan, and Early English matters. Out of his 
 poverty, too, he had gathered books about him, books won at a cost 
 which made them the objects of a singular affection; and he never 
 opened a volume of his " Acta Sanctorum " without a lingering memory 
 of the painful efforts by which he had brought together the volumes 
 one by one, and how many days he had gone without dinner when 
 there was no other way of buying them. 
 
 But books were not' his only sources of knowledge. To the last he 
 looked on his London life as having given him liis best lessons in 
 history. It was with his church wardens, his schoolmasters, in vestry 
 meetings, in police courts, at boards of guardians, in service in chapel 
 or churcli, in the daily life of the dock-laborer, the tradesman, the 
 costermonger, in the summer visitation of cholera, in the winter misery 
 that followed economic changes, that he learnt what the life of the 
 people meant as perhaps no historian had ever learnt it before. Con- 
 stantly struck down as he was by illness, even the days of sickness 
 were turned to use. Every drive, every railway journey, every town 
 he passed through in brief excursions for health's sake, added some- 
 thing to his knowledge ; if ne was driven to recover strength to a sea- 
 side lodging he could still note a description of Ebbsfleet or Rich- 
 borough or Minster, so that there is scarcely a picture of scenery or of 
 geographical conditions in his book which is not the record of a victory 
 over the overwhelming languor or disease. 
 
 After two years of observation, of reading, and of thought, the 
 Archbishops no longer seemed very certain guides through the centuries 
 of England's growth. They filled the place, it would appear, no better 
 than the Kings. If some of them were great leaders among the people, 
 others were of little account; and after tlie sixteenth century the up- 
 growth of the Nonconformists broke the history of the people, taken 
 from the merely ecclesiastical point of view, into two irreconcilable 
 fractions, and utterly destroyed any possibility of artistic treatment of 
 the story as a whole. In a new plan he looked far behind Augustine 
 and Canterbury, and threw himself into geology, the physical geog- 
 raphy of our island in prehistoric times, and the study of the cave- 
 men and the successive races that peopled Britain, as introductory to 
 the later history of England. But his first and dominating idea 
 quickly thrust all others aside. It was of the English People itself 
 that he must write if he would write after his own heart. The nine 
 years spent in the monotonous reaches of dreary streets that make up 
 Hoxton and Stepney, the close contact with sides of life little known 
 to students, had only deepened the impressions with which the idea of 
 a people's life had in Oxford struck on his imagination. " A State," 
 he would say, "is accidental ; it can be made or unmade, and is no 
 real thing to me. But a nation is very real to me. That you can 
 neither make nor destroy." All his writings, the historical articles 
 which he sent to the Saturday Review and letters to his much-honored 
 friend, Mr. Freeman, alike tended in the same direction, and show how
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 persistently he was working out his philosophy of history. The lessons 
 which years before he had found written in the streets and lanes of his 
 native town were not forgotten. "History," he wrote in 1869, "we 
 are told by publishers, is the most unpopular of all branches of litera- 
 ture at the present day, but it is only unpopular because it seems more 
 and more to sever itself from all that can touch the heart of a people. 
 In medieval history, above all, the narrow ecclesiastical character of 
 the annals' which serve as its base, instead of being corrected by a 
 wider research into the memorials which surround us, has been 
 actually intensified by the partial method of their study, till the story 
 of a great people seems likely to be lost in the mere squabbles of 
 priests. Now there is hardly a better corrective for all this to be 
 found than to set a man frankly in the streets of a simple English town, 
 and to bid him work out the history of the men who had lived and 
 died there. The mill by the stream, the tolls in the market-place, the 
 brasses of its burghers in the ciiurch, the names of its streets, the 
 lingering memory of its guilds, the mace of its mayor, tell us more of 
 the past of England than the spire of Sarum or the martyrdom of 
 Canterbury. We say designedly of the past of England, rather than of 
 the past of English towns. ... In England the history of the town 
 and of the country are one. The privilege of the burgher has speedily 
 widened into the liberty of the people at large. The municipal charter 
 has merged into the great charter of the realm. All the little struggles 
 over toll and tax, all the little claims of ' custom ' and franchise, have 
 told on the general advance of liberty and law. The townmotes of the 
 Norman reigns tided free discussion and self-government over from the 
 Witanagemot of the old England to the Parliament of the new. The 
 busting court, with its resolute assertion of justice by one's peers, gave 
 us tlie whole fabric of our judicial legislation. The Continental town 
 lost its individuality by sinking to the servile level of the land from 
 which it had isolated itself. The English town lost its individuality by 
 lifting the country at large to its own level of freedom and law." 
 
 The earnestness, however, with which he had thrown himself into 
 his parish work left no time for anj'- thought of working out his 
 cherished plans. His own needs were few, and during nearly three 
 years he spent on the necessities of schools and of the poor more than 
 the whole of the income he drew from the Church, while he provided 
 for his own support by writing at night, after his day's work was done, 
 articles for the Saturday Review. At last, in 1869, the disease which 
 had again and again attacked him fell with renewed violence on a 
 frame exhausted with labors and anxieties. All active work was for- 
 Bver at an end — the doctors told him there was little hope of prolonging 
 his life six months. It was at this moment, the first moment of leisure 
 he had ever known, that Jie proposed " to set down a few notions which 
 I have conceived concerning history," which "might serve as an in- 
 troduction to better things if I lived, and might stand for some work 
 done if I did not." The " Short History " was thus begun. When the 
 six months had passed he had resisted the first severit}' of the attack, 
 but he remained witli scarcely a hold on life ; and incessantly vexed by 
 the suffering and exhaustion of constant illness, perplexed by questions 
 as to the mere means of livelihood, thwarted and hindered by diffi- 
 culties about books in the long winters abroad, he still toiled on at his 
 task. "I wonder, he said once in answer to some critic, "how in 
 those years of physical pain and despondency I could ever have written
 
 vi HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 the book at all." Ntarl}' live years were given to the work. Tlie 
 sheets wore written ami rewritten, corrected ami canceled and begun 
 again till it .seemed as though revision would never have an end. 
 " The book is full of faults," he declared sorrowfully, "which make 
 mc almost hopeless of ever learning to write well." As the work went 
 on his friends often remonstrated with nuicli energy. Dean Stanley 
 could not forgive its missing so dramatic an oj)ening as Ca'sar's landing 
 would have iuTorded. Others judged .severely his style, his uiethod, 
 liis view of histor}'-, his selection and rejection of facts. Their judg- 
 ment left him "lonely," he said; and with the sensitiveness of the 
 artistic nature, its quick apprehension of un.seen danger, its craving for 
 sympathy, he saw with perliai)S needless clearness of vision the perils 
 to his chance of winning a hearing which were prophesied. He agreed 
 that the " faults" with which he was charged might cause the ruin of 
 his hopes of being accepted either by historians or by the public; and 
 yet these very " faults," he insisted, were bound up with his faith. 
 The book was in fact, if not in name, the same as that which he had 
 planned at Oxford; to correct its "faults" he must change his whole 
 conception of histor^^ ; be must renounce his belief that it was the great 
 impulses of national feeling, and not the policy of statesmen, that 
 formed the ground-work and basis of the history of nations, and his 
 certainty that political history could only be made intelligible and just 
 by basing it on social history in its largest sense. 
 
 " I ma.y be wrong in my theories," he wrote, "but it is better for 
 me to hold to what I think true, and to work it out as I best can, even 
 if I work it out badly, than to win the good word of some people I 
 respect and others I love" by giving up a real conviction. Amid all 
 his fears as to the failings of his work he still clung to the belief that it 
 went on the old traditional lines of English historians. However 
 Gibbon might err in massing together his social facts in chapters apart, 
 however inadequate Hume's attempts at social history might be, how- 
 ever JIacaulay might look at social facts merely as bits of external 
 ornaments, they all, he maintained, professed the faith he held. He 
 used to protest that even those English historians who desired to be 
 merely "external and pragmatic" could not altogether reach their aim 
 as though they had been "High Dutchmen." The free current of 
 national life in England was too strong to allow them to become ever 
 wholly lost in State papers ; and because he believed that Englishmen 
 could therefore best combine the love of accuracy and the appreciation 
 of the outer aspects of national or political life with a perception of the 
 spiritual forces from which these mere outer phenomena proceed, he 
 never doubted that " the English ideal of history would in the long 
 run be what Gibbon made it in his day — the first in the world." 
 
 When at last, by a miracle of resolution and endurance, the " Short 
 History " was finished, discouraging reports reached him from critics 
 whose judgment he respected ; and his despondency increased. 
 "Never mind, you mayn't succeed this time," said one of his best 
 friends, "but you are sure to succeed .some day." He never forgot 
 that in this time of depression there were two friends, Mr. Stopford 
 Brooke and his publisher, who were unwavering in their belief in his 
 work and in hopefulness of the result. 
 
 The book was ijublished in 1874, when he was little more than 36 
 years of age. Before a month was over, in the generous welcome 
 given it by scholars and by the English people, he found the reward of
 
 INTRODUCTIOX. vii 
 
 his long endurance. Mr. Green in fact was the first historian Avho had 
 eitlier conceived or written of English history from the side of the 
 principles which his book asserted ; and in so doing he had given to his 
 fellow-citizens such a story of their Commonwealth as has in fact uo 
 paralle in any other country. The opposition and criticism which he 
 met with were in part a measure of the originality of his conception. 
 Success, however, and criticism alike came to him as they come to the 
 true scholar. " I know, he said in this first moment of unexpected 
 recognition, "what men will say of me, 'He died learning.'" 
 
 In his "Long History," as given in the present edition, he had at 
 first proposed merely to prepare a library edition of the "Short 
 History " revised and corrected. In his hands, however, it became a 
 wholly different book, the chief part of it having been rewritten at 
 at much greater length, and on an altered plan. Though since his 
 death much has been written on English History, his main conclusions 
 may be regarded as established, and I do not think tliey would have 
 been modi lied, save in a few cases of detail, even by such books as the 
 last two volumes of the Bishop of Chester's " Constitutional History," 
 and his "Lectures on Modern History " ; T^Ir. Gardiner's later volumes 
 on Charles's reign, and Mr. Skene's latter volumes on "Early Scottish 
 History.'' 
 
 I would only add a few words which I value more especially, be- 
 cause they tell how the sincerity, the patient self-denial, the earnest- 
 ness of i)urpose, that underlay all his vivid activity were recognized 
 by one who was ever to him a master in English History, the Bishop 
 of Cliester. " ]\Ir. Green," he wrote, " possessed in no scanty measure 
 all the gifts which contribute to the making of a great historian. He 
 combined, so far as the history of England is concerned, a complete 
 and firm grasp of the subject in its unity and integrity with a wonder- 
 ful command of details, and a thorough sense of perspective and pro- 
 portion. All his work was real and original work ; few people besides 
 those who knew him well would see under the chaiming case and 
 vi vac it}' of his style tlie deep research and sustained industry of the 
 laborious student. But it was so; there was no department of our 
 national records that he had not studied and, I think 1 may say, 
 mastered. Hence I think the unity of his dramatic scenes and the 
 cogency of his historical arguments. Like other people he made mis- 
 takes sometimes; but scarcely ever does the correction of his mistakes 
 affect eitlier the essence of the picture or the force of the argument. 
 /Ind in him the desire of stating and pointing the truth of history was 
 fls strong as tlie wish to make both his pictures and his arguments tell- 
 ing and forcible. He never treated an opposing view with intolerance 
 or contumely; his handling of controversial matter was exemplary. 
 And then, to add still more to the debt we owe him, there is the 
 wonderful simplicity and beauty of the way in which he tells his tale, 
 which more than anything else has served to make English history a 
 popular, and as it ought to be, if not the first, at least the second study 
 of all Englishmen." 
 
 Alices. Green.
 
 •fl DeOfcatc tbls JBooft 
 
 TO 
 TWO DEAR FRIENDS, 
 
 MY MASTERS -IN THE STUDY OF ENGLISH HISTORk, 
 
 FDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN- 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAM STUEBa.
 
 COKTEKTS. 
 BOOK I. 
 
 EAELY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAOR. 
 
 Thk English Conquest of Britain. 449—577 ... 15 
 
 CHAPTER TI. 
 Tb* English Kingdoms. 578—796 36 
 
 CH4PTER in 
 
 WE&»fiX AND THE NORTHMEN. 796—947 . ...» 78 
 
 CHAPTER rV. 
 Feudalism and thb Monarchy. 954—1071 .... 95 
 
 BOOK II. 
 ENGLAND UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The Conqueror. 1071—1085 131 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 The Norman Kings. 1085—1154 ... * * . 143 
 
 CHAPTER ra. 
 Henry the Second. 1154—1189 ...... 169 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Angevin Kings. 1189—1204 190
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 John. 1214—1216 203 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 Henry the Third. 1216—1232 ...... 258 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 The Barons' War. 1232—1272 279 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Edward THE First. 1272-180? . = .... 331 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Edward the Second. 1307—1327 383 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Edward the Third. 1327—1347 397 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Peasant Revolt. 1347—1381 430 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Richard the Second. 1381 — 1400 489 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The House op Lancaster. 1399—1422 523 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Wars of the Roses. 1422—1461 548
 
 BOOK 1 
 
 EARLY ENGLAND 
 
 449—1071.
 
 AUTHOEITIES FOR BOOK: I. 
 
 (449—1071.) 
 
 For the conquest of Britain by the English our authorities are 
 scant and imperfect. The only extant British account is the " Epis- 
 tola" of Gildas, a work written probably about a.d. 560. The style 
 of Gildas is ditfuse and inflated, but his book is of great value in 
 the light it throws on the state of the island at that time, and as 
 giving at its close what is probably the native story of the conquest 
 of Kent. This is the only part of the struggle of which we have any 
 record from the side of the conquered. The English conquerors, on 
 the other hand, have left jottings of their conquest of Kent, Sussex, 
 and Wessex in the curious annals which form the opening of the 
 compilation now known as the "English" or "Anglo-Saxon Chroni- 
 cle," annals which are undoubtedly historic, though with a slight 
 mythical intermixture. For the history of the English conquest of 
 mid-Britain or the Eastern Coast we possess no written materials 
 from either side ; and a fragment of the Annals of Northumbria 
 embodied in the later compilation ("Historia Britonum") which 
 bears the name of Nennius alone throws light on the conquest of 
 the North. 
 
 From these inadequate materials however Dr. Guest has suc- 
 ceeded by a wonderful combination of historical and archaeological 
 knowledge in constructing a narrative of the conquest of Southern 
 and Southwestern Britain which must serve as the starting-point 
 for all future inquirers. This narrative, so far as it goes, has served 
 as the basis of the account given in my text ; and I can only trust 
 that it may soon be embodied in some more accessible form than 
 that of a series of papers in the Transactions of the Archteologicrd 
 Institute. In a like way though Kemble's "Saxons in England" 
 and Sir F. Palgrave's " History of the English Commonwealth" (i' 
 read with caution) contain much that is worth notice, our know! 
 edge of the primitive constitution of the English people and th 
 changes introduced into it since their settlement in Britain must 
 be mainly drawn from the "Constitutional History" of Professoj 
 Stubbs. In my earlier book I had not the advantage of aid from 
 this invaluable work, which was then unpublished ; in the present 
 I do little more than follow it in all constitutional questions as far 
 as it has at present gone. 
 
 Bajda's "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum," a work of 
 which I have spoken in my text, is the primary authority for the 
 history of the Northumbrian overlordship which followedthe Con- 
 quest. It is by co{)ioiis insertions from Baxla tliat the meagre reg- 
 nal and episcopal annals of the West Saxons have been brought to 
 the shape in which they at present appear in the part of the English
 
 12 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 Chronicle which concerns this period. The life of Wilfrid by Eddi, 
 with those of Cuthbert by an anonymous contemporary and by 
 Ba?da himself, throw great light on the religious and intellectual 
 condition of the North at the time of its supremacy. But with the 
 fall of Nortlmmbria we pass into a period of historical dearth. A 
 few incidents of Mercian history are preserved among the meagre 
 annals of Wessex in the English Chronicle : but for the most part 
 we are thrown upon later writers, especially Henry of Huntingdon 
 and William of Malmesbury, who, though authors of the twelfth 
 century, had access to older materials which are now lost. A little 
 ma}^ be gleaned from biographies such as that of Guthlac of Crow- 
 laud ; but the letters of Boniface and Alcwine, which have been 
 edited by Jaff e in his series of " Monumeuta Germanica, " form the 
 most valuable contemporary materials for this period. 
 
 From the rise of Wessex our history rests mainly on the English 
 Chronicle. The earlier part of this work, as we have said, is a 
 compilation, and consists of (1) Annals of the Conquest of South 
 Britain, and (2) Short Notices of the Kings and Bishops of Wessex 
 expanded by copious insertions from Ba^da, and after the end of 
 his work by brief additions from some northern sources. These 
 materials may have been thrown together into their present form in 
 Alfred's time as a preface to the far fuller annals which begin with 
 the reign of ^thelwulf, and which widen into a great contemporary 
 liistory when they reach that of Alfred himself. After Alfred's 
 day the Chronicle varies much in value. Through the reign of 
 Eadward the Elder it is copious, and a Mercian Chronicle is im- 
 bedded in it : it then dies down into a series of scant and jejune 
 entries, broken however with grand battle-songs, till the reign of 
 ..ajlthelred when its fulness returns. 
 
 Outside the Chronicle we encounter a great and valuable mass of 
 historical material for the age of JElfred and his successors. The 
 life of Alfred which bears the name of Asser, puzzling as it is in 
 some ways, is probably really Asser's work, and certainly of con- 
 temporary authority. The Latin rendering of the English Chronicle 
 which bears the name of ^thelweard adds a little to our knowledge 
 of this time. The Laws, which form the base of our constitutional 
 knowledge of this period, fall, as has been well pointed out by Mr. 
 Freeman, into two classes. Those of Eadward, ^thelstan, Ead- 
 mund, and Eadgar, are like the earlier laws of ^thelberht and Ine, 
 " mainly of the nature of amendments of custom." Those of Alfred, 
 ^ithelred, Cnut, with those which bear the name of Eadward the 
 Confessor, "aspire to the character of Codes." They are printed in 
 Mr. Tliorpe's "Ancient Laws and Institutes of England," but the 
 extracts given by Professor Stubbs in his "Select Charters" contain 
 all that directly bears on our constitutional growth. A vast mass 
 of Charters and other documents belonging to this period has been 
 collected by Kemble in his "Codex Diplomaticus -^vi Saxonici," 
 and some are added by Mr. Thorpe in his "Diplomatarium Anglo- 
 Saxonicum." Duustan's biograxjhies have been collected and edited 
 by Professor Stubbs in the series published by the Master of the 
 Rolls. 
 
 In the period which follows the accession of ^thelred we are 
 still aided by these collections of royal Laws and Charters, and the
 
 AUTHORITIES. 13 
 
 English Chronicle becomes of great importance. Its various copies 
 indeed differ so much in tone and information from one another 
 that they may to some extent be looked upon as distinct works, and 
 "Florence of Worcester" is probably the translation of a valuable 
 copy of the "Chronicle" which has disappeared. The translation 
 however was made in the twelfth century, ind it is colored by the 
 revival of national feeling which was characteristic of the time. 
 Of Eadward the Confessor himself we have a contemporary biog- 
 raphy (edited by Mr. Luard for the Master of the Rolls) which 
 throws gi'eat light on the personal history of the King and on hia 
 relations to the house of Godwine. 
 
 The earlier Norman traditions are preserved by Dudo of St. 
 Quentin, a verbose and confused writer, whose work was abridged 
 and continued by William of Jumieges, a contemporary of the Con- 
 queror. William's work in turn served as the basis of the " Roman 
 de Rou" composed by Wace in ithe time of Henry the Second. The 
 primary authority for the Conqueror himself is the " Gesta Williemi" 
 of his chaplain and violent partisan, William of Poitiers. For the 
 period of the invasion, in which the English authorities are meagre, 
 we have besides these the contemporary "Carmen de Bello Has- 
 tingensi, " by Guy, Bishop of Amiens, and the pictures in the 
 Bayeux Tapestry. Orderic, a writer of the twelfth century, gossipy 
 and confused but honest and well-informed, tells us much of the 
 religious movement in Normandy, and is particularly valuable and 
 detailed in his account of the period after the battle of Senlac. 
 ^mong secondary authorities for the Norman Conquest, Simeon of 
 Durham is useful for northern matters, and William of Malmesbury 
 worthy of note for his remarkable combination of Norman and Eng- 
 lish feeling. Domesday Book is of course invaluable for the Nor- 
 man settlement. The chief documents for the early history of Anjou 
 have been collected in the "Chroniques d' Anjou" published by the 
 Historical Society of France. Those which are authentic are little 
 more than a few scant annals of religious houses ; bvit light is 
 thrown on them by the contemporary French chronicles. The 
 "Gesta Comitum" is nothing but a compilation of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, in which a mass of Angevin romance as to the early story of 
 the Counts is dressed into historical shape by copious quotations 
 from these French historians. 
 
 It is possible that fresh light may be thrown on our earlier his- 
 tory when historical criticism has done more than has yet been done 
 for the materials given us by Ireland and Wales. For Welsh his- 
 tory the "Brut-y-Tywysogion" and the " Annales Cambriee" are now 
 accessible in the series published by the Master of the Rolls ; the 
 " Chronicle of Caradoc of Lancarvan" is translated by Fowel : the 
 Mabinogion, or Romantic Tales, have been published by Lady Char- 
 lotte Guest; and the Welsh Laws collected by the Record Commis- 
 sion. The importance of these, as embodying a customary code of 
 very early date, will probably be better appreciated when we possess 
 the whole of the Brehon Laws, the customary laws of Ireland, 
 which are now being issued by the Irish Laws Commission, and to 
 which attention has justly been di-awn by Sir Henry Maine ("Early 
 History of Institutions") as preserving Aryan usages of the remotest 
 antiquity.
 
 14 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 The enoniKnis mass of materials which exists for the early his- 
 tory of Ireland , various as they are in critical value, may be seen in 
 Mr' O'Curry's " Lectures ou the Materials of Ancient Irish History ;" 
 and they may be conveniently studied by the general reader in the 
 "Annals of the Four Masters," edited by Dr. O'Donovan. But this 
 is a mere compilation (though generally a faithful one) made about 
 the middle of the seventeenth century from earlier sources, two of 
 which have been published in the Rolls series. One, the "Wars of 
 the Gaedhil with the Gaill, ' is an account of the Danish wars whicli 
 may have been written in the eleventh century ; the other, the 
 "Annals of Loch Ce, " is a chronicle of Irish affairs from the end o^ 
 the Danish wars to 1590. The "Chronicon Scotorum" (in the samp 
 series) extends to the year 1150, and though composed in the seven- 
 teenth century is valuable from the learning of its author, Duald 
 Mac-Firbis. The works of Colgan are to Irish church affairs what 
 the "Annals of the Four Masters" are to Irish civil history. They 
 contain a vast collection of translations and transcriptions of early 
 saints' lives, from those of Patrick downward. Adamnan's "Life 
 of Columba" (admirably edited by Dr. Reeves) supplies some details 
 to the story of the Nortlumibrian kingdom. Among more miscel- 
 laneous works we find the " Book of Rights, " a summary of the dues 
 and rights of the several over-kings and under-kings, of much 
 earlier date probably than the Norman invasion ; and Cormac's 
 " Glossary, " attributed to the tenth century and certainly an early 
 work, from which much may be gleaned of legal and social details, 
 and something of the pagan religion of Ireland.
 
 CHAPTER r. 
 
 THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF BRITAIN. 
 449—577. 
 
 For the fatherland of the English race we must look far 
 away from England itself. In the fifth century after the 
 birth of Christ the one country which we know to have 
 borne the name of Angeln or England lay within the dis- 
 trict which is now called Sleswick, a district in the heart 
 of the peninsula that parts the Baltic from the northern 
 seas. Its pleasant pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, 
 its prim little townships looking down on inlets of purple 
 water, were then but a wild waste of heather and sand, 
 girt along the coast with a sunless woodland broken here 
 and there by meadows that crept down to the marshes and 
 the sea. The dwellers in this district, however, seem to 
 have been merely an outlying fragment of what was called 
 the Engle or English folk, the bulk of whom lay probably 
 in what is now Lower Hanover and Oldenburg. On one 
 side of them the Saxons of Westphalia held the land from 
 the Weser to the Rhine; on the other the Eastphalian Sax- 
 ons stretched away to the Elbe. North again of the frag- 
 ment of the English folk in Sleswick lay another kindred 
 tribe, the Jutes, whose name is still preserved in their 
 district of Jutland. Engle, Saxon, and Jute all belonged 
 to the same Low-German branch of the Teutonic familj^ ; 
 and at the moment when history discovers them they were 
 being drawn together by the ties of a common blood, com- 
 mon speech, common social and political institutions. 
 There is little ground indeed for believing that the throe 
 tribes looked on themselves as one people, or that we can 
 as yet apply to them, save by anticipation, the common
 
 16 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 name of Englishmen. But each of them was destined to 
 share in the conquest of the land in which we live ; and it 
 is from the union of all of them when its conquest was 
 complete that the English people has sprung. 
 
 Of the temper and life of the folk in this older England 
 we know little. But from the glimpses that we catch of 
 it when conquest had brought them to the shores of Brit- 
 ain their political and social organization must have been 
 that of the German race to which they belonged. In their 
 villages lay ready formed the social and political life which 
 is round us in the England of to-day. A belt of forest or 
 waste parted each from its fellow- villages, and within this 
 boundary or mark the "township," as the village was then 
 called from the " tun" or rough fence and trench that served 
 as its simple fortification, formed a complete and indepen- 
 dent body, though linked by ties which were strengthening 
 every day to the townships about it and the tribe of which 
 it formed a part. Its social centre was the homestead 
 where the setheling or eorl, a descendant of the first Eng- 
 lish settlers in the waste, still handed down the blood and 
 traditions of his fathers. Around this komestead or SBthel, 
 each in its little croft, stood the lowlier dwellings of free- 
 lings or ceorls, men sprung, it may be, from descendants 
 of the earliest settler who had in various ways forfeited 
 their claim to a share in the original homestead, or more 
 probably from incomers into the village who had since set- 
 tled round it and been admitted to a share in the land and 
 freedom of the community. The eorl was distinguished 
 from his fellow-villagers by his wealth and his nobler 
 blood ; he was held by them in an hereditary reverence ; 
 and it was from him and his fellow-sethelings that host- 
 leaders, whether of the village or the tribe, were chosen in 
 times of war. But this claim to precedence rested simply 
 on the free recognition of his fellow-villagers. Within 
 the township every freeman or ceorl was equal. It was 
 the freeman who was the base of village society. He was 
 the " free-necked man" whose long hair floated over a neck
 
 UJ 
 
 o 
 
 < 
 
 o 
 
 CQ 

 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 17 
 
 which had never bowed to a lord. He was the " weaponed 
 man" who alone bore spear and sword, and who alone pre- 
 served that right of self-redress or private war which in 
 such a state of society formed the main check upon lawless 
 outrage. 
 
 Among the English, as among all the races of mankind, 
 justice had originally sprung from each man's personal 
 action. There had been a time when every freeman was 
 his own avenger. But even in the earliest forms of Eng- 
 lish society of which we find traces this right of self-de- 
 fence was being modified and restricted by a growing sense 
 of public justice. The "blood-wite" or compensation in 
 money for personal wrong was the first effort of the tribe 
 as a whole to regulate private revenge. The freeman's 
 life and the freeman's limb had each on this system its 
 legal price. " Eye for eye, " ran the rough code, and " life 
 for life," or for each fair damages. We see a further step 
 toward the modern recognition of a wrong as done not to 
 the individual man but to the people at large in another 
 custom of early date. The price of life or limb was paid, 
 not by the wrong-doer to the man he wronged, but by the 
 family or house of the wrong-doer to the family or house 
 of the wronged. Order and law were thus made to rest 
 in each little group of people upon the blood-bond which 
 knit its families together ; every outrage was held to have 
 been done by all who were linked in blood to the doer of 
 it, every crime to have been done against all who were 
 linked in blood to the sufferer from it. Prom this sense 
 of the value of the family bond as a means of restraining 
 the wrong-doer by forces which the tribe as a whole did 
 not as yet possess sprang the first rude forms of English 
 justice. Each kinsman was his kinsman's keeper, 
 bound to protect him from wrong, to hinder him from 
 wrong-doing, and to suffer with him and pay for him if 
 wrong were done. So fully was this principle recognized 
 that even if any man was charged before his fellow-tribes- 
 men with crime his kinsfolk still remained in fact his sola 
 Vol. I.— 2
 
 18 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 judges; for it was by their solemn oath of his innocence 
 or his guilt that he had to stand or fall. 
 
 As the blood-bond gave its first form to English justice, 
 so it gave their first forms to English society and English 
 warfare. Kinsmen fought side by side in the hour of 
 oattle, and the feelings of honor and discipline which held 
 ^^o host together were drawn from the common duty of 
 everj' man in each little group of warriors to his house. 
 And as they fought side by side on the field, so they dwelt 
 side by side on the soil. Harling abode by Harling, and 
 Billing by Billing; and each "wick" or "ham" or "stead" 
 or " tun" took its name from the kinsmen who dwelt to- 
 gether in it. In this way the home or " ham" of the Bill- 
 ings was Billingham, and the " tun" or township of the 
 Harlings was Harlington. But in such settlements the 
 tie of blood was widened into the larger tie of land. Land 
 with the German race seems at a very early time to have 
 become everywhere the accompaniment of full freedom. 
 The freeman was strictly the free-holder, and the exercise 
 of his full rights as a free member of the comniTinity to 
 which he belonged became inseparable from the possession 
 of his " holding" in it. But property had not as yet reached 
 that stage of absolutely personal possession which the social 
 philosophy of a later time falsely regarded as its earliest 
 state. The woodland and pasture-land of an English vil- 
 lage were still undivided, and every free villager had the 
 right of turning into it his cattle or swine. The meadow- 
 land lay in like manner open and undivided from hay-har- 
 vest to spring. It was only when grass began to grow 
 afresh that the common meadow was fenced off into grass- 
 fields, one for each household in the village; and when 
 hay-harvest was over fence and division were at an end 
 again. The plough-land alone was permanently allotted 
 in equal shares both of corn-land and fallow-land to the 
 families of the freemen, though even the plough-land was 
 subject to fresh division as the number of claimants grew 
 greater or less.
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 19 
 
 It was this sharing in the common land which marked 
 off the freeman or ceorl from the iinfree man or Iset, the 
 tiller of land which another owned. As the ceorl was the 
 descendant of settlers who whether from their earlier ar- 
 rival or from kinship with the original settlers of the vil- 
 lage Tiad been admitted to a share in its land and its cor- 
 porate life, so the Iset was a descendant of later comers to 
 whom such a share was denied, or in some cases perhaps 
 of earlier dwellers from whom the laud had been wrested 
 by force of arms. In the modern sense of freedom the Iset 
 was free enough. He had house and home of his own, his 
 life and limb were as secure as the ceorl's — save as against 
 his lord ; it is probable from what we see in later laws that 
 as time went on he was recognized among the three tribes 
 as a member of the nation, summoned to the folk-moot, 
 allowed equal right at law, and called like the full free 
 man to the hosting. But he was unfree as regards lord 
 and land. He had neither part nor lot in the common land 
 of the village. The ground which he tilled he held of 
 some free man of the tribe to whom he paid rent in labor 
 or in kind. And this man was his lord. Whatever rights 
 the unfree villager might gain in the general social life of 
 his fellow- villagers, he had no rights as against his lord. 
 He could leave neither land nor lord at his will. He was 
 bound to render due service to his lord in tillage or in fight. 
 So long, however, as these services were done the land was 
 his own. His lord could not take it from him ; and he 
 was bound to give him aid and protection in exchange for 
 his services. 
 
 Far different from the position of the last was that of the 
 slave, though there is no ground for believing that the 
 slave class was other than a small one. It was a class 
 which sprang mainly from debt or crime. Famine drove 
 men to " bend their heads in the evil days for meat ;" the 
 debtor, unable to discharge his debt, flung on the ground 
 his freeman's sword and spear, took up the laborer's mat- 
 tock, and placed his head as a slave within a master's
 
 20 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, [Book I. 
 
 hands. The criminal whose kinsfolk would not make up 
 his fine became a crime-serf of the plaintiff or the king. 
 Sometimes a father pressed by need sold children and wife 
 into bondage. In any case the slave became part of the 
 live stock of his master's estate, to be willed away at death 
 with horse or ox, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as 
 his own. His children were bondsmen like himself; even 
 a freeman's children by a slave mother inherited the 
 mother's taint. " Mine is the calf that is born of my cow," 
 ran an English proverb. Slave cabins clustered round the 
 homestead of every rich landowner ; ploughman, shepherd, 
 goatherd, swineherd, oxherd and cowherd, dairymaid, barn- 
 man, soAver, hayward and woodward, were often slaves. 
 It was not indeed slavery such as we have known in mod- 
 ern times, for stripes and bonds were rare : if the slave was 
 slain it was by an angry blow, not by the lash. But his 
 master could slay him if he would ; it was but a chattel 
 the less. The slave had no place in the justice court, no 
 kinsmen to claim vengeance or guilt-fine for his wrong. If 
 a stranger slew him his lord claimed the damages; if 
 guilty of wrong-doing, " his skin paid for him" under his 
 master's lash. If he fled he might be chased like a strayed 
 beast, and when caught he might be flogged to death. If 
 the wrong-doer were a woman-slave she might be burned. 
 With the public life of the village, however, the slave had 
 nothing, the Iset in early days little, to do. In its moot, 
 the common meeting of its villagers for justice and gov- 
 ernment, a slave had no place or voice, while the Iset waa 
 originally represented by the lord whose land he tilled. 
 The life, the sovereignty of the settlement resided solely in 
 the body of the freemen whose holdings lay round the moot- 
 hill or the sacred tree where the community met from time 
 to time to deal out its own justice and to make its own 
 laws. Here new settlers were admitted to the freedom of 
 the township, and by-laws framed and headman and tith- 
 ing-man chosen for its governance. Here ploughland and 
 meadow- land were shared in due lot among the villagers,
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 21 
 
 and field and homestead passed from man to man by the 
 delivery of a turf cut from its soil. Here strife of farmer 
 with farmer was settled according to the " customs" of the 
 township as its elder men stated them, and four men were 
 chosen to follow headman or ealdorman to hundred-court 
 or war. It is with a reverence such as is stirred by the 
 sight of the head-waters of some mighty river that one 
 looks back to these village-moots of Friesland or Sleswick. 
 It was here that England learned to be a " mother of Par- 
 liaments." It was in these tiny knots of farmers that the 
 men from whom Englishmen were to spring learned the 
 worth of public opinion, of public discussion, the worth of 
 the agreement, the "common sense," the general convic- 
 tion to which discussion leads, as of the laws which derive 
 their force from being expressions of that general convic- 
 tion. A humorist of our own day has laughed at Parlia- 
 ments as "talking shops," and the laugh has been echoed 
 by some who have taken humor for argument. But talk 
 is persuasion, and persuasion is force, the one force which 
 can sway freemen to deeds such as those which have made 
 England what she is. The " talk" of the village moot, the 
 strife and judgment of men giving freely their own rede 
 and setting it as freely aside for what they learn to be the 
 wiser rede of other men, is the groundwork of English 
 history. 
 
 Small therefore as it might be, the township or village 
 was thus the primary and perfect type of English life, do- 
 mestic, social, and political. All that England has been 
 since lay there. But changes of which we know nothing 
 had long before the time at which our history opens 
 grouped these little commonwealths together in larger com- 
 munities, whether we name them Tribe, People, or Folk. 
 The ties of race and kindred were no doubt drawn tightei' 
 by the needs of war. The organization of each Folk, as 
 such, sprang in all likelihood mainly from war, from a 
 common greed of conquest, a common need of defence. 
 Its form at any rate was wholly military. The Folk-moot
 
 23 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 was in fact the war-host, the gathering of every freeman 
 of the tribe in arms. The head of the Folk, a head who 
 existed only so long as war went on, was the leader whom 
 the host chose to command it. Its Witenagemote or meet- 
 ing of wise men was the host's council of war, the gather- 
 ing of those ealdormen who had brought the men of their 
 villages to the field. The host was formed by levies from 
 the various districts of the tribe; the larger of which prob- 
 ably owed their name of " hundreds" to the hundred war- 
 riors which each originally sent to it. In historic times, 
 however, the regularity of such a military organization, if 
 it ever existed, had passed away, and the quotas varied 
 with the varying customs of each district. But men, 
 whether many or few, were still due from each district to 
 the host, and a cry of war at once called town-reeve and 
 hundred-reeve with their followers to the field. 
 
 The military organization of the tribe thus gave from 
 the first its form to the civil organization. But the pecul- 
 iar shape which its civil organization assumed was deter- 
 mined by a principle familiar to the Germanic races and 
 destined to exercise a vast influence on the future of man- 
 kind. This was the principle of representation. The four 
 or ten villagers who followed the reeve of each township 
 to the general muster of the hundred were held to represent 
 the whole body of the township from whence they came. 
 Their voice was its voice, their doing its doing, their pledge 
 its pledge. The hundred-moot, a moot which was made 
 by this gathering of the representatives of the townships 
 that lay within its bounds, thus became at once a court of 
 appeal from the moots of each separate village as well as 
 of arbitration in dispute between township and township. 
 The judgment of graver crimes and of life or death fell to 
 its share , while it necessarily possessed the same right of 
 law-making for the hundred that the village-moot possessed 
 for each separate village. And as hundred-moot stood 
 above town-moot, so above the hundred-moot stood the 
 Folk-moot, the general muster of the people in arms, at
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 33 
 
 once war-host and highest law-court and general Parlia- 
 ment of the tribe. But whether in Folk-moot or hundred- 
 moot, the principle of representation was preserved. In 
 both the constitutional forms, the forms of deliberation and 
 decision, were the same. In each the priests proclaimed 
 silence, the ealdormen of higher blood spoke, groups of 
 freemen from each township stood round, shaking their 
 spears in assent, clashing shields in applause, settling mat- 
 ters in the end by loud shouts of " Aye" or " Nay." 
 
 Of the social or the industrial life of our fathers in this 
 older England we know less than of their political life. 
 But there is no ground for believing them to have been 
 very different in these respects from the other German 
 peoples who were soon to overwhelm the Roman world. 
 Though their border nowhere touched the border of the 
 Empire they were far from being utterly strange to its 
 civilization. Roman commerce indeed reached the shores 
 of the Baltic, and we have abundant evidence that the arts 
 and refinement of Rome were brought into contact with 
 these earlier Englishmen. Brooches, sword-belts, and 
 shield-bosses which have been found in Sleswick, and 
 which can be dated not later than the close of the third 
 century, are clearly either of Roman make or closely mod- 
 elled on Roman metal-work. The vessels of twisted glass 
 which we know to have been in use at the tables of Eng- 
 lish and Saxon chieftains came, we can hardly doubt, from 
 Roman glass-works. Discoveries of Roman coins in Sles- 
 wick peat-mosses afford a yet more conclusive proof of 
 direct intercourse with the Empire. But apart from these 
 outer influences the men of the three tribes were far from 
 being mere savages. They were fierce warriors, but they 
 were also busy fishers and tillers of the soil, as proud of 
 their skill in handling plough and mattock or steering the 
 rude boat with which they hunted walrus and whale as of 
 their skill in handling sword and spear. They were hard 
 drinkers, no doubt, as they were hard toilers, and the " ale- 
 feast" was the centre of their social life. But coarse as
 
 24 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 the revel might seem to modern eyes, the scene within the 
 timbered hall which rose in the midst of their villages was 
 often Homeric in its simplicity and dignity. Queen or 
 eorl's wife with a train of maidens bore ale-bowl or mead- 
 bowl round the hall from the high settle of king or eal- 
 dorman in the midst to the mead benches ranged around 
 its walls, while the gleeman sang the hero-songs of his 
 race. Dress and arms showed traces of a love of art and 
 beauty, none the less real that it was rude and incomplete. 
 Rings, amulets, ear-rings, neck pendants, proved in their 
 workmanship the deftness of the goldsmith's art. Cloaks 
 were often fastened with golden buckles of curious and ex- 
 quisite form, set sometimes with rough jewels and inlaid 
 with enamel. The bronze boar-crest on the warrior's hel- 
 met, the intricate adornment of the warrior's shield, tell 
 like the honor in which the smith was held their tale of 
 industrial art. It is only in the English potter}-', hand- 
 made, and marked with coarse zigzag patterns, that we 
 find traces of utter rudeness. 
 
 The religion of these men was the same as that of the 
 rest of the German peoples. Christianity had by this time 
 brought about the conversion of the Roman Empire, but 
 it had not penetrated as yet among the forests of the north. 
 The common God of the English people was Woden, the 
 war-god, the guardian of ways and boundaries, to whom 
 his worshippers attributed the invention of letters, and 
 whom every tribe held to be the first ancestor of its kings. 
 Our own names for the days of the week still recall to us 
 the gods whom our fathers worshipped in their German 
 homeland. Wednesday is Woden's-day, as Thursday is 
 the day of Thunder, the god of air and storm and rain. 
 Friday is Frea's-day, the deity of peace and joy and fruit- 
 fulness, whose emblems, borne aloft by dancing maidens, 
 brought increase to every field and stall they visited. Sat- 
 urday commemorates an obscure god Saetere ; Tuesday the 
 dark god, Tiw, to meet whom was death. Eostre, the god 
 of the dawn or of the spring, lends his name to the Chris-
 
 CHAP. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 25 
 
 tian festival of the Resurrection. Behind these floated the 
 dim shapes of an older mythology; "Wyrd," the death- 
 goddess, whose memory lingered long in the "Weird" 
 of northern superstition; or the Shield-maidens, the 
 " mighty women" who, an old rhyme tells us, " wrought on 
 the battle-field their toil and hurled the thrilling javelins." 
 Nearer to the popular fancy lay deities of wood and fell or 
 hero-gods of legend and song ; Nicor, the water-sprite who 
 survives in our nixies and " Old Nick ;" Weland, the forger' 
 of weighty shields and sharp-biting swords, who found a 
 later home in the " Weyland's smithy" of Berkshire ; Egil, 
 the hero archer, whose legend is one with that of Cloudesly 
 or Tell. A nature-worship of this sort lent itself ill to the 
 purposes of a priesthood ; and though a priestly class ex- 
 isted it seems at no time to have had much weight among 
 Englishmen. As each freeman was his own judge and 
 his own lawmaker, so he was his own house-priest ; and 
 English worship lay commonly in the sacrifice which the 
 house-father offered to the gods of his hearth. 
 
 It is not indeed in Woden-worship or in the worship of 
 the older gods of flood and fell that we must look for the 
 real religion of our fathers. The Song of Beowulf, though 
 the earliest of English poems, is as we have it now a poem 
 of the eighth century, the work it may be of some Eng- 
 lish missionary of the days of Baeda and Boniface, who 
 gathered in the very homeland of his race the legends of 
 its earlier prime. But the thin veil of Christianity which 
 he has flung over it fades away as we follow the hero- 
 legend of our fathers ; and the secret of their moral tem- 
 per, of their conception of life breathes through every line. 
 Life was built with then not on the hope of a hereafter, 
 but on the proud self-consciousness of noble souls. " I have 
 this folk ruled these fifty winters," sings a hero-king as 
 he sits death-smitten beside the dragon's mound. " Lives 
 there no folk-king of kings about me — not any one of them 
 — dare in the war-strife Avelcome my onset ! Time's change 
 and chances I have abided, held my own fairly, sought not
 
 20 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I 
 
 to snare men; oath never sware I falsely against right. 
 So for all this may I glad be at heart now, sick tliough I 
 sit here, wounded with death-wounds!" In men of such 
 a temper, strong with the strength of manhood and full of 
 the vigor and the love of life, the sense of its shortness and 
 of the mystery of it all woke chords of a pathetic poetr\- 
 " Soon will it be," ran the warning rhyme, "that sickm 
 or sword-blade shear thy strength from thee, or the tii. 
 ring thee, or the flood whelm thee, or the sword grip thee, 
 or arrow hit thee, or age o'ertake thee, and thine eye's 
 brightness sink down in darkness." Strong as he might 
 be, man struggled in vain with the doom that encompassed 
 him, that girded his life with a thousand perils and broke 
 it at so short a span. "To us," cries Beowulf in his last 
 fight, " to us it shall be as our Weird betides, that Weird 
 that is every man's lord!" But the sadness with which 
 these Englishmen fronted the mysteries of life and death 
 liad nothing in it of the unmanly despair which bids men 
 eat and drink for to-morrow they die. Death leaves man 
 man and master of his fate. The thought of good fame, 
 of manhood, is stronger than the thought of doom. " Well 
 shall a man do when in the strife he minds but of winning 
 longsome renown, nor for his life cares!" "Death is bet- 
 ter than life of shame!" cries Beowulf's sword-fellow. 
 Beowulf himself takes up his strife with the fiend, " go the 
 weird as it will." If life is short, the more cause to work 
 bravely till it is over, " Each man of us shall abide the 
 end of his life-work; let him that may work, work his 
 doomed deeds ere death come !" 
 
 The energy of these peoples found vent in a restlessness 
 which drove them to take part in the general attack of the 
 German race on the Empire of Rome. For busy tillers 
 and busy fishers as Englishmen were, they were at heart 
 fighters; and their world was a world of war. Tribe 
 warred with tribe, and village with village ; even within 
 the township itself feuds parted household from household, 
 and passions of hatred and vengeance were handed on from
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071, 27 
 
 father to son. Their mood was above all a mood of fight- 
 ing men, venturesome, self-reliant, proud, with a dash of 
 hardness and cruelty in it, but ennobled by the virtues 
 which spring from war, by personal courage and loyalty 
 to plighted word, by a high and stern sense of manhood 
 and the worth of man. A grim joy in hard fighting was 
 already a characteristic of the race. War was the English- 
 man's "shield-play" and "sword-game;" the gleeman's 
 verse took fresh fire as he sang of the rush of the host and 
 the crash of its shield-line. Their arms and weapons, hel- 
 met and mailshirt, tall spear and javelin, sword and seax, 
 the short broad dcsgger that hung at each warrior's girdle, 
 gathered to them much of the legend and the art which 
 gave color and poetry to the life of Englishmen. Each 
 sword had its name like a living thing. And next to their 
 love of war came their love of the sea. EveryAvhere 
 throughout Beowulf's song, as everywhere throughout the 
 life that it pictures, we catch the salt whiff of the sea. 
 The Englishman was as proud of his sea-craft as of his 
 war-craft; sword in teeth he plunged into the sea to meet 
 walrus and sea-lion; he told of his whale-chase amid the 
 icy waters of the north. Hardly less than his love for the 
 sea was the love he bore to the ship that traversed it. In 
 the fond playfulness of English verse the ship was " the 
 wave-floater," "the foam -necked," "like a bird" as it 
 skimmed the wave-crest, " like a swan" as its curved prow 
 breasted the " swan-road" of the sea. 
 
 Their passion for the sea marked out for them their part 
 •n the general movement of the German nations. While 
 jroth and Lombard were slowly advancing over mountain 
 and plain the boats of the Englishmen pushed faster over 
 the sea. Bands of English rovers, outdriven by stress of 
 fight, had long found a home there, and lived as the}^ could 
 b}' sack of vessel or coast. Chance has preserved for us in 
 a Sleswick peat-bog one of the war-keels of these early 
 pirates. The boat is flat-bottomed, seventy feet long and 
 eight or nine feet wide, its sides of oak boards fastened
 
 28 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 with bark ropes and iron bolts. Fifty oars drove it over 
 the waves with a freight of warriors whose arms, axes, 
 swords, lauces, and knives were found heaped together in 
 its hold. Like the galleys of the Middle Ages such boats 
 could only creep cautiously along from harbor to harbor in 
 rough weather ; but in smooth water their swiftness fitted 
 them admirably for the piracy by which the men of these 
 tribes were already making themselves dreaded. Its flat 
 bottom enabled them to beach the vessel on any fitting 
 coast ; and a step on shore at once transformed the boat- 
 men into a war-band. From the first the daring of the 
 English race broke out in the secrecy and suddenness of 
 the pirates' swoop, in the fierceness of their onset, in the 
 careless glee with which they seized either sword or oar. 
 "Foes are they," sang a Roman poet of the time, "fierce 
 beyond other foes and cunning as they are fierce ; the sea 
 is their school of war and the storm their friend ; they are 
 sea-wolves that prey on the pillage of the world !" 
 
 Of the three English tribes the Saxons la}^ nearest to the 
 Empire, and they were naturally the first to touch the Ro- 
 man world ; before the close of the third century indeed 
 their boats appeared in such force in the English Channel 
 as to call for a special fleet to resist them. The piracy of 
 our fathers had thus brought them to the shores of a land 
 which, dear as it is now to Englishmen, had not as yet 
 been trodden by English feet. This land was Britain. 
 When the Saxon boats touched its coast the island was the 
 westernmost province of the Roman Empire. In the fifty- 
 fifth year before Christ a descent of Julius Csesar revealed 
 it to the Roman world; and a century after Ceesar's land- 
 ing the Emperor Claudius undertook its conquest. The 
 work was swiftly carried out. Before thirty years were 
 over the bulk of the island had passed beneath the Roman 
 sway and the Roman frontier had been carried to the Firths 
 of Forth and of Clyde. The work of civilization followed 
 fast on the work of the sword. To the last indeed the dis- 
 tance of the island from the seat of empire left her less
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 29 
 
 Romanized than any other province of the west. The bulk 
 of the population scattered over the country seem in spite 
 of imperial edicts to have clung to their old law as to their 
 old language, and to have retained some traditional alle- 
 giance to their native chiefs. But Roman civilization 
 rested rnainly on city life, and in Britain as elsewhere the 
 city was thoroughly Roman. In towns such as Lincoln 
 or York, governed by their own municipal officers, guarded 
 by massive walls, and linked together by a network of 
 magnificent roads which reached from one end of the island 
 to the other, manners, language, political life, all were of 
 Rome. 
 
 For three hundred years the Roman sword secured order 
 and peace without Britain and within, and with peace and 
 order came a wide and rapid prosperity. Commerce 
 sprang up in ports among which London held the first 
 rank ; agriculture flourished till Britain became one of the 
 corn-exporting countries of the world; the mineral re- 
 sources of the province were explored in the tin mines of 
 Cornwall, the lead mines of Somerset or Northumberland, 
 and the iron mines of the Forest of Dean. But evils which 
 sapped the strength of the whole Empire told at last on 
 the province of Britain. Wealth and population alike de- 
 clined under a crushing system of taxation, under restric- 
 tions which fettered industry, under a despotism which 
 crushed out all local independence. And with decay 
 within came danger from without. For centuries past 
 the Roman frontier had held back the barbaric world be- 
 yond it, the Parthian of the Euphrates, the Numidian of 
 the African desert, the German of the Danube or the Rhine. 
 In Britain a wall drawn from Xewcastle to Carlisle bridled 
 the British tribes, the Picts as they were called, who had 
 been sheltered from Roman conquest by the fastnesses of 
 the Highlands. It was this mass of savage barbarism 
 which broke upon the Empire as it sank into decay. In 
 its western dominions the triumph of these assailants was 
 complete. The Franks conquered and colonized Gaul.
 
 30 niSTOEY OF TUE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 The West-Goths conquered and colonized Spain. The 
 Vandals founded a kingdom in Africa. The Burgundians 
 encamped in the border-land between Italy and the Rhone. 
 The East- Goths ruled at last in Italy itself. 
 
 It was to defend Italy against the Goths that Rome in 
 the opening of the fifth century withdrew her legions from 
 Britain, and from that moment the province was left to 
 struggle unaided against the Picts. Nor were these its 
 only enemies. While marauders from Ireland, whose in- 
 habitants then bore the name of Scots, harried the west, 
 the boats of Saxon pirates, as we have seen, were swarm- 
 ing ojff its eastern and southern coasts. For forty years 
 Britain held bravely out against these assailants ; but civil 
 strife broke its powers of resistance, and its rulers fell back 
 at last on the fatal policy by which the Empire invited its 
 doom while striving to avert it, the policy of matching 
 barbarian against barbarian. By the usual promises of 
 land and pay a band of warriors was drawn for this pur- 
 pose from Jutland in 449 with two ealdormen, Hengest 
 and Horsa, at their head. If by English history we mean 
 the history of Englishmen in the land which from that 
 time they made their own, it is with this landing of Hen- 
 gest's war-band that English history begins. They landed 
 on the shores of the Isle of Thanet at a spot known since 
 as Ebbsfleet. No spot can be so sacred to Englishmen as 
 the spot which first felt the tread of English feet. There 
 is little to catch the eye in Ebbsfleet itself, a mere lift of 
 ground with a few gray cottages dotted over it, cut off 
 nowadays from the sea by a reclaimed meadow and a sea 
 wall. But taken as a whole the scene has a wild beauty 
 of its own. To the right the white curve of Ramsgate 
 cliffs looks down on the crescent of Pegwell Bay ; far away 
 to the left across gray marsh-levels where smoke-wreaths 
 mark the site of Richborough and Sandwich the coast-line 
 trends dimly toward Deal. Everything in the character 
 of the spot confirms the national tradition which fixed here 
 the landing-place of our fathers ; for the physical changes
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 419—1071. 31 
 
 of the country since the fifth century have told little on its 
 main features. At the time of Hengest's landing a broad 
 inlet of sea parted Thanet from the mainland of Britain; 
 and through tliis inlet the pirate boats would naturally 
 come sailing with a fair wind to what was then the gravel- 
 spit of Ebbsfleet. 
 
 The work for which the mercenaries had been hired was 
 quickly done ; and the Picts are said to have been scattered 
 to the winds in a battle fought on the eastern coast of Brit- 
 ain. But danger from the Pict was hardly over when 
 danger came from the Jutea themselves. Their fellow- 
 pirates must have flocked from the Channel to their set- 
 tlement in Thanet; the inlet between Thanet and the 
 mainland was crossed, and the Englishmen won their first 
 victory over the Britons in forcing their passage of the 
 Medway at the village of Aylesford. A second defeat at 
 the passage of the Cray drove the British forces in terror 
 upon London ; but the ground was soon won back again, 
 and it was not till 465 that a series of petty conflicts which 
 had gone on along the shores of Thanet made way for a 
 decisive struggle at Wippedsfleet. Here however the over- 
 throw was so terrible that from this moment all hope of 
 saving Northern Kent seems to have been abandoned, and 
 it was only on its southern shore that the Britons held their 
 ground. Ten years later, in 475, the long contest was over, 
 and with the fall of Lymne, whose broken walls look from 
 the slope to which they cling over the great flat of Rom- 
 ney Marsh, the work of the first English conqueror was 
 done. 
 
 The warriors of Hengesthad been drawn from the Jutes, 
 the smallest of the three tribes who were to blend in the 
 English people. But the greed v>f plunder now told on the 
 great tribe which stretched from the Elbe to the Rhine, 
 and in 477 Saxon invaders were seen pushing slowly 
 along the strip of land which lay westward of Kent between 
 the weald and the sea. Nowhere has the physical aspect 
 of the country more utterly changed. A vast sheet of
 
 32 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 scrub, woodland, and waste which then bore the name of 
 the Andredsweald stretched for more than a hundred miles 
 from the borders of Kent to the Hampshire Downs, ex- 
 tending northward almost to the Thames and leaving only 
 a thin strip of coast which now bears the name of Sussex 
 between its southern edge and the sea. This coast was 
 guarded by a fortress which occupied the spot now called 
 Pevensey, the future landing-place of the Norman Con- 
 queror; and the fall of this fortress of Anderida in 491 es- 
 tablished the kingdom of the South- Saxons. " ^lle and 
 Cissa beset Anderida," so ran the pitiless record of the 
 conquerors, " and slew all that were therein, nor was there 
 afterward one Briton left." But Hengest and -(file's 
 men had touched hardly more than the coast, and the true 
 conquest of Southern Britain was reserved for a fresh band 
 of Saxons, a tribe known as the Gewissas, who landed un- 
 der Cerdic and Cynric on the shores of the Southampton 
 Water, and pushed in 495 to the great downs or Gwent 
 where Winchester offered so rich a prize. Nowhere was 
 the strife fiercer than here; and it was not till 519 that a 
 decisive victory at Charford ended the struggle for the 
 " Gwent" and set the crown of the West-Saxons on the 
 head of Cerdic. But the forest-belt around it checked any 
 further advance ; and only a year after Charford the Brit- 
 ons rallied under a new leader, Arthur, and threw back 
 the invaders as they pressed westward through the Dorset- 
 shire woodlands in a great overthrow at Badbury or Mount 
 Badon. The defeat was followed by a long pause in the 
 Saxon advance from the southern coast, but while the Ge- 
 wissas rested a series of victories whose history is lost was 
 giving to men of the same Saxon tribe the coast district 
 north of the mouth of the Thames. It is probable however 
 that the strength of Camulodunum, the predecessor of our 
 modern Colchester, made the progress of these assailants 
 a slow and doubtful one ; and even when its reduction en- 
 abled the East- Saxons to occupy the territory to which they 
 have given their name of Essex a line of woodland which
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 33 
 
 has left its traces in Epping and Hainault Forests checked 
 their further advance into the island. 
 
 Though seventy years had passed since the victorj^ of 
 Aylesford only the outskirts of Britain were won. The 
 invaders were masters as yet but of Kent, Sussex, Hamp- 
 shire, and Essex. From London to St. David's Head, from 
 the Andredsweald to the Firth of Forth the country still 
 remained unconquered : and there was little in the years 
 which followed Arthur's triumph to herald that onset of 
 the invaders which was soon to make Britain England. 
 Till now its assailants had been drawn from two only of 
 the three tribes whom we saw dwelling by the northern 
 sea, from the Saxons and the Jutes. But the main work 
 of conquest was to be done by the third, by the tribe which 
 bore that name of Engle or Englishmen which was to ab- 
 sorb that of Saxon or Jute and to stamp itself on the people 
 which sprang from the union of the conquerors as on the 
 land that they won. The Engle had probabl}' been settling 
 for years along the coast of Northumbria and in the great 
 district which was cut off from the rest of Britain by the 
 Wash and the Fens, the later East-Anglia. But it was 
 not till the moment we have reached that the line of de- 
 fences which had hitherto held the invaders at bay was 
 turned by their appearance in the Humber and the Trent. 
 This great river-line led like a highway into the heart of 
 Britain; and civil strife seems to have broken the strength 
 of British resistance. But of the incidents of this final 
 struggle we know nothing. One part of the English force 
 marched from the Humber over the Yorkshire wolds to 
 found what was called the kingdom of the Deirans. Un- 
 der the Empire political power had centred in the district 
 between the Humber and the Roman wall; York was the 
 capital of Roman Britain ; villas of rich landowners studded 
 the valley of the Ouse ; and the bulk of the garrison main- 
 tained in the island lay camped along its northern border. 
 But no record tells us how Yorkshire was won, or how the 
 Engle made themselves masters of the uplands about Lin- 
 VoL. L— 3
 
 34 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 coin. It is only by their later settlements that we follow 
 their march into the heart of Britain. Seizing the valley 
 of the Don and whatever breaks there were in the wood- 
 land that then filled the space between the Humber and the 
 Trent, the Englo followed the curve of the latter river, and 
 struck along the line of its tributary the Soar. Here round 
 the Roman RatsB, the predecessor of our Leicester, settled 
 a tribe known as the Middle-English, while a small body 
 pushed further southward, and under the name of " South- 
 Engle" occupied the oolitic upland that forms our present 
 Northamptonshire. But the mass of the invaders seem to 
 have held to the line of the Trent and to have pushed west- 
 ward to its head-waters. Repton, Lichfield, and Tam- 
 worth mark the country of these western Englishmen, 
 whose older name was soon lost in that of Mercians, or 
 Men of the March. Their settlement was in fact a new 
 march or borderland between conqueror and conquered; 
 for here the impenetrable fastness of the Peak, the mass 
 of Cannock Chase, and the broken country of Staffordshire 
 enabled the Briton to make a fresh and desperate stand. 
 
 It was probably this conquest of Mid-Britain bj' the 
 Engle that roused the West- Saxons to a new advance. 
 For thirty years they had rested inactive within the limits 
 of the Gwent, but in 562 their capture of the hill-fort of 
 Old Sarum threw open the reaches of the Wiltshire downs 
 and a march of King Cuthwulf on the Thames made them 
 masters in 571 of the districts which now form Oxfordshire 
 and Berkshire. Pushing along the upper valley of Avon 
 to a new battle at Barbury Hill they swooped at last from 
 their uplands on the rich prey that lay along the Severn. 
 Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath, cities which had leagued 
 under their British kings to resist this onset, became in 
 577 the spoil of an English victory at Deorham, and the 
 line of the great western river lay open to the arms of the 
 conquerors. Once the West^^axons penetrated to the bor- 
 ders of Chester, and Uriconinm, a town beside the Wrekin 
 which has been recently brought again to light, went up
 
 Chap. 1.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 35 
 
 in flames. The raid ended in a crushing defeat which 
 broke the West-Saxon strength, but a British poet in 
 verses still left to us sings piteoustythe death-song of Uri- 
 conium, "the white town in the valley," the town of white 
 stone gleaming among the green woodlands. The torch 
 of the foe had left it a heap of blackened ruins where the 
 singer wandered through halls he had known in happier 
 days, the halls of its chief Kynd5dan, " without fire, with- 
 out light, without song," their stillness broken only by the 
 eagle's scream, the eagle who "has swallowed fresh drink, 
 heart's blood of Kyndylan the fair."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ENGLISH KINGDOMS. 
 577—796. 
 
 With the victory of Deorham the conquest of the bulk 
 of Britain was complete. Eastward of a line which may 
 be roughly drawn along the moorlands of Northumber- 
 land and Yorkshire through Derbyshire and the Forest of 
 Arden to the Lower Severn, and thence by Mendip to the 
 sea, the island had passed into English hands. Britain 
 had in the main become England. And within this new 
 England a Teutonic society was settled on the wreck of 
 Rome. So far as the conquest had yet gone it had been 
 complete. Not a Briton remained as subject or slave on 
 English ground. Sullenly, inch by inch, the beaten men 
 drew back from the land which their conquerors had won ; 
 and eastward of the border line which the English sword 
 had drawn all was now purely English. 
 
 It is this which distinguishes the conquest of Britain 
 from that of the other provinces of Rome. The conquest 
 of Gaul by the Franks or that of Italy by the Lombards 
 proved little more than a forcible settlement of the one or 
 the other among tributary subjects who were destined in 
 a long course of ages to absorb their conquerors. French 
 is the tongue, not of the Frank, but of the Gaul whom he 
 overcame ; and the fair hair of the Lombard is all but un- 
 known in Lombardy. But the English conquest of Brit- 
 ain up to the point which we have reached was a sheer 
 dispossession of the people whom the English conquered. 
 It was not that Englishmen, fxcrce and cruel as at times 
 they seem to have been, were more fierce or more cruel 
 than other Germans who attacked the Empire; nor have
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 37 
 
 we any ground for saying that they, unlike the Burgun- 
 dian or the Frank, were utterly strange to the Roman 
 civilization. Saxon mercenaries are found as well as 
 Frank mercenaries in the pay of Rome ; and the presence 
 of Saxon vessels in the Channel for a century before the 
 descent on Britain must have familiarized its invaders 
 with what civilization was to be found in the Imperial 
 provinces of the West. What really made the difference 
 between the fate of Britain and that of the rest of the Ro- 
 man world was the stubborn courage of the British them- 
 selves. In all the world-wide struggle between Rome and 
 the German peoples no land was so stubbornly fought for 
 or so hardly won. In Gaul no native resistance met 
 Frank or Visigoth save from the brave peasants of Brit- 
 anny and Auvergne. No popular revolt broke out against 
 the rule of Odoacer or Theodoric in Italy. But in Britain 
 the invader was met by a courage almost equal to his own. 
 Instead of quartering themselves quietly, like their fel- 
 lows abroad, on subjects who were glad to buy peace by 
 obedience and tribute, the English had to make every inch 
 of Britain their own by hard fighting. 
 
 This stubborn resistance was backed too by natural ob- 
 stacles of the gravest kind. Everywhere in the Roman 
 world the work of the conquerors was aided by the civili- 
 zation of Rome. Vandal or Frank marched along Roman 
 highways over ground cleared by the Roman axe and 
 crossed river or ravine on the Roman bridge. It was so 
 doubtless with the English conquerors of Britain. But 
 though Britain had long been Roman, her distance from 
 the seat of empire left her less Romanized than any other 
 province of the West. Socially the Roman civilization 
 had made little impression on any but the townsfolk, and 
 the material civilization of the island was yet more back- 
 ward than its social. Its natural defences threw obstacles 
 in its invaders' way. In the forest belts which stretched 
 over vast spaces of country they found barriers which in 
 all cases checked their advance and in some cases finally
 
 "8 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book 1. 
 
 stopped it. The Keutishmen and the South Saxons were 
 brought utterly to a standstill by the Andredsweald. The 
 East-Saxons could never pierce the woods of their western 
 border. The Fens proved impassable to the Northfolk 
 and the Southfolk of East-Anglia. It was only after a 
 long and terrible struggle that the West-Saxons could 
 hew their way through the forests which sheltered the 
 " Gwent" of the southern coast. Their attempt to break 
 out of the circle of woodland which girt in the downs was 
 in fact fruitless for thirty years ; and in the height of their 
 later power they were thrown back from the forests of 
 Cheshire. 
 
 It is only by realizing in this way the physical as well 
 as the moral circumstances of Britain that Ave can under- 
 stand the character of its earlier conquest. Field by field, 
 town b}' town, forest by forest, the land was won. And 
 as each bit of ground was torn away by the stranger, the 
 Briton sullenly withdrew from it only to turn doggedly 
 and fight for the next. There is no need to believe that 
 the clearing of the land meant so impossible a thing as the 
 general slaughter of the men who held it. Slaughter 
 there was, no doubt, on the battle-field or in towns like 
 Anderida whose resistance woke wrath in their besiegers. 
 But for the most part the Britons were not slaughtered; 
 they were defeated and drew back. Such a withdrawal 
 was only made possible by the slowness of the conquest. 
 For it is not only the stoutness of its defence which dis- 
 tinguishes the conquest of Britain from that of the other 
 provinces of the Empire, but the weakness of attack. As 
 the resistance of the Britons was greater than that of the 
 other provincials of Rome so the forces of their assailants 
 ^ere less. Attack by sea was less easy than attack by 
 iand, and the numbers who were brought across by the 
 boats of Hengest or Cerdic cannot have rivalled those 
 which followed Theodoric or Chlodewig across the Alps or 
 the Rhine. Landing in small parties, and but gradually 
 reinforced by after-comers, lihe English invaders could
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 39 
 
 only slowly and fitfully push the Britons back. The ab- 
 sence of any joint action among the assailants told in the 
 same way. Though all spoke the same language and used 
 the same laws, they had no such bond of political union 
 as the Franks ; and though all were bent on winning the 
 same land, ea^h band and each leader preferred their own 
 separate course of action to any collective enterprise. 
 
 Under such conditions the overrunning of Britain could 
 not fail to be a very different matter from the rapid and 
 easy overrunning of such countries as Gaul. How slow 
 the work of English conquest was may be seen from the 
 fact that it took nearl}^ thirty years to win Kent alone and 
 sixty to complete the conquest of Southern Britain, and 
 that the conquest of the bulk of the island was only 
 wrought out after two centuries of bitter warfare. But it 
 was just through the length of the struggle that of all the 
 German conquests this proved the most thorough and 
 complete. So far as the English sword in these earlier 
 daj's had reached, Britain had become England, a land, 
 that is, not of Britons but of Englishmen. Even if a few 
 of the vanquished people lingered as slaves round the 
 homesteads of their English conquerors, or a few of their 
 household words mingled with the English tongue, doubt- 
 ful exceptions such as these leave the main facts un- 
 touched. The keynote of the conquest was firmly struck. 
 When the English invasion was stayed for a while by the 
 civil wars of the invaders, the Briton had disappeared 
 from the greater part of the land which had been his own ; 
 and the tongue, the religion, the laws of his English con- 
 querors reigned without a break from Essex to Stafford- 
 shire and from the British Channel to the Firth of Forth. 
 
 For the driving out of the Briton was, as we have seen, 
 but a prelude to the settlement of his conqueror. What 
 strikes us at once in the new England is this, that it was 
 the one purely German nation that rose upon the v/reck 
 of Rome. In other lands, in Spain or Gaul or Italy, 
 though they were equally conquered by German peoples,
 
 40 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 religion, social life, administrative order, still remained 
 Roman. Britain was almost the only province of the Em- 
 pire where Rome died into a vague tradition of the past. 
 The whole organization of government and society disap- 
 peared with the people who used it. Roman roads indeed 
 still led to desolate cities. Roman camps still crowned 
 hill and do^vn. The old divisions of the land remained to 
 furnish bounds of field and farm for the new settlers. 
 The Roman church, the Roman country-house, was left 
 standing, though reft of priest and lord. But Rome was 
 gone. The mosaics, the coins which we dig up in our 
 fields are no relics of our English fathers, but of a world 
 which our fathers' swords swept utterly away. Its law, 
 its literature, its manners, its faith, went with it. Noth- 
 ing was a stronger proof of the completeness of this de- 
 struction of all Roman life than the religious change 
 which passed over the land. Alone among the German 
 assailants of Rome the English stood aloof from the faith 
 of the Empire they helped to overthrow. The new Eng- 
 land was a heathen country. Homestead and boundary, 
 the very days of the week, bore the names of new gods 
 who displaced Christ. 
 
 As we stand amid the ruins of town or country-house 
 which recall to us the wealth and culture of Roman Brit- 
 ain, it is hard to believe that a conquest which left them 
 heaps of crumbling stoneb was other than a curse to the 
 land over which it passed. But if the new England 
 which sprang from the wreck of Britain seemed for the 
 moment a waste from which the arts, the letters, the re- 
 fmement of the world had fled hopelessly away, it con- 
 tained within itself germs of a nobler life than that which 
 had been destroyed. The base of Roman society here as 
 everywhere throughout the Roman world was the slave, 
 the peasant who had been crushed by tyranny, political 
 and social, into serfdom. The base of the new English 
 society was the freeman whom we have seen tilling, judg- 
 ing, or fighting for himself by the Northern Sea. How-
 
 ChAx-. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 41 
 
 ever roughly he dealt with the material civilization of 
 Britain while the struggle went on, it was impossible that 
 such a man could be a mere destroyer. War in fact was 
 no sooner over than the warrior settled down into the 
 farmer, and the home of the ceorl rose beside the heap of 
 goblm-haunted stones that marked the site of the villa he 
 bad burned. The settlement of the English in the con- 
 quered land was nothing less than an absolute transfer of 
 English society in its completest form to the soil of Brit- 
 ain. The slowness of their advance, the small numbers 
 of each separate band in its descent upon the coast, made 
 it possible for the invaders to bring with them, or to call 
 to them when their work was done, their wives and chil- 
 dren, the last and slave, even the cattle they had left be- 
 hind them. The first wave of conquest was but the prel- 
 ude to the gradual migration of a whole people. It was 
 England which settled down on British soil, England with 
 its own language, its own laws, its complete social fabric, 
 its system of village life and village culture, its township 
 and its hundred, its principle of kinship, its principle of 
 representation. It was not as mere pirates or stray war- 
 bands, but as peoples already made, and fitted by a com- 
 mon temper and common customs to draw together into 
 our English nation in the days to come, that our fathers 
 left their German home-land for the land in which we 
 live. Their social and political organization remained 
 radically unchanged. In each of the little kingdoms 
 which rose on the wreck of Britain the host camped on 
 the land it had won, and the divisions of the host supplied 
 here as in its older home the rough groundwork of local 
 distribution. The land occupied by the hundred warriors 
 who formed the unit of military organization became per- 
 haps the local hundred ; but it is needless to attach any 
 notion of precise uniformity, either in the number of set- 
 tlers or in the area of their settlement, to such a process 
 as this, any more than to the army organization which 
 the process of distribution reflected. From the large
 
 42 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 amount of public land which we find existing afterward 
 it has been conjectured with some probability that the 
 number of settlers was far too small to occupy the whole 
 of the country at their disposal, and this unoccupied 
 ground became "folk-land," the common property of the 
 tribe as at a later time of the nation. What ground was 
 actually occupied ma}'- have been assigned to each group 
 and each family in the group by lot, and eorl and ceorl 
 gathei-ed round them their Iset and slL,ve as in their home- 
 land by the Rhine or the Elbe. And with the English 
 people passed to the shores of Britain all that was to make 
 Englishmen what they are. For distant and dim as their 
 life in that older England may have seemed to us, the 
 whole after-life of Englishmen was there. In its village- 
 moots lay our Parliament; iu the gieeman of its village- 
 feasts our Chaucer and our Shakespeare ; in the pirate-bark 
 stealing from creek to creek our Drakes and our Nelsons. 
 Even the national temper was fully formed. Civilization, 
 letters, science, religion itself, have done little to change 
 the inner mood of Englishmen. That love of venture and 
 of toil, of the sea and the fight, that trust in manhood and 
 the might of man, that silent awe of the mysteries of life 
 and death which lay deep in English souls then as now, 
 passed with Englishmen to the land which Englishmen 
 had won. 
 
 But though English society passed thus in its complete- 
 ness to the soil of Britain its primitive organization was 
 affected in more ways than one by the transfer. In the 
 first place conquest begat the King. It seems probable 
 that the English had hitherto known nothing of Kings in 
 their own fatherland, where each tribe was satisfied in 
 peace time with the customary government of village- 
 reeve and hundred-reeve and ealdorman, while it gathered 
 at fighting times under war leaders whom it chose for 
 each campaign. But in the long and obstinate warfare 
 which they waged against the Britons it was needful to 
 find a common leader whom tho various tribes engaged in
 
 CflAP. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 43 
 
 conquests such as those of Wessex or Mercia might follow ; 
 and the ceaseless character of a struggle which left few 
 intervals of rest or peace raised these leaders into a 
 higher position than that of temporary chieftains. It was 
 no doubt from this cause that we find Hengest and his son 
 ^SG raised to the kingdom in Kent, or ^lle in Sussex, 
 or Cerdic and Cynric among the West Saxons. The asso- 
 ciation of son with father in this new kingship marked 
 the hereditary character which distinguished it from the 
 temporary office of an ealdorman. The change was un- 
 doubtedly a great one, but it was less than the modern 
 conception of kingship would lead us to imagine. Hered- 
 itary as the succession was within a single house, each 
 successive King was still the free choice of his people, 
 and for centuries to come it was held within a people's 
 right to pass over a claimant too weak or too wicked for 
 the throne. In war indeed the King was supreme. But 
 in peace his power was narrowly bounded by the customs 
 of his people and the rede of his wise men. Justice was 
 not as yet the King's justice, it was the justice of village 
 and hundred and folk in town-moot and hundred-moot 
 and folk-moot. It was only with the assent of the wise 
 men that the King could make laws and declare war and 
 assign public lands and name public officers. Above all, 
 should his will be to breakthrough the free customs of his 
 people, he was without the means of putting his will into 
 action, for the one force he could call on was the host, 
 and the host was the people itself in arms. 
 
 With the new English King rose a new order of Eng- 
 lish nobles. The social distinction of the eorl was founded 
 on the peculiar purity of his blood, on his long descent 
 from the original settler around whom township and 
 thorpe grew up. A new distinction was now to be found 
 in service done to the King. From the earliest times of 
 German society it had been the wont of young men greedy 
 of honor or seeking training in arms to bind themselves 
 as " comrades" to king or chief. The leader whom they
 
 44: HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 JB -■     " '   » 
 
 chose gave them horses, arms, a seat in his mead hall, 
 and gifts from his hoard. The " comrade" on the other 
 hand — the gesith or thegn, as he was called — bound him- 
 self to follow and fight for his lord. The principle of per- 
 sonal dependence as distinguished from the warrior's 
 general duty to the folk at large was embodied in the 
 thegn. "Chieftains fight for victory," says Tacitus; 
 "comrades for their chieftain." When one of Beowulf's 
 " comrades" saw his lord hard bested " he minded him of 
 the homestead he had given him, of the folk-right he gave 
 him as his father had it; nor might he hold back then." 
 Snatching up sword and shield he called on his fellow- 
 thegns to follow him to the fight. " I mind me of the 
 day," he cried, "when we drank the mead, the day we 
 gave pledge to our lord in the beer hall as he gave us these 
 rings, our pledge that we would pay him back our war- 
 gear, our helms and our hard swords, if need befel him. 
 Unmeet is it, methinks, that we should bear back our 
 shields to our home unless we guard our lord's life." The 
 larger the band of such " comrades, " the more power and 
 repute it gave their lord. It was from among the chiefs 
 whose war-band was strongest that the leaders of the host 
 were commonly chosen; and as these leaders grew into 
 kings, the number of their thegns naturally increased. 
 The rank of the " comrades" too rose with the rise of their 
 lord. The king's thegns were his body-guard, the one 
 force ever ready to carry out his will. They were his 
 nearest and most constant counsellors. As the gathering 
 of petty tribes into larger kingdoms swelled the number 
 of eorls in each realm and in a corresponding degree 
 diminished their social importance, it raised in equal 
 measure the rank of the king's thegns. A post among 
 them was soon coveted and won by the greatest and no- 
 blest in the land. Their service was rewarded by exemp- 
 tion from the general jurisdiction of hundred-court or 
 shire-court, for it was part of a thegn's meed for his ser- 
 vice that he should be judged^only by the lord he served
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 45 
 
 Other meed was found in grants of public land which 
 made them a local nobility, no longer bound to actual ser- 
 vice in the king's household or the king's war-band, but 
 still bound to him by personal ties of allegiance far closer 
 than those which bound an eorl to the chosen war-leader 
 of the tribe. In a word, thegnhood contained within itself 
 the germ of that later feudalism which was to battle so 
 fiercely with the Teutonic freedom out of which it grew. 
 
 But the strife between the conquering tribes which at 
 once followed on their conquest of Britain was to bring 
 about changes even more momentous in the development 
 of the English people. While Jute and Saxon and Engle 
 were making themselves masters of central and southern 
 Britain, the English who had landed on its northernmost 
 shores had been slowly winning for themselves the coast 
 district between the Forth and the Tyne which bore the 
 name of Bernicia. Their progress seems to have been 
 small till they were gathered into a kingdom in 547 by 
 Ida the "Flame-bearer," who found a site for his King's 
 town on the impregnable rock of Bamborough ; nor was 
 it till the reign of his fourth son -<3j]thelric that they gained 
 full mastery over the Britons along their western border. 
 But once masters of the Britons the Bernician Englishmen 
 turned to conquer their English neighbors to the south, 
 the men of Deira, whose first King ^lla was now sinking 
 to the grave. The struggle filled the foreign markets 
 with English slaves, and one of the most memorable 
 stories in our history shows us a group of such captives 
 as they stood in the market-place of Rome, it may be in 
 the great Forum of Trajan which still in its deca}^ recalled 
 the glories of the Imperial City. Their white bodies, 
 their fair faces, their golden hair was noted by a deacon 
 who passed by. "From what country do these slaves 
 come?" Gregory asked the trader who brought them. 
 The slave-dealer answered, "They are English," or as the 
 word ran in the Latin form it would bear at Rome, " they 
 are Angles." The deacon's pity veiled itself in poetic
 
 4G HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 humor. "Not Angles but Angels," he said, "with faces 
 so augel-like ! From what country come they?" "They 
 come," said the merchant, " from Deira." " De ird! " was 
 the untranslatable word-play of the vivacious Roman — 
 " aye, plucked from God's ire and called to Christ's mercy i 
 And what is the name of their king?" They told him 
 "-dEUa," and Gregory seized on the word as of good omen. 
 "Alleluia shall be sung in Ella's land," he said, and 
 passed on, musing how the angel-faces should be brought 
 to sing it. 
 
 While Gregory was thus playing with -Ella's name the 
 old king passed away, and with his death in 589 the resist- 
 ance of his kingdom seems to have ceased. His house fled 
 over the western border to find refuge among the Welsh, 
 and ^^thelric of Bernicia entered Deira in triumph. A 
 new age of our history opens in this submission of one 
 English people to another. When the two kingdoms were 
 united under a common lord the period of national forma- 
 tion began. If a new England sprang out of the mass of 
 English states which covered Britain after its conquest, 
 we owe it to the gradual submission of the smaller peoples 
 to the supremacy of a common political head. The differ- 
 ence in power between state and state which inevitably 
 led to this process of union was due to the character which 
 the conquest of Britain was now assuming. Up to this 
 time all the kingdoms which had been established by the 
 invaders had stood in the main on a footing of equality. 
 All had taken an independent share in the work of con- 
 quest. Though the oneness of a common blood and a 
 common speech was recognized by all we find no traces of 
 any common action or common rule. Even in the two 
 groups of kingdoms, the five English and the five Saxon 
 kingdoms, which occupied Britain south of the Humber, 
 the relations of each member of the group to its fellows 
 seem to have been merely local. It was only locally that 
 East and West and South and North English were groupoo 
 round the Middle English of^Leicester, or East and Weai
 
 CHA.P. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071, 4'i 
 
 and South and North Saxons round the Middle Saxons 
 about London. In neither instance do we find any real 
 trace of a confederacy, or of the rule of one member of the 
 group over the others; while north of the Humber the 
 feeling between the Englishmen of Yorkshire and the 
 Englishmen who had settled toward the Firth of Forth 
 was one of hostility rather than of friendship. But this 
 age of isolation, of equality, of independence, had now 
 come to an end. The progress of the conquest had drawn 
 a sharp line between the kingdoms of the conquerors. 
 The work of half of them was done. In the south of the 
 island not only Kent but Sussex, Essex, and Middlesex 
 were surrounded by English territory, and hindered by 
 that single fact from all further growth. The same fate 
 had befallen the East Engle, the South Engle, the Middl© 
 and the North Engle. The West Saxons on the other 
 hand and the West Engle, or Mercians, still remained 
 free to conquer and expand on the south of the Humber, 
 as the Englishmen of Deira and Bernicia remained free 
 to the north of that river. It was plain therefore that 
 from this moment the growth of these powers would throw 
 their fellow-kingdoms into the background, and that with 
 an ever-growing inequalit}^ of strength must come a new 
 arrangement of political forces. The greater kingdoms 
 would in the end be drawn to subject and absorb the lesser 
 ones, and to the war between Englishman and Briton 
 would be added a struggle between Englishman and Eng- 
 lishman. 
 
 It was through this struggle and the establishment of a 
 lordship on the part of the stronger and growing states 
 over their weaker and stationary fellows that the English 
 kingdoms were to make their first step toward union in a 
 single England. Such an overlordship seemed destined 
 but a few years before to fall to the lot of Wessex. The 
 victories of Ceawlin and Cuthwulf left it the largest of 
 the English kingdoms. None of its fellow-states seemed 
 able to hold their own against a power which stretched
 
 48 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 from the Chilterns to the Severn and from the Channel to 
 the Ouse. But after its defeat in the march upon Chester 
 AVessex suddenly broke down into a chaos of Avarring 
 tribes ; and her place was taken by two powers whose rise 
 to greatness was as sudden as her fall. The first of these 
 was Kent. The Kentish King JEthelberht found himself 
 hemmed in on every side by English territory ; and since 
 conquest over Britons was denied him he sought a new 
 sphere of action in setting his kingdom at the head of the 
 conquerors of the south. The break-up of Wessex no 
 doubt aided his attempt ; but we know little of the causes 
 or events which brought about his success. We know 
 only that the supremacy of the Kentish King was owned 
 at last by the English peoples of the east and centre of 
 Britain. But it was not by her political action that Kent 
 was in the end to further the creation of a single England; 
 for the lordship which ^thelberht built up was doomed to 
 fall forever with his death, and yet his death left Kent 
 the centre of a national union far wider as it was far more 
 enduring than the petty lordship which stretched over 
 Eastern Britain. Years had passed by since Gregory 
 pitied the English slaves in the market-place of Rome. 
 As Bishop of the Imperial City he at last found himself 
 in a position to carry out his dream of winning Britain to 
 the faith, and an opening was given him by ^thelberht's 
 marriage with Bercta, a daughter of the Frankish King 
 Charibert of Paris. Bercta like her Frankish kindred 
 was a Christian; a Christian Bishop accompanied her 
 from Gaul; and a ruined Christian church, the church of 
 St. Martin beside the royal city of Canterburj^ was given 
 them for their worship. The King himself remained true 
 to the gods of his fathers ; but his marriage no doubt en- 
 couraged Gregory to send a Roman abbot, Augustine, at 
 the head of a band of monks to preach the Gospel to the 
 English people. The missionaries landed in 597 in the 
 Isle of Thanet, at the spot where Hengest had landed more 
 than a century before; and ^thelberht received them sit*
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 49 
 
 ting in the open air on the chalk-down above Minster 
 where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the 
 marshes the dim tower of Canterbury. The King listened 
 patiently to the long sermon of Augustine as the interpre- 
 ters the abbot had brought with him from Gaul rendered 
 it in the English tongue. " Your words are fair," ^thel- 
 berht replied at last with English good sense, " but they 
 are new and of doubtful meaning." For himself, he said, 
 he refused to forsake the gods of his fathers, but with the 
 usual religious tolerance of the German race he promised 
 shelter and protection to the strangers. The band of 
 monks entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver 
 cross with a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the 
 strains of the litany of their Church. " Turn from this 
 city, O Lord, " they sang, " Thine anger and wrath, and 
 turn it from Thy holy house, for we have sinned." And 
 then in strange contrast came the jubilant cry of the older 
 Hebrew worship, the cry which Gregory had wrested in 
 prophetic earnestness from the name of the Yorkshire king 
 in the Roman market-place, " Alleluia !" 
 
 It was thus that the spot which witnessed the landing 
 of Hengest became yet better known as the landing-place 
 of Augustine. But the second landing at Ebbsfleet was 
 in no small measure a reversal and undoing of the first. 
 " Strangers from Rome" was the title with which the mis- 
 sionaries first fronted the English king. The march of 
 the monks as they chanted their solemn litany was in one 
 sense a return of the Roman legions who withdrew at the 
 trumpet-call of Alaric. It was to the tongue and the 
 thought not of Gregory only but of the men whom his 
 Jutish fathers had slaughtered or driven out that ^thel- 
 berht listened in the preaching of Augustine. Canter- 
 bury, the earliest royal city of German England, became 
 a centre of Latin influence. The Roman tongue became 
 again one of the tongues of Britain, the language of its 
 worship, its correspondence, its literature. But more than 
 the tongue of Rome returned with Augustine. Practi- 
 VoL. I.— 4
 
 60 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book 1. 
 
 cally his landing renewed that union with the Western 
 world which the landing of Hengest had destroyed. The 
 new Eugland was admitted into the older commonwealth 
 of natiums. The civilization, art, letters, which had fled 
 before the sword of the English conquerors returned with 
 the Christian faith. The great fabric of the Roman law 
 indeed never took root in England, but it is impossible 
 not to recognize the result of the influence of the Roman 
 missionaries in the fact that codes of the customary Eng- 
 lish law began to be put in writing soon after their arrival. 
 A year passed before ^thelberht yielded to the preach- 
 ing of Augustine. Biit from the moment of his conver- 
 sion the new faith advanced rapidly and the Kentish men 
 crowded to baptism in the train of their king. The new 
 religion was carried beyond the bounds of Kent by the 
 supremacy which ^thelberht wielded over the neiglibor- 
 ing kingdoms. Sseberht, King of the East-Saxons, re- 
 ceived a bishop sent from Kent, and suffered him to build 
 up again a Christian church in what was now his subject 
 city of London, while the East- Anglian King Rsedwald 
 resolved to serve Christ and the older gods together. But 
 while ^thelberht was thus furnishing a future centre of 
 spiritual unity in Canterbury, the see to which Augustine 
 was consecrated, the growth of Northumbria was pointing 
 it out as the coming political centre of the new England. 
 In 593, four years before the landing of the missionaries 
 in Kent, ^thelric was succeeded by his son jEthelfrith, 
 and the new king took up the work of conquest with a 
 vigor greater than had yet been shown by any English 
 leader. For ten years he waged war with the Britons of 
 Strathclyde, a tract which stretched along his western 
 border from Dumbarton to Carlisle. The contest ended 
 in a great battle at Dsegsa's Stan, perhaps Dawston in 
 Liddesdale; and ^thelfrith turned to deliver a yet more 
 crushing blow on his southern border. British kingdoms 
 still stretched from Clyde-mouth to the mouth of Severn-, 
 and had their line remained tsibroken the British resist-
 
 z 
 < 
 
 z 
 
 UJ 
 
 < -.' 
 
 to c 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o' -^ 
 
 a 
 
 z 
 < 
 
 I
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449— 107L 61 
 
 ance might yet have withstood the English advance. It 
 was with a sound political instinct therefore that -lEthelfrith 
 marched in G07 upon Chester, the point where the king- 
 dom of Cumbria, a kingdom which stretched from the 
 Lune to the Dee, linked itself to the British states of what 
 we now call Wales. Hard by the city two thousand 
 monks were gathered in one of those vast religious settle- 
 ments which were characteristic of Celtic Christianity, 
 and after a three days' fast a crowd of these ascetics fol- 
 lowed the British army to the field. -<^thelfrith watched 
 the wild gestures of the monks as they stood apart from 
 the host with arms outstretched in prayer, and bade his 
 men slay them in the coming fight. " Bear they arms or 
 no," said the King, "they war against us when they cry 
 against us to their God," and in the surprise and rout 
 which followed the monks were the first to fall. 
 
 With the battle of Chester Britain, as a single political 
 body, ceased to exist. By their victory at Deorham the 
 West-Saxons had cut off the Britons of Dorset, Somerset, 
 Devon, and Cornwall from the general body of their race. 
 By ^thelfrith's victory at Chester and the reduction of 
 southern Lancashire which followed it what remained of 
 Britain was broken into two several parts. From this 
 time therefore the character of the English conquest of 
 Britain changes. The warfare of Briton and Englishman 
 died down into a warfare of -separate English kingdoms 
 against separate British kingdoms, of Northumbria 
 against Cumbria and Strathclyde. of Mercia against 
 modern Wales, of Wessex against the tract of British 
 country from Mendip to tlie Land's End. But great as 
 was the importance of the battle of Chester to the fortunes 
 of Britain, it was of still greater importance to the for- 
 tunes of England itself. The drift toward national unity 
 had already begun, but from the moment of .^thelfrith's 
 victory this drift became the main current of our history. 
 Masters: of the larger and richer part of the land, its con- 
 querors were no longer drawn greedily westward by the
 
 52 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 hope of plunder; while the severance of the British king- 
 doms took from their enemies the pressure of a common 
 danger. The con(iuests of yEthelfrith left him without a 
 rival in military power, and he turned from victories over 
 the Welsh, as their English foes called the Britons, to the 
 building up of a lordship over his own countrymen. 
 
 The power of ^thelberht seems to have declined with 
 old age, and though the Essex men still owned his suprem- 
 acy, the English tribes of Mid-Britain shook it off. So 
 strong, however, had the instinct of union now become, 
 that we hear nothing of any return to their old isolation. 
 Mercians and Southumbrians, Middle-English and South- 
 English now owned the lordship of the East-English King 
 Esedwald. The shelter given by Rsedwald to iElla's son 
 Eadwine served as a pretext for a Northumbrian attack. 
 Fortune however deserted .i^thelfrith, and a snatch of 
 northern song still tells of the day when the river Idle by 
 Retford saw his defeat and fall. But the greatness of 
 Northumbria survived its King. In 617 Eadwine was 
 welcomed back by his own men of Deira ; and his con- 
 quest of Bernicia maintained that union of the two realms 
 which the Bernician conquest of Deira had first brought 
 about. The greatness of Northumbria now reached its 
 height. Within his own dominions, Eadwine displayed 
 a genius for civil government which shows how utterly 
 the mere age of conquest had passed away. With him 
 began the English proverb so often applied to after kings : 
 " A woman with her babe might walk scatheless from sea 
 to sea in Eadwine's day." Peaceful communication re- 
 vived along the deserted highways ; the springs by the 
 roadside were marked with stakes, and a cup of brass set 
 beside each for the traveller's refreshment. Some faint 
 traditions of the Roman past may have flung their glory 
 round this new " Empire of the English ;" a royal standard 
 of purple and gold floated before Eadwine as he rode 
 through the villages; a feather tuft attached to a spear, 
 the Roman tufa, preceded him. as he walked through the
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071 53 
 
 Streets. The Northiimbriau king became in fact supreme 
 over Britain as no king of English blood had been before. 
 Northward his frontier reached to the Firth of Forth, and 
 here, if we trust tradition, Eadwine founded a city which 
 bore his name, Edinburgh, Eadwine's burgh. To the 
 west Bis arms crushed the long resistance of Elmet, the 
 district about Leeds ; he was master of Chester, and the 
 fleet he equipped there subdued the isles of Anglesea and 
 Man. South of the Humber he was owned as overlord by 
 the five English states of Mid-Britain. The West-Saxons 
 remained awhile independent. But revolt and slaughter 
 had fatally broken their power when Eadwine attacked 
 them. A story preserved by Bseda tells something of the 
 fierceness of the struggle which ended in the subjection of 
 the south to the overlordship of Northumbria. In an 
 Easter-court which he held in his royal city by the river 
 Derwent, Eadwine gave audience to Eumer, an envoy of 
 Wessex, who brought a message from its king. In the 
 midst of the conference Eumer started to his feet, drew a 
 dagger from his robe, and rushed on the Northumbrian 
 sovereign. Lilla, one of the King's war-band, threw 
 himself between Eadwine and his assassin ; but so furious 
 was the stroke that even through Lilla 's body the dagger 
 still reached its aim. The king, however, recovered from 
 his wound to march on the West-Saxons ; he slew or sub- 
 dued all who had conspired against him, and returned 
 victorious to his own country. 
 
 Kent had bound itself to him by giving bim its King's 
 daughter as a wife, a step which probably marked politi- 
 cal subordination ; and with the Kentish queen had come 
 Paulinus, one of Augustine's followers, whose tall stoop- 
 ing form, slender aquiline nose, and black hair falling 
 round a thin worn face, were long remembered in the 
 North. Moved by his queen's prayers Eadwine promised 
 to become Christian if he returned successful from Wes- 
 sex ; and the wise men of Northumbria gathered to de- 
 liberate on the new faith to which he bowed. To finer
 
 54 niSTORY OF THE SNGLISTI TEOPLE. [Book I 
 
 minds its charm \&y then as now in the light it threw on 
 the darkness which encompassed men's lives, the darknesa 
 of the future as of the past. " So seems the life of man, 
 O kin>;," burst forth an aged ealdorman, "as a sparrow's 
 flight through the hall when a man is sitting at meat in 
 winter-tide with the warm fire lighted on the hearth but 
 the chill rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one 
 door and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the 
 hearth-fire, and then flying forth from the other vanishes 
 into the wintr}" darkness whence it came. So tarries for 
 a moment the life of man in our sight, but what is before 
 it, Avhat after it, we know not. If this new teaching tell 
 us aught certainly of these, let us follow it." Coarser 
 argument told on the crovv^d. " None of your people, Ead- 
 wine, have worshipped the gods more busily than I," said 
 Coifi the priest, " yet there are many more favored and 
 more fortunate. Were these gods good for anything they 
 would help their worshippers." Then leaping on horse- 
 back, he hurled his spear into the sacred temple at God- 
 manham, and with the rest of the Witan embraced the 
 religion of the king. 
 
 But the faith of Woden and Thunder was not to fall 
 without a struggle. Even in Kent a reaction against the 
 new creed began with the death of ^thelberht. The young 
 Kings of the East-Saxons burst into the church where the 
 Bishop of London was administering the Eucharist to the 
 people, crying, " Give us that white bread you gave to our 
 father Saba," and on the bishop's refusal drove him from 
 their realm. This earlier tide of reaction was checked by 
 Eadwine's conversion; but Mercia, which had as yet 
 owned the supremacy of Northumbria, sprang into a sud- 
 den greatness as the champion of the heathen gods. Its 
 King, Penda, saw in the rally of the old religion a chance 
 of winning back his people's freedom and giving it the 
 lead among the tribes about it. Originally mere settlers 
 along the Upper Trent, the position of the Mercians on 
 the Welsh border invited them to widen tlwir possessions
 
 Chap. 2.] EAHLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 55 
 
 by conquest while the rest of their Anglian neighbors were 
 shut off from any chance of expansion. Their fights along 
 the frontier too kept their warlike energy at its height, 
 Penda must have alread}' asserted his superiority over the 
 four other English tribes of Mid-Britain before he could 
 have ventured to attack Wessex and tear from it in G28 
 the country of the Hwiccas and Magessetas on the Severn. 
 Even with this accession of strength, however, he was still 
 no match for Northumbria, But the war of the English 
 people with the Britons seems at this moment to have died 
 down for a season, and the Mercian ruler boldly broke 
 through the barrier which had parted the two races till 
 now by allying himself with a Welsh King, Cadwallon, 
 for a joint attack on Eadwine, The armies met in 633 
 at a place called Hrethfeld, and in the fight which followed 
 Eadwine was defeated and slain, 
 
 Bernicia seized on the fall of Eadwine to recall the line 
 of ^thelfrith to its throne ; and after a year of anarchy 
 his second son, Oswald, became its King. The Welsh 
 had remained encamped in the heart of the north, and 
 Oswald's first fight was with Cadwallon. A small North- 
 umbrian force gathered in 635 near the Roman Wall, and 
 pledged itself at the new King's bidding to become Chris- 
 tian if it conquered in the fight. Cadwallon fell fighting 
 on the "Heaven's Field," as after-times called the field of 
 battle ; the submission of Deira to the conqueror restored 
 the kingdom of Northumbria; and for nine years the 
 power of Oswald equalled that of Eadwine. It was not 
 the Church of Paulinus which nerved Oswald to this 
 struggle for the Cross, or which carried out in Bernicia 
 the work of conversion which his victory began. Paulinus 
 fled from Northumbria at Eadwine's fall; and the Roman 
 Church, though established in Kent, did little in contend- 
 ing elsewhere against the heathen reaction. Its place in 
 the conversion of northern England was taken by mission- 
 aries from Ireland. To understand the true meaning of 
 this change we must remember how greatly the Christian
 
 S(j HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 Cliiircli in the west had been affected bj^ the German in- 
 vasion. Before the landing of the English in Britain the 
 Christian Church stretched in an unbroken line across 
 Western Europe to the furthest coasts of Ireland. The 
 conquest of Britain by the pagan English thrust a wedge 
 of heathendom into the heart of this great communion 
 and broke it into two unequal parts. On one side lay 
 Italy, Spain, and Gaul, whose churches owned obedience 
 to and remained in direct contact with the See of Rome; 
 on the ether, practically cut off from the general body of 
 Christendom, lay the Church of Ireland. But the condi- 
 tion of the two portions of Western Christendom was 
 very different. While the vigor of Christianity in Italy 
 and Gaul and Spain was exhausted in a bare struggle for 
 life, Ireland, which remained unscourged by invaders, 
 drew from its conversion an energy such as it has never 
 known since. Christianity was received there with a 
 burst of popular enthusiasm, and letters and arts sprang 
 up rapidly in its train. The science and Biblical knowl- 
 edge which fled from the Continent took refuge in its 
 schools. The new Christian life soon beat too strongly to 
 brook confinement within the bounds of Ireland itself. 
 Patrick, the first missionary of the island, had not been 
 half a century dead when Irish Christianity flung itself 
 with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism 
 which was rolling in upon the Christian world. Irish 
 missionaries labored among the Picts of the Highlands 
 and among the Frisians of the northern seas. An Irish 
 missionary, Columban, founded monasteries in Burgundy 
 and the Apennines. The canton of St. Gall still com- 
 memorates in its name another Irish missionary before 
 whom the spirits of flood and fell fled wailing over the 
 waters of the Lake of Constance. For a time it seemed 
 as if the course of the world's history was to be changed, 
 as if the older Celtic race that Roman and German had 
 swept before them had turned to the moral conquest of 
 their conquerors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christian-
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 57 
 
 ity was to mould the destinies of the Churches of the 
 West. 
 
 On a low island of barren gneiss-rock off the west coast 
 of Scotland an Irish refugee, Columba, had raised the 
 famous mission-station of lona. It was within its walls 
 that Oswald in youth found refuge, and on his accession 
 to the throne of Northumbria he called for missionaries 
 from among its monks. The first preacher sent in answer 
 to his call obtained little success. He declared on his re- 
 turn that among a people so stubborn and barbarous as 
 the Northumbrian folk success was impossible. " Was it 
 their stubbornness or your severity?" asked Aidan, a 
 brother sitting by; "did you forget God's word to give 
 them the milk first and then the meat?" All eyes turned 
 on the speaker as fittest to undertake the abandoned mis- 
 sion, and Aidan sailing at their bidding fixed his bishop's 
 see in the island-peninsula of Lindisfarne. Thence, from 
 a monastery which gave to the spot its after-name of Holy 
 Island, preachers poured forth over the heathen realms. 
 Aidan himself wandered on foot, preaching among the 
 peasants of Yorkshire and Northumbria. In his own 
 court the King acted as interpreter to the Irish missiona- 
 ries in their efforts to convert his thegns. A new con- 
 ception of kingship indeed began to blend itself with that 
 of the warlike glory of JEthelfrith or the wise administra- 
 tion of Eadwine, and the moral power which was to r«ftch 
 its height in -Alfred first dawns in the story of Oswald. 
 For after-times the memory of Oswald's gi-eatness was 
 lost in the memory of his piety. " By reason of his con- 
 stant habit of praying or giving thanks to the Lord he 
 was wont wherever he sat to hold his hands upturned on 
 his knees." As he feasted with Bishop Aidan by his side, 
 the thegn, or noble of his war-band, whom he had sent to 
 give alms to the poor at his gate, told him of a multitude 
 that still waited fasting without. The King at once bade 
 the untasted meat before him be carried to the poor, and 
 his silver dish be parted piecemeal among them. Aidan
 
 63 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 seized the royal hand and blessed it. "May this hand," 
 he cried, "never grow old." 
 
 Oswald's lordship stretched as widely over Britain aa 
 that of his predecessor Eadwine. In him even more than 
 in Eadwine men saw some faint likeness of the older Em- 
 perors; once indeed a writer from the land of the Plots 
 calls Oswald "Emperor of the whole of Britain." IJ i 
 power was bent to carry forward the conversion of a., 
 England, but prisoned as it was to the central districts 
 of the country heathendom fought desperately for life. 
 Penda was still ils rallying-point. His long reign was 
 one continuous battle with the new religion ; but it was a 
 battle rather with the supremac}^ of Christian Northum- 
 bria than with the suprem.acy of the Cross. East-Anglia 
 became at last the field of contest between the two powers ; 
 and in 04:2 Oswald marched to deliver it from the Mercian 
 rule. But his doom was the doom of Eadwine, and in a 
 battle called the battle of the Maserfeld he was overthrown 
 and slain. For a few years after his victory at the Maser- 
 feld, Penda stood supreme in Britain. Heathenism tri- 
 umphed with him. If V/essex did not own his overlordship 
 as it had owned that of Oswald, its King threw off the 
 Christian faith which he had embraced but a few years 
 back at the preaching of Birinus. Even Deira seems to 
 have owned Penda's sway. Bernicia alone, though dis- 
 tracted by civil war between rival claimants for its throne, 
 refused to yield. Year by year the Mercian King carried 
 his ravages over the north ; once he reached even the royal 
 city, the impregnable rock-fortress of Bamborough. De- 
 spairing of success in an assault, he pulled down the cot- 
 tages around, and piling their wood against its walls fired 
 the mass in a fair v.ind that drove the flames on the town. 
 "See, Lord, what ill Penda is doing," cried Aidan from 
 his hermit cell in the islet of Fame, as he saw the smoke 
 drifting over the city, and a change of wind — so ran the 
 legend of Northumbria's agony — drove back the flames on 
 those who kindled them. But burned and harried as it
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 59 
 
 was, Beriiicia still fought for the Cross. Oswiii, a third 
 son of ^thelfrith, held his ground stoutly against Penda's 
 inroads till their cessation enabled him to build up again 
 the old Northumbrian kingdom by a march upon Deira. 
 The union of the two realms was never henceforth to be 
 dissolved ; and its influence was at once seen in the re- 
 newal of Christianity throughout Britain. East-Anglia; 
 conquered as it was, had clung to its faith. Wessez 
 quietly became Christian again. Penda's own son, whom 
 he had set over the Middle-English, received baptism and 
 teachers from Lindisfarne. At last the missionaries of 
 the new belief appeared fearlessly among the Mercians 
 themselves. Penda gave them no hindrance. In words 
 that mark the temper of a man of whom we would will- 
 ingly know more, Bseda tells us that the old King only 
 "hated and scorned those whom he saw not doing the 
 works of the faith they had received." His attitude 
 shows that Penda looked with the tolerance of his race on 
 all questions of creed, and that he was fighting less for 
 heathenism than for political independence. And now 
 the growing power of Oswiu called him to the old strug- 
 gle with Northumbria. In 655 he met Oswiu in the field 
 of Winwsed by Leeds. It was in vain that the Northum- 
 brian sought to avert Penda's attack by offers of orna- 
 ments and costly gifts. " If the pagans will not accept 
 them, " Oswiu cried at last, " let us offer them to One that 
 will;" and he vowed that if successful he would dedicate 
 his daughter to God, and endow twelve monasteries in his 
 realm. Victory at last declared for the faith of Christ. 
 Penda himself fell on the field. The river over which the 
 Mercians fled was swollen with a great rain ; it swept 
 away the fragments of the heathen host, and the cause of 
 the older gods was lost forever. 
 
 The terrible struggle between heathendom and Christi- 
 anity was followed by a long and profound peace. For 
 three years after the battle of Winwa3d Mercia was gov- 
 erned by Northumbrian thegns ii^ Oswiu 's name. The
 
 60 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I 
 
 winning of central England was a victory for Irish Chris- 
 tianity as well as for Oswiu. Even in Mercia itself 
 heathendom was dead with Penda. "Being thus freed," 
 Baida tells us, " the Mercians with their King rejoiced to 
 serve the true King, Christ." Its three provinces, the 
 earlier Mercia, the Middle-English, and the Lindiswaras, 
 were united in the bishopric of the missionary Ceadda, 
 \he St. Chad to whom Lichfield is still dedicated. Ceadda 
 was a monk of Lindisfarne, so simple and lowly in temper 
 that he travelled on foot on his long mission journeys till 
 Archbishop Theodore with his own hands lifted him on 
 horseback. The old Celtic poetry breaks out in his death- 
 legend, as it tells us how voices of singers singing sweetly 
 descended from heaven to the little cell beside St. Mary's 
 Church where the bishop lay dying. Then "the same 
 song ascended from the roof again, and returned heaven- 
 ward by the way that it came." It was the soul of his 
 brother, the missionary Cedd, come with a choir of angels 
 to solace the last hours of Ceadda. 
 
 In Northumbria the work of his fellow-missionaries has 
 almost been lost in the glory of Cuthbert. No story better 
 lights up for us the new religious life of the time than the 
 story of this Apostle of the Lowlands. Born on the 
 southern edge of the Lammermoor, Cuthbert found shelter 
 at eight years old in a widow's house in the little village 
 of Wranholm. Already in youth his robust frame had a 
 poetic sensibility which caught even in the chance word 
 of a game a call to higher things, and a passing attack of 
 lameness deepened the religious impression. A traveller 
 coming in his white mantle over the hillside and stopping 
 his horse to tend Cuthbert 's injured knee seemed to him 
 an angel. The boy's shepherd life carried him to the 
 bleak upland, still famous as a sheepwalk, though a scant 
 herbage scarce veils the whinstone rock. There meteors 
 plunging into the night became to him a company of an- 
 gelic spirits carrying the soul of Bishop Aidan heaven- 
 ward, and his longings slowty settled into a resolute will
 
 Chap. 2.] EAELY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 61 
 
 toward a religious life. In 651 he made his way to a 
 group of straw-thatched log-huts in the midst of untilled 
 solitudes where a few Irish monks from Lindisfarne had 
 settled in the mission-station of Melrose. To-day the land 
 is a land of poetry and romance. Cheviot and Lammer- 
 moor, Ettrick and Teviotdale, Yarrow and Annan-water, 
 are musical with old ballads and border minstrelsy. 
 Agriculture has chosen its valleys for her favorite seat, 
 and drainage and steam-power have turned sedgy marshes 
 into farm and meadow. But to see the Lowlands as they 
 were in Cuthbert's day we must sweep meadow and farm 
 away again, and replace them by vast solitudes, dotted 
 here and there with clusters of wooden hovels and crossed 
 by boggy tracks, over which travellers rode spear in hand 
 and eye kept cautiously about them. The Northumbrian 
 peasantry among whom he journeyed were for the most 
 part Christians only in name. With Teutonic indifference 
 they yielded to their thegns in nominally accepting the 
 new Christianity as these had yielded to the king. But 
 they retained their old superstitions side by side with the 
 new worship ; plague or mishap drove them back to a re- 
 liance on their heathen charms and amulets ; and if trou- 
 ble befell the Christian preachers who came settling among 
 them, they took it as proof of the wrath of the older gods. 
 When some log-rafts which were floating down the Tyne 
 for the construction of an abbey at its mouth drifted with 
 the monks who were at work on them out to sea, the rustic 
 bystanders shouted, " Let nobody pray for them ; let no- 
 body pity these men ; for they have taken away from us 
 our old worship, and how their new-fangled customs are 
 to be kept nobody knows." On foot, on horseback, Cuth- 
 bert wandered among listeners such as these, choosing 
 above all the remoter mountain villages from whose 
 roughness and poverty other teachers turned aside. Un- 
 like his Irish comrades, he needed no interpreter as he 
 passed from village to village; the frugal, long-headed 
 Northumbrians listened willingly to one who was himself
 
 62 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 a peasant of the Lowlands, and who had caught the rough 
 Northumbrian burr along the banks of the Leader. His 
 patience, his humorous good sense, the sweetness of his 
 look, told for him, and not less the stout vigorous frame 
 which fitted the peasant-preacher for the hard life he had 
 chosen. " Never did man die of hunger who served God 
 faithfully," he would say, when nightfall found them sup- 
 perless in the waste. " Look at the eagle overhead ! God 
 can feed us through him if He will" — and once at least lie 
 owed his meal to a fish that the scared bird lot fall. A 
 snowstorm drove his boat on the coast of Fife. " The 
 snow closes the road along the shore," mourned his com- 
 rades ; " the storm bars our way over sea. " " There is 
 still the way of heaven that lies open," said Cuthbert. 
 
 While missionaries were thus laboring among its peas- 
 antry Northumbria saw the rise of a number of monas- 
 teries, not bound indeed by the strict ties of the Benedic- 
 tine rule, but gathered on the loose Celtic model of the 
 family or the clan round some noble and wealthy person 
 who sought devotional retirement. The most notable and 
 wealthy of these houses was that of Streoneshalh, where 
 Hild, a woman of roj^al race, reared her abbey on the cliffs 
 of Whitby, looking out over the Northern Sea. Hild was 
 a Northumbrian Deborah whose counsel was sought even 
 by kings ; and the double monastery over which she ruled 
 became a seminary of bishops and priests. The sainted 
 John of Beverley was among her scholars. But the name 
 which really throws glory over Whitby is the name of a 
 cowherd from whose lips during the reign of Oswiu flowed 
 the first great English song. Though well advanced in 
 years, Csedmon had learned nothing of the art of verse, 
 the alliterative jingle so common among his fellows, 
 " wherefore being sometimes at feasts, when all agreed for 
 glee's sake to sing in turn, he no sooner saw the harp 
 come toward him than he rose from the board and went 
 homeward. Once when he had done thus, and gone 
 from the feast to the stable"^vhere be had that night charge
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449— 107L 63 
 
 of the cattle, there appeared to him in his sleep One who 
 said, greeting him by name, 'Sing, Csedmon, some song 
 to Me.' 'I cannot sing,' he answered; 'for this cause left 
 I the feast and came hither.' He who talked with him 
 answered, 'However that be, you shall sing to Me. ' 'What 
 shall I 'sing?' rejoined Ctedmon. 'The beginning of 
 created things, ' replied He. In the morning the cowherd 
 stood before Hild and told his dream. Abbess and breth- 
 ren alike concluded 'that heavenly grace had been con- 
 ferred on him by the Lord.' They translated for Csedmon 
 a passage in Holy Writ, 'bidding him, if he could, put 
 the same into verse. ' The next morning he gave it them 
 composed in excellent verse, whereon the abbess, under- 
 standing the divine grace in the man, bade him quit the 
 secular habit and take on him the monastic life." Piece 
 by piece the sacred story was thus thrown into Csedmon's 
 poem. " He sang of the creation of the world, of the origin 
 of man, and of all the history of Israel ; of their departure 
 from Egypt and entering into the Promised Land ; of the 
 incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ, and of 
 Plis ascension ; of the terror of future judgment, the hor- 
 ror of hell-pangs, and the joys of heaven." 
 
 But even while Csedmon was singing, the glories of 
 Northumbria and of the Irish Church were passing away. 
 The revival of Mercia was as rapid as its fall. Only a few 
 years after Penda's defeat the Mercians threw off Oswiu's 
 yoke and set Wulfhere, a son of Penda, on their throne. 
 Thv-'y were aided in their revolt, no doubt, by a religious 
 strife which was now rending the Northumbrian realm. 
 The labor of Aidan, the victories of Oswald and Oswiu 
 seemed to have annexed the north to the Irish Church. 
 The monks of Lindisfarne, or of the new religious houses 
 whose foundation followed that of Lindisfarne, looked for 
 their ecclesiastical tradition, not to Rome but to Ireland ; 
 and quoted for their guidance the instructions, not of 
 Gregory, but of Columl)a. Whatever claims of supremacy 
 over the whole English Church might be pressed by the
 
 64 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I 
 
 see of Canterbury, the real metropolitan of the Church as 
 it existed in the North of England was the Abbot of loua. 
 But Oswiu's queen brought with her from Kent the loy- 
 alty of the Kentish Church to the Roman see; and the 
 visit of two young thegns to the Imperial city raised their 
 love of Rome into a passionate fanaticism. The elder of 
 these, Benedict Biscop, returned to denounce the usages 
 in which the Irish Church differed from the Roman as 
 schismatic; and the vigor of his comrade Wilfrid stirred 
 so hot a strife that Oswiu was prevailed upon to summon 
 in 664 a great council at Whitby, where the future eccle- 
 siastical allegiance of his realm should be decided. The 
 points actually contested were trivial enough. Colman, 
 Aidan's successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish 
 fashion of the tonsure, and for the Irish time of keeping 
 Easter : Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one dispu- 
 tant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to 
 that of St. Peter. "You own," cried the King at last to 
 Colman, " that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the king- 
 dom of heaven — has He given such power to Columba?" 
 The bishop could but answer " No. " " Then will I rather 
 obey the porter of heaven," said Oswiu, "lest when I 
 reach its gates he who has the keys in his keeping turn 
 his back on me, and there be none to open." The humor- 
 ous tone of Oswiu's decision could not hide its importance, 
 and the synod had no sooner broken up than Colman, fol- 
 lowed by the whole of the Irish-born brethren and thir+y 
 of their English fellows, forsook the see of St. Aidan %nd 
 sailed away to lona. Trivial in fact as were the actual 
 points of difference which severed the Roman Church from 
 the Irish, the question to which communion Northumbria 
 should belong was of immense moment to the after- fortunes 
 of England. Had the Church of Aidan finally won, the 
 later ecclesiastical history of England would probably have 
 resembled that of Ireland. Devoid of that power of or- 
 ganization which was the strength of the Roman Church, 
 the Celtic Church in its own Irish home took the clan sys*
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 65 
 
 tern of the country as the basis of its government. Tribal 
 quarrels and ecclesiastical controversies became inextrica- 
 bly confounded ; and the clergy, robbed of ail really spir- 
 itual influence, contributed no element save that of disor- 
 der to the state. Hundreds of wandering bishops, a vast 
 religious authority wielded by hereditary chieftains, the 
 dissociation of piety from morality, the absence of those 
 larger and more humanizing influences which contact with 
 a wider world alone can give, this is a picture which the 
 Irish Church of later times presents to us. It was from 
 such a chaos as this that England was saved by the vic- 
 tory of Rome in the Synod of Whitby. But the success 
 of Wilfrid dispelled a yet greater danger. Had England 
 clung to the Irish Church it must have remained spiritu- 
 ally isolated from the bulk of the Western world. Fallen 
 as Rome might be from its older greatness, it preserved 
 the traditions of civilization, of letters and art and law. 
 Its faith still served as a bond which held together the na- 
 tions that sprang from the wreck of the Empire. To fight 
 against Rome was, as Wilfrid said, " to fight against the 
 world," To repulse Rome was to condemn England to 
 isolation. Dimly as such thoughts may have presented 
 themselves to Oswiu's mind, it was the instinct of a states- 
 man that led him to set aside the love and gratitude of 
 his youth and to link England to Rome in the Synod of 
 Whitby. 
 
 Oswiu's assent to the vigoi-ous measures of organization 
 undertaken by a Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus, whom 
 Rome dispatched in 608 to secure England to her sway as 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, marked a yet more decisive 
 step in the new policy. The work of Theodore lay mamly 
 in the organization of the episcopate, and thus the Churcij 
 of England, as we know it to-day, is the work, so far a3 
 its outer form is concerned, of Theodore. His work was 
 determined in its main outlines by the previous history of 
 :he English people. The conquest of the Continent had 
 been wrought either by races which ^^ere already Chris- 
 VOL. I.— 6
 
 66 niSTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book 1. 
 
 tian, or by heathens who bowed to the Christian faith of 
 the nations they conquered. To this oneness of religion 
 between the German invaders of the Empire and their 
 Koman subjects was owing the preservation of all that 
 survived of the Roman world. The Church everywhere 
 remained untouched. The Christian bishop became the 
 defender of the conquered Italian or Gaul against his 
 Gothic and Lombard conqueror, the mediator between the 
 German and his subjects, the one bulwark against bar- 
 baric violence and oppression. To the barbarian, on the 
 other hand, he was the representative of all that was ven- 
 erable in the past, the living record of law, of letters, and 
 of art. But in Britain the priesthood and the people had 
 been driven out together. When Theodore came to organ- 
 ize the Church of England, the very memory of the older 
 Christian Church which existed in Roman Britain had 
 passed away. The first missionaries to the Englishmen, 
 strangers in a heathen land, attached themselves necessa- 
 rily to the courts of the kings, who were their earliest con- 
 verts, and whose conversion was generally followed by that 
 of their people. The English bishops were thus at first 
 royal chaplains, and their diocese was naturally nothing 
 but the kingdom. In this way realms which are all but 
 forgotten are commemorated in the limits of existing sees. 
 That of Rochester represented till of late an obscure king- 
 dom of West Kent, and the frontier of the original king- 
 dom of Mercia may be recovered by following the map of 
 the ancient bishopric of Lichfield, In adding many sees 
 to those he found Theodore was careful to make their dio- 
 ceses co-extensive with existing tribal demarcations. But 
 he soon passed from this extension of the episcopate to its 
 organization. In his arrangement of dioceses, and the 
 way in which he grouped them round the see of Canter- 
 bury, in his national synods and ecclesiastical canons, 
 Theodore did unconsciously a political work. The old di- 
 visions of kingdoms and tribes about him, divisions which 
 had sprung for the most i}q.rt from mere accidents of the
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 67 
 
 conquest, were now fast breaking down. The smaller states 
 were by this time practically absorbed by the three larger 
 cues, and of these three Mercia and Wessex were compelled 
 to bow to the superiority of Northumbria. The tendency 
 to national unity which was to characterize the new Eng- 
 land had thus already declared itself; but the policy of 
 Theodore clothed with a sacred form and surrounded with 
 divine sanctions a unity which as yet rested on no basis 
 but the sword. The single throne of the one Primate at 
 Canterbury accustomed men's minds to the thought of a 
 single throne for their one temporal overlord. The regu- 
 lar subordination of priest to bishop, of bishop to primate, 
 in the administration of the Church, supplied a mould on 
 which the civil organization of the state quietly shaped 
 itself. Above all, the councils gathered by Theodore were 
 the first of our national gatherings for general legislation. 
 It was at a much later time that the Wise Men of Wes- 
 sex, or Northumbria, or Mercia learned to come together 
 in the Witenagemote of all England. The synods which 
 Theodore convened as religiously representative of the 
 whole English nation led the way by their example to our 
 national parliaments. The canons which these synods en- 
 acted led the way to a national system of law. 
 
 The organization of the episcopate was followed by the 
 organization of the parish system. The mission-station or 
 monastery from which priest or bishop went forth on jour- 
 ney after journey to preach and baptize naturally disap- 
 peared as the land became Christian. The missionaries 
 turned into settled clergy. As the King's chaplain became 
 a bishop and the kingdom his diocese, so the chaplain of 
 an English noble became the priest and the manor his par- 
 ish. Bnt this parish system is probably later than Theo- 
 dore, and the system of tithes which has been sometimes 
 coupled with his name dates only from the close of the 
 eighth century. What was really due to him was the or- 
 ganization of the episcopate, and the impulse which this 
 gave to national unity. But the movement toward unity
 
 •8 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 found a sudden check in the revived strength of Mercia. 
 Wulf here proved a vigorous and active ruler, and the i->eace- 
 ful reign of Oswiu left him free to build up again during 
 sevent-eeji years of rule (65T-6T5) that Mercian overlord- 
 ship over the tribes of Mid-Engla.nd which had been lost 
 at Penda's death. He had inore than his father's success. 
 Not only did Essex again ovm his supremacy, but even 
 London fell into Mercian hands. The West-Saxons were 
 driven across the Thames, and nearly all their settlements 
 to the north of that river were annexed to the Mercian 
 re^lm. Wulfhere's supremacy* soon reached even south of 
 the Thames, for Sussex in its d read of West-Saxons found 
 protection in accepting his ovei lordship, and its king was 
 rewarded by a gift of the two tnitlying settlements of the 
 Jutes — the Isle of Wight and the lands of the Meonwaras 
 along the Southampton water — which we must suppose 
 had been reduced by Mercian anxis. The industrial prog- 
 ress of the Mercian kingdom went hand in hand with its 
 military advance. The forests of its western border, the 
 marshes of its eastern coast, were being cleared and drained 
 by monastic colonies, whose success shows the hold which 
 Christianity had now gained over its people. Heathenism 
 indeed still held its own in the wild western woodlands 
 and in the yet wilder fen- country on the eastern border of 
 the kingdom which stretched from the "Holland," the 
 sunk, hollow land of Lincolnshire, to the channel of the 
 Ouse, a wilderness of shallow waters and reedy islets 
 wrapped in its own dark mist- veil and tenanted only by 
 flocks of screaming wild-fowl. But in either quarter the 
 new faith made its way. In the western woods Bishop 
 Ecgwine found a site for an abbey round which gathered 
 the town of Evesham, and the eastern fen-land was soon 
 filled with religious houses. Here through the liberality 
 of Elng Wulfhere rose the abbey of Peterborough. Here 
 too, Guthlac, a youth of the royal race of Mercia, sought 
 a refuge from the world in the solitudes of Crowland, and 
 BO great was the reverence he won, that only two years
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 69 
 
 had passed since his death when the stately Abbey of 
 Crowland rose over his tomb. Earth was brought in boats 
 to form a site; the buildings rested on oaken piles driven 
 into the marsh; a great stone church replaced the hermit's 
 cell ; and the toil of the new brotherhood changed the pools 
 around them into fertile meadow-land. 
 
 In spite, however, of this rapid recovery of its strength 
 by Mercia Northumbria remained the dominant state in 
 Britain: and Ecgfrith, who succeeded Oswiu in 670, so' 
 utterly defeated Wulfhere when war broke out between 
 them that he was glad to purchase peace by the surrender 
 of Lincolnshire. Peace would have been purchased more 
 hardly had not Ecgfrith 's ambition turned rather to con- 
 quests over the Briton than to victories over his fellow 
 Englishmen. The war between Briton and Englishman 
 which had languished since the battle of Chester had been 
 revived some twelve years before by an advance of the 
 West-Saxons to the southwest. Unable to save the pos- 
 session of Wessex north of the Thames from the grasp of 
 Wulfhere, their king, Cenwalh, sought for compensation 
 in an attack on his Welsh neighbors. A victory at Brad- 
 ford on the Avon enabled him to overrun the countrv near 
 Mendip which had till then been held by the Britons ; and 
 a second campaign in 658, which ended in a victory on the 
 skirts of the great forest that covered Somerset to the east, 
 settled the "West-Saxons as conquerors round the sources 
 of the Parret. It may have been the example of the West- 
 Saxons which spurred Ecgfrith to a series of attacks upon 
 his British neighbors in the west which widened the bounds 
 of his kingdom. His reign marks the highest pitch of 
 Northumbrian power. His armies chased the Britons fronr. 
 the kingdom of Cumbria and made the district of Carlisle 
 English ground. A large part of the conquered country 
 was bestowed upon the see of Lindisfarne, which was at 
 this time filled by one whom we have seen before laboring 
 as the apostle of the Lowlands. Cuthbert had found a 
 new mission-station in Holy Island, and preached among
 
 70 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 the moors of Northumberland as he had preached beside 
 the banks of Tweed. He remained there through the great 
 secession which followed on the Synod of Whitby, and be- 
 came prior of the dwindled company of brethren, now torn 
 with endless disputes against which his patience and good 
 humor struggled in vain. Worn out at last, he fled to a 
 little island of basaltic rock, one of the Fame group not 
 far from Ida's fortress of Bamborough, strewn for the 
 most part with kelp and sea- weed, the home of the gull 
 and the seal. In the midst of it rose his hut of rough 
 stones and turf, dug down within deep into the rock, and 
 roofed with logs and straw. But the reverence for his 
 sanctity dragged Cuthbert back to fill the vacant see of 
 Lindisfarne. He entered Carlisle, which the King had 
 bestowed upon the bishopric, at a moment when all North- 
 umbria was waiting for news of a fresh campaign of Ecg- 
 frith's against the Britons in the north. The Firth of 
 Forth had long been the limit of ISTorthumbria, but tlv* 
 Picts to the north of it owned Ecgfrith's supremac3\ In 
 685, however, the King resolved on their actual subjection 
 and marched across the Forth. A sense of coming ill 
 weighed on Northumbria, and its dread was quickened by 
 a memory of the curses which had been pronounced by the 
 bishops of Ireland on its King, when his navy, setting out 
 a year before from the newly conquered western coast, 
 swept the Irish shores in a raid which seemed like sacri- 
 lege to those who loved the home of Aidan and Columba. 
 As Cuthbert bent over a Roman fountain which still stood 
 unharmed among the ruins of Carlisle, the anxious by- 
 standers thought they caught words of ill-omen falliug 
 from the old man's lips. "Perhaps," he seemed to mur- 
 mur, " at this very hour the peril of the fight is over and 
 done." " Watch and pray," he said, when they questioned 
 iiim on the morrow; "watch and pray." In a few days 
 more a solitary fugitive escaped from the slaughter told 
 that the Picts had turned desperatel}^ to bay as the Eng- 
 lish army entered Fife ; aod that Ecgf rith and the flower
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 71 
 
 of his Dobles lay, a ghastly ring of corpses, on the far-off 
 moorland of Nectansmere. 
 
 The blow was a fatal one for Northumbrian greatness, 
 for while the Picts pressed on the kingdom from the north 
 JEthelred, Wiilfhere's successor, attacked it on the Mer- 
 cian border, and the war was only ended by a peace which 
 left him master of Middle-England and free to attempt the 
 direct conquest of the south. For the moment this attempt 
 proved a fruitless one. Mercia was still too weak to grasp 
 the lordship which was slipping from Northumbria's hands, 
 while Wessex which seemed her destined prey rose at this 
 moment into fresh power under the greatest of its early 
 kings. Ine, the West-Saxon king whose reign covered 
 the long period from 688 to 728, carried on during the 
 whole of it the war which Cen twine had begun. He 
 pushed his way southward round the marshes of the Par- 
 ret to a more fertile territory, and guarded the frontier of 
 his new conquests by a wooden fort on the banks of the 
 Tone which has grown into the present Taunton. The 
 West-Saxons thus became masters of the whole district 
 which now bears the name of Somerset. The conquest of 
 Sussex and of Kent on his eastern border made Ine mas- 
 ter of all Britain south of the Thames, and his repulse of 
 a new Mercian King, Ceolred, in a bloody encounter at 
 Wodnesburh in 714 seemed to establish the threefold divi- 
 sion of the English race between three realms of almost 
 equal power. But able as Ine was to hold Mercia at bay, 
 he was unable to hush the civil strife that was the curse 
 of Wessex, and a wild legend tells the story of the disgust 
 which drove him from the world. He had feasted royally 
 at one of his country houses, and on the morrow, as he 
 rode from it, his queen bade him turn back thither. The 
 king returned to find his house stripped of curtains and 
 vessels, and foul with refuse and the dung of cattle, while 
 in the royal bed where he had slept with JEthelburh rested 
 a sow with her farrow of ])igs. The scene had no need of 
 the queen's comment : " See, my lord, how the fashion of
 
 72 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book l 
 
 this world passeth away !" In 726 he sought peace in a 
 pilgrimage to Rome. The anarchy which had driven Ine 
 from the throne broke out in civil strife which left Wes- 
 sex an easy prey to -i^thelbald, the successor of Ceolred in 
 the Mercian realm, -^thelbald took up with better for- 
 tune the struggle of his people for supremacy over the south. 
 He penetrated to the very heart of the West-Saxon king- 
 dom, and his siege and capture of the royal town of Som- 
 erton in 733 ended the war. For twenty years the over- 
 lordship of Mercia was recognized by all Britain south of 
 the Humber. It was at the head of the forces not of Mer- 
 cia only but of East-Anglia, Kent, and Essex, as well as 
 of the West-Saxons, that ^thelbald marched against the 
 Welsh on his western border. 
 
 In so complete a mastery of the south the Mercian King 
 found grounds for a hope that Northern Britain would also 
 yield to his sway. But the dream of a single England 
 was again destined to be foiled. Fallen as Northumbria 
 was from its old glory, it still remained a great power. 
 Under the peaceful reigns of Ecgfrith's successors. Aid- 
 frith and Ceolwulf, their kingdom became the literary 
 centre of Western Europe. No schools were more famous 
 than those of Jarrow and York. The whole learning of 
 the age seemed to be summed up in a Northumbrian 
 scholar. Bseda — the Venerable Bede, as later times styled 
 him — was born about ten years after the Synod of Whitby 
 beneath the shade of a great abbey which Benedict Biscop 
 was rearing by the mouth of the Wear. His youth was 
 trained and his long tranquil life was wholly spent in an 
 offshoot of Benedict's house which was founded by his 
 scholar Ceolfrid. Bseda never stirred from Jarrow. " I 
 spent my whole life in the same monastery," he says, "and 
 while attentive to the rule of my order and the service of 
 the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning, or teach- 
 ing, or writing." The words sketch for us a scholar's life, 
 the more touching in its simplicity that it is the life of 
 the first great English scholar. The quiet grandeur of a
 
 Chap. 2.] EAELY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 73 
 
 life consecrated to knowledge, the tranquil pleasure that 
 lies in learning and teaching and writing, dawned for 
 Englishmen in the story of Bseda. While still young he 
 became a teacher, and six hundred monks besides strangers 
 that flocked thither for instruction formed his school of 
 JarroW. It is hard to imagine how among the toils of the 
 schoolmaster and the duties of the monk Bseda could have 
 found time for the composition of the numerous works 
 that made his name famous in the West. But materials 
 for study had accumulated in Northumbria through the 
 journeys of Wilfred and Benedict Biscop and the libraries 
 which were forming at Wearmouth and York. The tra- 
 dition of the older Irish teachers still lingered to direct the 
 young scholar into that path of Scriptural interpretation 
 to which he chiefly owed his fame. Greek, a rare accom- 
 plishment in the West, came to him from the school which 
 the Greek Archbishop Theodore founded beneath the waUs 
 of Canterbury. His skill in the ecclesiastical chant was 
 derived from a Roman cantor whom Pope Vitalian sent in 
 the train of Benedict Biscop. Little by little the young 
 scholar thus made himself master of the whole range of 
 the science of his time ; he became, as Burke rightly styled 
 him, "the father of English learning." The tradition of 
 the older classic culture was first revived for England in 
 his quotations of Plato and Aristotle, of Seneca and Cicero, 
 of Lucretius and Ovid. Virgil cast over him the same 
 spell that he cast over Dante ; verses from the ^neid break 
 his narratives of martyrdoms, and the disciple ventures on 
 the track of the great master in a little eclogue descriptive 
 of the approach of spring. His work was done with small 
 aid from others. "I am my own secretary," he writes; 
 "I make my own notes. I am my own librarian." But 
 forty-five works remained after his death to attest his pro- 
 digious industry. In his own eyes and those of his con- 
 temporaries the most important among these were the com- 
 mentaries and homilies upon various books of the Bible 
 which he had drawn from the writings of the Fathers. Bui
 
 74 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. IBooK I. 
 
 he was far from confining himself to theology. In trea- 
 tises compiled as text-books for his scholars Beeda threw 
 together all that the world had then accumulated in as- 
 tronomy and meteorolog3% in physics and music, in phil- 
 osoph}^ grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine. But 
 the encyclopaedic character of his researches left him in 
 heart a simple Englishman. He loved his own English 
 tongue, he was skilled in English song, his last work was 
 a translation into English of the Gospel of St. John, and 
 almost the last words that broke from his lips were some 
 English rhymes upon death. 
 
 But the noblest proof of his love of England lies in the 
 work which immortalizes his name. In his " Ecclesiasti- 
 cal Hiytor}^ of the English Nation," Bseda was at once the 
 founder of mediaeval history and the first English histo- 
 rian. All that we really know of the century and a half 
 that follows the landing of Augustine we know from him. 
 Wherever his own personal observation extended, the story 
 is told with admirable detail and force. He is hardly less 
 full or accurate in the portions which he owed to his Kent- 
 ish friends, Alcwine and Nothelm. What he owed to no 
 informant was his exquisite faculty of story-telling, and 
 yet no story of his own telling is so touching as the story 
 of his death. Two weeks before the Easter of 735 the old 
 man was seized with an extreme weakness and loss of 
 breath. He still preserved, however, his usual pleasantness 
 and gay good-humor, and in spite of prolonged sleepless- 
 ness continued his lectures to the pupils about him. Verses 
 of his own English tongue broke from time to time from 
 the master's lip — rude rhymes that told how before the 
 "need-fare," Death's stern "must go," none can enough 
 bethink him what is to be his doom for good or ill. The 
 tears of Bseda's scholars mingled with his song. "We 
 never read without weeping," writes one of them. So the 
 days rolled on to Ascension-tide, and still master and pupils 
 toiled at their work, for Bseda longed to bring to an end 
 his version of St. John's Goepel into the English tongue
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 75 
 
 and his extracts fi*om Bishop Isidore. " I don't want my 
 boys to read a lie," he answered those who would have had 
 him rest, " or to work to no purpose after I am gone." A 
 few daj^s before Ascension-tide his sickness grew upon 
 him, but he spent the whole day in teaching, only saying 
 cheerfully to his scholars, " Learn with what speed you 
 may; I know not how long I may last." The dawn broke 
 on another sleepless night, and again the old man called 
 his scholars round him and bade them write. " There is 
 still a chapter wanting," said the scribe, as the morning 
 drew on, " and it is hard for thee to question thyself any 
 longer." "It is easily done," said Bseda; "take thy pen 
 and write quickly." Amid tears and farewells the day 
 wore on to eventide. " There is yet one sentence unwrit- 
 ten, dear master," said the boy. " Write it quickly," bade 
 the dying man. " It is finished now," said the little scribe 
 at last. "You speak truth," said the master; "all is fin- 
 ished now." Placed upon the pavement, his head sup- 
 ported in his scholar's arms, his face turned to the post 
 where he was wont to pray, Bseda chanted the solemn 
 "Glory to God." As his voice reached the close of his 
 song he passed quietly away. 
 
 First among English scholars, first among English the- 
 ologians, first mnong English historians, it is in the monk 
 of Jarrow that English literature strikes its roots. In the 
 six hundred scholars who gathered round him for instruc- 
 tion he is the father of our national education. In his 
 physical treatises he is the first figure to which our science 
 looks back. But the quiet tenor of his scholar's life was 
 broken by the growing anarchy of Northumbria, and by 
 threats of war from its Mercian rival. At last ^thelbald 
 marched on a state which seemed exhausted by civil dis- 
 cord and ready for submission to his arms. But its king 
 Eadberht showed himself worthy of the kings that had 
 gone before him, and in 740 he threw back ^thelbald's 
 attack in a repulse which not only ruined the Mercian 
 rulers hopes of northern conquest but loosened his hold on
 
 76 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 the south. Already goaded to revolt by exactions, the 
 West-Saxons were roused to a fresh struggle for indepen- 
 dence, and after twelve years of continued outbreaks the 
 whole people mustered at Burford under the golden dragon 
 of their race. The fight was a desperate one, but a sud- 
 den panic seized the Mercian King. He fled from the 
 field, and a decisive victory freed Wessex from the Mercian 
 yoke. Four years later, in 757, its freedom was main- 
 tained by a new victory at Secandun ; but amidst the rout 
 of his host ^thelbald redeemed the one hour of shame that 
 had tarnished his glory ; he refused to fly, and fell fight- 
 ing on the field. 
 
 But though Eadberht might beat back the inroads of 
 the Mercians and even conquer Strathclyde, before the an- 
 archy of his own kingdom he could only fling down his 
 sceptre and seek a refuge in the cloister of Lindisfarne. 
 From the death of Baeda the history of Northumbria be- 
 came in fact little more than a wild story of lawlessness 
 and bloodshed. King after king was swept away by trea- 
 son and revolt, the country fell into the hands of its tur- 
 bulent nobles, its very fields lay waste, and the land was 
 scourged by famine and plague. An anarchy almost as 
 complete fell on Wessex after the recovery of its freedom. 
 Only in Mid-England was there any sign of order and set- 
 tled rule. The two crushing defeats at Burford and Se- 
 candun, though they had brought about revolts v/hich 
 stripped Mercia of all the conquests it had made, were far 
 from having broken the Mercian power. Under the long 
 reign of Offa, which went on from 755 to 796, it rose again 
 to all but its old dominion. Since the dissolution of the 
 temporary alliance which Penda formed with the Welsh 
 King Cadwallon, the war with the Britons in the west had 
 been the one great hindrance to the progress of Mercia. 
 But under Offa Mercia braced herself to the completion of 
 her British conquests. Beating back the Welsh from 
 Hereford, and carrying his own ravages into the heart of 
 Wales, Offa in 779 drove the King of Powys from hia
 
 Chap. 2.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 77 
 
 capital, which changed its old name of Pengwerii for the 
 significant English title of the Town in the Scrub or Bush, 
 Scrobbesbyryg, Shrewsbury. Experience, however, had 
 taught the Mercian the worthlessness of raids like these, 
 and Offa resolved to create a military border by planting 
 a settlement of Englishmen between the Severn, which had 
 till then served as the western boundary of the English 
 race, and the huge " Offa's Dyke" which he drew from the 
 mouth of Wye to that of Dee. Here, as in the later con- 
 quests of the West-Saxons, the old plan of extermination 
 was definitely abandoned and the Welsh who chose to re- 
 main dwelt undisturbed among their English conquerors. 
 From these conquests over the Britons Offa turned to build 
 up again the realm which had been shattered at Secandun. 
 But his progress was slow. A reconquest of Kent in 774- 
 woke anew the jealousy of the West-Saxons ; and though 
 Offa repulsed their attack at Bensington in 777 the victory 
 was followed by several years of inaction. It was not till 
 Wessex was again weakened by fresh anarchy that he 
 was able to seize East Anglia and restore his realm to its 
 old bounds under Wulfhere. Further he could not go. 
 A Kentish revolt occupied him till his death in 796, and 
 his successor Cenwulf did little but preserve the realm he 
 bequeathed him. At the close of the eighth century the 
 drift of the English peoples toward a national unity was 
 in fact utterly arrested. The work of Northumbria had 
 been foiled by the resistance of Mercia ; the effort of Mer- 
 cia had broken down before the resistance of Wessex. A 
 threefold division seemed to have stamped itself upon the 
 land ; and so complete was the balance of power between 
 the three realms which parted it that no subjection of one 
 to the other seemed likely to fuse the English tribes into 
 an English people.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WESSEX AND THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 796—947. 
 
 The union which each English kingdom in turn had 
 failed to bring about was brought about by the pressure 
 of the Northmen. The dwellers in the isles of the Baltic 
 or on either side of the Scandinavian peninsula had lain 
 hidden till now fi"om Western Christendom, waging their 
 battle for existence with a stern climate, a barren soil, and 
 stormy seas. It was this hard fight for life that left its 
 stamp on the temper of Dane, Swede, or Norwegian alike, 
 that gave them their defiant energy, their ruthless daring, 
 their passion for freedom and hatred of settled rule. Fo- 
 rays and plunder raids over sea eked out their scanty live- 
 lihood, and at the close of the eighth century these raids 
 found a wider sphere than the waters of the northern seas. 
 Tidings of the wealth garnered in the abbeys and towns 
 of the new Christendom which had risen from the wreck 
 of Rome drew the pirates slowly southward to the coasts 
 of Northern Gaul; and just before Offa's death their boats 
 touched the shores of Britain. To men of that day it must 
 have seemed as though the world had gone back three 
 hundred years. The same northern fiords poured forth, 
 their pirate-fleets as in the days of Hengest or Cerdic. 
 There was the same wild panic as the black boats of the 
 invaders struck inland along the river-reaches or moored 
 round the river isles, the same sights of horror, firing of 
 homesteads, slaughter of men, women driven off to slavery 
 or shame, children tossed on pikes or sold in the market- 
 place, as when the English themselves had attacked Brit- 
 ain. Christian priests were again slain at the altar by
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 79 
 
 worshippers of Woden ; letters, arts, religion, government 
 disappeared before these Northmen as before the North- 
 men of three centuries before. 
 
 In 794 a pirate band plundered the monasteries of Jar- 
 row, and Holy Island, and the presence of the freebooters 
 soon told on the political balance of the English realms. 
 A. great revolution was going on in the south, where Mer- 
 cia was torn by civil wars which followed on Cenwulf 's 
 death, while the civil strife of the West- Saxons was hushed 
 by a new king, Ecgberht. In Offa's days Ecgberht had 
 failed in his claim of the crown of Wessex and had been 
 driven to fly for refuge to the court of the Franks. He 
 remained there through the memorable year during which 
 Charles the Great restored the Empire of the West, and 
 returned in 802 to be quietly welcomed as King by the 
 West-Saxon people. A march into the heart of Cornwall 
 and the conquest of this last fragment of the British king- 
 dom in the southwest freed his hands for a strife with 
 Mercia, which broke out in 825 when the Mercian King 
 Beornwulf marched into the heart of Wiltshire. A vic- 
 tory of Ecgberht at Ellandun gave all England south of 
 Thames to the West-Saxons, and the defeat of Beornwulf 
 spurred the men of East-Anglia to rise in a desperate re- 
 volt against Mercia. Two great overthrows at their hands 
 had already spent its strength when Ecgberht crossed the 
 Thames in 827, and the realm of Penda and Offa bowed 
 without a struggle to its conqueror. But Ecgberht had 
 wider aims than those of supremacy over Mercia alone. 
 The dream of a union of all England drew him to the north. 
 Northumbria was still strong ; in learning and arts it stood 
 at tlie head of the English race; and under a king like 
 Eadberht it would have withstood Ecgberht as resolutely 
 as it had withstood ^thelbakl. But the ruin of JarroAV 
 and Hol}^ Island had cast on it a spell of terror. Torn by 
 civil strife, and desperate of finding in itself the union 
 needed to meet the Northmen, Northumbria sought union 
 and deliverance in sabjection to a foreign master. Its
 
 80 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 thegns met Ecgberht in Derbyshire, and owned the su- 
 premacy of Wessex. 
 
 With the submission of Northumbria the work which 
 Oswiu and ^thelbald had failed to do was done, and the 
 whole English race was for the first time knit together 
 under a single rule. The union came not a moment too 
 soon. Had the old severance of people from people, the 
 old civil strife within each separate realm, gone on it is 
 hard to see how the attacks of the Northmen could have 
 been withstood. They were already settled in Ireland, and 
 from Ireland a northern host landed in 836 at Charmouth 
 in Dorsetshire strong enough to drive Ecgberht, when he 
 hastened to meet them, from the field. His victory the 
 year after at Hengestdun won a little rest for the land ; but 
 ^thelwulf who mounted the throne on Ecgberht's death 
 in 839 had to face an attack which was only beaten off by 
 years of hard fighting, ^thelwulf fought bravely in de- 
 fence of his realm; in his defeat at Charmouth as in a 
 final victory at Aclea in 851 he led his troops in person 
 against the sea-robbers ; and his success won peace for the 
 land through the short and uneventful reigns of his sons 
 ^thelbald and ^thelberht. But the northern storm burst 
 in full force upon England when a third son, JEthelred, 
 followed his brothers on the throne. The Northmen were 
 now settled on the coast of Ireland and the coast of Gaul ; 
 they were masters of the sea; and from west and east alike 
 they closed upon Britain. While one host from Ireland 
 fell on the Scot kingdom north of the Firth of Forth, an- 
 other from Scandinavia landed in 8GG on the co&st of East- 
 Anglia under Hubba and marched the next year upon York. 
 A victory over two claimants of its crown gave the pirates 
 Northumbria; and their two armies united at Nottingham 
 in 868 for an attack on the Mercian realm. Mercia was 
 saved by a march of King ^thelred to Nottingham, but 
 the peace he made there witli the Northmen left them leis- 
 ure to prepare for an invasion of East-Anglia, whose un- 
 der-King, Eadmund, brought prisoner before their leaders.
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 81 
 
 was bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows. His 
 martyrdom by the heathen made Eadmund the St. Sebas- 
 tian of English legend ; in later days his figure gleamed 
 from the pictured windows of every church along the east- 
 ern coast, and the stately' Abbey of St. Edmundsbury rose 
 over his relics. With him ended the line of East- Anglian 
 under-kings, for his kingdom was not only conquered but 
 divided among the soldiers of the pirate host, and their 
 leader Guthrum assumed its crown. Then the Northmen 
 turned to the richer spoil of the great abbeys of the Fen. 
 Peterborough, Crowlaud, Ely went up in flames, and their 
 monks fled or were slain among the ruins. Mercia, though 
 still spared from actual conquest, cowered panic-stricken 
 before the Northmen, and by payment of tribute owned 
 them as its overlords. 
 
 In five years the work of Ecgberht had been undone, 
 and England north of the Thames had been torn from the 
 overlordship of Wessex. So rapid a change could only 
 have been made possible by the temper of the conquered 
 kingdoms. To them the conquest was simply their trans- 
 fer from one overlord to another, and it may be that in all 
 there were men who preferred the overlordship of the 
 Northman to the overlordship of the West-Saxon. But 
 the loss of the subject kingdoms left Wessex face to face 
 with the invaders. The time had now come for it to fight, 
 not for supremacy, but for life. As j^et the land seemed 
 paralyzed by terror. With the exception of his one march 
 on Nottingham, King ^thelred had done nothing to save 
 his under-kingdoms from the wreck. But the pirates no 
 sooner pushed up Thames to Reading in 871 than the West- 
 Saxons, attacked on their own soil, turned fiercely at bay. 
 A desperate attack drove the Northmen from Ashdown on 
 the heights that overlooked the Vale of White Horse, but 
 their camp in the tongue of land between the Kennet and 
 Thames proved impregnable, ^thelred died in the midst 
 of the struggle, and his brother Alfred, who now became 
 king, bought the withdrawal of the pirates and a few years' 
 Vol. I.— 6
 
 83 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 breathiug-space for his realm. It was easy for the quick 
 eye of Alfred to see that the Northmen had withdrawn 
 simply with the view of gaining firmer footing for a new 
 attack; three years indeed had hardly passed before Mer- 
 (.ia was invaded and its under-King driven over sea to 
 ;aake place for a tributary of the invaders. From Repton 
 . uilf their host marched northward to the Tyne, while Guth- 
 rum led the rest into his kingdom of East-Anglia to pre- 
 pare for their next year's attack on Wessex. In 876 his 
 ileet appeared before Wareham, and when driven thence 
 by Alfred, the Northmen threw themselves into Exeter. 
 Their presence there was likely to stir a rising of the 
 Welsh, and through the winter -Alfred girded himself for 
 this new peril. At break of spring his army closed round 
 the town, a hired fleet cruised off the coast to guard against 
 rescue, and the defeat of their fellows at Wareham in an 
 attempt to relieve them drove the pirates to surrender. 
 They swore to leave Wessex and withdrew to Gloucester. 
 But Alfred had hardly disbanded his troops when his en- 
 emies, roused by the arrival of fresh hordes eager for plun- 
 der, reappeared at Chippenham, and in the opening of 878 
 marched ravaging over the land. The surprise of Wessex 
 was complete, and for a month or two the general panic 
 loft no hope of resistance. Alfred, with his small band 
 of followers, could only throw himself into a fort raised 
 hastily in the isle of Athelney among the marshes of the 
 Parret, a position from which he could watch closely the 
 movements of his foes. But with the first burst of spring 
 he called the thegns of Somerset to his standard, and still 
 gathering troops as he moved marched through Wiltshire 
 on the Northmen, He found their host at Edington, de- 
 feated it in a great battle, and after a siege of fourteen 
 days forced them to surrender and to bind themselves by 
 a solemn peace or "' frith" at Wedmore in Somerset. In 
 form the Peace of Wedmore seemed a surrender of the bulk 
 of Britain to its invaders. All Northumbria, all East- 
 Anglia, all Central England east of a line which stretched
 
 Chap. 3.] Ei^RLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 83 
 
 from Thames' mouth along the Lea to Bedford, theuce 
 along the Ouse to Watling Street, and by Watling Street 
 to Chester, was left subject to the Northmen. Through- 
 out this 'Danelagh' — as it was called — the conquerors set- 
 tled down among the conquered population as lords of the 
 soil, thickl}' in Northern Britain, more thinly in its cen- 
 tral districts, but everywhere guarding jealously their old 
 isolation and gathering in separate " heres" or armies round 
 towns which were only linked in loose confederacies. The 
 peace had in fact saved little more than Wessex itself. 
 But in saving Wessex it saved England. The spell of ter- 
 ror was broken. The tide of invasion turned. From an 
 attitude of attack the Northmen were thrown back on an 
 attitude of defence. The whole reign of Alfred was a 
 preparation for a fresh struggle that was to wrest back 
 from the pirates the land they had won. 
 
 What really gave England heart for such a struggle was 
 the courage and energy of the King himself. Alfred was 
 the noblest as he was the most complete embodiment of 
 all that is great, all that is lovable, in the English temper. 
 He combined as no other man has ever combined its prac- 
 tical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound 
 sense of duty, the reserve and self-control that steadies in 
 it a wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and 
 fairness, its frank genialit}", its sensitiveness to action, its 
 poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion. Reli- 
 gion indeed was the groundwork of JElfred's character. 
 His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere through- 
 out his writings that remain to us the name of God, the 
 thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. 
 But he was no mere saint. He felt none of that scorn of 
 the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his 
 day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sick- 
 ness and constant pain, his temper took no touch of asceti- 
 cism. His rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobil- 
 ity of nature, gave color and charm to his life. A sunny 
 frankness and openness of spirit breathes in the pleasant
 
 84 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed 
 himself in his daily converse. JElired was in truth an 
 artist, and both the lights and shadows of his life were 
 those of the artistic temperament. His love of books, his 
 love of strangers, his questionings of travellers and schol- 
 ars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs to break 
 out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him 
 in. At one time he jots down news of a voyage to the 
 unknown seas of the north. At another he listens to tid- 
 ings which his envoys bring back from the churches of 
 Malabar. And side by side with this restless outlook of 
 the artistic nature he showed its tenderness and suscepti- 
 bility, its vivid apprehension of unseen danger, its craving 
 for affection, its sensitiveness to wrong. It was with him- 
 self rather than with his reader that he communed as 
 thoughts of the foe without, of ingratitude and opposition 
 within, broke the calm pages of Gregory or Boethius. 
 " Oh, what a happy man was he," he cries once, " that man 
 that had a naked sword hanging over his head from a sin- 
 gle thread ; so as to me it always did !" " Desirest thou 
 power?" he asks at another time. "But thou shalt never 
 obtain it without sorrows — sorrows from strange folk, and 
 yet keener sorrows from thine own kindred." " Hardship 
 and sorrow !" he breaks out again, " not a king but would 
 wish to be without these if he could. But I know that he 
 cannot!" The loneliness which breathes in words like 
 these has often begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt 
 of men and the judgments of men. But cynicism found 
 no echo in the large and sympathetic temper of -(Alfred. 
 He not only longed for the love of his subjects, but for the 
 remembrance of " generations" to come. Nor did his inner 
 gloom or anxiety check for an instant his vivid and ver- 
 satile activity. To the scholars he gathered round him he 
 seemed the very type of a scholar, snatching every hour 
 he could find to read or listen to books read to him. The 
 singers of his court found in him a brother singer, gath- 
 ering the old songs of his people to teach them to his chil-
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 85 
 
 dren, breaking his renderings from the Latin with simple 
 verse, solacing himself in hours of depression with the 
 music of the Psalms. He passed from court and study to 
 plan buildings and instruct craftsmen in gold-work, to 
 teach even falconers and dog-keepers their business. But 
 all this versatility and ingenuity was controlled by a cool 
 good sense. Alfred was a thorough man of business. He 
 was careful of detail, laborious, methodical. He carried 
 in his bosom a little handbook in which he noted things as 
 they struck him — now a bit of family genealogy, now a 
 prayer, now such a story as that of Ealdhelm playing min- 
 strel on the bridge. Each hour of the day had its appointed 
 task ; there was the same order in the division of his rev- 
 enue and in the arrangement of his court. 
 
 Wide however and various as was the King's temper, 
 its range was less wonderful than its harmony. Of the 
 narrowness, of the want of proportion, of the predominance 
 of one quality over another which goes commonly with an 
 intensity of moral purpose Alfred showed not a trace. 
 Scholar and soldier, artist and man of business, poet and 
 saint, his character kept that perfect balance which charms 
 us in no other Englishman save Shakspere. But full 
 and harmonious as his temper was, it was the temper of a 
 king. Every power was bent to the work of rule. His 
 practical energy found scope for itself in the material and 
 administrative restoration of the wasted land. His intel- 
 lectual activity breathed fresh life into education and liter- 
 ature. His capacity for inspiring trust and affection drew 
 the hearts of Englishmen to a common centre, and began 
 the upbuilding of a new England. And all was guided, 
 controlled, ennobled by a single aim. " So long as I have 
 lived," said the King as life closed about him, "I have 
 striven to live worthily." Little by little men came to 
 know what such a life of worthiness meant. Little by lit- 
 tle they came to recognize in Alfred a ruler of higher and 
 nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had it seen 
 a King who lived solely for the good of his people. Never
 
 8G HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I 
 
 had it seen a ruler who set aside every personal aim to de- 
 vote himself solely to the welfare of those whom he ruled. 
 li was tliis grand self-mastery that gave him his power 
 over the men about him. Warrior and conqueror as he 
 was, they saw him set aside at thirty the warrior's dream 
 of conquest ; and the self -renouncement of Wedmore struck 
 the key-note of his reign. But still more is it this height 
 and singleness of purpose, this absolute concentration of the 
 noblest faculties to the noblest aim, that lifts Alfred out 
 of the narrow bounds of Wessex. If the sphere of his 
 action seems too small to justify the comparison of him 
 with the few whom the world owns as its greatest men, 
 he rises to their level in the moral grandeur of his life. 
 And it is this which has hallowed his memory among his 
 own English people. "I desire," said the King in some 
 of his latest words, " I desire to leave to the men that 
 come after me a remembrance of me in good works." His 
 aim has been more than fulfilled. His memory has come 
 down to us with a living distinctness through the mists of 
 exaggeration and legend which time gathered round it. 
 The instinct of the people has clung to him\vith a singular 
 affection. The love which he won a thousand years ago 
 has lingered round his name from that day to this. While 
 every other name of those earlier times has all but faded 
 from the recollection of Englishmen, that of -(Alfred re- 
 mains familiar to every English child. 
 
 The secret of -(Alfred's government lay in his own vivid 
 energy. He could hardly have chosen braver or more ac- 
 tive helpers than those whom he employed both in his po- 
 litical and in his educational efforts. The children whom 
 he trained to rule proved the ablest rulers of their time. 
 But at the outset of his reign he stood alone, and what work 
 was to be done was done by the King himself. His first ef- 
 forts were directed to the material restoration of his realm. 
 The burnt and wasted country saw its towns built again, 
 forts erected in positions of danger, new abbeys founded, 
 the machinery of justice and government restored, the laws
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 87 
 
 — - - J, 
 
 codified and amended. Still more strenuous were Alfred's 
 efforts for its moral and intellectual restoration. Even in 
 Mercia and Northumbria the pirates' sword had left few 
 survivors of the schools of Ecgberht or Bseda, and matters 
 were even worse in Wessex which had been as yet the 
 most ignorant of the English kingdoms. " When I began 
 to reign," said Alfred, "I cannot remember one priest 
 south of the Thames who could render his service-book 
 ink) English." For instructors indeed he could find only 
 a few Mercian prelates and priests with one Welsh bishop, 
 Asser, " Formerly," the King writes bitterly, " men came 
 hither from foreign lands to seek for instruction, and now 
 when we desire it we can only obtain it from abroad." 
 But his mind was far from being prisoned within his own 
 island. He sent a Norwegian ship-master to explore the 
 White Sea, and Wulf stan to trace the coast of Esthonia ; 
 envoys bore his presents to the churches of India and Jerusa- 
 lem, and an annual mission carried Peter's-pence to Rome. 
 But it was with the Franks that his intercourse was clos- 
 est, and it was from them that he drew the scholars to aid 
 him in his work of education. A scholar named Grim- 
 bald came from St. Omer to preside over his new abbey at 
 Winchester; and John, the old Saxon, was fetched from 
 the abbey of Corbey to rule a monastery and school that 
 .i^lfred's gratitude for his deliverance from the Danes 
 raised in the marshes of Athelney. The real work, how- 
 ever, to be done was done, not by these teachers, but by the 
 King himself. .i3Illfred established a school for the j^oung 
 nobles in his court, and it was to the need of books for 
 these scholars in their own tongue that we owe his most 
 remarkable literary effort. He took his books as he found 
 them — they were the popular manuals of his age — the 
 Consolation of Boethius, the Pastoral of Pope Gregory, 
 the compilation of Orosius, then the one accessible hand- 
 book of universal history, and the history of his own people 
 by Bseda. He translated these works into English, but 
 he was far more than a translator, he was an editor for
 
 88 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 the people. Here he omitted, there he expanded. He en- 
 riched Orosius by a sketch of the new geographical dis- 
 coveries in the North. He gave a West-Saxon form to 
 his selections from Baeda. In one place he stops to explain 
 his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, 
 his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due 
 balance of priest, soldier, and churl. The mention of Nero 
 spurs him to an outbreak on the abuses of power. The 
 cold Providence of Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic 
 acknowledgment of the goodness of God. As he writes, 
 his large-hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he 
 talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me," he prays 
 with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better 
 than I, for every man must say what he says and do what 
 he does according to his abilit3\" But simple as was his 
 aim, Alfred changed the whole front of our literature. Be- 
 fore him, England possessed in her own tongue one great 
 poem and a train of ballads and battle-songs. Prose she 
 had none. The mighty roll of the prose books that fill her 
 libraries begins with the translations of -^Elf red, and above 
 all with the chronicle of his reign. It seems likely that 
 the King's rendering of Bgeda's history gave the first im- 
 pulse toward the compilation of what is known as the Eng- 
 lish or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was certainly thrown 
 into its present form during his reign. The meagre lists 
 of the Kings of Wessex and the bishops of Winchester, 
 which had been preserved from older times, were roughly 
 expanded into a national history by insertions from Bseda : 
 but it is when it reaches the reign of -<Elfred that the 
 chronicle suddenly widens into the vigorous narrative, full 
 of life and originality, that marks the gift of a new power 
 to the English tongue. Varying as it does from age to 
 age in historic value, it remains the first vernacular his- 
 tory of any Teutonic people, and save for the Gothic trans> 
 lations of Ulfilas, the earliest and most venerable monu- 
 ment of Teutonic prose. 
 
 But all this literary activity was only a part of that gen-
 
 ALFRED THE GREAT 
 After a Print by Vertue
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 89 
 
 eral upbuilding of Wessex by which Alfred was preparing 
 for a fresh contest with the stranger. He kiiew that the 
 actual winning back of the Danelagh must be a work of 
 the sword, and through these long years of peace he was 
 busy with the creation of such a force as might match that 
 of the Northmen. A fleet grew out of the little squadron 
 which Alfred had been forced to man with Frisian sea- 
 men. The national fyrd or levy of all freemen at the 
 King's call was reorganized. It was now divided into 
 two halves, one of which served in the field while the other 
 guarded its own burhs and townships and served to re- 
 lieve its fellow when the men's forty days of service were 
 ended. A more disciplined military force was provided 
 by subjecting all owners of five hides of land to thegn-ser- 
 vice, a step which recognized the change that had now 
 substituted the thegn for the eorl and in which we see the 
 beginning of a feudal system. How effective these meas- 
 ures were was seen when the new resistance they met on 
 the Continent drove the Northmen to a fresh attack on 
 Britain. In 893 a large fleet steered for the Andredsweald, 
 while the sea-king Hasting entered the Thames. Alfred 
 held both at bay through the year till the men of the Dane- 
 lagh rose at their comrades' call. Wessex stood again 
 front to front with the Northmen. But the King's meas- 
 ures had made the realm strong enough to set aside its old 
 policy of defence for one of vigorous attack. His son Ead- 
 ward and his son-in-law ^thelred, whom he had set as eal- 
 dorman over what remained of Mercia, showed themselves 
 as skilful and active as the King. The aim of the North- 
 men was to rouse again the hostility of the Welsh, but 
 while Alfred held Exeter against their fleet Eadward and 
 JEthelred caught their army near the Severn and over- 
 threw it with a vast slaughter at Buttington. The de- 
 struction of their camp on the Lea by the united English 
 forces ended the war; in 897 Hasting again withdrew 
 across the Channel, and the Danelagh made peace. It was 
 with the peace he had won still about him that Alfred
 
 90 HISTORY OF THE ENGIJSH PEOPLE. [Book 1. 
 
 died in 901, and warrior as his son Eadward had shown 
 himself, he chmg to his father's policy of rest. It was not 
 till 910 that a fresh rising of the Northmen forced Alfred's 
 children to gird themselves to the conquest of the Dane- 
 lagh. 
 
 While Eadward bridled East-Anglia his sister ^theh 
 fifed, in whose hands ^thelred's death left English Mer- 
 cia, attacked the "Five Boroughs," a rude confederacy 
 which had taken the place of the older Mercian kingdom. 
 Derby represented the original Mercia on the upper Trent, 
 Lincoln the Lindiswaras, Leicester the Middle-English, 
 Stamford the province of the Gyrwas, Nottingham prob- 
 ably that of the Southumbrians. Each of these " Five 
 Boroughs" seems to have been ruled by its earl with his 
 separate " host ;" within each twelve " lawmen" adminis- 
 tered Danish law, while a common justice-court existed 
 for the whole confederacy. In her attack on this power- 
 ful league ^thelflted abandoned the older strategy of battle 
 and raid for that of siege and fortress-building. Advanc- 
 ing along the line of Trent, she fortified Tamworth and 
 Stafford on its headwaters ; when a rising in Gwent called 
 her back to the Welsh border, her army stormed Breck- 
 nock; and its king no sooner fled for shelter to the North- 
 men in whose aid he had risen than ^thelflsed at once 
 closed on Derby. Raids from Middle England failed to 
 draw the Lady of Mercia from her prey ; and Derby was 
 hardly her own when, turning southward, she forced the 
 surrender of Leicester. The brilliancy of his sister's ex- 
 ploits had as yet eclipsed those of the King, but the son of 
 Alfred was a vigorous and active ruler ; he had repulsed 
 a dangerous inroad of the Northmen from France, sum- 
 moned no doubt by the cry of distress from their brethren 
 in England, and had bridled East-Anglia to the south by 
 the erection of forts at Hertford and Witham. On the 
 death of ^thelflsed in 918 he came boldly to the front. 
 Annexing Mercia to Wessex, and thus gathering the whole 
 strength of the kingdom into ^his single hand, he under-
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 91 
 
 took the systematic reduction of the Danelagh. South of 
 the Middle English and the Fens lay a tract watered by 
 the Ouse and the Nen — originally the district of a tribe 
 known as the South-English, and now, like the Five Bor- 
 oughs of the north, grouped round the towns of Bedford, 
 Huntingdon, and Northampton. The reduction of these 
 was followed by that of East- Anglia ; the Northmen of the 
 Fens submitted with Stamford, the Southumbrians with 
 Nottingham. Eadward's Mercian troops had already 
 seized Manchester; he himself was preparing to complete 
 his conquests, when in 924 the whole of the North sud- 
 denly laid itself at his feet. Not merel}^ Northumbria but 
 the Scots and the Britons of Strathclyde "chose him to 
 father and lord." 
 
 The triumph was his last. Eadward died in 925, but 
 the reign of his son ^thelstan, .^S^lfred's golden-haired 
 grandson whom the King had girded as a child with a 
 swoi'd set in a golden scabbard and a gem-studded belt, 
 proved even moi-e glorious than his own. In spite of its 
 submission the North had still to be won. Dread of the 
 Northmen had drawn Scot and Cumbrian to their ac- 
 knowledgment of Eadward's overlordship, but ^thelstan 
 no sooner incorporated Northumbria with his dominions 
 than dread of Wessex took the place of dread of the Dane- 
 lagh. The Scot King Constantino organized a league of 
 Scot, Cumbrian, and Welshman with the Northmen. The 
 league was broken by ^thelstan's rapid action in 926; the 
 North- Welsh were forced to pay annual tribute, to march 
 in his armies, and to attend his councils; the West-Welsh 
 of Cornwall were reduced to a like vassalage, and finally 
 driven from Exeter, which they had shared till then with 
 its English inhabitants. But ten years later the same league 
 called .i32thelstan again to tlie North ; and though Constan- 
 tino was punished by an army which wasted his kingdom 
 while a fleet ravaged its coasts to Caithness, the English 
 army had no sooner withdrawn than Northumbria rose in 
 937 at the appearance of a fleet of pirates from Ireland un-
 
 92 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 der the sea-kiug Anlaf in the Humber. Scot and Cumbrian 
 fought beside the Northmen against the West-Saxon King; 
 but his victory at Brunanburh crushed the confederacy 
 and won peace till his death. His son Eadmund was but 
 a boy at his accession in 940, and the North again rose in 
 revolt. The men of the Five Boroughs joined their kins- 
 men in Northumbria ; once Eadmund was driven to a peace 
 which left him King but south of the Watling Street ; and 
 only 3-ears of hard fighting again laid the Danelagh at his 
 feet. 
 
 But policy was now to supplement the work of the 
 sword. The completion of the West- Saxon realm was in 
 fact reserved for the hands, not of a king or warrior, but 
 of a priest. Dunstan stands first in the line of ecclesias- 
 tical statesmen who counted among them Lanfranc and 
 Wolsey and ended in Laud. He is still more remarkable 
 in himself, in his own vivid personality after eight centu- 
 ries of revolution and change. He was bom in the little 
 hamlet of Glastonbur}', the home of his father, Heorstan, 
 a man of wealth and brother of the bishops of Wells and 
 of Winchester. It must have been in his father's hall that 
 the fair, diminutive bo}', with his scant but beautiful hair, 
 caught his love for "the vain songs of heathendom, the 
 trifling legends, the funeral chaunts," which afterward 
 roused against him the charge of sorcery. Thence too he 
 might have derived his passionate love of music, and his 
 custom of carrying his harp in hand on journey or visit. 
 Wandering scholars of Ireland had left their books in the 
 monastery of Glastonbury, as they left them along the 
 Rhine and the Danube; and Dunstan plunged into the 
 study of sacred and profane letters till his brain broke down 
 in delirium. So famous became his knowledge in the 
 neighborhood that news of it reached the court of ^thel- 
 stan, but his appearance there was the signal for a burst 
 of ill-will among the courtiers. They drove him from the 
 king's train, threw him from his horse as he passed through 
 the marshes, and with the wild passion of their age tram-
 
 Chap. 3.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 93 
 
 pled him under foot in the mire. The outrage ended in 
 fever, and Dunstan rose from his sick-bed a monk. But 
 the monastic profession was then little more than a vow 
 of celibacy, and his devotion took no ascetic turn. His 
 nature in fact was sunny, versatile, artistic ; full of strong 
 affections, and capable of inspiring others with affections 
 as strong. Quick-witted, of tenacious memory, a ready 
 and fluent speaker, gay and genial in address, an artist, 
 a musician, he was at the same time an indefatigable 
 worker at books, at building, at handicraft. As his sphere 
 began to widen we see him followed by a train of pupils, 
 busy with literature, writing, harping, painting, design- 
 ing. One morning a lady summons him to her house to 
 design a robe which she is embroidering, and as he bends 
 with her maidens over their toil his harp hung upon the 
 wall sounds without mortal touch tones which the excited 
 ears around frame into a joyous antiphon. 
 
 From this scholar life Dunstan was called to a wider 
 sphere of activity by the accession of Eadmund. But the 
 old jealousies revived at his reappearance at court, and 
 counting the game lost Dunstan prepared again to with- 
 draw. The King had spent the day in the chase ; the red 
 deer which he was pursuing dashed over Cheddar cliffs, 
 and his horse only checked itself on the brink of the ravine 
 at the moment when Eadmund in the bitterness of death 
 was repenting of his injustice to Dunstan. He was at once 
 summoned on the King's return. "Saddle your horse," 
 said Eadmund, "and ride with me." The royal train 
 swept over the marshes to his home ; and the King, be- 
 stowing on him the kiss of peace, seated him in the abbot's 
 chair as Abbot of Glastonbury. Dunstan became one of 
 Eadmund 's councillors and his hand was seen in the set- 
 tlement of the North. It was the hostility of the states 
 around it to the West-Saxon rule which had roused so often 
 revolt in the Danelagh; but from this time we hear noth- 
 ing more of the hostility of Bernicia, while Strathclyde 
 was conquered by Eadmund and turned adroitly to account
 
 94 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 ill winning over the Scots to his cause. The greater part 
 of it was granted to their King Malcolm on terms that 
 he should be Eadmund's fellow- worker by sea and land. 
 The league of Scot and Briton was thus finally broken up, 
 and the fidelity of the Scots secured by their need of help 
 in holding down their former ally. The settlement was 
 soon troubled by the young King's death. As he feasted 
 at Pucklechurch in the May of 946, Leofa, a robber whom 
 Eadmund had banished from the land, entered the hall, 
 seated himself at the royal board, and drew sword on the 
 cup-bearer when he bade him retire. The King sprang 
 in wrath to his thegn's aid, and seizing Leofa by the hair, 
 flung him to the ground ; but in the struggle the robber 
 drove his dagger to Eadmund's heart. His death at once 
 stirred fresh troubles in the North; the Danelagh rose 
 against his brother and successor, Eadred, and some years 
 of hard fighting were needed before it was again driven to 
 own the English supremacy. But with its submission in 
 954 the work of conquest was done. Dogged as his fight 
 had been, the Northman at last owned himself beaten. 
 From the moment of Eadred's final triumph all resistance 
 came to an end. The Danelagh ceased to be a force in 
 English politics. North might part anew from South ; 
 men of Yoikshire might again cross swords with men of 
 Hampshire , but their strife was henceforth a local strife 
 between men of the same people ; it was a strife of En- 
 glishmen with Englishmen, and not of Englishmen with 
 Northmen. 
 
 y
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FEUDALISM AND THE MONARCHY. 
 954—1071. 
 
 The fierceness of the Northman's onset had hidden the 
 real character 'of his attack. To the men who first fronted 
 the pirates it seemed as though the story of the world had 
 gone back to the days when the German barbarians first 
 broke in upon the civilized world. It was so above all in 
 Britain. All that tradition told of the Englishmen's own 
 attack on the island was seen in the Northmen's attack 
 on it. Boats of marauders from the northern seas again 
 swarmed off the British coast; church and town were 
 again the special object of attack ; the invaders again set- 
 tled on the conquered soil; heathendom again proved 
 stronger than the faith of Christ. But the issues of the 
 two attacks showed the mighty difference between them. 
 When the English ceased from their onset upon Roman 
 Britain Roman Britain had disappeared, and a new people 
 of conquerors stood alone on the conquered land. The 
 Northern storm on the other hand left land, people, gov- 
 ernment unchanged. England remained a country of Eng- 
 lishmen. The conquerors sank into the mass of the con- 
 quered, and Woden yielded without a struggle to Christ. 
 The strife between Briton and Englishman was in fact a 
 strife between men of different races, while the strife be- 
 tween Northman and Englishman was a strife between 
 men whose race was the same. The followers of Hengest 
 or of Ida were men utterly alien from the life of Britain, 
 strange to its arts, its culture, its wealth, as they were 
 strange to the social degradation which Rome had brought 
 on its province. But the Northman was little more than
 
 90 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 an Englishman bringing back to an England which had 
 drifted far from its origin the barbaric life of its earliest 
 forefathers. Nowhere throughout Europe was the fight 
 BO fierce, because nowhere else were the fighters men of 
 one blood and one speech. But just for this reason the 
 union of the combatants was nowhere so peaceful or so 
 complete. The victory of the house of Alfred only has- 
 tened a process of fusion which was already going on. 
 From the first moment of his settlement in the Danelagh 
 the Northman had been passing into a Englishman. The 
 settlers were few; they were scattered among a large 
 population; in tongue, in manner, in institutions there 
 was little to distinguish them from the men among whom 
 they dwelt. Moreover their national temper helped on the 
 process of assimilation. Even in France, where difference 
 of language and difference of custom seemed to interpose 
 an impassable barrier between the Northman settled in 
 Normandy and his neighbors, he was fast becoming a 
 Frenchman. In England, where no such barriers existed, 
 the assimilation was even quicker. The two people soon 
 became confounded. In a few years a Northman in blood 
 was Archbishop of Canterbury and another Northman in 
 blood was Archbishop of York. 
 
 The fusion might have been delayed if not wholly averted 
 by continued descents from the Scandinavian homeland. 
 But with Eadred's reign the long attack which the North- 
 man had directed against western Christendom came, for 
 a while at least, to an end. On the world which it assailed 
 its results had been immense. It had utterly changed the 
 face of the west. The empire of Ecgberht, the empire of 
 Charles the Great, had been alike dashed to pieces. But 
 break and change as it might, Christendom had held the 
 Northmen at bay. The Scandinavian power which had 
 grown up on the western seas had disappeared like a 
 dream. In Ireland the Northman's rule had dwindled to 
 the holding of a few coast towns. In France his settle- 
 ments had shrunk to the one settlement of Normandy. In
 
 dHAP. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 97 
 
 England every Northman was a subject of the English 
 King. Even the Empire of the Seas had passed from the 
 Sea- Kings' hands. It was an English and not a Scandi- 
 navian fleet that for fifty years to come held mastery in 
 the English and the Irish Channels. With Eadred's vic- 
 tory in fact the struggle seemed to have reached its close. 
 Stray pirate boats still hung off headland and coast ; stray 
 vikings still shoved out in spring-tide to gather booty. 
 But for nearly half-a-century to come no great pirate fleet 
 made its way to the west, or landed on the shores of Brit- 
 ain. The energies of the Northmen were in fact absorbed 
 through these years in the political changes of Scandina- 
 via itself. The old isolation of fiord from fiord and dale 
 from dale was breaking down. The little commonwealths 
 which had held so jealously aloof from each other were 
 being drawn together whether they would or no. In each 
 of the three regions of the north great kingdoms were 
 growing up. In Sweden King Eric made himself lord of 
 the petty states about him. In Denmark King Gorm built 
 up in the same way a monarchy of the Danes. Norway, 
 though it lingered long, followed at last in the same track. 
 Legend told how one of its many rulers, Harald of West- 
 fold, sent his men to bring him Gytha of Hordaland, a 
 girl he had chosen for wife, and how Gytha sent his men 
 back again with taunts at his petty realm. The taunts 
 went home, and Harald vowed never to clip or comb his 
 hair till he had made all Norway his own. So every 
 springtide came war and hosting, harrying and burning, 
 till a great fight at Hafursfiord settled the matter, and 
 Harald "Ugly- Head," as men called him while the strife 
 lasted, was free to shear his locks again and became Harald 
 " Fair-Hair." The Northmen loved no master, and a great 
 multitude fled out of the country, some pushing as far as 
 Iceland and colonizing it, some swarming to the Orkneys 
 and Hebrides till Harald harried them out again and the 
 sea-kings sailed southward to join Guthrum's host in the 
 Rhine country or follow Rolf to his fights on the Seine. 
 Vol. L— 7
 
 98 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 But little by little the land settled down into order, and 
 the three Scandinavian realms gathered strength for new 
 efforts which were to leave their mark on our after-history. 
 
 But of the new danger which threatened it in this union 
 of the north England knew little. The storm seemed to 
 have drifted utterly away; and the land passed from a 
 hundred years of ceaseless conflict into a time of peace. 
 Here as elsewhere the Nortlunan had failed in his purpose 
 of conquest ; but here as elsewhere he had done a mighty 
 work. In shattering the empire of Charles the Great he 
 had given birth to the nations of modern Europe. In his 
 long strife with Englishmen he had created an English 
 people. The national union which had been brought about 
 for a moment by the sword of Ecgberht was a union of 
 sheer force which broke down at the first blow of the sea- 
 robbers. The black boats of the Northmen were so many 
 wedges that split up the fabric of the roughly-built realm. 
 But the very agency which destroyed the new England 
 was destined to bring it back again, and to breathe into it 
 a life that made its union real. The peoples who had so 
 long looked on each other as enemies found themselves 
 fronted by a common foe. They were thrown together by 
 a common danger and the need of a common defence. 
 This common faith grew into a national bond as religion 
 struggled hand in hand with England itself against the 
 heathen of the north. They recognized a common king, 
 as a common struggle changed Alfred and his sons from 
 mere leaders of West Saxons into leaders of all English- 
 men in their fight with the stranger. And when the work 
 which .Alfred set his house to do was done, when the yoke 
 of the Northman was lifted from the last of his conquests, 
 Engle and Saxon, Northumbrian and Mercian, spent with 
 the battle for a common freedom and a common country, 
 knew themselves in the hour of their deliverance as an 
 English people. 
 
 The new people found its centre in the King. The 
 heightening of the royal power was a direct outcome of
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 99 
 
 the war. The dying out of other royal stocks left the 
 house of Cerdic the one line of hereditary kingship. But 
 it was the war with the Northmen that raised -Alfred and 
 his sons from tribal leaders into national kings. The long 
 series of triumphs which wrested the land from the stranger 
 begot a new and universal lo^^alty ; while the wider do- 
 minion which their success bequeathed removed the kings 
 further and further from their people, lifted them higher 
 and higher above the nobles, and clothed them more and 
 more with a mysterious dignity. Above all the religious 
 character of the war against the Northmen gave a relig- 
 ious character to the sovereigns who waged it. The 
 king, if he was no longer sacred as the son of Woden, 
 became yet more sacred as "the Lord's Anointed." By 
 the very fact of his consecration he was pledged to a relig- 
 ious rule, to justice, mercy, and good government; but 
 his " hallowing" invested him also with a power drawn 
 not from the will of man or the assent of his subjects but 
 from the will of God, and treason against him became the 
 worst of crimes. Every reign lifted the sovereign higher 
 in the social scale. The bishop, once ranked equal with 
 him in value of life, sank to the level of the ealdorman. 
 The ealdorman himself, once the hereditary ruler of a 
 smaller state, became a mere delegate of the national king, 
 with an authority curtailed in every shire by that of the 
 royal shire-reeves, officers despatched to levy the royal 
 revenues and to administer the royal justice. Among the 
 later nobility of the thegns personal service with such a 
 lord was held not to degrade but to ennoble. " Dish -thegn" 
 and "bower-thegn," " house-thegn" and "horse- thegn" 
 found themselves great officers of state ; and the develop- 
 ment of politics, the wider extension of home and foreign 
 affairs were already transforming these royal officers into 
 a standing council or ministry for the transaction of the 
 ordinary administrative business and the reception of judi- 
 cial appeals. Such a ministry, composed of thegns or 
 prelates nominated by the king, and constituting in itself
 
 100 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK I. 
 
 a large part of the Witenagemote when that assembly was 
 gathered for legislative purposes, drew the actual control 
 of affairs more and more into the hands of the sovereign 
 himself. 
 
 But the king's power was still a personal power. He 
 had to be everywhere and to see for himself that every- 
 thing ho willed was done. The royal claims lay still far 
 ahead of the real strength of the Crown. There was a want 
 of administrative machinery in actual connection with the 
 government, responsible to it, drawing its force directly 
 from it, and working automatically in its name even in 
 moments when the royal power was itself weak or waver- 
 ing. The Crown was strong under a king who was strong, 
 whose personal action was felt everywhere throughout the 
 realm, whose dread lay on every reeve and ealdorman. 
 But with a weak king the Crown was weak. Ealdormen, 
 provincial witenagemotes, local jurisdictions, ceased to 
 move at the royal bidding the moment the direct royal 
 pressure was loosened or removed. Enfeebled as they 
 were, the old provincial jealousies, the old tendency to 
 severance and isolation lingered on and woke afresh when 
 the Crown fell to a nerveless ruler or to a child. And at 
 the moment we have reached the royal power and the na- 
 tional union it embodied had to battle with fresh tenden- 
 cies toward national disintegration which sprang like 
 itself from the struggle with the Northman. The ten- 
 dency toward personal dependence and toward a social 
 organization based on personal dependence received an 
 overpowering impulse from the strife. The long insecur- 
 itj^ of a century of warfare drove the ceorl, the free tiller 
 of the soil, to seek protection more and more from the 
 thegn beside him. The freeman "commended" himself 
 to a lord who promised aid, and as the price of this shelter 
 he surrendered his freehold to receive it back as a fief laden 
 with conditions of military service. The principle of per- 
 sonal allegiance which was embodied in the very notion of 
 thegnhood, itself tended to widen into a theory of general
 
 Chap. 4.] EARIiY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 101 
 
 dependence. From Alfred's day it was assumed that no 
 man could exist without a lord. The " lordless man" be- 
 came a sort of outlaw in the realm. The free man, the 
 very base of the older English constitution, died down 
 more and more into the "villein," the man who did suit 
 and service to a master, who followed him to the field, 
 who looked to his court for justice, who rendered days of 
 service in his demesne. The same tendencies drew the 
 lesser thegns around the greater nobles, and these around 
 the provincial ealdormen. The ealdormen had hardly been 
 dwarfed into lieutenants of the national sovereign before 
 they again began to rise into petty kings, and in the cen- 
 tury which follows we see Mercian or Northumbrian thegns 
 following a Mercian or Northumbrian ealdorman to the 
 field though it were against the lord of the land. Even 
 the constitutional forms which sprang from the old Eng- 
 lish freedom tended to invest the higher nobles with a 
 commanding power. In the " great meeting" of the Wite- 
 nagemote or Assembly of the Wise lay the rule of the 
 realm. It represented the whole English people, as the 
 wise-moots of each kingdom represented the separate 
 peoples of each ; and its powers were as supreme in the 
 wider field as theirs in the narrower. It could elect or 
 depose the King. To it belonged the higher justice, the 
 imposition of taxes, the making of laws, the conclusion of 
 treaties, the control of wars, the disposal of public lar ae^ 
 the appointment of great ofiicers of state. But sucn a 
 meeting necessarily differed greatly in constitution from 
 the Witans of the lesser kingdoms. The individual free- 
 man, save when the host was gathered together, could 
 hardly take part in its deliberations. The only relic of its 
 popular character lay at last in the ring of citizens who 
 gathered round the Wise Men at London or Winchester, 
 and shouted their "aye" or "nay" at the election of a 
 king. Distance and the hardships of travel made the 
 presence of the lesser thegns as rare as that of the free- 
 men ; and the national council practically shrank into a
 
 302 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 gathering of the ealdormen, the bishops, and the officers 
 of the crown. 
 
 The old English democracy had thus all but passed into 
 an oligarchy of the narrowest kind. The feudal move- 
 ment which in other lands was breaking up every nation 
 into a mass of loosely-knit states with nobles at their head 
 who owned little save a nominal allegiance to their king 
 threatened to break up England itself. What hindered its 
 triumph was the power of the Crown, and it is the story 
 of this struggle between the monarchy and these tenden- 
 cies to feudal isolation which fills the period between the 
 death of Eadred and the conquest of the Norman. It was 
 a struggle which England shared with the rest of the west* 
 em world, but its issue here was a peculiar one. In other 
 countries feudalism won an easy victory over the central 
 government. In England alone the monarchy was strong 
 enough to hold feudalism at bay. Powerful as he might 
 be, the English ealdorman never succeeded in becoming 
 really hereditary or independent of the Crown. Kings as 
 weak as ^thelred could drive ealdormen into exile and 
 could replace them by fresh nominees. If the Witenage- 
 mote enabled the great nobles to bring their power to bear 
 directly on the Crown, it preserved at any rate a feeling 
 of national unity and was forced to back the Crown against 
 individual revolt. The Church too never became feudal- 
 ized The bishop clung to the Crown, and the bishop re- 
 mained a great social and political power. As local in 
 area as the ealdorman, for the province was his diocese 
 and he sat by his side in the local Witenagemote, he fur- 
 nished a standing check on the independence of the great 
 nobles. But if feudalism proved too weak to conquer the 
 monarchy, it was strong enough to paralyze its action. 
 Neither of the two forces could master the other, but each 
 could weaken the other, and throughout the whole period 
 of their conflict England lay a prey to disorder within and 
 to insult from without. 
 
 The first sign of these troubles was seen when the death
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 103 
 
 of Eadred in 955 handed over the realm to a child King, 
 his nephew Eadwig. Eadwig was swayed by a woman 
 of high lineage, ^thelgif u ; and the quarrel between her 
 ajid the older counsellors of Eadred broke into open strife 
 at the coronation feast. On the young King's insolent 
 withdrawal to her chamber Dunstan, at the bidding of 
 the Witan, drew him roughly back to his seat. But the 
 feast was no sooner ended than a sentence of outlawry 
 drove the abbot over sea, while the triumph of ^thelgifu 
 was crowned in 957 by the marriage of her daughter to 
 the King and. the spoliation of the monasteries which 
 Dunstan had befriended. As the new Queen was Ead- 
 wig's kinswoman the religious opinion of the day regarded 
 his marriage as incestuous, and it was followed by a revo- 
 lution. At the opening of 958 Archbishop Odo parted 
 the King from his wife by solemn sentence; while the 
 Mercians and Northumbrians rose in revolt, proclaimed 
 Ead wig's brother Eadgar their king, and recalled Dunstan. 
 The death of Eadwig a few months later restored the unity 
 of the realm ; but his successor Eadgar was only a boy of 
 fourteen, and throughout his reign the actual direction of 
 affairs lay in the hands of Dunstan, whose elevation to the 
 see of Canterbury set him at the head of the Church as of 
 the State. The noblest tribute to his rule lies in the silence 
 of our chroniclers. His work indeed was a work of settle-- 
 ment, and such a work was best done by the simple en^ 
 forcement of peace. During the years of rest in whicK; 
 the stern hand of the Primate enforced justice and order 
 i^orthman and Englishman drew together into a single 
 people. Their union was the result of no direct policy of 
 fusion; on the contrary Dunstan's policy preserved to the 
 conquered Danelagh its local rights and local usages. But 
 he recognized the men of the Danelagh as Englishmen, he 
 employed Northmen in the royal service, and promoted 
 them to high posts in Church and State. For the rest he 
 trusted to time, and time justified his trust. The fusion 
 was marked by a memorable change in the name of the
 
 104 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 land. Slowly as the conquering tribes had learned to 
 know themselves by the one national name of English- 
 men, they learned yet more slowly to stamp their name 
 on the land they had won. It was not till Eadgar 's day 
 that the name of Britain passed into the name of Engla- 
 land, the land of Englishmen, England. The same vigor- 
 ous rule which secured rest for the country during these 
 years of national union told on the growth of material 
 prosperity. Commerce sprang into a wider life. Its ex- 
 tension is seen in the complaint that men learned fierceness 
 from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Flem- 
 ing, and drunkenness from the Dane. The laws of --Ethel- 
 red which provide for the protection and regulation of 
 foreign trade only recognize a state of things which grew 
 up under Eadgar. " Men of the Empire," traders of lower 
 Lorraine and the Rhine-land, "Men of Rouen," traders 
 from the new Norman duchy of the Seine, were seen in 
 the streets of London. It was in Eadgar's day indeed that 
 London rose to the commercial greatness it has held ever 
 since. 
 
 Though Eadgar reigned for sixteen years, he was still 
 in the prime of manhood when he died in 975. His death 
 gave a fresh opening to the great nobles. He had be- 
 queathed the Crown to his elder son Eadward; but the 
 Ealdorman of East Anglia, ^thelwine, rose at once to set 
 a younger child, JEthelred, on the throne. But the two 
 primates of Canterbury and York who had joined in setting 
 the crown on the head of Eadgar now joined in setting it 
 on the head of Eadward, and Dunstan remained as before 
 master of the realm. The boy's reign however was troubled 
 by strife between the monastic party and their opponents 
 till in 979 the quarrel was cut short by his murder at 
 Corfe, and with the accession of -i^thelred, the power of 
 Dunstan made way for that of Ealdorman ^thelwine 
 and the Queen-mother. Some years of tranquillity fol- 
 lowed this victory; but though -(Ethelwine preserved 
 order at home he showed little sense of the danger which
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449-1071. 105 
 
       ---■--■     mm ■—^■^i^l^l—— ^iMt^M O , . I I — 
 
 threatened from abroad. The North was girding itself for 
 a fresh onset on England. The Scandinavian peoples had 
 drawn together into their kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, 
 and Norway; and it was no longer in isolated bands but 
 in national hosts that they were about to seek conquests 
 in the South. As ^thelred drew to manhood some chance 
 descents on the coast told of this fresh stir in the North, 
 and the usual result of the Northman's presence was seen 
 in new risings among the Welsh. 
 
 In 991 Ealdorman Brihtnoth of East-Anglia fell in battle 
 with a Norwegian force at Maldon, and the withdrawal 
 of the pirates had to be bought by money. jEthelwine 
 too died at this moment, and the death of the two ealdor- 
 men left ^thelred free to act as King. But his aim was 
 rather to save the Crown from his nobles than England 
 from the Northmen. Handsome and pleasant of address, 
 the young King's pride showed itself in a string of im- 
 perial titles, and his restless and self-confident temper 
 drove him to push the pretensions of the Crown to their 
 furthest extent. His aim throughout his reign was to free 
 himself from the dictation of the great nobles ; and it was 
 his indifference to their " rede" or counsel that won him 
 the name of ".^thelred the Redeless." From the first he 
 struck boldly at his foes, and -i^lfar, the Ealdorman of 
 Mercia, whom the death of his rival ^thelwine left su- 
 preme in the realm, was driven by the King's hate to 
 desert to a Danish force which he was sent in 992 to drive 
 from the coast, j^thelred turned from his triumph at 
 home to meet the forces of the Danish and Norwegian 
 Kings, Swegen and Olaf, which anchored off London in 
 994. His policy throughout was a policy of diplomacy 
 rather than of arms, and a treaty of subsidy gave time for 
 intrigues which parted the invaders till troubles at home 
 drew both again to the North, -^thelred took quick ad- 
 vantage of his success at home and abroad ; the place ot 
 the great ealdormen in the royal council was taken by 
 court-thegns, in whom we see the rudiments of a ministry,
 
 106 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 while the King's fleet attacked the pirates' haunts in Cum- 
 berland and the Cotentin. But in spite of all this activity 
 the news of a fresh invasion found England more weak 
 and broken than ever. The rise of the " new men" only 
 widened the breach between the court and the great nobles, 
 and their resentment showed itself in delaj^s which foiled 
 every attempt of ^thelred to meet the pirate-bands who 
 still clung to the coast. 
 
 They came probably from the other side of the Channel, 
 and it was to clear them away as well as secure himself 
 against Swegen's threatened descent that -lEthelred took 
 a step which brought England in contact with a land 
 over-sea. Normandy, where the Northmen had settled a 
 hundred years before, was now growing into a great power, 
 and it was to win the friendship of Normandy and to close 
 its harbors against Swegen that JEthelred in 1002 took the 
 Norman Duke's daughter, Emma, to wife. The same 
 dread of invasion gave birth to a panic of treason from the 
 Northern mercenaries whom the King had drawn to settle 
 in the land as a fighting force against their brethren ; and 
 an order of ^thelred brought about a general massacre 
 of them on St. Brice's day. Wedding and murder, how- 
 ever, proved feeble defences against Swegen. His fleet 
 reached the coast in 1003, and for four years he marched 
 through the length and breadth of Southern and Eastern 
 England, " lighting his war-beacons as he went" in blaz- 
 ing homestead and town. Then for a heavy bribe he with- 
 drew, to prepare for a later and more terrible onset. But 
 there was no rest for the realm. The fiercest of the Norwe- 
 gian jarls took his place, and from Wessex the war ex- 
 tended over Mercia and East-Anglia. In 1012 Canterbury 
 was taken and sacked, ^Ifheah the Archbishop dragged 
 to Greenwich, and there in default of ransom brutally 
 slain. The Danes set him in the midst of their busting, 
 pelting him with bones and skulls of oxen, till one more 
 pitiful than the rest clove his head with an axe. Mean- 
 while the court was torn with intrigue and strife, with
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 107 
 
 quanels between the court-thegns in their greed of power 
 and yet fiercer quarrels between these favorites and the 
 nobles whom they superseded in the royal councils. The 
 King's policy of finding aid among his new ministers broke 
 down when these became themselves ealdormen. With 
 their local position they took up the feudal claims of inde- 
 pendence ; and Eadric, whom ^thelred raised to be Ealdor- 
 man of Mercia, became a power that overawed the Crown. 
 In this paralysis of the central authority all organization 
 and union was lost. " Shire would not help other" when 
 Swegen returned in 1013. The war was terrible but short. 
 Everywhere the country was pitilessl}'' harried, churches 
 plundered, men slaughtered. But, with the one exception 
 of London, there was no attempt at resistance. Oxford 
 and Winchester flung open their gates. The thegns of 
 Wessex submitted to the Northmen at Bath. Even Lon- 
 don was forced at last to give way, and ^thelred fled 
 over-sea to a refuge in Normandy. 
 
 He was soon called back again. In the opening of 1014 
 Swegen died suddenly at Gainsborough ; and the spell of 
 terror was broken. The Witan recalled " their own born 
 lord," and ^thelred returned to see the Danish fleet under 
 Swegen's son, Cnut, sail away to the North. It was but 
 to plan a more terrible return. Youth of nineteen as he 
 was, Cnut showed from the first the vigor of his temper. 
 Setting aside his brother he made himself King of Den- 
 mark ; and at once gathered a splendid fleet for a fresh 
 attack on England, whose King and nobles were again at 
 strife, and where a bitter quarrel between Ealdorman 
 Eadric of Mercia and ^thelred's son Eadmund Ironside 
 broke the strength of the realm. The desertion of Eadric 
 to Cnut as soon as he appeared off the coast threw open 
 England to his arms ; Wessex and Mercia submitted to 
 him ; and though the loyalty of London enabled Eadmund, 
 when his father's death raised him in 1016 to the throne, 
 to struggle bravely for a few months against the Danes, a 
 decisive overthrow at Assandun and a treaty of partiticoi
 
 108 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 which this wrested from him at Olney were soon foUowed 
 by the young King's death. Cnut was left master of the 
 reahn. His first acts of government showed little but the 
 temper of the mere Northman, passionate, revengeful, 
 uniting the guile of the savage with his thirst for blood. 
 Eadric of Mercia, whose aid had given him the Crown, 
 was felled by an axe-blow at the King's signal ; a murder 
 removed Eadwig, the brother of Eadmund Ironside, while 
 the children of Eadmund were hunted even into Hungary 
 by his ruthless hate. But from a savage such as this the 
 young conqueror rose abruptly into a wise and temperate 
 king. His aim during twenty years seems to have been 
 to obliterate from men's minds the foreign character of 
 his rule and the bloodshed in which it had begun. 
 
 Conqueror indeed as he was, the Dane was no foreigner 
 in the sense that the Norman was a foreigner after him. 
 His language differed little from the English tongue. He 
 brought in no new system of tenure or government. Cnut 
 ruled in fact, not as a foreign conqueror, but as a native 
 king. He dismissed his Danish host, and retaining only 
 a trained band of household troops or " hus-carles" to serve 
 as a body-guard relied boldly for support within his realm 
 on the justice and good government he secured it. He fell 
 back on " Eadgar's Law, " on the old constitution of the 
 realm, for his rule of government ; and owned no differ- 
 ence between Dane and Englishman among his subjects. 
 He identified himself even with the patriotism which had 
 withstood the stranger. The Church had been the centre 
 of the national resistance ; Archbishop jElfheah had been 
 slain by Danish hands. But Cnut sought the friendship 
 of the Church ; he translated --Elfheah's body with great 
 pomp to Canterbury ; he atoned for his father's ravages by 
 gifts to the religious houses ; he protected English pilgrims 
 even against the robber lords of the Alps. His love for 
 monks broke out in a song which he composed as he 
 listened to their chant at Ely. " Merrily sang the monks 
 of Ely when Cnut King rowed by" across the vast fen-
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 109 
 
 waters that surrounded their abbey. "Row, boatmen, 
 near the land, and hear we these monks sing. " A letter 
 which Cnut wrote after twelve years of rule to his English 
 subjects marks the grandeur of his character and the noble 
 conception he had formed of kingship. " I have vowed to 
 God to lead a right life in all things," wrote the King, " to 
 rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to ad- 
 minister just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done 
 aught beyond what was just, through headiness or negli- 
 gence of youth, I am ready, with God's help, to amend it 
 utterly." No royal officer, either for fear of the King or 
 for favor of any, is to consent to injustice, none is to do 
 wrong to rich or poor " as they would value my friendship 
 and their own well-being." He especially denounces un- 
 fair exactions : " I have no need that money be heaped to- 
 gether for me by unjust demands. " " I have sent this letter 
 before me," Cnut ends, "that all the people of my realm 
 may rejoice in my well-doing; for as you yourselves 
 know, never have I spared, nor will I spare, to spend myself 
 and my toil in what is needful and good for my people. " 
 
 Cnut's greatest gift to his people was that of peace. 
 With him began the long internal tranquillity which was 
 from this time to be the key-note of the national history. 
 Without, the Dane was no longer a terror ; on the contrary 
 it was English ships and English soldiers who now ap- 
 peared in the North and followed Cnut in his campaigns 
 against Wend or Norwegian. Within, the exhaustion 
 which follows a long anarchy gave fresh strength to the 
 Crown, and Cnut's own ruling temper was backed by the 
 force of hus-carles at his disposal. The four Earls of 
 Northumberland, Mercia,Wes8ex, and East-Anglia, whom 
 he set in the place of the older ealdormen, knew them- 
 selves to be the creatures of his will; the ablest indeed of 
 their number, Godwine, Earl of Wessex, was the minister 
 or close counsellor of the King. The troubles along the 
 Northern border were ended by a memorable act of policy. 
 From Eadgar's day the Scots had pressed further and
 
 110 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 further across the Firth of Forth till a victory of their 
 Kiug Malcolm over Earl Eadwulf at Carham in 1018 made 
 him master of Northern Northumbria. In 1031 Cnut ad- 
 vanced to the North, but the quarrel ended in a formal 
 cession of the district between the Forth and the Tweed, 
 Lothian as it was called, to the Scot-King on his doing 
 homage to Cnut. The gain told at once on the character 
 of the Northern kingdom. The Kings of the Scots had 
 till now been rulers simply of Gaelic and Celtic peoples; 
 but from the moment that Lothian with its English farm 
 ers and English seamen became a part of their dominions 
 it became the most important part. The Kings fixed their 
 seat at Edinburgh, and in the midst of an English popu- 
 lation passed from Gaelic chieftains into the Saxon rulers 
 of a mingled people. 
 
 But the greatness of Cnut's rule hung solely on the 
 greatness of his temper, and the Danish power was shaken 
 by his death in 1035. The empire he had built up at once 
 fell to pieces. He had bequeathed both England and Den- 
 mark to his son Harthacnut ; but the boy's absence en- 
 abled his brother, Harold Harefoot, to acquire all England 
 save Godwine's earldom of Wessex, and in the end even 
 Godwine was forced to submit to him. Harold's death in 
 1040 averted a conflict between the brothers, and placed 
 Harthacnut quietly on the throne. But the love which 
 Cnut's justice had won turned to hatred before the law- 
 lessness of his successors. The long peace sickened men 
 of their bloodshed and violence. " Never was a bloodier 
 ,deed done in the land since the Danes came," ran a popu- 
 lar song, when Harold's men seized JElfred, a brother of 
 Eadmund Ironside, who returned to England from Nor- 
 mandy where he had found a refuge since his father's 
 flight to its shores. Every tenth man among his followers 
 was killed, the rest sold for slaves, and Alfred's eyes torn 
 out at Ely. Harthacnut, more savage than his prede- 
 cessor, dug up his brother's body and flung it into a marsh ; 
 while a rising at Worcester against his hus-carles was
 
 CANUTE COMMANDING THE SEA TO RETIRE 
 From an Old Print
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. Ill 
 
 punished by the burniug of the town and the pillage of the 
 shire. The young King's death was no less brutal than 
 his life; in 1042 "he died as he stood at his drink in the 
 house of Osgod Clapa at Lambeth." England wearied 
 of rulers such as these : but their crimes helped her to free 
 herself from the impossible dream of Cnut. The North, 
 still more barbarous than herself, could give her no new 
 element of progress or civilization. It was the conscious- 
 ness of this and a hatred of rulers such as Harold and 
 Harthacnut which co-operated with the old feeling of rev- 
 erence for the past in calling back the line of Alfred to 
 the throne. 
 
 It is in such transitional moments of a nation's history 
 that it needs the cool prudence, the sensitive selfishness, 
 the quick perception of what is possible, which distin- 
 guished the adroit politician whom the death of Cnut left 
 supreme in England. Originally of obscure origin, God- 
 wine's ability had raised him high in the royal favor; he 
 was allied to Cnut by marriage, entrusted by him with the 
 earldom of Wessex, and at last made the Viceroy or justi- 
 ciar of the King in the government of the realm. In the 
 wars of Scandinavia he had shown courage and skill at 
 the head of a body of English troops, but his true field of 
 action lay at home. Shrewd, eloquent, an active admin- 
 istrator, Godwine united vigilance, industry, and caution 
 with a singular dexterity in the management of men. 
 During the troubled years that followed the death of Cnut 
 he did his best to continue his master's policy in securing 
 the internal union of England under a Danish sovereign 
 and in preserving her connection with the North. But at 
 the death of Harthacnut Cnut's policy had become im- 
 possible, and abandoning the Danish cause Godwine drifted 
 with the tide of popular feeling which called Eadward, 
 the one living son of ^thelred, to the throne. Eadward 
 had lived from his youth in exile at the court of Nor- 
 mandy. A halo of tenderness spread in after-time round 
 this last King of the old English stock ; legends told of hia
 
 112 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK I. 
 
 pious simplicity, his blitheness and gentleness of mood, 
 the holiness that gained him his name of " Confessor" and 
 enshrined him as a Saint in his abbey-church at West- 
 minster. Gleemen sang in manlier tones of the long peace 
 and glories of his reign, how warriors and wise counsellors 
 stood round his throne, and Welsh and Scot and Briton 
 obeyed him. His was the one figure that stood out bright 
 against the darkness when England lay trodden under foot 
 by Norman conquerors ; and so dear became his memory 
 that liberty and independence itself seemed incarnate in 
 his name. Instead of freedom, the subjects of William or 
 Henry called for the "good laws of Eadward the Con- 
 fessor." But it was as a mere shadow of the past that the 
 exile really returned to the throne of Alfred ; there was 
 something shadow-like in his thin form, his delicate com- 
 plexion, his transparent womanly hands ; and it is almost 
 as a shadow that he glides over the political stage. The 
 work of government was done by sterner hands. 
 
 Throughout his earlier reign, in fact, England lay in the 
 hands of its three Earls, Siward of Northumbria, Leofric 
 of Mercia, and Godwine of Wessex, and it seemed as if 
 the feudal tendency to provincial separation against which 
 jEthelred had struggled was to triumph with the death of 
 Cnut. What hindered this severance was the greed of 
 Godwine. Siward was isolated in the North: Leofric's 
 earldom was but a fragment of Mercia. But the Earl of 
 Wessex, already master of the wealthiest part of England, 
 seized district after district for his house. His son Swegen 
 secured an earldom in the southwest; his son Harold be- 
 came Earl of East- Anglia ; his nephew Beorn was estab- 
 lished in Central England: while the marriage of his 
 daughter Eadgyth to the King himself gave Godwine a 
 hold upon the throne. Policy led the Earl, as it led his 
 son, rather to aim at winning England itself than at break- 
 ing up England to win a mere fief in it. But his aim 
 found a sudden check through the lawlessness of his son 
 Swegen. Swegen seduced the abbess of Leominster, sent
 
 Chap. 4.] EAELY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 113 
 
 her home again with a yet more outrageous demand of her 
 hand in marriage, and on the King's refusal to grant it 
 fled from the reahn. Godwine's influence secured his 
 pardon, but on his very return to seek it Swegen murdered 
 his cousin Beorn who had opposed the reconciliation and 
 again fled to Flanders. A storm of national indignation 
 followed him over-sea. The meeting of the Wise Men 
 branded him as "nithing," the "utterly worthless," yet in 
 a year his father wrested a new pardon from the King and 
 restored him .to his earldom. The scandalous inlawing of 
 such a criminal left Godwine alone in a struggle which- 
 soon arose with Eadward himself. The King was a 
 stranger in his realm, and his sympathies lay naturally 
 with the home and friends of his youth and exile. He 
 spoke the Norman tongue. He used in Norman fashion 
 a seal for his charters. He set Norman favorites in the 
 highest posts of Church and State. Foreigners such as 
 these, though hostile to the minister, were powerless 
 against Godwine's influence and ability, and when at a 
 later time they ventured to stand alone against him they 
 fell without a blow. But the general ill-will at Swegen's 
 inlawing enabled them to stir Eadward to attack the Earl, 
 and in 1051 a trivial quarrel brought the opportunity of a 
 decisive break with him. On his return from a visit to 
 the Court, Eustace, Count of Boulogne, the husband of the 
 King's sister, demanded quarters for his train in Dover. 
 Strife arose, and many both of the burghers and foreigners 
 were slain. All Godwine's better nature withstood Ead- 
 ward when the King angrily bade him exact vengeance 
 from the town for the affront of his kinsman; and he 
 claimed a fair trial for the townsmen. But Eadward 
 looked on his refusal as an outrage, and the quarrel wi- 
 dened into open strife. Godwine at once gathered his forces 
 and marched upon Gloucester, demanding the expulsion 
 of the foreign favorites. But even in a just quarrel the 
 country was cold in his support. The Earls of Mercia 
 and Northumberland united their forces to those of Ead- 
 VoL. I.— 8
 
 114 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 ward at Gloucester, and marched with the King to a gath- 
 ering of the Witenagemote at London, Godwine again 
 appeared in arms, but Svvegen's outlawry was renewed, 
 and the Earl of Wessex, declining with his usual prudence 
 a useless struggle, withdrew over-sea to Flanders. 
 
 But the wrath of the nation was appeased by his fall. 
 Great as were Godwine's faults, he was the one man who 
 now stood between England and the rule of the strangers 
 who flocked to the Court ; and a year had hardly passed 
 when he was strong enough to return. At the appearance 
 of his fleet in the Thames in 1053 Eadward was once more 
 forced to yield. The foreign prelates and bishops fled 
 over-sea, outlawed by the same meeting of the Wise men 
 which restored Godwine to his home. But he returned 
 only to die, and the direction of affairs passed quietly to 
 his son Harold, Harold came to power unfettered by the* 
 obstacles which beset his father, and for twelve years he 
 was the actual governor of the realm. The courage, 
 the ability, the genius for administration, the ambition 
 and subtlety of Godwine were found again in his son. In 
 the internal government of England he followed out his 
 father's policy while avoiding its excesses. Peace waa 
 preserved, justice administered, and the realm increased 
 in wealth and prosperity. Its gold work and embroidery 
 became famous in the markets of Flanders and France 
 Disturbances from without were crushed sternly and rap 
 idly; Harold's military talents displaj^ed themselves in a 
 campaign against Wales, and in the boldness and rapidity 
 with which, arming his troops with weapons adapted for 
 mountain conflict, he penetrated to the heart of its fast- 
 nesses and reduced the country to complete submission. 
 With the gift of the Northumbrian earldom on Siward'3 
 death to his brother Tostig, all England save a small part 
 of the older Mercia lay in the hands of the house of God- 
 wine, and as the waning health of the King, the death of 
 his nephew, the son of Eadmund, who had returned from 
 Hungary as his heir, and the childhood of the ^theling
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449-1071. 115 
 
 Eadgar who stood next in blood, removed obstacle after 
 obstacle to his plans, Harold patiently but steadily moved 
 forward to the throne. 
 
 But his advance was watched by one even more able and 
 ambitious than himself. For the last half-century Eng- 
 land had been drawing nearer to the Norman land which 
 fronted it across the Channel. As we pass nowadays 
 through Normandy, it is English history which is round 
 about us. The name of hamlet after hamlet has memories 
 for English ears^ a fragment of castle wall marks the home 
 of the Bruce, a tiny village preserves the name of the 
 Percy. The very look of the country and its people seem 
 familiar to us ; the Norman peasant in his cap and blouse 
 recalls the build and features of the small English farmer; 
 the fields about Caen, with their dense hedgerows, their 
 elms, their apple-orchards, are the very picture of an Eng- 
 lish country-side. Huge cathedrals lift themselves over 
 the red-tiled roofs of little market towns, the models of 
 stately fabrics which superseded the lowlier churches of 
 -(S]lfred or Dunstan, while the windy heights that look 
 over orchard and meadowland are crowned with the square 
 gray keeps which Normandy gave to the cliffs of Rich- 
 mond and the banks of Thames. It was Rolf the Ganger, 
 or Walker, a pirate leader like Guthrum or Hasting, who 
 wrested this land from the French king, Charles the Sim- 
 ple, in 912, at the moment when JElfred's children were 
 beginning their conquest of the English Danelagh. The 
 treaty of Clair-on-Epte in which France purchased peace 
 by this cession of the coast was a close imitation of the 
 Peace of Wedmore. Rolf, like Guthrum, was baptized, 
 received the King's daughter in marriage, and became his 
 vassal for the territory which now took the name of " the 
 Northman's land" or Normandy. But vassalage and the 
 new faith sat lightly on the Dane. No such ties of blood 
 and speech tended to unite the Northman with the French 
 among -ivhom he settled along the Seine as united him to 
 the Englishmen among whom he settled along the Hum-
 
 lie HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 ber. "William Longsword, the son of Rolf, though waver- 
 ing toward France and Christianity, remained a Northman 
 in heart; he called in a Danish colony to occupy his con- 
 quest of the Cotentin, the peninsula which runs out from 
 St. Michael's Mount to the cliffs of Cherbourg, and reared 
 his boy among the Nortlmien of Bayeux where the Danish 
 tongue and fashions most stubbornlj'- held their own. A 
 heathen reaction followed his death, and the bulk of the 
 Normans, with the child Duke Richard, fell away for the 
 time from Christianity, while new pirate-fleets came 
 swarming up the Seine. To the close of the century the 
 whole people were still "Pirates" to the French around 
 them, their laud the "Pirates' land," their Duke the 
 "Pirates' Duke." Yet in the end the same forces which 
 merged the Dane in the Englishman told even more pow- 
 erfully on the Dane in France. No race has ever shown a 
 greater power of absorbing all the nobler characteristics of 
 the peoples with whom the}^ came in contact, or of infusing 
 their own energy into them. During the long reign of 
 Duke Richard the Fearless, the son of William Long- 
 sword, a reign which lasted from 945 to 996, the heathen 
 Northmen pirates became French Christians and feudal at 
 heart. The old Norse language lived only at Bayeux and 
 in a few local names. As the old Northern freedom died 
 silently away, the descendants of the pirates became feu- 
 dal nobles and the " Pirates' land" sank into the most loyal 
 of the fiefs of France. 
 
 From the moment of their settlement on the Frankish 
 coast, the Normans had been jealously watched by the 
 English kings; and the anxiety of ^thelred for their 
 friendship set a Norman woman on the English throne. 
 The marriage of Emma with -^Ethelred brought about a 
 close political connection between the two countries. It 
 was in Normandy that the King found a refuge from 
 Swegen's invasion, and his younger boys grew up in exile 
 at the Norman court. Their presence there drew the eyes 
 of every Norman to the rich land which offered so tempt-
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 117 
 
 ing a prey across the Channel. The energy which they 
 had shown in winning their land from the Franks, in ab- 
 sorbing the French civilization and the French religion, 
 was now showing itself in adventures on far-off shores, in 
 crusades against the Moslem of Spain or the Arabs of 
 Sicily. It was this spirit of adventure that roused the 
 Norman Duke Robert to sail against England in Cnut's 
 day under pretext of setting ^thelred's children on its 
 throne, but the wreck of his fleet in a storm put an end to 
 a project which might have anticipated the work of his 
 son. It was that son, WiUiam the Great, as men of his 
 own day styled him, William the Conqueror as he was to 
 stamp himself by one event on English history, who was 
 now Duke of Normandy. The full grandeur of his in- 
 domitable will, his large and patient statesmanship, the 
 loftiness of aim which lifts him out of the petty incidents 
 of his age, were as yet only partly disclosed. But there 
 never had been a moment from his boyhood when he was 
 not among the greatest of men. His life from the very 
 first was one long mastering of difficulty after difficulty. 
 The shame of his birth remained in his name of "the 
 Bastard." His father Robert had seen Arlotta, a tanner's 
 daughter of the town, as she washed her linen in a little 
 brook by Falaise; and loving her he had made her the 
 mother of his boy. The departure of Robert on a pilgrim- 
 age from which he never returned left William a child- 
 ruler among the most turbulent baronage in Christendom ; 
 treason and anarchy surrounded him as he grew to man- 
 hood; and disorder broke at last into open revolt. But in 
 1047 a fierce combat of horse on the slopes of Val-es-dunes 
 beside Caen left the young Duke master of his duchy and 
 he soon made his masterj- felt. "Normans," said a Nor- 
 man poet, " must be trodden down and kept under foot, for 
 he only that bridles them may use them at his need." In 
 the stem order he forced on the land Normandy from this 
 hour felt the bridle of its Duke. 
 
 Secure at home, William seized the moment of God-
 
 118 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 wine's exile to visit England, and received from his cousin, 
 King Eadward, as he afterward asserted, a promise of 
 succession to his throne. Such a promise, however, un- 
 confirmed hy the Witenagemote, was valueless; and the 
 return of Godwine must have at once cut short the young 
 Duke's hopes. He found in fact work enough to do in his 
 own duchy, for the discontent of his baronage at the stern 
 justice of his rule found support in the jealousy which his 
 power raised in the states around him, and it was only 
 after two great victories at Mortemer and Varaville and 
 six years of hard fighting that outer and inner foes were 
 alike trodden under foot. In 1060 William stood first 
 among the princes of France. Maine submitted to his 
 rule. Brittany was reduced to obedience by a single 
 march. "While some of the rebel barons rotted in the 
 Duke's dungeons and some were driven into exile, the 
 land settled down into a peace which gave room for a quick 
 upgrowth of wealth and culture. Learning and education 
 found their centre in the school of Bee, which the teaching 
 of a Lombard scholar, Lanfranc, raised in a few years 
 into the most famous school of Christendom. Lanfranc's 
 first contact with William, if it showed the Duke's im- 
 perious temper, showed too his marvellous insight into 
 men. In a strife with the Papacy which William pro- 
 voked by his marriage with Matilda, a daughter of the 
 Count of Flanders, Lanfranc took the side of Rome. His 
 opposition was met by a sentence of banishment, and the 
 Prior had hardly set out on a lame horse, the only one his 
 house could afford, when he was overtaken by the Duke, 
 impatient that he should quit Normandy. " Give me a 
 better horse and I shall go the quicker," replied the im- 
 perturbable Lombard, and William's wrath passed into 
 laughter and good will. From that hour Lanfranc became 
 his minister and counsellor, whether for affairs in the 
 flnchy itself or for the more daring schemes of ambition 
 which opened up across the Channel. 
 William's hopes of the English crown are said to have
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449— 107L 118 
 
 been revived by a storm which threw Harold, while cruis- 
 ing in the Channel, on the coast of Ponthieu. Its count 
 sold him to the Duke ; and as the price of return to England 
 William forced him to swear on the relics of saints to 
 support his claim to its throne. But, true or no, the oath 
 told little on Harold's course. As the childless King drew 
 to his grave one obstacle after another was cleared from 
 the Earl's path. His brother Tostig had become his most 
 dangerous rival; but a revolt of the Northumbrians drove 
 Tostig to Flanders, and the Earl was able to win over the 
 Mercian house of Leofric to his cause by owning Morkere, 
 the brother of the Mercian Earl Eadwine, as his brother's 
 successor. His aim was in fact attained without a strug- 
 gle. In the opening of 1066 the nobles and bishops who 
 gathered round the death-bed of the Confessor passed 
 quietly from it to the election and coronation of Harold. 
 But at Rouen the news was welcomed with a burst of furi- 
 ous passion, and the Duke of Normandy at once prepared 
 to enforce his claim by arms. William did not claim the 
 Crown. He claimed simply the right which he afterward 
 used when his sword had won it of presenting himself for 
 election by the nation, and he believed himself entitled so 
 to present himself by the direct commendation of the 
 Confessor. The actual election of Harold which stood in 
 his way, humed as it was, he did not recognize as valid. 
 But with this constitutional claim was inextricably min- 
 gled resentment at the private wrong which Harold had 
 done him, and a resolve to exact vengeance on the man 
 whom he regarded as untrue to his oath. The difficulties 
 in the way of his enterprise were indeed enormous. He 
 could reckon on no support within England itself. At 
 home he had to extort the consent of his own reluctant 
 baronage ; to gather a motley host from every quarter of 
 France and to keep it together for months ; to create a fleet, 
 to cut down the very trees, to build, to launch, to man the 
 vessels; and to find time amid all this for the common 
 business of government, for negotiations with Denmark
 
 120 HISTOR\* OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 and the Empire, with France, Brittany, and Anjou, with 
 Flanders and with Rome which had been estranged from 
 England by Archbishop Stigand's acceptance of his pallium 
 from one who was not owned as a canonical Pope. 
 
 But his rival's difficulties were hardly less than his own. 
 Harold was threatened with invasion not only by William 
 but by his brother Tostig, who had taken refuge in Nor- 
 way and secured the aid of its King, Harald Hardrada. 
 The fleet and army he had gathered lay watching for 
 months along the coast. His one standing force was his 
 body of hus-carles, but their numbers only enabled them 
 to act as the nucleus of an army. On the other hand the 
 Land-fyrd or general levy of fighting-men was a body easy 
 to raise for any single encounter but hard to keep together. 
 To assemble such a force was to bring labor to a standstill. 
 The men gathered under the King's standard were the 
 farmers and ploughmen of their fields. The ships were 
 the fishing- vessels of the coast. In September the task of 
 holding them together became impossible, but their dis- 
 persion had hardly taken place when the two clouds which 
 had so long been gathering burst at once upon the realm. 
 A change of wind released the landlocked armament of 
 William; but before changing, the wind which prisoned 
 the Duke brought the host of Tostig and Harald Hardrada 
 to the coast of Yorkshire. The King hastened with his 
 household troops to the north and repulsed the Norwegians 
 in a decisive overthrow at Stamford Bridge, but ere he 
 could hurry back to London the Norman host had crossed 
 the sea and William, who had anchored on the twenty- 
 eighth of September off Pevensey, was ravaging the coast 
 to bring his rival to an engagement. His merciless rav- 
 ages succeeded in drawing Harold from London to the 
 south; but the King wisely refused to attack with the 
 troops he had hastily summoned to his banner. If he was 
 forced to give battle, he resolved to give it on ground he 
 had himself chosen, and advancing near enough to the 
 coast to check William's ravages he entrenched himself on
 
 Chap. 4.] EARL\ ENGLAND. 449—1071. 121 
 
 a hill known afterward as that of Senlac, a low spur of 
 the Sussex downs near Hastings. His position covered 
 London and drove William to concentrate his forces. With 
 a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve ; 
 and no alternative was left to the Duke but a decisive vic- 
 tory or ruin. ' 
 On the fourteenth of October William led his men at 
 dawn along the higher ground that leads from Hastings 
 to the battle-field which Harold had chosen. From the 
 mound of Telham the Normans saw the host of the Eng- 
 lish gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade 
 on the height of Senlac. Marshy ground covered their 
 right ; on the left, the most exposed part of the position, 
 the hus-carles or body-guard of Harold, men in full armor 
 and wielding huge axes, were grouped round the Golden 
 Dragon of Wessex and the Standard of the King. The 
 rest of the ground was covered by thick masses of half- 
 armed rustics who had flocked at Harold's summons to the 
 fight with the stranger. It was against the centre of this 
 formidable position that William arrayed his Norman 
 knighthood, while the mercenary forces he had gathered 
 in France and Britanny were ordered to attack its flanks. 
 A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle ; 
 in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in 
 the air and catching it again while he chanted the song 
 of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, 
 and he was the first to fall. The charge broke vainly on 
 the stout stockade behind which the English warriors plied 
 axe and javelin with fierce cries of "Out, out," and the 
 repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by a repulse 
 of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke rallied 
 and led them to the fatal stockade. All the fury of fight 
 that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the headlong 
 valor that spurred him over the slopes of Val-es-dunes, 
 mingled that day with the coolness of head, the dogged 
 perseverance, the inexhaustible faculty of resource which 
 shone at Mortemer and Varaville. His Breton troops, en-
 
 122 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 tangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in disor- 
 der, and as panic spread through the army a cry arose that 
 the Duke was slain. William tore off his helmet ; " 1 live," 
 he shouted, " and by God's help I will conquer yet." Mad- 
 dened by a fresh repulse, the Duke spurred right at the 
 Standard; unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, 
 the King's brother; again dismounted, a blow from his 
 hand hurled to the ground an unmannerly rider who would 
 not lend him his steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the 
 battle he turned the flight he had arrested into the mean3 
 of victory. Broken as the stockade was by bis desperate 
 onset, the shield -wall of the warriors behind it still held 
 the Normans at bay till William by a feint of flight drew 
 a part of the English forces from their post of vantage. 
 Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to 
 pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and made him- 
 self master »f the central ground. Meanwhile the French 
 and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At 
 three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged 
 around the Standard where Harold's hus-carles stood stub- 
 bornly at bay on a spot marked afterward by the high 
 altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the Duke at last 
 brought his archers to the front. Their arrow-flight told 
 heavily on the dense masses crowded around the King, and 
 as the sun went down a shaft pierced Harold's right eye. 
 He fell between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed 
 with a desperate melee over his corpse. 
 
 Night covered the flight of the English army : but Wil- 
 liam was quick to reap the advantage of his victory. Se- 
 curing Romney and Dover, he marched by Canterbury 
 upon London. Faction and intrigue were doing his work 
 for him as he advanced ; for Harold's brothers had fallen 
 with the King on the field of Senlac, and there was none 
 of the house of Godwine to contest the crown. Of the old 
 royal line there remained but a single boy, Eadgar the 
 JEtheling. He was chosen King; but the choice gave 
 little strength to the national cause. The widow of the
 
 2 
 O 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 _J 
 
 u. 
 
 O 
 
 ce 
 of.
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 123 
 
 Confessor surrendered Winchester to the Duke. The bish- 
 ops gathered at London inclined to submission. The 
 citizens themselves faltered as William, passing by their 
 walls, gave Southwark to the flames. The throne of the 
 boy-king really rested for support on the Earls of Mercia 
 and Northumbria, Eadwine and Morkere ; and William, 
 crossing the Thames at Wallingford and marching into 
 Hertfordshire, threatened to cut them off from their earl- 
 doms. The masterly movement forced the Earls to hurry 
 home, and London gave way at once. Eadgar himself 
 was at the head of the deputation who came to offer the 
 crown to the Norman Duke. " They bowed to him," says 
 the English annalist, pathetically, "for need." They 
 bowed to the Norman as they had bowed to the Dane, and 
 William accepted the crown in the spirit of Cnut. London 
 indeed was secured by the erection of a fortress which 
 afterward grew into the Tower, but William desired to 
 reign not as a conqueror but as a lawful king. At Christ- 
 mas he received the crown at Westminster from the hands 
 of Archbishop Ealdred amid shouts of "Yea, Yea," from 
 his new English subjects. Fines from the greater land- 
 owners atoned for a resistance which now counted as re- 
 bellion ; but with this exception every measure of the new 
 sovereign showed his desire of ruling as a successor of 
 Eadward or Alfred. As yet indeed the greater part of 
 England remained quietly aloof from him, and he can 
 hardly be said to have been recognized as king by North- 
 umberland or the greater part of Mercia. But to the east 
 of a line which stretched from Norwich to Dorsetshire his 
 rule was unquestioned, and over this portion he ruled as 
 an English king. His soldiers were kept in strict order. 
 No change was made in law or custom. The privileges 
 of London were recognized by a royal writ which still re- 
 mains, the most venerable of its muniments, among the 
 city's archives. Peace and order were restored. William 
 even attempted, though in vain, to learn the English 
 tongue that he might personally administer justice to the
 
 124 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book L 
 
 suitors in his court. The kingdom seemed so tranquil that 
 only a few months had passed after the battle of Senlac 
 when leaving England in charge of his brother, Odo, 
 Bishop of Bayeux, and his minister, William Fitz-Osbern, 
 the King returned in 1067 for a while to NormandJ^ The 
 peace he left was soon indeed disturbed. Bishop Odo's 
 tyranny forced the Kentishmen to seek aid from Count 
 Eustace of Boulogne ; while the Welsh princes supported 
 a similar rising against Norman oppression in the west. 
 But as yet the bulk of the land held fairly to the new king. 
 Dover was saved from Eustace ; and the discontented fled 
 over-seat to seek refuge in lands as far off as Constantino- 
 ple, where Englishmen from this time formed great part 
 of the bodyguard or Varangians of the Eastern Emperors. 
 William returned to take his place again as an English 
 King. It was with an English force that he subdued a 
 rising in the southwest with Exeter at its head, and it 
 was at the head of an English army that he completed his 
 work by marching to the North. His march brought 
 Eadwine and Morkere again to submission ; a fresh rising 
 ended in the occupation of York, and England as far as 
 the Tees lay quietly at William's feet. 
 
 It was in fact only the national revolt of 1068 that trans- 
 formed the King into a conqueror. The signal for this 
 revolt came from Swegen, King of Denmark, who had 
 for two years past been pi eparing to dispute England with 
 the Norman, but on the appearance of his fleet in the 
 Humber all Northern, all Western and Southwestern Eng- 
 land rose as one man. Eadgar the ^thelinp- with a band 
 of exiles who had found refuge in Scotland took the head 
 of the Northumbrian revolt ; in the southwest the men of 
 Devon, Somerset, and Dorset gathered to the sieges of 
 Exeter and Montacute; while a new Norman castle at 
 Shrewsbury alone bridled a rising in the West. So ably 
 had the revolt been planned that even William was taken 
 by surprise. The outbreak was heralded by a storm of 
 York and the slaughter of three thousand Normans who
 
 Chap. 4.] EARLY ENGLAND. 449—1071. 125 
 
 formed its garrison. The news of this slaughter reached 
 William as he was hunting in the forest of Dean ; and in 
 a wild outburst of wrath he swore " by the splendor of 
 God" to avenge himself on the North. But wrath went 
 hand in hand with the coolest statesmanship. The centre 
 of resistance lay in the Danish fleet, and pushing rapidly 
 to the Humber with a handful of horsemen William 
 bought at a heavy price its inactivity and withdrawal. 
 Then turning westward with the troops that gathered 
 round him he swept the Welsh border and relieved Shrews- 
 bury while William Fitz-Osbern broke the rising around 
 Exeter. His success set the King free to fulfil his oath of 
 vengeance on the North, After a long delay before the 
 flooded waters of the Aire he entered York and ravaged 
 the whole country as far as the Tees. Town and village 
 were harried and burned, their inhabitants were slain or 
 driven over the Scottish border. The coast was especially 
 wasted that no hold might remain for future landings of 
 the Danes. Crops, cattle, the very implements of hus- 
 bandry were so mercilessly destroyed that a famine which 
 followed is said to have swept off more than a hundred 
 thousand victims. Half a century later indeed the land 
 still lay bare of culture and deserted of men for sixty miles 
 northward of York. The work of vengeance once ovei, 
 William led his army back from the Tees to York, and 
 thence to Chester and the West. Never had he shown 
 the grandeur of his character so memorably as in this ter- 
 rible march. The winter was hard, the roads choked 
 with snowdrifts or broken by torrents, provisions failed ; 
 and his army, storm-beaten and forced to devour its horses 
 for food, broke out into mutiny at the order to cross the 
 bleak moorlands that part Yorkshire from the West. The 
 mercenaries from Anjou and Brittany demanded their 
 release from service. William granted their prayer with 
 scorn. On foot, at the head of the troops which still clung 
 to him, he forced his way by paths inaccessible to horses, 
 often helping the men with his own hands to clear the
 
 126 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I. 
 
 road, and as the army descended upon Chester the resist- 
 ance of the English died away. 
 
 For two years William was able to busy himself in 
 castle-building and in measures for holding down the con- 
 quered land. How effective these were was seen when 
 the last act of the conquest was reached. All hope of 
 Danish aid was now gone, but Englishmen still looked for 
 help to Scotland, where Eadgar the ^tbeling had again 
 found refuge and where his sister Margaret had become 
 wife of King Malcolm. It was probably some assurance 
 of Malcolm's aid which roused the Mercian Earls, Ead- 
 wine and Morkere, to a fresh rising in 1071. But the re- 
 volt was at once foiled by the vigilance of the Conqueror. 
 Eadwine fell in an obscure skirmish, while Morkere found 
 shelter for a while in the fen country where a desperate 
 band of patriots gathered round an outlawed leader, Here- 
 ward. Nowhere had William found so stubborn a resist- 
 ance ; but a causeway two miles long was at last driven 
 across the marshes, and the last hopes of English freedom 
 died in the surrender of Ely. It was as the unquestioned 
 master of England that William marched to the North, 
 crossed the Lowlands and the Forth, and saw Malcolm 
 appear in his camp upon the Tay to swear fealty at his 
 feet.
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 EIGLAND UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 
 
 1071—1314.
 
 ^ AUTHOEITIES FOR BOOK II. 
 
 1071—1214. 
 
 Among the Norman chroniclers Orderic becomes from this point 
 particularly valuable and detailed. The Chronicle and Florence of 
 Worcester remain the primary English authorities, while Simeon 
 of Durham gives much special information on northern matters. 
 For the reign of William the Red the chief source of information is 
 Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, in his "Historia Novorum" and 
 "Life of Anselm. " William of Malmesbury and Henry of Hunting- 
 don are both contemporary authorities during that of Henry the 
 First ; the latter remains a brief but accurate annalist ; the former 
 is the leader of a new historic school, who treat English events as 
 part of the history of the world, and emulate classic models by a 
 more philosophical arrangement of their niateriiils. To these the 
 opening of Stephen's reign adds the "Gesta Stejliani," a record in 
 great detail by one of the King's clerks, and the Hexham Chroniclers. 
 
 All this wealth of historical material, however, suddenly leavet us 
 in the chaos of civil war. Even the Chronicle dies out in the midst 
 of Stephen's reign, and the close at the same time of the works we 
 have noted leaves a blank in our historical literature which extends 
 over the early years of Henry the Second. But this dearth is fol- 
 lowed by a vast outburst of historical industry. For the Beket 
 struggle we have the mass of the Archbishop's own correspondence 
 with that of Foliot and John of Salisbury. From 1169 to 1192 our 
 primary authority is the Chronicle known as that of Benedict of 
 Peterborough, whose authorship Professor Stubbs has shown to be 
 more probably due to tiie royal treasurer, Bishop Richard Fitz-Neal. 
 This is continued to 1301 by Roger of Howden in a record of equally 
 official value. William of Newborough's history, which ends in 
 1198, is a work of the classical school, like William of Malmes- 
 bury's It is distinguished by its fairness and good sense. To these 
 may be added the Chronicle of Ralph Niger, with the additions o 
 Ralph of Coggeshall, that of Gervais of Canterbury, and the inter 
 esting life of St. Hugh of Lincoln. 
 
 But the intellectual energy of Henry the Second's time is shown 
 even more remarkably in the mass of general literatiu-e which lies 
 behind these distinctively historical sources, in the treatises of John 
 of Salisbuiy, the voluminous works of Giraldus Cambrensis, the 
 "Trifles" and satires of Walter Map, Glanvill's treatise on Law, 
 Richard FitzNeal's "Dialogue on the Exchequer," to which we owe 
 our knowledge of Henry's financial system, the romances of Gaimar 
 and of Wace, the poem of the San Graal. But this intellectual fer- 
 tility is far from ceasing with Henry the Second. The thirteenth 
 century has hardly begun when the romantic impulse quickens even 
 
 Vol. I.— 9
 
 loO HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 the old English tongue in the long poem of Layamon. The Chronicle 
 of Richard of Devizes and an " Itineraiiiim Regis" supplement Roger 
 of Howden for Richard's reign. With John we enter upon the An- 
 nal of Barnwell and arc aided by the invaluable series of the Chroni- 
 clers of St. Albans. Among the side topics of the time, we may 
 find much information as to the Jews in Toovey's " Anglia Judaica ;" 
 the Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brakelond gives us a peep into social 
 and monastic life ; the Cistercian revival may be traced in the rec- 
 ords of the Cistercian abbeys in Dugdale's Mouasticon ; the Charter 
 Rolls give some information as to municipal history, and constitu- 
 tional development may be traced in the documents collected by 
 Professor Stubbs in his " Select Charters. "
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 
 1071—1085. 
 
 In the five hundred years that followed the landing of 
 Hengest Britain had become England, and its conquest 
 had ended in the settlement of its conquerors, in their con- 
 version to Christianity, in the birth of a national litera- 
 ture, of an imperfect civilization, of a rough political 
 order. But through the whole of this earlier age every 
 attempt to fuse the various tribes of conquerors into a 
 single nation had failed. The effort of Northumbria to 
 extend her rule over all England had been foiled by the 
 resistance of Mercia ; that of Mercia by the resistance of 
 Wessex. "Wessex herself, even under the guidance of 
 great kings and statesmen, had no sooner reduced the 
 country to a seeming unity than local independence rose 
 again at the call of the Northmen. The sense of a single 
 England deepened with the pressure of the invaders ; the 
 monarchy of JElfred and his house broadened into an 
 English kingdom ; but still tribal jealousies battled with 
 national unity. Northumbrian lay apart from West- 
 Saxon, Northman from Englishman. A common national 
 sympathy held the country roughly together, but a real 
 national union had yet to come. It came with foreign 
 rule. The rule of the Danish kings broke local jealousies 
 as they had never been broken before, and bequeathed a 
 new England to Godwine and the Confessor. But Cnut 
 was more Englishman than Northman, and his system of 
 government was an English system. The true foreign 
 yoke was only felt when England saw its conqueror in 
 William the Norman.
 
 132 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 For nearly a century and a half, from the hour when 
 William turned triumphant from the fens of Ely to the 
 hour when John fled defeated from Norman shores, our 
 story is one of foreign masters. Kings from Normandy 
 were followed by kings from Anjou. But whether under 
 Norman or Angevin Englishmen were a subject race, con- 
 quered and ruled by men of strange blood and of strange 
 speech. And 3'et it was in these years of subjection that 
 England first became really England. Provincial differ- 
 ences were finally crushed into national unity by the press- 
 ure of the stranger. The firm government of her foreign 
 kings secured the land a long and almost unbroken peace 
 in which the new nation grew to a sense of its oneness, 
 and this consciousness was strengthened by the political 
 ability which in Henry the First gave it administrative 
 order and in Henry the Second built up the fabric of its 
 law. New elements of social life were developed alike by 
 the suffering and the prosperity of the times. The wrong 
 which had been done by the degradation of the free land- 
 owner into a feudal dependant was partially redressed by 
 the degradation of the bulk of the English lords themselves 
 into a middle class as they were pushed from their place 
 by the foreign baronage who settled on English soil; and 
 this social change was accompanied by a gradual enrich- 
 ment and elevation of the class of servile and semi-servile 
 cultivators which had lifted them at the close of this period 
 into almost complete freedom. The middle-class which 
 was thus created was reinforced by the upgrowth of a cor- 
 responding class in our tov/ns. Commerce and trade were 
 promoted by the justice and policy of the foreign kings ; 
 and with their advance rose the political importance of 
 the trader. The boroughs of England, which at the open- 
 ing of this period were for the most part mere villages, 
 were rich enough at its close to buy liberty from the Crown 
 and to stand ready for the mightier part they were to play 
 in the development of our parliament. The shame of 
 conquest, the oppression of the conquerors, begot a moral
 
 Chap. 1.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 133 
 
 and religious revival which raised religion into a living 
 thing; while the close connection with the Continent 
 which foreign conquest brought about secured for Eng- 
 land a new communion with the artistic and intellectual 
 life of the world without her. 
 
 In a word, it is to the stern discipline of our foreign 
 kings that we owe not merely English wealth and Eng- 
 lish freedom but England herself. And of these foreign 
 masters the greatest was William of Normandy. In Wil- 
 liam the wild impulses of the Northman's blood mingled 
 strangely with the cool temper of the modern statesman. 
 As he was the last, so he was the most terrible outcome of 
 the northern race. The very spirit of the sea-robbers from 
 whom he sprang seemed embodied in his gigantic form, 
 his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his des- 
 perate bravery, the fury of his wrath, the ruthlessness of 
 his revenge. "No knight under Heaven," bis enemies 
 owned, "was William's peer." Boy as he was at Val- 
 es-dunes, horse and man went down before his lance. All 
 the fierce gayety of his nature broke out in the warfare of 
 his youth, in his rout of fifteen Angevins with but five 
 men at his back, in his defiant ride over the ground which 
 Geoffry Martel claimed from him, a ride with hawk on 
 fist as if war and the chase were one. No man could 
 bend William's bow. His mace crashed its way through 
 a ring of English warriors to the foot of the Standard. 
 He rose to his greatest height at moments when other 
 men despaired. His voice rang out as a trumpet when 
 his soldiers fled before the English charge at Senlac, and 
 his rally turned the flight into a means of victory. In his 
 winter march on Chester he strode afoot at the head of his 
 fainting troops and helped with his own hand to clear a 
 road through the snowdrifts. And with the Northman's 
 daring broke out the Northman's pitilessness. When the 
 townsmen of Alengon hung raw hides along their walls in 
 eoorn of the "tanner's" grandson, William tore out his 
 prisoners' eyes, hewed off their hands and feet, and flung
 
 134 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 them into the town. Hundreds of Hampshire men were 
 driven from their homes to make him a hunting-ground, 
 and his harrying of North umbria left Northern England 
 a desolate Avaste. Of men's love or hate he recked little. 
 His grim look, his pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of 
 passion, left William lonely even in his Court. His sub- 
 jects trembled as he passed. " Stark man he was," writes 
 the English chronicler, "and great awe men had of him." 
 His very wrath was solitary. " To no man spake he and 
 no man dared speak to him," when the news reached him 
 of Harold's seizure of the throne. It was only when he 
 passed from his palace to the loneliness of the woods that 
 the King's temper unbent. " He loved the wild deer as 
 though he had been their father." 
 
 It was the genius of William which lifted him out of 
 this mere Northman into a great general and a great 
 statesman. The wary strategy of his French campaigns, 
 the organization of his attack upon England, the vnctory 
 at Senlac, the quick resource, the steady perseverance 
 which achieved the Conquest showed the wide range of 
 his generalship. His political ability had shown itself 
 from the first moment of his accession to the ducal throne. 
 William had the instinct of government. He had hardly 
 reached manhood when Normandy lay peaceful at his 
 feet. Revolt was crushed. Disorder was trampled under 
 foot. The Duke "could never love a robber," be he baron 
 or knave. The sternness of his temper stamped itself 
 throughout upon his rule. " Stark he was to men that 
 withstood him," says the Chronicler of his English sys- 
 ijem of government ; " so harsh and cruel was he that none 
 dared withstand his will. Earls that did aught against 
 his bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of 
 their bishoprics, abbots of their abbacies. He spared 
 not his own brother: first he was in the land, but the 
 King cast him into bondage. If a man would live and 
 hold his lands, need it were he followed the King's will." 
 Stern as such a rule was, its sternness gave rest to the 

 
 Cbap. 1.] UNDER FOIIEIGN KINGfS. 1071—1214. 135 
 
 land. Even amid the sufferings which necessarily 
 sprang from the circumstances of the Conquest itself, 
 from the erection of castles or the enclosure of forests or 
 the exactions which built up William's hoard at Winches- 
 ter, Englishmen were unable to forget " the good peace he 
 made in the land, so that a man might fare over his realm 
 with a bosom full of gold." Strange touches too of a hu- 
 manity far in advance of his age contrasted with this 
 general temper of the Conqueror's government. One of 
 the strongest traits in his character was an aversion to 
 shed blood by process of law ; he formally abolished the 
 punishment of death, and only a single execution stains 
 the annals of his reign. An edict yet more honorable to 
 his humanity put an end to the slave-trade which had till 
 then been carried on at the port of Bristol. The contrast 
 between the ruthlessness and pitifulness of his public acts 
 sprang indeed from a contrast within his temper itself. 
 The pitiless warrior, the stern and aweful king was a ten- 
 der and faithful husband, an affectionate father. The 
 lonely silence of his bearing broke into gracious converse 
 with pure and sacred souls like Anselm. If William was 
 " stark" to rebel and baron, men noted that he was " mild 
 to those that loved God." 
 
 But the greatness of the Conqueror was seen in more 
 than the order and peace which he imposed upon the land. 
 Fortune had given him one of the greatest opportunities 
 ever offered to a king of stamping his own genius on the 
 destinies of a people ; and it is the way in which he seized 
 on this opportunity which has set William among the 
 foremost statesmen of the world. The struggle which 
 ended in the fens of Ely had wholly changed his position. 
 He no longer held the land merely as its national and 
 elected King. To his elective right he added the right of 
 conquest. It is the way in which William grasped and 
 employed this double power that marks the originality of 
 his political genius, for the system of government which 
 he devised was in fact the result of this double origin of
 
 136 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book XL 
 
 his rule. It represented neither the purely feudal system 
 of the Continent nor the system of the older English roy- 
 alty : more truly perhaps it may be said to have repre- 
 sented both. As the conqueror of England William de- 
 veloped the military organization of feudalism so far as 
 was necessary for the secure possession of his conquests. 
 The ground was already prepared for such an organiza- 
 tion. We have watched the beginnings of English feud- 
 alism in the warriors, the " companions" or " thegns" 
 who were personally attached to the king's war-band and 
 received estates from the folkland in reward for their per- 
 sonal services. In later times this feudal distribution of 
 estates had greatly increased as the bulk of the nobles fol- 
 lowed the king's example and bound their tenants to 
 themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. The 
 pure freeholders on the other hand, the class which formed 
 the basis of the original English society, had been gradu- 
 ally reduced in number, partly through imitation of the 
 class above them, but more through the pressure of the 
 Danish wars and the social disturbance consequent upon 
 them, which forced these freemen to seek protectors among 
 the thegns at the cost of their independence. Even before 
 the reign of William, therefore, feudalism was superseding 
 the older freedom in England as it had already superseded 
 it in Germany or France. But the tendency was quick- 
 ened and intensified by the Conquest. The desperate and 
 universal resistance of the country forced William to hold 
 by the sword what the sword had won ; and an army 
 strong enough to crush at any moment a national revolt 
 was needful for the preservation of his throne. Such an 
 army could only be maintained by a vast confiscation of 
 the soil, and the failure of the English risings cleared the 
 ground for its establishment. The greater part of the 
 higher nobility fell in battle or fled into exile, while the 
 lower thegnhood either forfeited the whole of their lands 
 or redeemed a portion by the surrender of the rest. We 
 aee the completeness of the confiscation in the vast estates
 
 Chap. 1.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 137 
 
 which William was enabled to grant to his more powerful 
 followers. Two hundred manors in Kent with more than 
 an equal number elsewhere rewarded the services of his 
 brother Odo, and grants almost as large fell to William's 
 counsellors Fitz-Osbern and Montgomery or to barons like 
 the Mowbrays and the Clares. But the poorest soldier of 
 fortune found his part in the spoil. The meanest Nor- 
 man rose to wealth and power in this new dominion of 
 his lord. Great or small, each manor thus granted was 
 granted on condition of its holder's service at the King's 
 call ; a whole army was by this means encamped upon the 
 soil; and William's summons could at any hour gather an 
 overwhelming force around his standard. 
 
 Such a force however, effective as it was against the 
 conquered English, was hardly less formidable to the 
 Crown itself. When once it was established, William 
 found himself fronted in his new realm by a feudal bar- 
 onage, by the men whom he had so hardly bent to his will 
 in Normandy, and who were as impatient of law, as jeal- 
 ous of the royal power, as eager for an unbridled military 
 and judicial independence within their own manors, here 
 as there. The political genius of the Conqueror was 
 shown in his appreciation of this danger and in the skill 
 with which he met it. Large as the estates he granted 
 were, they were scattered over the country in such a way 
 as to render union between the great landowners or the 
 hereditary attachment of great areas of population to any 
 one separate lord equally impossible. A j^et wiser meas- 
 ure struck at the very root of feudalism. When the larger 
 holdings were divided by their owners into smaller sub- 
 tenancies, the under-tenants were bound by the same condi- 
 tions of service to their lord as he to the Crown. " Hear, 
 my lord," swore the vassal, as kneeling bareheaded and 
 without arms he placed his hands within those of his 
 superior, "I become liege man of yours for life and limb 
 and earthly regard ; and I will keep faith and loyalty to 
 you for life and death, God help me !" Then the kiss of
 
 138 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IL 
 
 his lord invested him with land as a " fief" to descend to 
 him and his heirs forever. In other countries such a vas- 
 sal owed fealty to his lord against all foes, be they king 
 or no. By the usage, however, which William enacted in 
 England each sub-tenant, in addition to his oath of fealty 
 to his lord, swore fealty directly to the Crown, and loyalty 
 to the King was thus established as the supreme and uni- 
 versal duty of all Englishmen. 
 
 But the Conqueror's skill was shown not so much in 
 these inner checks upon feudalism as in the counterbal- 
 ancing forces which he provided without it. He was not 
 only the head of the great garrison that held England 
 down, he was legal and elected King of the English people. 
 If as Conqueror he covered the country with a new mili- 
 tary organization, as the successor of Eadward he main- 
 tained the judicial and administrative organization of the 
 old English realm. At the danger of a severance of the 
 land between the greater nobles he struck a final blow by 
 the abolition of the four great earldoms. The shire be- 
 came the largest unit of local government, and in each 
 shire the royal nomination of sheriffs for its administra- 
 tion concentrated the whole executive power in the King's 
 hands. The old legal constitution of the country gave 
 him the whole judicial power, and William was jealous 
 to retain and heighten this. While he preserved the local 
 courts of the hundred and the shire he strengthened the 
 jurisdiction of the King's Court, which seems even in the 
 Confessor's day to have become more and more a court of 
 highest appeal with a right to call up all cases from any 
 lower jurisdiction to its bar. The control over the national 
 revenue which had rested even in the most troubled times 
 in the hands of the King was turned into a great financial 
 power by the Conqueror's system. Over the whole face 
 of the land a large part of the manors were burthened with 
 special dues to the Crown : and it was for the purpose of 
 ascertaining and recording these that William sent into 
 each county the commissioners whosie inquiries are re-
 
 Chap. 1.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314. 139 
 
 corded in his Domesday Book. A jury empanelled in each 
 hundred declared on oath the extent and nature of each 
 estate, the names, number, and condition of its inhabi- 
 tants, its value before and after the Conquest, and the 
 sums due from it to the Crown. These, with the Dane- 
 geld or land-tax levied since the days of -(Ethelred, formed 
 as yet the main financial resources of the Crown, and their 
 exaction carried the royal authority in its most direct 
 form home to every landowner. But to these were added 
 a revenue drawn from the old Crown domain, now largely 
 increased by the confiscations of the Conquest, the ever- 
 growing income from the judicial " fines" imposed by the 
 King's judges in the King's courts, and the fees and re- 
 demptions paid to the Crown on the grant or renewal of 
 every privilege or charter. A new source of revenue was 
 found in the Jewish traders, many of whom followed Wil- 
 liam from Normandy, and who were glad to pay freely 
 for the royal protection which enabled them to settle in 
 their quarters or " Jewries" in all the principal towns of 
 England. 
 
 William found a yet stronger check on his baronage in 
 the organization of the Church. Its old dependence on 
 the royal power was strictly enforced. Prelates were 
 practically chosen by the King. Homage was exacted 
 from bishop as from baron. No royal tenant could be ex- 
 communicated save by the King's leave. No synod could 
 legislate without his previous assent and subsequent con- 
 firmation of its decrees. No papal letters could be received 
 within the realm save by his permission. The King 
 firmly repudiated the claims which were beginning to be 
 put forward by the court of Rome. When Gregory VII. 
 called on him to do fealty for his kingdom the King sternly 
 refused to admit the claim. " Fealty I have never willed 
 to do, nor will I do it now. I have never promised it, 
 nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours." Wil- 
 liam's reforms only tended to tighten this hold of tho 
 Crown on the clergy. Stigand was deposed ; and the el»-
 
 140 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 vation of Lanfranc to the see of Canterbury was followed 
 by the removal of most of the English prelates and by the 
 appointment of Norman ecclesiastics in their place. The 
 new archbishop did much to restore discipline, and Wil- 
 liam's own efforts were no doubt partly directed by a real 
 desire for the religious improvement of his realm. But 
 the foreign origin of the new prelates cut them off from 
 the flocks they ruled and bound them firmly to the foreign 
 throne; while their independent position was lessened by 
 a change which seemed intended to preserve it. Ecclesi- 
 astical cases had till now been decided, like civil cases, in 
 shire or hundred-court, where the bishop sat side by side 
 with ealdorman or sheriff. They were now withdrawn 
 from it to the separate court of the bishop. The change 
 was pregnant with future trouble to the Crown ; but for 
 the moment it told mainly in removing the bishop from 
 his traditional contact with the popular assembly and in 
 effacing the memory of the original equality of the relig- 
 ious with the civil power. 
 
 In any struggle with feudalism a national king, secure 
 of the support of the Church, and backed by the royal 
 hoard at Winchester, stood in different case from the 
 merely feudal sovereigns of the Continent. The difference 
 of power was seen as soon as the Conquest was fairly over 
 and the struggle which William had anticipated opened 
 between the baronage and the Crown. The wisdom of 
 his policy in the destruction of the great earldoms which 
 had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at 
 their restoration made in 1075 by Eoger, the son of his 
 minister William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton, Ralf 
 de Guader, whom the King had rewarded for his services 
 at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The rising was 
 quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf 
 driven over sea. The intrigues of the baronage soon 
 found another leader in William's half-brother, the Bishop 
 of Bayeux. Under pretence of aspiring by arms to the 
 papacy Bishop Odo collected money and men, but the
 
 Chap. 1.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. lOTl— 1214. 141 
 
 treasure was at once seized by the royal officers and the 
 Bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the 
 King's bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prel- 
 ate of the Church ; and it was with his own hands that 
 Willram was forced to effect his arrest. The Conqueror 
 was as successful against foes from without as against 
 foes from within. The fear of the Danes, which had so 
 long hung like a thunder-cloud over England, passed 
 away before the host which William gathered in 1085 to 
 meet a great armament assembled by King Cnut. A 
 mutiny dispersed the Danish fleet, and the murder of its 
 King removed all peril from the North. Scotland, already 
 humbled by William's invasion, was bridled by the erec' 
 tion of a strong fortress at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and 
 after penetrating with his army to the heart of Wales the 
 King commenced its systematic reduction by settling three 
 of his great barons along its frontier. It was not till his 
 closing years that William's unvarjnng success was trou- 
 bled by a fresh outbreak of the Norman baronage under 
 his son Kobert and by an attack which he was forced to 
 meet in 1087 from France. Its King mocked at the Con- 
 queror's unwieldy bulk and at the sickness which bound 
 him to his bed at Rouen. " King William has as long a 
 lying-in," laughed Philip, "as a woman behind her cur- 
 tains." "When I get up," William swore grimly, "I 
 will go to mass in Philip's-land and bring a rich offering 
 for my churching. I will offer a thousand candles for my 
 fee. Flaming brands shall they be, and steel shall glitter 
 over the fire they make. " At harvest- tide town and ham- 
 let flaring into ashes along the French border fulfilled the 
 ruthless vow. But as the King rode down the steep street 
 of Mantes which he had given to the flames his horse 
 stumbled among the embers, and William was flung 
 heavily against his saddle. He was borne home to Rouen 
 to die. The sound of the minster bell Avoke him at dawn 
 as he lay in the convent of St. Gervais, overlooking the 
 city — it was the hour of prime — and stretching out his
 
 142 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 hands in prayer the King passed quietly away. Death 
 itself took its color from the savage solitude of his life. 
 Priests and nobles fled as the last breath left him, and the 
 Conqueror's body lay naked and lonely on the floor.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE NORMAN KINGS. 
 1085—1154. 
 
 With the death of the Conqueror passed the terror 
 which had held the barons in awe, while the severance of 
 his dominions roused their hopes of successful resistance 
 to the stern rule beneath which they had bowed. William 
 bequeathed Normandy to his eldest son Robert ; but Wil- 
 liam the Red, his second son, hastened with his father's 
 ring to England where the influence of Lanfranc secured 
 him the crown. The baronage seized the opportunity to 
 rise in arms under pretext of supporting the claims of 
 Robert, whose weakness of character gave full scope for 
 the growth of feudal independence ; and Bishop Odo, now 
 freed from prison, placed himself at the head of the revolt. 
 The new King was thrown almost wholly on the loyalty 
 of his English subjects. But the national stamp which 
 William had given to his kingship told at once. The 
 English rallied to the royal standard ; Bishop Wulfstan 
 of Worcester, the one surviving Bishop of English blood, 
 defeated the insurgents in the West; while the King, 
 summoning the freemen of country and town to his host 
 under pain of being branded as " nithing" or worthless, 
 advanced with a large force against Rochester where the 
 barons were concentrated. A plague which broke out 
 among the garrison forced them to capitulate, and as the 
 prisoners passed through the royal army cries of " gallows 
 and cord" burst from the English ranks. The failure of 
 a later conspiracy whose aim was to set on the throne a 
 kinsman of the royal house, Stephen of Albemarle, with 
 the capture and imprisonment of its head, Robert Mow-
 
 144 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 bray, the Earl of Northumberland, brought home at last 
 to the baronage their helplessness in a strife with the King. 
 The genius of the Conqueror had saved England from the 
 danger of feudalism. But he had left as weighty a dan- 
 ger in the power which trod feudalism under foot. The 
 power of the Crown was a purely personal power, restrained 
 under the Conqueror by his own high sense of duty, but 
 capable of becoming a pure despotism in the hands of his 
 sou. The nobles were at his feet, and the policy of his 
 minister, Bishop Flambard of Durham, loaded their estates 
 with feudal obligations. Each tenant was held as bound 
 to appear if needful thrice a year at the royal court, to 
 pay a heavy fine or rent on succession to his estate, to 
 contribute aid in case of the King's capture in war or the 
 knighthood of the King's eldest son or the marriage of his 
 eldest daughter. An heir who was still a minor passed 
 into the King's wardship, and all profit from his lands 
 went during the period of wardship to the King. If the 
 estate fell to an heiress, her hand was at the King's dis- 
 posal and was generally sold by him to the highest bidder. 
 These rights of " marriage" and " wardship" as well as the 
 exaction of aids at the roj^al will poured wealth into the 
 treasury while they impoverished and fettered the baron- 
 age. A fresh source of revenue was found in the Church. 
 The same principles of feudal dependence were applied to 
 its lands as to those of the nobles ; and during the vacancy 
 of a see or abbey its profits, like those of a minor, were 
 swept into the royal hoard. William's profligacy and 
 extravagance soon tempted him to abuse this resource, 
 and so steadily did he refuse to appoint successors to prel- 
 ates whom death removed that at the close of his reign 
 one archbishopric, four bishoprics, and eleven abbeys 
 were found to be without pastors. 
 
 Vile as was this system of extortion and misrule but a 
 single voice was raised in protest against it. Lanfranc 
 had been followed in his abbey at Bee by the most famoiis 
 of his scholars, Anselm of Aosta, an Italian like himself.
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 145 
 
 Friends as they were, no two men could be more strangely 
 unlike. Anselm had grown to manhood in the quiet soli- 
 tude of his mountain-valley, a tender-hearted poet-dreamer, 
 with a soul pure as the Alpine snows above him, and an> 
 intelligence keen and clear as the mountain-air. The 
 whole temper of the man was painted in a dream of his 
 youth. It seemed to him as though heaven lay, a stately 
 palace, amid the gleaming hill-peaks, while the women 
 reaping in the corn-fields of the valley became harvest- 
 maidens of its King. They reaped idly, and Anselm, 
 grieved at their sloth, hastily climbed the mountain side 
 to accuse them to their lord. As he reached the palace 
 the King's voice called him to his feet and he poured forth 
 his tale ; then at the royal bidding bread of an unearthly 
 whiteness was set before him, and he ate and was re- 
 freshed. The dream passed with the morning ; but the 
 sense of heaven's nearness to earth, the fervid loyalty to 
 the service of his Lord, the tender restfulness and peace 
 in the Divine presence which it reflected lived on in the 
 life of Anselm. Wandering like other Italian scholars to 
 Normandy, he became a monk under Lanfranc, and on his 
 teacher's removal to higher duties succeeded him in the 
 direction of the Abbey of Bee. No teacher has ever 
 thrown a greater spirit of love into his toil. " Force your 
 scholars to improve !" he burst out to another teacher who 
 relied on blows and compulsion. " Did you ever see a 
 craftsman fashion a fair image out of a golden plate by 
 blows alone? Does he not now gently press it and strike 
 it with his tools, now with wise art yet more gently raise 
 and shape it? "What do your scholars turn into under 
 this ceaseless beating?" "They turn only brutal," was 
 the reply. "You have bad luck," was the keen answer, 
 "in a training that only turns men into beasts." The 
 worst natures softened before this tenderness and patience. 
 Even the Conqueror, so harsh and terrible to others, be- 
 came another man, gracious and easy of speech, with 
 A.nselm. But amid his absorbing cares as a teacher, the 
 Vol. I.— 10
 
 146 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 — ■■■' ' ■■■■—-- . ''■'■■■"■ ^ 
 
 Prior of Bee found time for philosophical speculations to 
 which we owe the scientific inquiries which built up the 
 theology of the middle ages. His famous works were the 
 first attempts of any Christian thinker to elicit the idea 
 of God from the very nature of the human reason. His 
 passion for abstruse thought robbed him of food and sleep. 
 Sometimes he could hardl}' pray. Often the night was a 
 long watch till he could seize his conception and write it 
 on the wax tablets which lay beside him. But not even a 
 fever of intense thought such as this could draw Anselm's 
 heart from its passionate tenderness and love. Sick monks 
 in the infirmary could relish no drink save the juice which 
 his hand squeezed for them from the grape-bunch. In 
 the later days of his archbishopric a hare chased by the 
 hounds took refuge under his horse, and his gentle voice 
 grew loud as he forbade a huntsman to stir in the chase 
 while the creature darted off again to the woods. Even 
 the greed of lands for the Church to which so many relig- 
 ious men yielded found its characteristic rebuke as the 
 battling lawj'ers in such a suit saw Anselm quietly close 
 bis eyes in court and go peacefully to sleep. 
 
 A sudden impulse of the Red King drew the abbot from 
 these quiet studies into the storms of the world. The see 
 of Canterbury had long been left without a Primate when 
 a dangerous illness frightened the King into the promo- 
 tion of Anselm. The Abbot, who happened at the time 
 to be in England on the business of his house, was dragged 
 to the royal couch and the cross forced into his hands. 
 But William had no sooner recovered from his sickness 
 than he found himself face to face with an opponent whose 
 meek and loving temper rose into firmness and grandeur 
 when it fronted the tyranny of the King. Much of the 
 struggle between William and the Archbishop turned on 
 questions such as the right of investiture, which have 
 little bearing on our history, but the particular question 
 at issue was of less importance than the fact of a contest 
 at all. The boldness of Anselm's attitude not only broke
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 147 
 
 the tradition of ecclesiastical servitude but infused through 
 the nation at large a new spirit of independence. The real 
 character of the strife appears in the Primate's answer 
 when his remonstrances against the lawless exactions 
 from the Church were met by a demand for a present on 
 his own promotion, and his first offer of five hundred 
 pounds was contemptuously refused. " Treat me as a free 
 man," Anselm replied, "and I devote mj'self and all that 
 I have to your service, but if you treat me as a slave you 
 shall have neither me nor mine." A burst of the Red 
 King's fury drove the Archbishop from court, and he 
 finally decided to quit the country, but his example had 
 not been lost, and the close of William's reign found a 
 new spirit of freedom in England with which the greatest 
 of the Conqueror's sons was glad to make terms. His 
 exile, however, left WiUiam without a check. Supreme at 
 home, he was fuU of ambition abroad. As a soldier the 
 Red King was little inferior to his father. Normandy 
 had been pledged to him by his brother Robert in exchange 
 for a sum which enabled the Duke to march in the first 
 Crusade for the delivery of the Holy Land, and a rebellion 
 at Le Mans was subdued by the fierce energy with which 
 William flung himself at the news of it into the first boat 
 he found, and crossed the Channel in face of a storm. 
 "Kings never drown," he replied contemptuously to the 
 remonstrances of his followers. Homage was again 
 wrested from Malcolm by a march to the Firth of Forth, 
 and the subsequent death of that king threw Scotland into 
 a disorder which enabled an army under Eadgar ^theling 
 to establish Edgar, the son of Margaret, as an English 
 feudatory on the throne. In Wales William was less tri- 
 umphant, and the terrible losses inflicted on the heavy 
 Norman cavalry in the fastnesses of Snowdon forced 
 him to fall back on the slower but wiser policy of 
 the Conqueror. But triumph and defeat alike ended 
 in a strange and tragical close. In 1100 the Red King 
 was found dead by peasants in a glade of the New Forest,
 
 14 S HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 with the arrow either of a hunter or an assassin in his 
 breast. 
 
 Robert was at this moment on his return from the Holy 
 Land, where his bravery had redeemed much of his earlier 
 ill-fame, and the English crown was seized by his younger 
 brother Henry in spite of the opposition of the baronage, 
 who clung to the Duke of Normandy and the union of 
 their estates on both sides the Channel under a single 
 ruler. Their attitude threw Henry, as it had thrown 
 Rufus, on the support of the English, and the two great 
 measures which followed his coronation, his grant of a 
 charter, and his marriage with Matilda, mark the new re- 
 lation which this support brought about between the peo- 
 ple and their King. Henry's Charter is important, not 
 merely as a direct precedent for the Great Charter of 
 John, but as the first limitation on the despotism estab- 
 lished by the Conqueror and carried to such a height by 
 his son. The " evil customs" by which the Red King had 
 enslaved and plundered the Church were explicitly re- 
 nounced in it, the unlimited demands made by both the 
 Conqueror and his son on the baronage exchanged for cus- 
 tomary fees, while the rights of the people itself, though 
 recognized more vaguely, were not forgotten. The barons 
 were held to do justice to their under-tenants and to re- 
 nounce tyrannical exactions from them, the King promis- 
 ing to restore order and the "law of Eadward," the old 
 constitution of the realm, with the changes which his 
 father had introduced. His marriage gave a significance 
 to these promises which the meanest English peasant 
 could understand. Edith, or Matilda, was the daughter 
 of King Malcolm of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister 
 of Eadgar ^theling. She had been brought up in the 
 nunnery of Romsey by its abbess, her aunt Christina, and 
 the veil which she had taken there formed an obstacle to 
 her union with the King which was only removed by the 
 wisdom of Anselm. While Flambard, the embodiment 
 of the Red King's despotism, was thrown into the Tower,
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 149 
 
 the Archbishop's recall had been one of Henry's first acts 
 after his accession. Matilda appeared before his court to 
 tell her tale in words of passionate earnestness. She bad 
 been veiled in her childhood, she asserted, only to save 
 her from the insults of the rude soldiery who infested the 
 land, had flung the veil from her again and again, and 
 had yielded at last to the unwomanly taunts, the actual 
 blows of her aunt. "As often as I stood in her presence," 
 the girl pleaded, " I wore the veil, trembling as I wore it 
 with indignation and grief. But as soon as I could get 
 out of her sight I used to snatch it from my head, fling it 
 on the ground, and trample it under foot. That was the 
 way, and none other, in which I was veiled." Anselm at 
 once declared her free from conventual bonds, and the 
 shout of the English multitude when he set the crown on 
 Matilda's brow drowned the murmur of Churchman or of 
 baron. The mockery of the Norman nobles, who nick- 
 named the King and his spouse Godric and Godgifu, was 
 lost in the joy of the people at large. For the first time 
 since the Conquest an English sovereign sat on the Eng- 
 lish throne. The blood of Cerdic and Alfred was to blend 
 itself with that of Rolf and the Conqueror. Henceforth 
 it was impossible that the two peoples should remain 
 parted from each other; so quick indeed was their union 
 that the very name of Norman had passed away in half a 
 century, and at the accession of Henry's grandson it was 
 impossible to distinguish between the descendants of the 
 conquerors and those of the conquered at Senlac. 
 
 Charter and marriage roused an enthusiasm among his 
 subjects which enabled Henry to defy the claims of his 
 brother and the disaffection of his nobles. Early in 1101 
 Robert landed at Portsmouth to win the crown in arms. 
 The great barons with hardly an exception stood aloof 
 from the King. But the Norman Duke found himself 
 face to face with an English army which gathered at 
 Anselm's summons round Henry's standard. The temper 
 of the English had rallied from the panic of Senlac. The
 
 150 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IL 
 
 soldiers who came to fight for their King " nowise feared 
 the Normans. " As Henry rode along their lines showing 
 them how to keep firm their shield-wall against the lances 
 of Robert's knighthood, he was met with shouts for battle. 
 But King and Duke alike shrank from a contest in which 
 the victory of either side would have undone the Con- 
 queror's work. The one saw his effort was hopeless, the 
 other was only anxious to remove his rival from the realm, 
 and by a peace which the Count of Meulan negotiated 
 Robert recognized Henry as King of England while Henry 
 gave up his fief in the Cotentin to his brother the Duke. 
 Robert's retreat left Henry free to deal sternly with the 
 barons who had forsaken him. Robert de Lacy was 
 stripped of his manors in Yorkshire ; Robert Malet was 
 driven from his lands in Suffolk ; Ivo of Grantmesnil lost 
 his vast estates and went to the Holy Land as a pilgrim. 
 But greater even than these was Robert of Belesme, the 
 son of Roger of Montgomery, who held in England the 
 earldoms of Shrewsbury and Arundel, while in Normandy 
 he was Count of Ponthieu and Alengon. Robert stood at 
 the head of the baronage in wealth and power : and his 
 summons to the King's Court to answer for his refusal of 
 aid to the King was answered by a haughty defiance. 
 But again the Norman baronage had to feel the strength 
 which English loyalty gave to the Crown. Sixty thousand 
 Englishmen followed Henry to the attack of Robert's 
 strongholds along the Welsh border. It was in vain that 
 the nobles about the King, conscious that Robert's fall left 
 them helpless in Henry's hands, strove to bring about a 
 peace. The English soldiers shouted "Heed not these 
 traitors, our lord King Henry, " and with the people at his 
 back the King stood firm. Only an early surrender saved 
 Robert's life. He was suffered to retire to his estates in 
 Normandy, but his English lands were confiscated to the 
 Crown. "Rejoice, King Henry," shouted the English 
 soldiers, " for you began to be a free King on that day 
 when you conquered Robert of Belesme and drove him
 
 Chaf. 2.] TMDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 151 
 
 from the land. " Master of his own realm and enriched 
 by the confiscated lands of the ruined barons Henry crossed 
 into Normandj% where the misgovernment of the Duke 
 had alienated the clergy and tradesfolk, and where the 
 outrages of nobles like Robert of Belesme forced the more 
 peaceful classes to call the King to their aid. In 1106 his 
 forces met those of his brother on the field of Tenchebray, 
 and a decisive English victory on Norman soil avenged 
 the shame of Hastings. The conquered duchy became a 
 dependency of the English crown, and Henry's energies 
 were frittered away through a quarter of a century in 
 crushing its revolts, the hostility of the French, and the 
 efforts of his nephew William, the son of Robert, to regain 
 the crown which his father had lost. 
 
 W ith the victory of Tenchebray Henry was free to enter 
 on that work of administration which was to make his 
 reign memorable in our history. Successful as his wars 
 had been he was in heart no warrior but a statesman, and 
 his greatness showed itself less in the field than in the 
 council chamber. His outer bearing like his inner temper 
 stood in marked contrast to that of his father. Well read, 
 accomplished, easy and fluent of speech, the lord of a 
 harem of mistresses, the centre of a gay court where poet 
 and jongleur found a home, Henry remained cool, self- 
 possessed, clear-sighted, hard, methodical, loveless him- 
 self, and neither seeking nor desiring his people's love, 
 but wringing from them their gratitude and regard by 
 sheer dint of good government. His work of order was 
 necessarily a costly work ; and the steady pressure of his 
 taxation, a pressure made the harder by local famines and 
 plagues during his reign, has left traces of the grumbling 
 it roused in the pages of the English Chronicle. But even 
 the Chronicler is forced to own amid his grumblings 
 that Henry " was a good man, and great was the awe of 
 him." He had little of his father's creative genius, of 
 that far-reaching originality by which the Conqueror 
 stamped himself ^nd his will on the very fabric of our
 
 153 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 history. But he had the passion for order, the love of 
 justice, the faculty of organization, the power of steady 
 and unwavering rule, which was needed to complete the 
 Conqueror's work. His aim was peace, and the title of 
 the Peace-loving King which was given him at his death 
 showed with what a steadiness and constancy he carried 
 out his aim. In Normandy indeed his work was ever and 
 anon undone by outbreaks of its baronage, outbreaks 
 sternly repressed only that the work might be patiently 
 and calmly taken up again where it had been broken off. 
 But in England his will was carried out with a perfect 
 success. For more than a quarter of a century the land 
 had rest. Without, the Scots were held in friendship, the 
 Welsh were bridled by a steady and well-planned scheme 
 of gradual conquest. Within, the license of the baronage 
 was held sternly down, and justice secured for all. " He 
 governed with a strong hand," says Orderic, but the strong 
 hand was the hand of a king, not of a tyrant. " Great 
 was the awe of him," writes the annalist of Peterborough. 
 " No man durst ill-do to another in his days. Peace he 
 made for man and beast. " Pitiless as were the blows he 
 aimed at the nobles who withstood him, they were blows 
 which his English subjects felt to be struck in their cause. 
 " While he mastered by policy the foremost counts and 
 lords and the boldest tyrants, he ever cherished and pro- 
 tected peaceful men and men of religion and men of the 
 middle class." What impressed observers most was the 
 unswerving, changeless temper of his rule. The stern 
 justice, the terrible punishment he inflicted on all who 
 broke his laws, were parts of a fixed system which differed 
 widely from the capricious severity of a mere despot. 
 Hardly less impressive was his unvarying success. Heavy 
 as were the blows which destiny levelled at him, Henry 
 bore and rose unconquered from all. To the end of his 
 life the proudest barons lay bound and blinded in his 
 prison. His hoard grew greater and greater. Normandy, 
 toss as she might, lay helpless at his feet to the last. In
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314. 153 
 
 England it was only after his death that men dared mutter 
 what evil things they had thought of Henry the Peace- 
 lover, or censure the pitilessness, the greed, and the lust 
 which had blurred the wisdom and splendor of his rule. 
 
 His^ vigorous administration carried out into detail the 
 system of government which the Conqueror had sketched. 
 The vast estates which had fallen to the crown through 
 revolt and forfeiture were granted out to new men depend- 
 ent on royal favor. On the ruins of the great feudatories 
 whom he had crushed Henry built up a class of lesser 
 nobles, whom the older barons of the Conquest looked 
 down on in scorn, but who were strong enough to form a 
 counterpoise to their influence while they furnished the 
 Crown with a class of useful administrators whom Henry 
 employed as his sheriffs and judges. A new organization 
 of justice and finance bound the kingdom more tightly 
 together in Henry's grasp. The Clerks of the Royal 
 Chapel were formed into a body of secretaries or royal 
 ministers, whose head bore the title of Chancellor. Above 
 them stood the Justiciar, or Lieutenant- General of the 
 kingdom, who in the frequent absence of the King acted 
 as Regent of the realm, and whose staff, selected from the 
 barons connected with the royal household, were formed 
 into a Supreme Court of the realm. The King's Court, 
 as this was called, permanently represented the whole 
 court of ro3"al vassals which had hitherto been summoned 
 thrice in the year. As the royal council, it revised and 
 registered laws, and its "counsel and consent," though 
 merely formal, preserved the principle of the older popular 
 legislation. As a court of justice it formed the highest 
 court of appeal ; it could call up any suit from a lower 
 tribunal on the application of a suitor, while the union of 
 several sheriffdoms under some of its members connected 
 it closely with the local courts. As a financial body, its 
 chief work lay in the assessment and collection of the 
 revenue. In this capacity it took the name of the Court 
 of Exchequer from the checkered table, much like a chess-
 
 154 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BoOK II. 
 
 board, at which it sat and on which accounts were ren- 
 dered. In their financial capacity its justices became 
 " barons of the Exchequer." Twice every year the sheriff 
 of each county appeared before these barons and rendered 
 the sum of the fixed rent from royal domains, the Dane- 
 geld or land tax, the fines of the local courts, the feudal 
 aids from the baronial estates, which formed the chief 
 part of the royal revenue. Local disputes respecting these 
 payments or the assessment of the town-rents were settled 
 by a detachment of barons from the court who made the 
 circuit of the shires, and whose fiscal visitations led to the 
 judicial visitations, the "judges' circuits," which still 
 form so marked a feature in our legal system. 
 
 Measures such as these changed the whole temper of 
 the Norman rule. It remained a despotism, but from 
 this moment it was a despotism regulated and held in 
 check by the forms of administrative routine. Heavy 
 as was the taxation under Henry the First, terrible as was 
 the suffering throughout his reign from famine and plague, 
 the peace and order which his government secured through 
 thirty years won a rest for the land in which conqueror 
 and conquered blended into a single people and in which 
 this people slowly moved forward to a new freedom. But 
 while England thus rested in peace a terrible blow broke 
 the fortunes of her King. In 1120 his son, William the 
 "-^theling," with a crowd of nobles accompanied Henry 
 on bis return from Normandy; but the white ship in 
 which he embarked lingered behind the rest of the royal 
 fleet till the guards of the King's treasure pressed its de- 
 parture. It had hardly cleared the harbor when the ship's 
 side struck on a rock, and in an instant it sank beneath 
 the waves. One terrible cry, ringing through the silence 
 of the night, was heard by the royal fleet; but it was not 
 till the morning that the fatal news reached the King. 
 Stern as he was, Henry fell senseless to the ground, and 
 rose never to smile again. He had no other son, and the 
 circle of his foreign foes closed round him the more fiercely
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071-1214. 155 
 
 that William, the son of his captive brother Robert, was 
 now his natural heir, Henry hated William while he 
 loved his own daughter Maud, who had been married to 
 the Emperor Henry the Fifth, but who had been restored 
 by his death to her father's court. The succession of a 
 woman was new in English history ; it was strange to a 
 feudal baronage. But when all hope of issue from a sec- 
 ond wife whom he wedded was over Henry forced priests 
 and nobles to swear allegiance to Maud as their future 
 mistress, and affianced her to Geoffry the Handsome, the 
 son of the one foe whom he dreaded. Count Fulk of Anjou. 
 The marriage of Matilda was but a step in the wonder- 
 ful history by which the descendants of a Breton wood- 
 man became masters not of Anjou only, but of Touraine, 
 Maine, and Poitou, of Gascony and Auvergne, of Aqui- 
 taine and Normandy, and sovereigns at last of the great 
 realm which Normandy had won. The legend of the 
 father of their races carries us back to the times of our own 
 ,^lfred, when the Danes were ravaging along Loire as 
 they ravaged along Thames. In the heart of the Breton 
 border, in the debatable land between France and Brit- 
 tany, dwelt Tortulf the Forester, half-brigand, half-hunter 
 as the gloomy days went, living in free outlaw-fashion in 
 the woods about Rennes. Tortulf had learned in his 
 rough forest school " how to strike the foe, to sleep on the 
 bare ground, to bear hunger and toil, summer's heat and 
 winter's frost, how to fear nothing save ill-fame." Fol- 
 lowing King Charles the Bald in his struggle with the 
 Danes, the woodman won broad lands along Loire, and 
 his son Ingelgor, who had swept the Northmen from 
 Touraine and the land to the west, which they had burned 
 and wasted into a vast solitude, became the first Count of 
 Anjou. But the tale of Tortulf and Ingelger is a mere 
 creation of some twelfth-century jongleur. The earliest 
 Count whom history recognizes is Fulk the Red. Fulk 
 attached himself to the Dukes of France who were now 
 drawing nearer to the throne, and in 888 received from
 
 156 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 them in guerdon the western portion of Anjou which lay 
 across the Mayenne. The story of his son is a story of 
 peace, breaking like a quiet idyl the war-storms of his 
 house. Alone of his race Fulk the Good waged no wars : 
 his delight was to sit in the choir of Tours and to be called 
 "Canon." One Martinmas eve Fulk was singing there 
 in clerkly guise when the French King, Lewis d'Outre- 
 mer, entered the church. "He sings like a priest," 
 laughed the King as his nobles pointed mockingly to the 
 figure of the Count-Canon. But Fulk was ready with his 
 reply. "Know, my lord," wrote the Count of Anjou, 
 "that a King unlearned is a crowned ass." Fulk was in 
 fact no priest, but a busy ruler, governing, enforcing 
 peace, and carrying justice to every corner of the wasted 
 land. To him alone of his race men gave the title of " the 
 Good." 
 
 Hampered by revolt, himself in character little more 
 than a bold, dashing soldier, Fulk's son, Geoffry Grey- 
 gown, sank almost into a vassal of his powerful neighbors, 
 the Counts of Blois and Champagne. But this vassalage 
 was roughly shaken off by his successor. Fulk Nerra, 
 Fulk the Black, is the greatest of the Angevins, the first 
 in whom we can trace that marked type of character 
 which their house was to preserve through two hundred 
 years. He was without natural affection. In his youth 
 he burned a wife at the stake, and legend told how he led 
 her to her doom decked out in his gayest attire. In his 
 old age he waged his bitterest war against his son, and 
 exacted from him when vanquished a humiliation which 
 men reserved for the deadliest of their foes. " You ai-e 
 conquered, you are conquered!" shouted the old man in 
 fierce exultation, as Geoffry, bridled and saddled like a 
 beast of burden, crawled for pardon to his father's feet. 
 In Fulk first appeared that low type of superstition which 
 startled even superstitious ages in the early Plantagenets. 
 Robber as he was of Church lands, and contemptuous of 
 ecclesiastical censures, the fear of the end of the world
 
 Ohap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 157 
 
 drove Fulk to the Holy Sepulchre. Barefoot and with the 
 strokes of the scourge falling heavily on his shoulders, the 
 Count had himself dragged by a halter through the streets 
 of Jerusalem, and courted the doom of martyrdom by his 
 wild otitcries of penitence. He rewarded the fidelity of 
 Herbert of Le Mans, whose aid saved him from utter ruin, 
 by entrapping him into captivity and robbing him of his 
 lands. He secured the terrified friendship of the French 
 King by despatching twelve assassins to cut down before 
 his eyes the minister who had troubled it. Familiar as 
 the age was with treason and rapine and blood, it recoiled 
 from the cool cynicism of his crimes, and believed the 
 wrath of Heaven to have been revealed against the union 
 of the worst forms of evil in Fulk the Black. But neither 
 the wrath of Heaven nor the curses of men broke with a 
 single mishap the fifty years of his success. 
 
 At his accession in 987 Anjou was the least important 
 of the greater provinces of France. At his death in 1040 
 it stood, if not in extent, at least in real power, first among 
 them all. Cool-headed, clear-sighted, quick to resolve, 
 quicker to strike, Fulk's career was one long series of vic- 
 tories over all his rivals. He was a consummate general, 
 and he had the gift of personal bravery, which was denied 
 to some of his greatest descendants. There was a moment 
 in the first of his battles when the day seemed lost for 
 Anjou ; a feigned retreat of the Bretons drew the Angevin 
 horsemen into a line of hidden pitfalls, and the Count 
 himself was flung heavily to the ground. Dragged from 
 the medley of men and horses, he swept down almost 
 singly on the foe " as a storm-wind" (so rang the paean of 
 the Angevins) "sweeps down on the thick corn-rows," 
 and the field was won. But to these qualities of the war- 
 rior he added a power of political organization, a capacity 
 for far-reaching combinations, a faculty of statesmanship, 
 which became the heritage of his race, and lifted them as 
 high above the intellectual level of the rulers of their time 
 as their shameless wickedness degraded them below the
 
 158 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book XL 
 
 level of man. His overthrow of Brittany on the field of 
 Conquereux was followed by the gradual absorption of 
 Southern Touraine; a victory at Pontlevoi crushed the 
 rival house of Blois; the seizure of Saumur completed his 
 conquests in the south, while Northern Touraine was won 
 bit by bit till only Tours resisted the Angevin. The 
 treacherous seizure of its Count, Herbert Wakedog, left 
 Maine at his mercy. 
 
 His work of conquest was completed by his son. Geoffry 
 Martel wrested Tours from the Count of Blois, and by the 
 seizure of Le Mans brought his border to the Norman 
 frontier. Here however his advance was checked by the 
 genius of William the Conqueror, and with his death the 
 greatness of Anjou came for a while to an end. Stripped 
 of Maine by the Normans and broken by dissensions with- 
 in, the weak and profligate rule of Fulk Rechin left Anjou 
 powerless. But in 1109 it woke to fresh energy with the 
 accession of his son, Fulk of Jerusalem. Now urging the 
 turbulent Norman nobles to revolt, now supporting 
 Robert's son, William, in his strife with his uncle, offer- 
 ing himself throughout as the loyal supporter of the 
 French kingdom which was now hemmed in on almost 
 every side by the forces of the English king and of his 
 allies the Counts of Blois and Champagne, Fulk was the 
 one enemy whom Henry the First really feared. It was 
 to disanii his restless hostility that the King gave the 
 hand of Matilda to Geoffry the Handsome. But the ha- 
 tred between Norman and Angevin had been too bitter to 
 make such a marriage popular, and the secrecy with 
 which it was brought about was held by the barons to free 
 them from the oath they had previously sworn. As no 
 baron if he was sonless could give a husband to his 
 daughter save with his lord's consent, the nobles held by 
 a strained analogy that their own assent was needful to 
 the marriage of Maud. Henr}^ found a more pressing 
 danger in the greed of her husband Geoffry, whose habit 
 of wearing the common broom of Anjou, the planta
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214 159 
 
 genista, in his helmet gave him the title of Plantagenet. 
 His claims ended at last in intrigues with the Norman 
 nobles, and Henry hurried to the border to meet an Ange- 
 vin invasion ; but the plot broke do^vn at his presence, the 
 Angevins retired, and at the close of 1135 the old King 
 withdrew to the Forest of Lj'ons to die. 
 
 "God give him," wrote the Archbishop of Rouen from 
 Henry's death-bed, "the peace he loved." With him in- 
 deed closed the long peace of the Norman rule. An out- 
 burst of anarchy followed on the news of his departure, 
 and in the midst of the turmoil Earl Stephen, his nephew, 
 appeared at the gates of London. Stephen was a son of 
 the Conqueror's daughter, Adela, who had married a 
 Count of Blois ; he had been brought up at the English 
 court, had been made Count of Mortain by Henry, had 
 become Count of Boulogne by his marriage, and as head 
 of the Norman baronage had been the first to pledge him- 
 self to support Matilda's succession. But his own claim 
 as nearest male heir of the Conqueror's blood (for his 
 cousin, the son of Robert, had fallen some years before in 
 Flanders) was supported by his personal popularity ; mere 
 swordsman as he was, his good-humor, hia generosity, his 
 very prodigality made Stephen a favorite with all. No 
 noble, however, had as yet ventured to join him nor had 
 any town opened its gates when London poured out to 
 meet him with uproarious welcome. Neither baron nor 
 prelate was present to constitute a National Council, but 
 the great city did not hesitate to take their place. The 
 voice of her citizens had long been accepted as representa- 
 tive of the popular assent in the election of a king ; but it 
 marks the progress of English independence under Henry 
 that London now claimed of itself the right of election. 
 Undismayed by the absence of the hereditary counsellors 
 of the crown its " Aldermen and wise folk gathered to- 
 gether the folkmoot, and these providing at their own will 
 for the good of the realm unanimously resolved to choose 
 a king. " The solemn deliberation ended in the choice of
 
 160 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book XL 
 
 Stephen, the citizens swore to defend the King with money 
 and blood, Stephen swore to apply his whole strength to 
 the pacification and good government of the realm. It 
 was in fact the new union of conquered and conquerors 
 into a single England that did Stephen's work. The suc- 
 cession of Maud meant the rule of GeofiPry of Anjou, and 
 to Norman as to Englishman the rule of the Angevin was 
 a foreign rule. The welcome Stephen won at London and 
 Winchester, his seizure of the royal treasure, the adhe- 
 sion of the Justiciar Bishop Roger to his cause, the reluc- 
 tant consent of the Archbishop, the hopelessness of aid 
 from Anjou where Geoffry was at this moment pressed 
 by revolt, the need above all of some king to meet the out- 
 break of anarchy which followed Henry's death, secured 
 Stephen the voice of the baronage. He was crowned at 
 Christmas-tide ; and soon joined by Robert Earl of Glou- 
 cester, a bastard son of Henry and the chief of his nobles ; 
 while the issue of a charter from Oxford in 1136, a charter 
 which renewed the dead King's pledge of good govern- 
 ment, promised another Henry to the realm. The charter 
 surrendered all forests made in the last reign as a sop to 
 the nobles, it conciliated the Church by granting freedom 
 of election and renouncing all right to the profits of vacant 
 churches, it won the people by a pledge to abolish the tax 
 of Danegeld. 
 
 The king's first two years were years of success and 
 prosperity. Two risings of barons in the east and west 
 were easily put down, and in 1137 Stephen passed into 
 Normandy and secured the Duchy against an attack from 
 Anjou. But already the elements of trouble were gather- 
 ing round him. Stephen was a mere soldier, with few 
 kingly qualities save that of a soldier's bravery ; and the 
 realm soon began to slip from his grasp. He turned 
 against himself the jealous dread of foreigners to which 
 he owed his accession by surrounding himself with hired 
 knights from Flanders ; he drained the treasury by creat- 
 ing new earls endowed with pensions from it, and recruited
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 161 
 
 his means by base coinage. His consciousness of the 
 gathering storm only drove Stephen to bind his friends to 
 him by suffering them to fortify castles and to renew the 
 feudal tyranny which Henry had struck down. But the 
 long reign of the dead king had left the Crown so strong 
 that even yet Stephen could hold his own. A plot which 
 Robert of Gloucester had been weaving from the outset of 
 his reign came indeed to a head in 1138, and the Earl's 
 revolt stripped Stephen of Caen and half Normandy. But 
 when his partisans in England rose in the south and the 
 west and the King of Scots, whose friendship Stephen had 
 bought in the opening of his reign by the cession of Car- 
 lisle, poured over the northern border, the nation stood 
 firmly by the King. Stephen himself marched on the 
 western rebels and soon left them few strongholds save 
 Bristol. His people fought for him in the north. The 
 pillage and cruelties of the wild tribes of Galloway and 
 the Highlands roused the spirit of the Yorkshiremen. 
 Baron and freeman gathered at York round Archbishop 
 Thurstan and marched to the field of Northallerton to 
 await the foe. The sacred banners of St. Cuthbert of 
 Durham, St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. 
 Wilfred of Ripon hung from a pole fixed in a four-wheeled 
 car which stood in the centre of the host. The first onset 
 of David's host was a terrible one. " I who wear no ar- 
 mor," shouted the chief of the Galwegians, "will go as 
 far this day as any one with breastplate of mail ;" his men 
 charged with wild shouts of "Albin, Albin," and were 
 followed by the Norman knighthood of the Lowlands. 
 But their repulse was complete ; the fierce hordes dashed 
 in vain against the close English ranks around the Stand- 
 ard, and the whole army fled in confusion to Carlisle. 
 
 Weak indeed as Stephen was, the administrative organi- 
 zation of Henry still did its work. Roger remained justi- 
 ciar, his son was chancellor, his nephew Nigel, the Bishop 
 of Ely, was treasurer. Finance and justice were thus 
 concentrated in the hands of a single family which pre* 
 Vol. L— 11
 
 1C2 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 served amid the deepening misrule something of the old 
 order and rule, and which stood at the head of the " new 
 men," whom Henry had raised into importance and made 
 the instruments of his will. These new men were still 
 weak by the side of the older nobles ; and conscious of the 
 jealousy and ill-will with which they were regarded they 
 followed in self-defence the example which the barons 
 were setting in building and fortifying castles on their 
 domains. Roger and his house, the objects from their 
 oflScial position of a deeper grudge than any, were carried 
 away by the panic. The justiciar and his son fortified 
 their castles, and it was only with a strong force at their 
 back that the prelates appeared at court. Their attitude 
 was one to rouse Stephen's jealousy, and the news of 
 Matilda's purpose of invasion lent strength to the doubts 
 which the nobles cast on their fidelity. All the weak 
 violence of the King's temper suddenly broke out. He 
 seized Roger the Chancellor and the Bishop of Lincoln 
 when they appeared at Oxford in June, 1139, and forced 
 them to surrender their strongholds. Shame broke the 
 justiciar's heart; he died at the close of the year, and his 
 nephew Nigel of Ely was driven from the realm. But the 
 fall of this house shattered the whole system of govern- 
 ment. The King's court and the Exchequer ceased to 
 work at a moment when the landing of Earl Robert and 
 the Empress Matilda set Stephen face to face with a dan- 
 ger greater than he had yet encountered, while the clergy, 
 alienated by the arrest of the Bishops and the disregard of 
 their protests, stood angrily aloof. 
 
 The three bases of Henry's system of government, the 
 subjection of the baronage to the law, the good-will of the 
 Church, and the organization of justice and finance, were 
 now utterly ruined ; and for the seventeen years which 
 passed from this hour to the Treaty of Wallingford Eng- 
 land was given up to the miseries of civil war. The 
 country was divided between the adherents of the two 
 rivals, the West supporting Matilda, London and the East
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314 163 
 
 Stephen. A defeat at Lincoln in 1141 left the latter a 
 captive in the hands of his enemies, while Matilda was 
 received throughout the land as its " Lady." But the dis- 
 dain with which she repulsed the claim of London to the 
 enjoyment of its older privileges called its burghers to 
 arms ; her resolve to hold Stephen a prisoner roused his 
 party again to life, and she was driven to Oxford to be 
 besieged there in 1142 by Stephen himself, who had ob- 
 tained his release in exchange for Earl Robert after the 
 capture of the Earl in a battle at Devizes. She escaped 
 from the castle, but with the death of Robert her struggle 
 became a hopeless one, and in 1146 she withdrew to Nor- 
 mandy. The war was now a mere chaos of pillage and 
 bloodshed. The royal power came to an end. The royal 
 courts were suspended, for not a baron or bishop would 
 come at the King's call. The bishops met in council to 
 protest, but their protests and excommunications fell on 
 deafened ears. For the first and last time in her history 
 England was in the hands of the baronage, and their out- 
 rages showed from what horrors the stern rule of the 
 Norman kings had saved her. Castles sprang up every- 
 where. "They filled the land with castles," says the ter- 
 rible annalist of the time. " They greatly oppressed the 
 wretched people by making them work at these castles, 
 and when they were finished they filled them with devils 
 and armed men." In each of these robber-holds a petty 
 tyrant ruled like a king. The strife for the Crown had 
 broken into a medley of feuds between baron and baron, 
 for none could brook an equal or a superior in his fellow. 
 " They fought among themselves 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." For fight as they might with 
 one another, all were at one in the plunder of the land. 
 Towns were put to ransom. Villages were sacked and 
 burned. All who were deemed to have goods, whether 
 men or women, were carried off and flung into dungeons
 
 164 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 . — - — ^   • 
 
 and tortured till they yielded up their wealth. No ghast- 
 lier picture of a nation's misery has ever been painted 
 than that which closes the English Chronicle whose last 
 accents falter out amid the horrors of the time. " They 
 hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul 
 smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by 
 the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. 
 They put knotted strings about men's heads, and writhed 
 them till they went to the brain. They put men into pris- 
 ons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, 
 and so they tormented them. Some they put into a chest 
 short and narrow and not deep and that had sharp stones 
 within, and forced men therein so that they broke all their 
 limbs. In many of the castles were hateful and grim 
 things called rachenteges, which two or three men had 
 enough to do to carry. It was thus made : it was fastened 
 to a beam and had a sharp iron to go about a man's neck 
 and throat, so that he might noways sit, or lie, or sleep, 
 but he bore all the iron. Many thousands they starved 
 with hunger." 
 
 It was only after years of this feudal anarchy that Eng- 
 land was rescued from it by the efforts of the Church. 
 The political influence of the Church had been greatly 
 lessened by the Conquest: for pious, learned, and ener- 
 getic as the bulk of the Conqueror's bishops were, they 
 were not Englishmen. Till the reign of Henry the First 
 no iilnglishman occupied an English see. This severance 
 of the higher clergy from the lower priesthood and from 
 the people went far to paralyze the constitutional influence 
 of the Church. Anselm stood alone against Rufus, and 
 when Anselm was gone no voice of ecclesiastical freedom 
 broke the silence of the reign of Henry the First. But 
 at the close of Henry's reign and throughout the reign of 
 Stephen England was stirred by the first of those great 
 religious movements which it was to experience afterward 
 in the preaching of the Friars, the Lollardism of Wyclif, 
 the Reformation, the Puritan enthusiasm, and the missioa
 
 Chap. 2.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214 165 
 
 work of the Wesley s. Everywhere in town and country 
 men banded themselves together for prayer : hermits flocked 
 to the woods : noble and churl welcomed the austere Cis- 
 tercians, a reformed offshoot of the Benedictine order, as 
 they ^read over the moors and forests of the North. A 
 new spirit of devotion woke the slumbers of the religious 
 houses, and penetrated alike to the home of the noble and 
 the trader. London took its full share in the revival. 
 The city was proud of its religion, its thirteen conventual 
 and more than a hundred parochial churches. The new 
 Impulse changed its very aspect. In the midst of the city 
 TJishop Richard busied himself with the vast cathedral 
 ohurch of St. Paul which Bishop Maurice had begun; 
 barges came up the river with stone from Caen for the 
 great arches that moved the popular wonder, while street 
 and lane were being levelled to make room for its famous 
 churchyard. Rahere, a minstrel at Henry's court, raised 
 the Priory of Saint Bartholomew beside Smithfield. Al- 
 fune built St. Giles' at Crippegate. The old English 
 Cnichtenagild surrendered their soke of Aldgate as a site 
 for the new priory of the Holy Trinity. The tale of this 
 house paints admirably the temper of the citizens at the 
 time. Its founder. Prior Norman, built church and clois- 
 ter and bought books and vestments in so liberal a fashion 
 that no money remained to buy bread. The canons were 
 at their last gasp when the city-folk, looking into the re- 
 fectory as they passed round the cloister in their usual 
 Sunday procession, saw the tables laid but not a single 
 loaf on them. " Here is a fine set-out," said the citizens; 
 " but where is the bread to come from?" The women who 
 were present vowed each to bring a loaf every Sunday, 
 and there was soon bread enough and to spare for the pri- 
 ory and its priests. 
 
 We see the strength of the new movement in the new 
 class of ecclesiastics whom it forced on to the stage. Men 
 like Archbishop Theobald drew whatever influence they 
 wielded from a belief in their holiness of life and unselfish*
 
 166 HISTORY OF THE EXGLISTi PEOPLE. [Book IL 
 
 ness of aim. The paralysis of the Church ceased as the 
 new impulse bound prelacj' and people together, and at 
 the moment we have reached its power was found strong 
 enough to wrest England out of the chaos of feudal mis- 
 rule. In the early part of Stephen's reign his brother 
 Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, who had been appointed 
 in 1139 Papal Legate for the realm, had striven to supply 
 the absence of any royal or national authority by conven- 
 ing synods of bishops, and by asserting the moral right of 
 the Church to declare sovereigns unworthy of the throne. 
 The compact between king and people which became a 
 part of constitutional law in the Charter of Henry had 
 gathered new force in the Charter of Stephen, but its legit- 
 imate consequence in the responsibility of, the crown for 
 the execution of the compact was first drawn out by these 
 ecclesiastical councils. From their alternate depositions 
 of Stephen and Matilda flowed the after-depositions of 
 Edward and Richard and the solemn act by which the 
 succession was changed in the case of James. Extrava- 
 gant and unauthorized as their expression of it may ap- 
 pear, they expressed the right of a nation to good govern- 
 ment. Henry of Winchester however, " half monk, half 
 soldier," as he was called, possessed too little religious in- 
 fluence to wield a really spiritual power, and it was only 
 at the close of Stephen's reign that the nation really found 
 a moral leader in Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Theobald's ablest agent and adviser was Thomas, the son 
 of Gilbert Beket, a leading citizen and, it is said , Port- 
 reeve of Loudon, the site of whose house is still marked 
 by the Mercer's Chapel in Cbeapside. His mother Rohe^e 
 was a type of the devout woman of her day ; she weighed 
 her boy every year on his birthday against money, clothes, 
 and provisions which she gave to the poor. Thomas grew 
 up amid the Norman barons and clerks who frequented 
 hia father's house with a genial freedom of character 
 tempered by the Norman refinement; he passed from the 
 school of Merton to the University of Paris, and returned
 
 Chap. 2.] UXDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214 167 
 
 to fling himself into the life of the young nobles of the 
 time. Tall, handsome, bright-eyed, ready of wit and 
 speech, his firmness of temper showed itself in his very 
 sports ; to rescue his hawk which had fallen into the water 
 he once plunged into a miUrace and was all but crushed 
 by tlie wheel. The loss of his father's wealth drove him 
 to the court of Archbishop Theobald, and he soon became 
 the Primate's confidant in his plans for the rescue of 
 England. 
 
 The natural influence which the Primate would have 
 exerted was long held in suspense by the superior position 
 of Bishop Henry of Winchester as Papal Legate; but 
 this oflBce ceased with the Pope who granted it, and when 
 in 1150 it was transferred to the Archbishop himself The- 
 obald soon made his weight felt. The long disorder of 
 the realm was producing its natural reaction in exhaus- 
 tion and disgust, as well as in a general craving for return 
 to the line of hereditarv succession whose breaking seemed 
 the cause of the nation's woes. But the growth of their 
 son Henry to manhood set naturally aside the pretensions 
 both of Count Geoffrv and M^atilda. Young as he was 
 Henry already showed the cool long-sighted temper which 
 was to be his characteristic on the throne. Foiled in an 
 early attempt to grasp the crown, he looked quietly on at 
 the disorder which was doing his work till the death of 
 his father at the close of 1151 left him master of Xormandv 
 and Anjou. In the spring of the following year his mar- 
 riage with its duchess, Eleanor of Poitou, added Acqui- 
 taine to his dominions. Stephen saw the gathering storm, 
 and strove to meet it. He called on the bishops and bar- 
 onage to secure the succession of his son Eustace by con- 
 senting to his association with him in the kingdom. But 
 the moment was now come for Theobald to play his part. 
 He was already negotiating through Thomas of London 
 with Henry and the Pope; he met Stephen's plans by a 
 refusal to swear fealty to his son, and the bishops, in spite 
 of Stephen's threats, went with their head. The blow
 
 168 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IL 
 
 m — --' m 
 
 was soon followed by a harder one, Thomas, as Theo- 
 bald's agent, invited Henry to appear in England, and 
 though the Duke disappointed his supporters' hopes by the 
 scanty number of men he brought with him in 1153, his 
 weakness proved in the end a source of strength. It was 
 not to foreigners, men said, that Henry owed his success, 
 but to the arms of Englishmen. An English army gath- 
 ered round him, and as the hosts of Stephen and the Duke 
 drew together a battle seemed near which would decide 
 the fate of the realm. But Theobald who was now firmly 
 supported by the greater barons again interfered and forced 
 the rivals to an agreement. To the excited partisans of 
 the house of Anjou it seemed as if the nobles were simply 
 playing their own game in the proposed settlement and 
 striving to preserve their power by a balance of masters. 
 The suspicion was probably groundless, but all fear van- 
 ished with the death of Eustace, who rode off from his 
 father's camp, maddened with the ruin of his hopes, to 
 die in August, smitten, as men believed, by the hand of 
 God for his plunder of abbeys. The ground was now 
 clear, and in November the Treaty of Wallingford abol- 
 ished the evils of the long anarchy. The castles were to 
 be razed, the crown lands resumed, the foreign mercena- 
 ries banished from the country, and sheriffs appointed to 
 restore order. Stephen was recognized as King, and in 
 turn recognized Henry as his heir. The Duke received at 
 Oxford the fealty of the barons, and passed into Normandy 
 in the spring of 1154. The work of reformation had 
 already begun. Stephen resented indeed the pressure 
 which Henry put on him to enforce the destruction of the 
 castles built during the anarchy; but Stephen's resistance 
 was but the pettish outbreak of a ruined man. He was 
 in fact fast drawing to the grave ; and on his death in Oc- 
 tober, 1154, Henry returned to take the crown without a 
 blow.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HENKY THE SECOND. 
 1154—1189. 
 
 Young as he was, and he had reached but his twenty- 
 first year when he returned to England as its King, Henry 
 mounted the throne with a purpose of government which 
 his reign carried steadily out. His practical, serviceable 
 frame suited the hardest worker of his time. There was 
 something in his build and look, in the square stout form, 
 the fiery face, the close-cropped hair, the prominent eyes, 
 the bull-neck, the coarse strong hands, the bowed legs, 
 that marked out the keen, stirring, coarse-fibred man of 
 business. "He never sits down," said one who observed 
 him closely ; " he is always on his legs from morning till 
 night. " Orderly in business, careless of appearance, spar- 
 ing in diet, never resting or giving his servants rest, 
 chatty, inquisitive, endowed with a singular charm of ad- 
 dress and strength of memory, obstinate in love or hatred, 
 a fair scholar, a great hunter, his general air that of a 
 rough, passionate, busy man, Henry's personal character 
 told directly on the character of his reign. His accession 
 marks the period of amalgamation when neighborhood and 
 traffic and intermarriage drew Englishmen and Normans 
 into a single people. A national feeling was thus spring- 
 ing up before which the barriers of the older feudalism 
 were to be swept away. Henry had even less reverence 
 for the feudal past than the men of his day : he was in- 
 deed utterly without the imagination and reverence which 
 enable men to sympathize with any past at all. He had a 
 practical man's impatience of the obstacles thrown in the 
 way of bis reforms by the older constitution of the realm,
 
 170 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 nor could he understand other men's rehictance to pur- 
 chase undoubted improvements by the sacrifice of customs 
 and traditions of bygone days. Without any theoretical 
 hostility to the co-ordinate powers of the state, it seemed 
 to him a perfectly reasonable and natural course to tram- 
 ple either baronage or Church under foot to gain his end 
 of good government. He saw clearly that the remedy for 
 such anarchy as England had endured under Stephen lay 
 in the establishment of a kingly rule unembarrassed by 
 any privileges of order or class, administered by royal 
 servants, and in whose public administration the nobles 
 acted simply as delegates of the sovereign. His work was 
 to lie in the organization of judicial and administrative 
 reforms which realized this idea. But of the currents of 
 thought and feeling which were tending in the same direc- 
 tion he knew nothing. V^hat he did for the moral and 
 social impulses which were telling on men about him was 
 simply to let them alone. Beligion grew more and more 
 identified with patriotism under the eyes of a King who 
 whispered, and scribbled, and looked at picture-books dur- 
 ing mass, who never confessed, and cursed God in wild 
 frenzies of blasphemy. Great peoples formed themselves 
 on both sides of the sea round a sovereign who bent the 
 whole force of his mind to hold together an Empire which 
 the growth of nationality must inevitably destroy. There 
 is throughout a tragic grandeur in the irony of Henry's 
 position, that of a Sforza of the fifteenth century set in the 
 midst of the twelfth, building up by patience and policy 
 and craft a dominion alien to the deepest sympathies of 
 his age and fated to be swept away in the end by popular 
 forces to whose existence his very cleverness and activity 
 blinded him. But whether by the anti-national temper 
 of his general system or by the administrative reforms of 
 his English rule his policy did more than that of all his 
 predecessors to prepare England for the unity and freedom 
 which the fall of his house was to reveal. 
 
 He had been placed on the throne, as we have seen, by
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314. 171 
 
 the Church. His first work was to repair the evils which 
 England had endured till his accession by the restoration 
 of the system of Henry the First ; and it was with the aid 
 and counsel of Theobald that the foreign marauders were 
 driven from the realm, the new castles demolished in spite 
 of the opposition of the baronage, the King's Court and 
 Exchequer restored. Age and infirmity, however, warned 
 the Primate to retire from the post of minister, and his 
 power fell into the younger and more vigorous hands of 
 Thomas Beket, who had long acted as his confidential ad- 
 viser and was now made Chancellor. Thomas won the 
 personal favor of the King. The two young men had, in 
 Theobald's words, "but one heart and mind;" Henry 
 jested in the Chancellor's hall, or tore his cloak from his 
 shoulders in rough horse-play as they rode through the 
 streets. He loaded his favorite with riches and honors, 
 but there is no ground for thinking that Thomas in any 
 degree influenced his system of rule. Henry's policy 
 seems for good or evil to have been throughout his own. 
 His work of reorganization went steadily on amid trou- 
 bles at home and abroad. Welsh outbreaks forced him in 
 1157 to lead an army over the border; and a crushing re- 
 pulse showed that he was less skilful as a general than as 
 a statesman. The next year saw him drawn across the 
 Channel, where he was already master of a third of the 
 present France. Anjou and Touraine he had inherited 
 from his father, Maine and Normandy from his mother, 
 he governed Brittany through his brother, while the seven 
 provinces of the South, Poitou, Saintonge, Auvergne, 
 Perigord, the Limousin, the Angoumois, and Guienne, 
 belonged to his wife. As Duchess of Aquitaine Eleanor 
 had claims on Toulouse, and these Henry prepared in 1159 
 to enforce by arms. But the campaign was turned to the 
 profit of his reforms. He had already begun the work of 
 bringing the baronage within the grasp of the law by 
 sending judges from the Exchequer year after year to ex- 
 act the royal dues and administer the King's justice even
 
 172 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IL 
 
 in castle and manor. He now attacked its military influ- 
 ence. Each man who held lands of a certain value was 
 bound to furnish a knight for his lord's service; and the 
 barons thus held a body of trained soldiers at their dispo- 
 sal. When Henry called his chief lords to serve in the 
 war of Toulouse, he allowed the lower tenants to commute 
 their service for sums payable to the royal treasury under 
 the name of "scutage," or shield-money. The "Great 
 Scutage" did much to disarm the baronage, while it ena- 
 bled the King to hire foreign mercenaries for his service 
 abroad. Again, however, he was luckless in war. King 
 Lewis of France threw himself into Toulouse. Conscious 
 of the ill-compacted nature of his wide dominion, Henry 
 shrank from an open contest with his suzerain ; he with- 
 drew his forces, and the quarrel ended in 1160 by a formal 
 alliance and the betrothal of his eldest son to the daughter 
 of Lewis. 
 
 Henry returned to his English realm to regulate the re- 
 lations of the state with the Church. These rested in the 
 main on the system established by the Conqueror, and 
 with that system Henry had no wish to meddle. But he 
 was resolute that, baron or priest, all should be equal be- 
 fore the law ; and he had no more mercy for clerical than 
 for feudal immunities. The immunities of the clergy in- 
 deed were becoming a hindrance to public justice. The 
 clerical order in the middle ages extended far beyond the 
 priesthood; it included in Henry's day the whole of the 
 professional and educated classes. It was subject to the 
 jurisdiction of the Church courts alone; but bodily pun- 
 ishment could only be inflicted by officers of the lay courts, 
 and so great had the jealousy between clergy and laity be- 
 come that the bishops no longer sought civil aid but re- 
 stricted themselves to the purely spiritual punishments of 
 penance and deprivation of orders. Such penalties formed 
 no effectual check upon crime, and while preserving the 
 Church courts the King aimed at the delivery of convicted 
 offenders to secular punishment. For the carrying out of
 
 Chap. 8.] UNDEE FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 173 
 
 these designs he sought an agent in Thomas the Chancel- 
 lor. Thomas had now been his minister for eight years, 
 and had fought bravely in the war against Toulouse at the 
 head of the seven hundred knights who formed his house- 
 hold. But the King had other work for him than war. 
 On Theobald's death in 1162 he forced on the monks of 
 Canterbury his election as Archbishop. But from the 
 momeat of his appointment the dramatic temper of the 
 new Primate flung its whole energy into the part he set 
 himself to play. At the first intimation of Henry's pur- 
 pose he pointed with a laugh to his gay court attire : " You 
 are choosing a fine dress," he said, "to figure at the head 
 of your Canterbury monks ;" once monk and Archbishop 
 he passed with a fevered earnestness from luxury to as- 
 ceticism; and a visit to the Council of Tours in 1163, 
 where the highest doctrines of ecclesiastical authority were 
 sanctioned by Pope Alexander the Third, strengthened his 
 purpose of struggling for the privileges of the Church. 
 His change of attitude encouraged his old rivals at court 
 to vex him with petty law-suits, but no breach had come 
 with the King till Henry proposed that clerical convicts 
 should be punished by the civil power. Thomas refused ; 
 he would only consent that a clerk, once degraded, should 
 for after offences suffer like a layman. Both parties ap- 
 pealed to the " customs" of the realm ; and it was to state 
 these " customs" that a court was held in 1164 at Claren- 
 don near Marlborough. 
 
 The report presented by bishops and barons formed the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon, a code which in the bulk of 
 its provisions simply re-enacted the system of the Con- 
 queror. Every election of bishop or abbot was to take 
 place before royal ofiicers, in the King's chapel, and with 
 the King's assent. The prelate elect was bound to do 
 homage to the King for his lands before consecration, and 
 to hold his lands as a barony from the King, subject to all 
 feudal burdens of taxation and attendance in the King's 
 court. No bishop might leave the realm without the royal
 
 174 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 permission. No tenant in chief or royal servant might be 
 excommunicated, or their land placed under interdict, but 
 by the King's assent. What was new was the legislation 
 respecting ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The King's court 
 was to decide whether a suit between clerk and layman, 
 whose nature was disputed, belonged to the Church courts 
 or the King's. A royal oflScer was to be present at all 
 ecclesiastical proceedings in order to confine the Bishop's 
 court within its own due limits, and a clerk convicted 
 there passed at once under the civil jurisdiction. An ap- 
 peal was left from the Archbishop's court to the King's 
 court for defect of justice, but none might appeal to the 
 Papal court save with the King's leave. The privilege of 
 sanctuary in churches and churchyards was repealed, so 
 far as property and not persons was concerned. After a 
 passionate refusal the Primate was at last brought to set 
 his seal to these Constitutions, but his assent was soon re- 
 tracted, and Henry's savage resentment threw the moral 
 advantage of the position into his opponent's hands. Vexa- 
 tious charges were brought against Thomas, and he was 
 summoned to answer at a Council held in the autumn at 
 Northampton. All urged him to submit; his very life 
 was said to be in peril from the King's wrath. But in 
 the presence of danger the courage of the man rose to its 
 full height. Grasping his archiepiscopal cross he entered 
 the royal court, forbade the nobles to condemn him, and 
 appealed in the teeth of the Constitutions to the Papal See. 
 Shouts of " Traitor !" followed him as he withdrew. The 
 Primate turned fiercely at the word: "Were I a knight," 
 he shouted back, "my sword should answer that foul 
 taunt !" Once alone, however, dread pressed more heavily ; 
 he fled in disguise at nightfall and reached France through 
 Flanders. 
 
 Great as were the dangers it was to bring with it, the 
 flight of Thomas left Henry free to carry on the reforms 
 be had planned. In spite of denunciations from Primate 
 and Pope, the Constitutions regulated from this time the
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. It5 
 
 relations of the Church with the State. Henry now turned 
 to the actual organization of the realm. His reign, it has 
 been truly said, "initiated the rule of law" as distinct 
 from the despotism, whether personal or tempered by 
 routine, of the Norman sovereigns. It was by successive 
 " assizes" or codes issued with the sanction of the great 
 councils of barons and prelates which he summoned year 
 by year, that he perfected in a system of gradual reforms 
 the administrative measures which Henry the First had 
 begun. The fabric of our judicial legislation commences 
 in 1166 with the Assize of Clarendon, the first object of 
 which was to provide for the order of the realm by reviv- 
 ing the old English system of mutual security or frank 
 pledge. No stranger might abide in any place save a 
 borough and only there for a single night unless sureties 
 were given for his good behavior; and the list of such 
 strangers was to be submitted to the itinerant justices. 
 In the provisions of this assize for the repression of crime 
 we find the origin of trial by jury, so often attributed to 
 earlier times. Twelve lawful men of each hundred, with 
 four from each township, were sworn to present those who 
 were known or reputed as criminals within their district 
 for trial by ordeal. The jurors were thus not merely wit- 
 nesses, but sworn to act as judges also in determining the 
 value of the charge, and it is this double character of 
 Henry's jurors that has descended to our "grand jury," 
 who still remain charged with the duty of presenting 
 criminals for trial after examination of the witnesses 
 against them. Two later steps brought the jury to its 
 modern condition. Under Edward the First witnesses 
 acquainted with the particular fact in question were added 
 in each case to the general jury, and by the separation of 
 these two classes of jurors at a later time the last became 
 simply " witnesses" without any judicial power, while the 
 first ceased to be witnesses at all and became our modern 
 jurors, who are only judges of the testimony given. With 
 this assize too a practice which had prevailed from the
 
 176 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 earliest English times, the practice of "compurgation," 
 passed away. Under this system the accused could be 
 acquitted of the charge by the voluntary oath of his neigh- 
 bors and kinsmen ; but this was abolished by the Assize 
 of Clarendon, and for the fifty years which followed it his 
 trial, after the investigation of the grand jury, was found 
 solely in the ordeal or "judgment of God," where inno- 
 cence was proved by the power of holding hot iron in the 
 hand or by sinking when flung into the water, for swim- 
 ming was a proof of guilt. It was the abolition of the 
 whole system of ordeal by the Council of Lateran in 1216 
 which led the way to the establishment of what is called 
 a " petty jury" for the final trial of prisoners. 
 
 But Henry's work of reorganization had hardly begun 
 when it was broken by the pressure of the strife with the 
 Primate. For six years the contest raged bitterly; at 
 Rome, at Paris, the agents of the two powers intrigued 
 against each other. Henry stooped to acts of the meanest 
 persecution in driving the Primate's kinsmen from Eng- 
 land, and in confiscating the lands of their order till the 
 monks of Pontigny should refuse Thomas a home; while 
 Beket himself exhausted the patience of his friends bj^ his 
 violence and excommunications, as well as by the stub- 
 bornness with which he clung to the offensive clause " Sav- 
 ing the honor of my order, " the addition of which to his 
 consent would have practically neutralized the King's re- 
 forms. The Pope counselled mildness, the French king 
 for a time withdrew his support, his own clerks gave way 
 at last. "Come up," said one of them bitterly when his 
 horse stumbled on the road, "saving the honor of the 
 Church and my order." But neither warning nor deser- 
 tion moved the resolution of the Primate. Henry, in 
 dread of Papal excommunication, resolved in 1170 on the 
 coronation of his son : and this office, which belonged to 
 the see of Canterbury, he transferred to the Archbishop of 
 York. But the Pope's hands were now freed by his suc- 
 cesses in Italy, and the threat of an interdict forced the
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 177 
 
 King to a show of submission. The Archbishop was al- 
 lowed to return after a reconciliation with the King at 
 Freteval, and the Kentishmen flocked around him with 
 uproarious welcome as he entered Canterbury. " This is 
 England," said his clerks, as they saw the white head- 
 lands t)f the coast, "You will wish yourself elsewhere 
 before fifty days are gone," said Thomas sadly, and his 
 foreboding showed his appreciation of Henry's character. 
 He was now in the royal power, and orders had already 
 been issued in the younger Henry's name for his arrest 
 when four knights from the King's court, spurred to out- 
 rage by a passionate outburst of their master's wrath, 
 crossed the sea, and on the 29th of December forced their 
 way into the Archbishop's palace. After a stormy parley 
 with him in his chamber they withdrew to arm. Thomas 
 was hurried by his clerks into the cathedral, but as he 
 reached the steps leading from the transept to the choir his 
 pursuers burst in from the cloisters. "Where," cried 
 Reginald Fitzurse in the dusk of the dimly lighted min- 
 ster, " where is the traitor, Thomas Beket?" The Primate 
 turned resolutely back : " Here I am, no traitor, but a 
 priest of God," he replied, and again descending the steps 
 be placed himself with his back against a pillar and fronted 
 his foes. All the bravery and violence of his old knightly 
 life seemed to revive in Thomas as he tossed back the 
 threats and demands of his assailants. "You are our 
 prisoner," shouted Fitzurse, and the four knights seized 
 him to drag him from the church. " Do not touch me, 
 Reginald," cried the Primate, "pander that you are, you 
 owe me fealty;" and availing himself of his personal 
 strength he shook him roughly off. "Strike, strike," re- 
 torted Fitzurse, and blow after blow struck Thomas to the 
 ground. A retainer of Ranulf de Broc with the point of 
 his sword scattered the Primate's brains on the ground. 
 " Let us be off, " he cried triumphantly, " this traitor will 
 never rise again." 
 
 The brutal murder was received with a thriU of horror 
 Vol. L— 12
 
 178 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 throughout Christendom; miracles were wrought at the 
 martyr's tomb ; he was canonized, and became the most 
 popular of English saints. The stately "mart3^rdom" 
 which rose over his relics at Canterbury seemed to embody 
 the triumph which his blood had won. But the contest 
 had in fact revealed a new current of educated opinion 
 which was to be more fatal to the Church than the reforms 
 of the King. Throughout it Henry had been aided by a 
 silent revolution which now began to part the purely lit- 
 erary class from the purely clerical. During the earlier 
 ages of our history we have seen literature springing up 
 in ecclesiastical schools, and protecting itself against the 
 ignorance and violence of the time under ecclesiastical 
 privileges. Almost all our writers from Baeda to the days 
 of the Angevins are clergy or monks. The revival of let- 
 ters which followed the Conquest was a purely ecclesiasti- 
 cal revival ; the intellectual impulse which Bee had given 
 to Normandy travelled across the Channel with the new 
 Norman abbots who were established in the greater Eng- 
 lish monasteries; and writing-rooms or scriptoria, where 
 the chief works of Latin literature, patristic or classical, 
 were copied and illuminated, the lives of saints compiled, 
 and entries noted in the monastic chronicle, formed from 
 this time a part of every religious house of any importance. 
 But the literature which found this religious shelter was 
 not so much ecclesiastical as secular. Even the philo- 
 sophical and devotional impulse given by Anselm produced 
 no English work of theology or metaphysics. The literary 
 revival which followed the Conquest took mainly the old 
 historical form. At Durham Turgot and Simeon threw 
 into Latin shape the national annals to the time of Henry 
 the First with an especial regard to northern affairs, while 
 the earlier events of Stephen's reign were noted down by 
 two Priors of Hexham in the wild border-land between 
 England and the Scots. 
 
 These however were the colorless jottings of mere annal- 
 ists; it was in the Scriptorium of Canterbury, in Qsbern's
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 179 
 
 lives of the English saints or in Eadmer's record of the 
 struggle of Anselm against the Red King and his successor 
 that we see the first indications of a distinctlj^ English 
 feeling telling on the new literature. The national im- 
 pulse is yet more conspicuous in the two historians that 
 followed. The war-songs of the English conquerors of 
 Britain were preserved by Henry, an Archdeacon of 
 Huntingdon, who wove them into annals compiled from 
 Bffida and the Chronicle ; while William, the librarian of 
 Malmesburj. as industriously collected the lighter ballads 
 which embodied the popular traditions of the English 
 Kings. It is in William above all others that we see the 
 new tendency of English literature. In himself, as in his 
 work, he marks the fusion of the conquerors and the con- 
 quered, for he was of both English and Norman parentage 
 and his sympathies were as divided as his blood. The 
 form and style of his writings show the influence of those 
 classical studies which were now reviving throughout 
 Christendom. Monk as he is, William discards the older 
 ecclesiastical models and the annalistic form. Events are 
 grouped together with no strict reference to time, while 
 the lively narrative flows rapidly and loosely along with 
 constant breaks of digression over the general history of 
 Europe and the Church. It is in this change of historic 
 spirit that William takes his place as first of the more 
 statesmanlike and philosophic school of historians who 
 began to arise in direct connection with the Court, and 
 among whom the author of the chronicle which commonly 
 bears the name of " Benedict of Petersborough" with his 
 continuator Roger of Howden are the most conspicuous. 
 Both held judicial offices under Henry the Second, and it 
 is to their position at Court that they owe the fulness and 
 accuracy of their information as to affairs at home and 
 abroad, as well as their copious supply of official docu- 
 ments. What is noteworthy in these writers is the purely 
 political temper with which they regard the conflict of 
 Church and State in their time. But the English court
 
 180 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II, 
 
 had now become the centre of a distinctly secular litera- 
 ture The treatise of Ranulf de Glanvill, a justiciar of 
 Henr}' the Second, is the earliest work on English law, as 
 that of the royal treasurer, Richard Fitz-Neal, on the Ex- 
 chequer is the earliest on English government. 
 
 Still more distinctly secular than these, though the work 
 of a priest who claimed to be a bishop, are the writings of 
 Gerald de Barri. Gerald is the father of our popular lit- 
 erature as he is the originator of the political and ecclesi- 
 astical pamphlet. Welsh blood (as his usual name of 
 Giraldus Cambrensis implies) mixed with Norman in his 
 veins, and something of the restless Celtic fire runs alike 
 through his writings and his life. A busy scholar at 
 Paris, a reforming Archdeacon in Wales, the wittiest of 
 Court chaplains, the most troublesome of bishops, Gerald 
 became the gayest and most amusing of all the authors of 
 his time. In his hands the stately Latin tongue took the 
 vivacity and picturesqueness of the jongleur's verse. 
 Reared as he had been in classic studies, he threw pedan- 
 try contemptuously aside. " It is better to be dumb than 
 not to be understood," is his characteristic apology for the 
 novelty of his style: "new times require new fashions, 
 and so I have thrown utterly aside the '>ld and dry method 
 of some authors and aimed at adopting the fashion of 
 speech which is actually in vogue to-day." His tract on 
 the conquest of Ireland and his account of Wales, which 
 are in fact reports of two journeys undertaken in those 
 countries with John and Archbishop Baldwin, illustrate 
 his rapid faculty of careless observation, his audacity, and 
 his good sense. They are just the sort of lively, dashing 
 letters that we find in the correspondence of a modern jour- 
 nal. There is the same modern tone in his political pam- 
 phlets; his profusion of jests, his fund of anecdote, the 
 aptness of his quotations, his natural shrewdness and criti- 
 cal acumen, the clearness and vivacity of his style, are 
 backed by a fearlessness and impetuosity that made him 
 a dangerous assailant even to such a ruler as Henry the
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 181 
 
 Second. The invectives in which Gerald poured out his 
 resentment against the Angevins are the cause of half the 
 scandal about Henry and his sons which has found its 
 way into history. His life was wasted in an ineffectual 
 attempt to secure the see of St. David's, but his pungent 
 pen plaj'ed its part in rousing the nation to its later strug- 
 gle with the Crown. 
 
 A tone of distinct hostility to the Church developed 
 itself almost from the first among the singers of romance. 
 Romance had long before taken root in the court of Henry 
 the First, where under the patronage of Queen Maud the 
 dreams of Arthur, so long cherished by the Celts of Brit- 
 tany, and which had travelled to Wales in the train of 
 the exile Rhys ap Tewdor, took shape in the History of 
 the Britons by Geoffry of Monmouth. Myth, legend, 
 tradition, the classical pedantrj^ of the day, Welsh hopes 
 of future triumph over the Saxon, the memories of the 
 Crusades and of the world-wide dominion of Charles the 
 Great, were mingled together by this daring fabulist in a 
 work whose popularity became at once immense. Alfred 
 of Beverly transferred Geoffry's inventions into the region 
 of sober history, while two Norman trouveurs, Gaimar 
 and Wace, translated them into French verse. So com- 
 plete was the credence they obtained that Arthur's tomb 
 at Glastonbury was visited by Henrj^ the Second, while the 
 child of his son Geoffry and of Constance of Brittany re- 
 ceived the name of the Celtic hero. Out of Geoffry's 
 creation grew little by little the poem of the Table Round. 
 Brittany, which had mingled with the story of Arthur 
 the older and more mysterious legend of the Enchanter 
 Merlin, lent that of Lancelot to the wandering minstrels of 
 the day, who moulded it as they wandered from hall to 
 hall into the familiar tale of knighthood wrested from its 
 loyalty by the love of woman. The stories of Tristram 
 and Gawayne, at first as independent as that of Lancelot, 
 were drawn with it into the whirlpool of Arthurian ro- 
 mance j and when the Church, jealous of the popularity
 
 182 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 of the legends of chivalry, invented as a counteracting in- 
 fluence the poem of the Sacred Dish, the San Graal which 
 held the blood of the Cross invisible to all eyes but those 
 of the pure in heart, the genius of a Court poet, Walter 
 de Map, wove the rival legends together, sent Arthur and 
 his knights wandering over sea and land in quest of the 
 San Graal, and crowned the work by the figure of Sir 
 Galahad, the type of ideal knighthood, without fear and 
 without reproach. 
 
 Walter stands before us as the representative of a sudden 
 outburst of literary, social, and religious criticism which fol- 
 lowed this growth of Romance and the appearance of a freer 
 historical tone in the court of the two Henries. Born on 
 the Welsh border, a student at Paris, a favorite with the 
 King, a royal chaplain, justiciary, and ambassador, his 
 genius was as various as it was prolific. He is as much 
 at his ease in sweeping together the chit-chat of the time 
 in his " Courtly Trifles" as in creating the character of Sir 
 Galahad. But he only rose to his fullest strength when 
 he turned from the fields of romance to that of Church re- 
 form and embodied the ecclesiastical abuses of his day in 
 the figure of his "Bishop Goliath." The whole spirit of 
 Henry and his Court in their struggle with Thomas is re- 
 flected and illustrated in the apocalypse and confession of 
 this imaginary prelate. Picture after picture strips the 
 evil from the corruption of the mediaeval Church, its in- 
 dolence, its thirst for gain, its secret immorality. The 
 whole body of the clergy from Pope to hedge-priest is 
 painted as busy in the chase for gain ; what escapes the 
 bishop is snapped up by the archdeacon, what escapes the 
 archdeacon is nosed and hunted down by the dean, while 
 a host of minor officials prowl hungrily around these 
 greater marauders. Out of the crowd of figures which 
 fills the canvas of the satirist, pluralist vicars, abbots 
 "purple as their wines," monks feeding and chattering 
 together like parrots in the refectory, rises the Philistine 
 Bishop, light of purpose, void of conscience, lost in sensu-
 
 Obap. 8.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314. 183 
 
 ality, drunken, unchaste, the Goliath who sums up the 
 enormities of all, and against whose forehead this new 
 David slings his sharp pebble of the brook. 
 
 It would be in the highest degree unjust to treat such 
 invectives as sober history, or to judge the Church of the 
 twelfth century by the taunts of Walter de Map. What 
 writings such as his bring home to us is the upgrowth of 
 a new literary class, not only standing apart from the 
 Church but regarding it with a hardly disguised ill-will, 
 and breaking down the unquestioning reverence with 
 which men had till now regarded it by their sarcasm and 
 abuse. The tone of intellectual contempt which begins 
 with Walter de Map goes deepening on till it culminates 
 in Chaucer and passes into the open revolt of the Lollard. 
 But even in these early days we can hardly doubt that it 
 gave Henry strength in his contest with the Church. So 
 little indeed did he suffer from the murder of Archbishop 
 Thomas that the years which follow it form the grandest 
 portion of his reign. While Rome was threatening ex- 
 communication he added a new realm to his dominions. 
 Ireland had long since fallen from the civilization and 
 learning which its missionaries brought in the seventh 
 century to the shores of Northumbria. Every element of 
 improvement or progress which had been introduced into 
 the island disappeared in the long and desperate struggle 
 with the Danes. The coast-towns which the invaders 
 founded, such as Dublin or Waterford, remained Danish 
 in blood and manners and at feud with the Celtic tribes 
 around them, though sometimes forced by the fortunes of 
 war to pay tribute and to accept the over-lordship of the 
 Irish Kings. It was through these towns, however, that 
 the intercourse with England which had ceased since the 
 eighth century was to some extent renewed in the eleventh. 
 Cut off from the Church of the island by national antipa- 
 thy, the Danish coast-cities applied to the See of Canter- 
 bury for the ordination of their bishops, and acknowledged 
 a right of spiritual supervision in Lanfranc and Anselm.
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 The relations thus formed were drawn closer by a slave- 
 trade between the two countries which the Conqueror and 
 Bishop Wulfstan succeeded for a time in suppressing at 
 Bristol but which appears to have quickly revived. At 
 the time of Henry the Second's accession Ireland was full 
 of Englishmen who had been kidnapped and sold into 
 slavery in spite of royal prohibitions and the spiritual 
 menaces of the English Church. The slave-trade afforded 
 a legitimate pretext for war, had a pretext been needed by 
 the ambition of Henry the Second; and within a few 
 months of that King's coronation John of Salisbury was 
 dispatched to obtain the Papal sanction for an invasion of 
 the island. The enterprise, as it was laid before Pope 
 Hadrian IV., took the color of a crusade. The isolation 
 of Ireland from the general body of Christendom, the ab- 
 sence of learning and civilization, the scandalous vices of 
 its people, were alleged as the grounds of Henry's action. 
 It was the general belief of the time that all islands fell 
 under the jurisdiction of the Papal See, and it was as a 
 possession of the Roman Church that Henry sought Ha- 
 drian's permission to enter Ireland. His aim was " to en- 
 large the bounds of the Church, to restrain the progress 
 of vices, to correct the manners of its people and to plant 
 virtue among them, and to increase the Christian religion." 
 He engaged to "subject the people to laws, to extirpate 
 vicious customs, to respect the rights of the native 
 Churches, and to enforce the payment of Peter's pence" 
 as a recognition of the overlordship of the Roman See. 
 Hadrian by his bull approved the enterprise as one 
 prompted by "the ardor of faith and love of religion," and 
 declared his will that the people of Ireland should receive 
 Henry with all honor, and revere him as their lord. 
 
 The Papal bull was produced in a great council of the 
 English baronage, but the opposition was strong enough 
 to force on Henry a temporary abandonment of his de- 
 signs, and fourteen years passed before the scheme was 
 brought to life again by the flight of Dermod, King of
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 185 
 
 Leinster, to Henry's court. Dermod had been driven from 
 his dominions in one of the endless civil wars which dev- 
 astated the island ; he now did homage for his kingdom 
 to Henry, and returned to Ireland with promises of aid 
 from the English knighthood. He was followed in 1169 
 by Robert Fitz-Stephen, a son of the Constable of Cardigan, 
 with a little band of a hundred and forty knights, sixty 
 men-at-arms, and three or four hundred Welsh archers. 
 Small as was the number of the adventurers, their horses 
 and arms proved irresistible by the Irish kernes ; a sally 
 of the men of Wexford was avenged by the storm of their 
 town; the Ossory clans were defeated with a terrible 
 slaughter, and Dermod, seizing a head from the heap of 
 trophies which his men piled at his feet, tore off in savage 
 triumph its nose and lips with his teeth. The arrival of 
 fresh forces heralded the coming of Richard of Clare, Earl 
 of Pembroke and Striguil, a ruined baron who bore the 
 nickname of Strongbow, and who in defiance of Henry's 
 prohibition landed near Waterford with a force of fifteen 
 hundred men as Dermod's mercenary. The city was at 
 once stormed, and the united forces of the Earl and King 
 marched to the siege of Dublin. In spite of a relief at- 
 tempted by the King of Connaught, who was recognized 
 as over-king of the island by the rest of the tribes, Dublin 
 was taken by surprise ; and the marriage of Richard with 
 Eva, Dermod's daughter, left the Earl on the death of his 
 father-in-law which followed quickly on these successes 
 master of his kingdom of Leinster. The new lord had 
 soon, however, to hurry back to England and appease the 
 jealousy of Henry by the surrender of Dublin to the 
 Crown, by doing homage for Leinster as an English lord- 
 ship, and by accompanying the King in 1171 on a voyage 
 to the new dominion which the adventurers had won. 
 
 Had fate suffered Henry to carry out his purpose, the 
 conquest of Ireland would now have been accomplished. 
 The King of Connaught indeed and the chiefs of Ulster 
 refused him homage, but the rest of the Irish tribes owned
 
 186 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 M   -     M- ^— ^^^— ^-^^^ii^— ^^^^ . a 
 
 his suzerainty ; the bishops in synod at Cashel recognized 
 him as their lord ; and he was preparing to penetrate to 
 the north and west, and to secure his conquest by a sys- 
 tematic erection of castles throughout the country, when 
 the need of making terms with Rome, whose interdict 
 threatened to avenge the murder of Archbishop Thomas, 
 recalled him in the spring of 1172 to Normandy. Henry 
 averted the threatened sentence by a show of submission. 
 The judicial provisions in the Constitutions of Clarendon 
 were in form annulled, and liberty of election was restored 
 in the case of bishoprics and abbacies. In reality, how- 
 ever, the victory rested with the King. Throughout his 
 reign ecclesiastical appointments remained practically in 
 his hands and the King's Court asserted its power over 
 the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops. But the strife 
 with Thomas had roused into active life every element of 
 danger which surrounded Henry, the envious dread of his 
 neighbors, [the disaffection of his own house, the disgust of 
 the barons at the repeated blows which he levelled at their 
 military and judicial power. The King's withdrawal of 
 the office of sheriff from the great nobles of the shire to 
 entrust it to the lawyers and courtiers who already fur- 
 nished the staff of the royal judges quickened the resent- 
 ment of the baronage into revolt. His wife Eleanor, now 
 parted from Henry by a bitter hate, spurred her eldest son, 
 whose coronation had given him the title of king, to de- 
 mand possession of the English realm. On his father's 
 refusal the boy sought refuge with Lewis of France, and 
 his flight was the signal for a vast rising. France, Flan- 
 ders, and Scotland joined in league against Henry; his 
 younger sons, Richard and Geoffry, took up arms in 
 Aquitaine, while the Earl of Leicester sailed from Flan- 
 ders with an army of mercenaries to stir up England to 
 revolt. The Earl's descent ended in a crushing defeat 
 near St. Edmundsbury at the hands of the King's justi- 
 ciars; but no sooner had the French king entered Nor- 
 mandy and invested Rouen than the revolt of the baronage
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214, 187 
 
 burst into flame. The Scots crossed the border, Roger 
 Mowbray rose in Yorkshire, Ferrars, Earl of Derby, in 
 the midland shires, Hugh Bigod in the eastern counties, 
 while a Flemish fleet prepared to support the insurrection 
 by a descent upon the coast. The murder of Archbishop 
 Thomas still hung round Henry's neck, and his first act 
 in hurrying to England to meet these perils in 1174 was 
 to prostrate himself before the shrine of the new martyr 
 and to submit to a public scourging in expiation of his 
 sin. But the penance was hardly wrought when all danger 
 was dispelled by a series of triumphs. The King of Scot- 
 land, William the Lion, surprised by the English under 
 cover of a mist, fell into the hands of the justiciar, 
 Ranulf de Glanvill, and at the retreat of the Scots the 
 English rebels hastened to lay down their arms. With 
 the army of mercenaries which he had brought over sea 
 Henry was able to return to Normandy, to raise the siege 
 of Rouen, and to reduce his sons to submission. 
 
 Through the next ten years Henry's power was at 
 its height. The French King was cowed. The Scotch 
 King bought his release in 1175 by owning Henry's suzer- 
 ainty. The Scotch barons did homage, and English gar- 
 risons manned the strongest of the Scotch castles. In 
 England itself church and baronage were alike at the 
 King's mercy, Eleanor was imprisoned : and the younger 
 Henry, though always troublesome, remained powerless 
 to do harm. The King availed himself of this rest from 
 outer foes to push forward his judicial and administrative 
 organization. At the outset of his reign he had restored 
 the King's court and the occasional circuits of its justices; 
 but the revolt was hardly over when in 1176 the Assize of 
 Northampton rendered this institution permanent and 
 regular by dividing the kingdom into six districts, to each 
 of which three itinerant judges were assigned. The cir- 
 cuits thus marked out correspond roughly with those that 
 still exist. The primary object of these circuits was finan- 
 cial ; but the rendering of the King's justice went on side
 
 188 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II 
 
 by side with the exaction of the King's dues, and this 
 carrying of justice to every corner of the realm was made 
 still more effective by the abolition of all feudal exemp- 
 tions from the royal jurisdiction. The chief danger of the 
 new sj'stem lay in the opportunities it afforded to judicial 
 corruption; and so great were its abuses that in 1178 
 Henry was forced to restrict for a while the number of 
 justices to five, and to reserve appeals from their court to 
 himself in council. The Court of Appeal which was thus 
 created, that of the King in Council, gave birth as time 
 went on to tribunal after tribunal. It is from it that the 
 judicial powers now exercised by the Privy Council are 
 derived, as well as the equitable jurisdiction of the Chan- 
 cellor. In the next century it became the Great Council 
 of the realm, and it is from this Great Council, in its two 
 distinct capacities, that the Privy Council drew its legis- 
 lative, and the House of Lords its judicial character. The 
 Court of Star Chamber and the Judicial Committee of the 
 Privy Council are later offshoots of Henry's Court of 
 Appeal. From the judicial organization of the realm, he 
 turned to its militarj'' organization, and in 1181 an Assize 
 of Arms restored the national fyrd or militia to the place 
 which it had lost at the Conquest. The substitution of 
 scutage for military service had freed the crown from its 
 dependence on the baronage and its feudal retainers; the 
 Assize of Arms replaced this feudal organization by the 
 older obligation of every freeman to servo in defence of 
 the realm. Every knight was now bound to appear in 
 coat of mail and with shield and lance, every fieeholder 
 with lance and hauberk, ever}' burgess and poorer freeman 
 with lance and helmet, at the Kino-'s call. The lew of an 
 
 7 CJ *-■ 
 
 armed nation was thus placed wholly at the disposal *)f the 
 Crown for purposes of defence. 
 
 A fresh revolt of the younger Henry with his brother 
 Geoffry in 1183 hardly broke the current of Henry's suc- 
 cess. The revolt ended with the young King's death, and 
 in 1186 this was followed by the death of Geoffry. Rich-
 
 Chap. 3.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 189 
 
 ard, now his father's heir, remained busy in Aquitaine ; 
 and Henry was himself occupied with plans for the recov- 
 ery of Jerusalem, which had been taken by Saladin in 
 1187. The "Saladin tithe," a tax levied on all goods and 
 chattels, and memorable as the first English instance of 
 taxation on personal property, was granted to the King at 
 the opening of 1188 to support his intended Crusade. But 
 the Crusade was hindered by strife which broke out be- 
 tween Richard and the new French King, Philip; and 
 while Henry strove in vain to bring about peace, a sus- 
 picion that he purposed to make his youngest son, John, 
 his heir drove Richard to Philip's side. His father, 
 broken in health and spirits, negotiated fruitlessly through 
 the winter, but with the spring of 1189 Richard and the 
 French King suddenly appeared before Le Mans. Henry 
 was driven in headlong flight from the town. Tradition 
 tells how from a height where he halted to look back on 
 the burning city, so dear to him as his birthplace, the 
 King hurled his curse against God : " Since Thou hast taken 
 from me the town I loved best, where I was born and 
 bred, and where my father lies buried, I will have my 
 revenge on Thee too — I will rob Thee of that thing Thou 
 lovest most in me. " If the words were uttered, they were 
 the frenzied words of a dying man. Death drew Henry 
 to the home of his race, but Tours fell as he lay at Saumur, 
 and the hunted King was driven to beg mercy from his 
 foes. They gave him the list of the conspirators against 
 him : at its head was the name of one, his love for whom 
 had brought with it the ruin that was crushing him, his 
 youngest son, John. "Now," he said, as he turned his 
 face to the wall, " let things go as they will — I care no 
 more for myself or for the world." The end was come at 
 last. Henry was borne to Chinon by the silvery waters of 
 Vienne, and muttering, "Shame, shame on a conquered 
 King," passed sullenly away.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ANGEVIN KINGa 
 
 1189—1204. 
 
 The fall of Henry the Second only showed the strength 
 of the system he had built up on this side the sea. In the 
 hands of the justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvill, England re- 
 mained peaceful through the last stormy months of his 
 reign, and his successor Richard found it undisturbed 
 when he came for his crowning in the autumn of 1189. 
 Though born at Oxford, Richard had been bred in Aqui- 
 taine ; he was an utter stranger to his realm, and his visit 
 was simply for the purpose of gathering money for a Cru- 
 sade. Sheriffdoms, bishoprics, were sold; even the su- 
 premacy over Scotland was bought back again by William 
 the Lion; and it was with the wealth which these meas- 
 ures won that Richard made his way in 1190 to Marseilles 
 and sailed thence to Messina. Here he foimd his army 
 and a host under King Philip of France; and the winter 
 was spent in quarrels between the two Kings and a strife 
 between Richard and Tancred of Sicily. In the spring of 
 1191 his mother Eleanor arrived with ill news from Eng- 
 land. Richard had left the realm under the regency of 
 two bishops, Hugh Puiset of Durham and William Long- 
 champ of Ely ; but before quitting France he had entrusted 
 it wholly to the latter, who stood at the head of Church 
 and State as at once justiciar and Papal legate. Long- 
 champ was loyal to the King, but his exactions and scorn 
 of Englishmen roused a fierce hatred among the baronage, 
 and this hatred found head in John. While richly gifting 
 his brother with earldoms and lands, Richard had taken 
 oath from him that he would quit England for three years.
 
 RICHARD, Coeur de Lion 
 From his Monumental Effigy at FontevraudJ
 
 Ohap. i.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314. 191 
 
 But tidings that the justiciar was striving to secure the 
 succession of Arthur, the child of his elder brother Geoffry 
 and of Constance of Brittany, to the English crown at 
 once recalled John to the realm, and peace between him 
 and Longchamp was only preserved by the influence of the 
 queen-mother Eleanor. Richard met this news by send- 
 ing William of Coutances, the Archbishop of Rouen, with 
 full but secret powers to England. On his landing in the 
 summer of 1191 William found the country already in, 
 arms. No battle had been fought, but John had seized 
 many of the royal castles, and the indignation stirred by 
 Longchamp's arrest of Archbishop Geoffry of York, a 
 bastard son of Henry the Second, called the whole baron- 
 age to the field. The nobles swore fealty to John as Rich- 
 ard's successor, and William of Coutances saw himself 
 forced to show his commission as justiciar, and to assent 
 to Longchamp's exile from the realm. 
 
 The tidings of this revolution reached Richard in the 
 Holy Land. He had landed at Acre in the summer and 
 joined with the French King in its siege. But on the sur- 
 render of the town Philip at once sailed home, while Rich- 
 ard, marching from Acre to Joppa, pushed inland to Jeru- 
 salem. The city, however, was saved by false news of its 
 strength, and through the following winter and the spring 
 of 1192 the King limited his activity to securing the for- 
 tresses of southern Palestine. In June he again advanced 
 on Jerusalem, but the revolt of his army forced him a 
 second time to fall back, and news of Philip's intrigues 
 with John drove him to abandon further efforts. There 
 was need to hasten home. Sailing for speed's sake in a 
 merchant vessel, he was driven by a storm on the Adri- 
 atic coast, and while journeying in disguise overland ar- 
 rested in December at Vienna by his personal enemy, Duke 
 Leopold of Austria. Through the whole year John, in 
 disgust at his displacement by William of Coutances, had 
 been plotting fruitlessly with Philip. But the news of 
 this capture at once roused both to activity. John secured
 
 192 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 his castles and seized Windsor, giving out that the King 
 would never return; while Philip strove to induce the 
 Emperor, Henry the Sixth, to whom the Duke of Austria 
 had given Richard up, to retain his captive. But a new 
 influence now appeared on the scene. The See of Canter- 
 bury was vacant, and Richard from his prison bestowed 
 it on Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, a nephew 
 of Ranulf de Glanvill and who had acted as secretary to 
 Bishop Longchamp. Hubert's ability was seen in the 
 skill with which he held John at bay and raised the enor- 
 mous ransom which Henry demanded, the whole people, 
 clergy as well as lay, paying a fourth r f their movable 
 goods. To gain his release, however, Riciiard was forced 
 besides this payment of ransom to do homage to the Em- 
 peror, not only for the kingdom of Aries with which Henry 
 invested him but for England itself, whose crown he re- 
 signed into the Emperor's hands and received back as a 
 fief. But John's open revolt made even these terms wel- 
 come, and Richard hurried to England in the spring of 
 1194, He found the rising already quelled by the decision 
 with which the Primate led an army against John's cas- 
 tles, and his landing was followed by his brother's com- 
 plete submission. 
 
 The firmness of Hubert Walter had secured order in 
 England, but oversea Richard found himself face to face 
 with dangers which he was too clear-sighted to under- 
 value. Destitute of his father's administrative genius, 
 less ingenious in his political conceptions than John, Rich- 
 ard was far from being a mere soldier, A love of adven- 
 ture, a pride in sheer physical strength, here and there a 
 romantic generosity, jostled roughly with the craft, the 
 unscrupulousness, the violence of his race; but he was at 
 heart a statesman, cool and patient in the execution of his 
 plans as he was bold in their conception. " The devil is 
 loose; take care of yourself," Philip had written to John 
 at the news of Richard's release. In the French King's 
 case a restless ambition was spurred to action by insults
 
 Chap. 4.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1314. 193 
 
 which he had borne during the Crusade. He had availed 
 himself of Kichard's imprisonment to invade Normandy, 
 while the lords of Aquitaine rose in open revolt under the 
 troubadour Bertrand de Born. Jealousy of the rule of 
 strangers, weariness of the turbulence of the mercenary 
 soldiers of the Angevins or of the greed and oppression of 
 their financial administration, combined with an impa- 
 tience of their firm government and vigorous justice to 
 alienate the nobles of their provinces on the Continent. 
 Loyalty among the people there was none ; even An jou, 
 the home of their race, drifted toward Philip as steadily 
 as Pitou. But in warlike ability Richard was more than 
 Philip's peer. He held him in check on the Norman fron- 
 tier and surprised his treasure at Freteval while he re- 
 duced to submission the rebels of Aquitaine. Hubert 
 Walter gathered vast sums to support the army of mer- 
 cenaries which Richard led against his foes. The country 
 groaned under its burdens, but it owned the justice and 
 firmness of the Primate's rule, and the measures which he 
 took to procure money with as little oppression as might 
 be proved steps in the education of the nation in its own 
 sell -government. The taxes were assessed by a jury of 
 p\v: )rn kniglits at each circuit of the justices ; the grand jury 
 of the county was based on the election of knights in the 
 hundred courts ; and the keeping of pleas of the crown was 
 taken from the sheriff and given to a newly elected ofiicer, 
 the coroner. In these elections were found at a later time 
 precedents for parliamentary representation; in Hubert's 
 mind they were doubtless intended to do little more than 
 reconcile the people to the crushing taxation. His work 
 poured a million into the treasury, and enabled Richard 
 during a short truce to detach Flanders by his bribes from 
 the French alliance, and to unite the Counts of Chartres, 
 Champagne, and Boulogne with the Bretons in a revolt 
 against Philip. He won a yet more valuable aid in the 
 election of his nephew Otto of Saxony, a son of Henry the 
 Lion, to the German throne, and his envoy William L(m^ 
 Vol. I.— 13
 
 194 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book XL 
 
 champ knitted an alliance which would bring the German 
 lances to bear on the King of Paris. 
 
 But the security of Normandy was requisite to the suc- 
 cess of these wider plans, and Richard saw that its de- 
 fence could no longer rest on tho loyalty of the Norman 
 people. His father might trace his descent through Ma- 
 tilda from the line of Rolf, but the Angevin ruler was in 
 fact a stranger to the Norman. It was impossible for a 
 Norman to recognize his Duke with any real sympathy in 
 the Angevin prince whom he saw moving along the bor- 
 der at the head of Braban^on mercenaries, in whoso camp 
 the old names of the Norman baronage were missing and 
 Merchade, a Gascon ruffian, held supreme command. The 
 purely military site that Richard selected for a new for- 
 tress with which he guarded the border showed his reali- 
 zation of the fact that Normandy could now only be held 
 by force of arms. As a monument of warlike skill his 
 "Saucy Castle," Chateau Gaillard, stands first among the 
 fortresses of the middle ages. Richard fixed its site where 
 the Seine bends suddenly at Gaillon in a great semicircle 
 to the north, and where the valley of Les Andelys breaks 
 the line of the chalk cliffs along its banks. Blue masses 
 of woodland crown the distant hills ; within the river curve 
 lies a dull reach of flat meadow, round which the Seine, 
 broken with green islets and dappled with the gray and 
 blue of the sky, flashes like a silver bow on its way to 
 Rouen. The castle formed part of an entrenched camp 
 which Richard designed to cover his Norznan capital. 
 Approach by the river was blocked by a stockade and a 
 bridge of boats, by a fort on the islet in mid-stream, and 
 by a tower which the King built in the valley of the Gam- 
 bon, then an impassable marsh. In the angle between this 
 valley and the Seine, on a spur of the chalk hills which 
 only a narrow neck of land connects with the general pla- 
 teau, rose at the height of three hundred feet above the 
 river the crowning fortress of the whole. Its outworks 
 and the walls which connected it with the town and stock-
 
 Chap. 4.] UNDER FOREIGN KINQS. 1071—1214. 195 
 
 ade have for the most part pjone, but time and the hand 
 of man have done little to destroy the fortifications them- 
 selves — the fosse, hewn deep into the solid rock, with case- 
 mates hollowed out along its sides, the fluted walls of the 
 citadel, the huge donjon looking down on the brown roofs 
 and huddled gables of Les Andelys. Even now in its ruin 
 we can understand the triumphant outburst of its royal 
 builder as he saw it rising against the sky : " How pretty 
 a child is mine, this child of but one year old !" 
 
 The easy reduction of Normandy on the fall of Chateau 
 Gaillard at a later time prove*! Richard's foresight; but 
 foresight and sagacity were mingled in him with a brutal 
 violence and a callous indifference to honor. " I would take 
 it, were its walls of iron," Philip exclaimed in wrath as 
 he saw the fortress rise. " I would hold it, were its walls 
 of butter," was the defiant answer of his foe. It was 
 Church land and the Archbishop of Rouen laid Normandy 
 under interdict at its seizure, but the King met the intei 
 diet with mockery, and intrigued with Rome till the cen- 
 sure was withdrawn. He was just as defiant of a " rain 
 of blood," whose fall scared his courtiers. " Had an angel 
 from heaven bid him abandon his work," says a cool ob- 
 server, "he would have answered with a curse." The 
 twelvemonth's hard work, in fact, by securing the Nor- 
 man frontier set Richard free to deal his long-planned blow 
 at Philip. Money only was wanting ; for England had at 
 last struck against the continued exactions. In 1 1 98 Hugh, 
 Bishop of Lincoln, brought nobles and bishops to refuse a 
 new demand for the maintenance of foreign soldiers, and 
 Hubert Walter resigned in despair. A new justiciar, 
 Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, Earl of Essex, extorted some money 
 by a harsh assize of the forests ; but the exchequer was 
 soon drained, and Richard listened with more than the 
 greed of his race to rumors that a treasure had been found 
 in the fields of the Limousin. Twelve knights of gold 
 seated round a golden table were the find, it was said, of 
 the Lord of Chaluz. Treasure-trove at any rate there was.
 
 196 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book II. 
 
 and in the spring of 1199 Richard prowled around the walls. 
 But the castle held stubbornly out till the King's greed 
 passed into savage menace. He would hang all, he swore 
 — man, woman, the very child at the breast. In the midst 
 of his threats an arrow from the walls struck him down. 
 He died as he had lived, owning the wild passion which 
 for seven years past had kept him from confession lest he 
 should be forced to pardon Philip, forgiving with kingly 
 generosity the archer who had shot him. 
 
 The Angevin dominion broke to pieces at his death. 
 John was acknowledged as King in England and Nor- 
 mandy, Aquitaine was secured for him by its Duchess, his 
 mother Eleanor; but Anjou, Maine, and Touraine did 
 homage to Arthur, the son of his elder brother Geoffry, 
 the late Duke of Brittany. The ambition of Philip, who 
 protected his cause, turned the day against Arthur; the 
 Angevins rose against the French garrisons with which 
 the French King practically annexed the country, and in 
 May 1200 a treaty between the two kings left John master 
 of the whole dominion of his house. But fresh troubles 
 broke out in Poitou ; Philip, on John's refusal to answer 
 the charges of the Poitevin barons at his Court, declared 
 in 1202 his fiefs forfeited; and Arthur, now a boy of fif- 
 teen, strove to seize Eleanor in the castle of Mirabeau. 
 Surprised at its siege by a rapid march of the King, the 
 boy was taken prisoner to Rouen, and murdered there in 
 the spring of 1203, as men believed, by his uncle's hand. 
 This brutal outrage at once roused the French provinces 
 in revolt, while Philip sentenced John to forfeiture as a 
 murderer and marched straight on Normandy. The ease 
 with which the conquest of the Duchy was effected can 
 only be explained by the utter absence of any popular re- 
 sistance on the part of the Normans themselves. Half a 
 century before the sight of a Frenchman in the land would 
 have roused every peasant to arms from Avranches to 
 Dieppe. But town after town surrendered at the mere 
 summons of Philip, and the conquest was hardly over be-
 
 Chap. 4.] UNDER FOREIGN KINGS. 1071—1214. 197 
 
 fore Normandy settled down into the most loyal of the 
 provinces of France. Much of this was due to the wise 
 liberality with which Philip met the claims of the towns 
 to independence and self-government, as well as to the 
 overpowering force and military ability with which the 
 conquest was effected. But the utter absence of opposition 
 sprang from a deeper cause. To the Norman his transfer 
 from John to Philip was a mere passing from one foreign 
 master to another, and foreigner for foreigner Philip was 
 the less alien of the two. Between France and Normandy 
 there had been as many years of friendship as of strife ; 
 between Norman and Angevin lay a century of bitterest 
 hate. Moreover, the subjection to France was the realiza- 
 tion in fact of a dependence which had always existed in 
 theory ; Philip entered Rouen as the over-lord of its Dukes ; 
 while the submission to the house of Anjou had been the 
 most humiliating of all submissions, the submission to an 
 equal. In 1204 Philip turned on the south with as start- 
 ling a success. Maine, Anjou, and Touraine passed with 
 little resistance into his hands, and the death of Eleanor 
 was followed by the submission of the bulk of Aquitaine. 
 Little was left save the country south of the Garonne ; 
 and from the lordship of a vast empire that stretched from 
 the Tyne to the Pyrenees John saw himself reduced at a 
 blow to the realm of England.
 
 BOOK IIL 
 
 THE CHARTER 
 
 1804—1891.
 
 AUTHOEITIES FOE BOOK IIL 
 
 1204—1291. 
 
 A chronicle drawn up at the monastery of Barnwell near Cam' 
 bridge, and which has been embodied in the "Memoriale" of Walter 
 of Coventry, gives us a contemporary account of the period from 
 1201 to 1235. We possess another contemporary annalist for the 
 same period in Roger of Weudover, the first of the published chroni- 
 clers of St. Albans, whose work extends to 1235. Though full of 
 detail Roger is inaccurate, and he has strong royal and ecclesiasti- 
 cal sympathies ; but his chronicle was subsequently revised in a 
 more patriotic sense by another monk of the same abbey, Matthew 
 Paris, and continued in the " Greater Chronicle" of the latter. 
 
 Matthew has left a parallel but shorter account of the time in his 
 " Historia Anglorum" (from the Conquest to 1253). He is the last 
 of the great chroniclers of his house ; for the chronicles of Rishan- 
 ger, his successor at St. Albans, and of the obscurer annalists who 
 worked on at that Abbey till the Wars of the Roses, are little save 
 scant and lifeless jottings of events which become more and more 
 local as time goes on. The annals of the abbeys of Waverley, Dun- 
 stable, and Burton, which have been published in the "Annales 
 Monastici" of the Rolls Series, add important details for the reigns 
 of John and Henry III. Those of Melrose, Osney, and Lanercost 
 help us in the close of the latter reign, where help is especially wel- 
 come. For the Barons' war we have besides these the royalist 
 chronicle of Wykes, Rishanger's fragment published by the Camden 
 Society, and a chronicle of Bartholomew de Cotton, which is con- 
 temporaiy from 1264 to 1298. Where the chronicles fail, however, 
 the public documents of the realm become of high importance. The 
 "Royal Letters" (1216—1272) which have been printed from the 
 Patent Rolls by Professor Shirley (Rolls Series) throw great light 
 on Henry's politics. 
 
 Our municipal history during this period is fully represented by 
 that of London. For the general history of the capital the Rolls 
 Series has given us its " Liber Albus" and " Liber Custumarum, " 
 while a vivid account of its communal revolution is to be found in 
 the " Liber de Antiquis Legibus" published by the Camden Society. 
 A store of documents will be found in the Charter Rolls published 
 by the Record Commission, in Brady's work on "English Boroughs," 
 and in the "Ordinances of English Gilds," published with a re- 
 markable preface from the pen of Dr. Brentano by the Early English 
 Text Society. For our religious and intellectual history materials 
 now become abundant. Grosseteste's Letters throw light on the 
 state of the Church and its relations with Rome ; those of Adam 
 Marsh give us interesting details of Earl Simon's relation to the
 
 1802 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 religious movement of his day ; and Eccleston's tract on the arrival 
 of the Friars is embodied in the " Monumenta Franciscana. " For the 
 Universities we have the collection of materials edited by Mr. Anstey 
 under the name of " Muuimenta Academica. " 
 
 With the close of Henry's reign our directly historic materials 
 become scantier and scantier. The monastic annals we have before 
 mentioned are supplemented by the jejune entries of Trivet and 
 Murimuth, by the " Annales Angliaj et Scotiae, " by Rishanger's 
 Chronicle, his "Gesta Edwardi Primi," and three fragments of his 
 annals (all published in the Rolls Series). The portion of the so- 
 called " Walsingham's History" which relates to this period is now 
 attributed by Mr. Riley to Rishanger's hand. For the wars in the 
 north and in the west we have no records from the side of the con- 
 quered. The social and physical state of Wales indeed is illustrated 
 by the " Itinerarium" which Gerald du Barri drew up in the twelfth 
 century, but Scotland has no contemporary chronicles for this 
 period ; the jingling rhymes of Blind Harry are two hundred years 
 later than his hero, Wallace. We possess, however, a copious collec- 
 tion of State papers in the " Rotuli Scotiae, " the " Documents and 
 Records illustrative of the History of Scotland" which were edited 
 by Sir F. Palgrave, as well as in Rymer's Foedera. For the history 
 of our Parliament the most noteworthy materials have been collected 
 by Professor Stubbs in his Select Charters, and he has added to them 
 a short treatise called "Modus Tenendi Parliamenta, " which may 
 be taken as a fair account of its actual state and powers in the four* 
 teenth century.
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 1214—1316. 
 
 The loss of Normandy did more than drive John from 
 the foreign dominions of his race; it set him face to face 
 with England itself. England was no longer a distant 
 treasure-house from which gold could be drawn for wars 
 along the Epte or the Loire, no longer a possession to be 
 kept in order by wise ministers and by flying visits from 
 its foreign King. Henceforth it was his home. It was 
 to be ruled by his personal and continuous rule. People 
 and sovereign were to know each other, to be brought into 
 contact with each other as they had never been brought 
 since the conquest of the Norman. The change in the 
 attitude of the king was the more momentous that it took 
 place at a time when the attitude of the country itself was 
 rapidly changing. The Norman conquest had given a new 
 aspect to the land. A foreign king ruled it through for- 
 eign ministers. Foreign nobles were quartered in every 
 manor. A military organization of the country changed 
 while it simplified the holding of every estate. Huge 
 castles of white stone bridled town and country ; huge stone 
 minsters told how the Norman had bridled even the 
 Church. But the change was in great measure an exter- 
 nal one. The real life of the nation was little affected by 
 the shock of the Conquest. English institutions, the local, 
 judicial, and administrative forms of the country were the 
 same as of old. Like the English tongue they remained 
 practically unaltered. For a century after the Conquest 
 only a few new words crept in from the language of the
 
 204 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book m. 
 
 conquerors, and so entirely did the spoken tongue of the 
 nation at large remain unchanged that William himself 
 tried to learn it that he might administer justice to his 
 subjects. Even English literature, banished as it was 
 from the court of the stranger and exposed to the fashion- 
 able rivalry of Latin scholars, survived not only in relig- 
 ious works, in poetic paraphrases of gospels and psalms, 
 but in the great monument of our prose, the English 
 Chronicle. It was not till the miserable reign of Stephen 
 that the Chronicle died out in the Abbey of Peterborough. 
 But the "Sayings of Alfred" show a native literature 
 going on through the reign of Henry the Second, and the 
 appearance of a great work of English verse concides in 
 point of time with the return of John to his island realm. 
 " There was a priest in the land whose name was Laya- 
 mon ; he was the son of Leovenath ; may the Lord be gra- 
 cious to him ! He dwelt at Earnley, a noble church on 
 the bank of Severn (good it seemed to him !) near Rad- 
 stone, where he read books. It came to mind to him and 
 in his chief est thought that he would tell the noble deeds 
 of England, what the men were named and whence they 
 came who first had English land." Journeying far and 
 wide over the country, the priest of Earnley found Bseda 
 and Wace, the books too of St. Albin and St. Austin. 
 " Layamon laid down these books and turned the leaves ; 
 he beheld them lovingly; may the Lord be gracious to 
 him ! Pen he took with finger and wrote a book-skin, and 
 the true words set together, and compressed the three 
 books into one." Layamon 's church is now that of Are- 
 ley, near Bewdley in Worcestershire; his poem was in 
 fact an expansion of Wace's " Brut" with insertions from 
 Bseda. Historically it is worthless ; but as a monument 
 of our language it is beyond all price. In more than 
 thirty thousand lines not more than fifty Norman words 
 are to be found. Even the old poetic tradition remains the 
 same. The alliterative metre of the earlier verse is still 
 only slightly affected by rhyming terminations ; the similes
 
 Chae. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 205 
 
 are the few natural similes of Csedmon ; the battle-scenes 
 are painted with the same rough, simple joy. 
 
 Instead of crushing England indeed the Conquest did 
 more than any event that had gone before to build up an 
 English people. All local distinctions, the distinction of 
 Saxon from Mercian, of both from Northumbrian, died 
 away beneath the common pressure of the stranger. The 
 Conquest was hardly over when we see the rise of a new 
 national feeling, of a new patriotism. In his quiet cell at 
 Worcester the monk Florence strives to palliate by excuses 
 of treason or the weakness of rulers the defeats of English- 
 men by the Danes. Alfred, the great name of the English 
 past, gathers round him a legendary worship, and the 
 " Sayings of Alfred" embody the ideal of an English king. 
 We see the new vigor drawn from this deeper conscious- 
 ness of national unity in a national action which began as 
 soon as the Conquest had given place to strife among the 
 conquerors. A common hostility to the conquering baron- 
 age gave the nation leaders in its foreign sovereigns, and 
 the sword which had been sheathed at Senlac was drawn 
 for triumphs which avenged it. It was under William 
 the Red that English soldiers shouted scorn at the Norman 
 barons who surrendered at Rochester. It was under Henry 
 the First that an English army faced Duke Robert and 
 his foreign knighthood when they landed for a fresh inva- 
 sion, " not fearing the Normans. " It was under the same 
 great King that Englishmen conquered Normandy in turn 
 on the field of Tenchebray. This overthrow of the con- 
 quering baronage, this union of the conquered with the 
 King, brought about the fusion of the conquerors in the 
 general body of the English people. As early as the days 
 of Henry the Second the descendants of Norman and Eng- 
 lishman had become indistinguishable. Both found a bond 
 in a common English feeling and English patriotism, in 
 a common hatred of the Angevin and Poitevin " foreign- 
 ers" who streamed into England in the wake of Henry 
 and his sons. Both had profited by the stern discipline of
 
 206 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 the Norman rule. The wretched reign of Stephen alone 
 broke the long peace, a peace without parallel elsewhere, 
 which in England stretched from the settlement of the 
 Conquest to the return of John. Of her kings' forays 
 along Norman or Aquitanian borders England heard little; 
 she cared less. Even Richard's crusade woke little inter- 
 est in his island realm. What England saw in her kings 
 was "the good peace they made in the land." And with 
 peace came a stern but equitable rule, judicial and admin- 
 istrative reforms that carried order and justice to every 
 corner of the laud, a wealth that grew steadily in spite of 
 heavy taxation, an immense outburst of material and in- 
 tellectual activity. 
 
 It was with a new English people, therefore, that John 
 found himself face to face. The nation which he fronted 
 was a nation quickened with a new life and throbbing 
 with a new energy. Not least among the signs of this 
 energy was the upgrowth of our Universities. The estab- 
 lishment of the great schools which bore this name was 
 everywhere throughout Europe a special mark of the im- 
 pulse which Christendom gained from the crusades. A 
 new fervor of study sprang up in the West from its con- 
 tact with the more cultured East. Travellers like Adelard 
 of Bath brought back the first rudiments of physical and 
 mathematical science from the schools of Cordova or Bag- 
 dad. In the twelfth century a classical revival restored 
 CsBsar and Virgil to the list of monastic studies, and left 
 its stamp on the pedantic style, the profuse classical quota- 
 tions of writers like William of Malmesbury or John of 
 Salisbury. The scholastic philosophy sprang up in the 
 schools of Paris. The Roman law was revived by the im- 
 perialist doctors of Bologna. The long mental inactivity 
 of feudal Europe broke up like ice before a summer's sun. 
 Wandering teachers such as Lan franc or Anselm crossed 
 sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. The 
 same spirit of restlessness of inquiry, of impatience with 
 the older traditions of mankind either local or intellectual
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 207 
 
 that drove half Christendom to the tomb of its Lord 
 crowded the roads with thousands of young scholars hur- 
 rying to the chosen seats where teachers were gathered 
 together. A new power sprang up in the midst of a world 
 which had till now recogTiized no power but that of sheer 
 brute force. Poor as they were, sometimes even of servile 
 race, the wandering scholars who lectured in every cloister 
 were hailed as "masters" by the crowds at their feet. 
 Abelard was a foe worthy of the threats of councils, of 
 the thunders of the Church. The teaching of a single 
 Lombard was of note enough in England to draw down 
 the prohibition of a King. 
 
 Vacarius was probably a guest in the court of Archbish- 
 op Theobald where Thomas of London and John of Salis- 
 bury were already busy with the study of the Civil Law. . 
 But when he opened lectures on it at Oxford he was at 
 once silenced by Stephen, who was at that moment at war 
 with the Church and jealous of the power which the wreck 
 of the royal authority was throwing into Theobald's hands. 
 At this time Oxford stood in the first rank among English 
 towns. Its town church of St. Martin rose from the midst 
 of a huddled group of houses, girded in with massive walls, 
 that lay along the dry upper ground of a low peninsula 
 between the streams of Cherwell and the Thames. The 
 ground fell gently on either side, eastward and westward, 
 to these rivers ; while on the south a sharper descent led 
 down across swampy meadows to the ford from which the 
 town drew its name and to the bridge that succeeded it. 
 Around lay a wild forest country, moors such as Cowley 
 and Bullingdon fringing the course of Thames, great 
 woods of which Shotover and Bagley are the relics clos- 
 ing the horizon to the south and east. Though the two 
 huge towers of its Norman castle marked the strategic 
 importance of Oxford as commanding the river valley 
 along which the commerce of Southern England mainly 
 flowed, its walls formed the least element in the town's 
 military strength, for on every side but the north it was
 
 208 HISTORY OP THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 guarded by the swampy meadows along Cherwell or by 
 an intricate network of streams into which the Thames 
 breaks among the meadows of Osney. From the midst of 
 these meadows rose a mitred abbey of Austin Canons 
 which with the older priory of St. Frideswide gave Oxford 
 some ecclesiastical dignity. The residence of the Norman 
 house of the D'Oillis within its castle, the frequent visits 
 of English kings to a palace without its walls, the pres- 
 ence again and again of important Parliaments, marked 
 its political weight within the realm. The settlement of 
 one of the wealthiest among the English Jewries in the 
 very heart of the town indicated, while it promoted, the 
 activity of its trade. No place better illustrates the trans- 
 formation of the land in the hands of its Norman masters, 
 the sudden outburst of industrial effort, the sudden ex- 
 pansion of commerce and accumulation of wealth which 
 followed the Conquest. To the west of the town rose one 
 of the stateliest of English castles, and in the meadows 
 beneath the hardly less stately abbey of Osney. In the 
 fields to the north the last of the Norman kings raised his 
 palace of Beaumont. In the southern quarter of the city 
 the canons of St. Frideswide reared the church which still 
 exists as the diocesan cathedral, while the piety of the Nor- 
 man Castellans rebuilt almost all its parish churches and 
 founded within their new castle walls the church of the 
 Canons of St. George. 
 
 We know nothing of the causes which drew students 
 and teachers within the walls of Oxford. It is possible 
 that here as elsewhere a new teacher quickened older edu- 
 cational foundations, and that the cloisters of Osney and 
 St. Frideswide already possessed schools which burst into 
 a larger life under the impulse of Vacarius. As yet, how- 
 ever, the fortunes of the University were obscured by the 
 glories of Paris. English scholars gathered in thousands 
 round the chairs of William of Champeaux or Abelard. 
 The English took their place as oup of the "nations" of 
 the French University. John of Salisbury became famous
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 209 
 
 as one of the Parisian teachers. Thomas of London wan- 
 dered to Paris from his school at Merton. But through 
 the peaceful reign of Henry the Second Oxford quietly 
 grew in numbers and repute, and forty years after the 
 visit of Vacarius its educational position was fully estab- 
 lished. "When Gerald of Wales read his amusing Topo^^- 
 raphy of Ireland to its students the most learned and famous 
 of the English clergy were to be found within its walls. 
 At the opening of the thirteenth century Oxford stood 
 without a rival in its own country, while in European 
 celebrity it took rank with the greatest schools of the 
 Western world. But to realize this Oxford of the past we 
 must dismiss from our minds all recollections of the Oxford 
 of the present. In the outer look of the new University 
 there was nothing of the pomp that overawes the freshman 
 as he first paces the " High" or looks down from the gallery 
 of St. Mary's. In the stead of long fronts of venerable 
 colleges, of stately walks beneath immemorial elms, his- 
 tory plunges us into the mean and filthy lanes of a mediae- 
 val town. Thousands of boys, huddled in bare lodging- 
 houses, clustering round teachers as poor as themselves in 
 church porch and house porch, drinking, quarrelling, dic- 
 ing, begging at the corners of the streets, take the place 
 of the brightly-colored train of doctors and Heads. Mayor 
 and Chancellor struggled in vain to enforce order or peace 
 on this seething mass of turbulent life. The retainers who 
 followed their young lords to the University fought out 
 the feuds of their houses in the streets. Scholars from 
 Kent and scholars from Scotland waged the bitter struggle 
 of North and South. At nightfall roysterer and reveller 
 roamed with torches through the narrow lanes, defying 
 bailiffs, and cutting down burghers at their doors. Now a 
 mob of clerks plunged into the Jewry and wiped off the 
 memory of bills and bonds by sacking a Hebrew house or 
 two. Now a tavern squabble between scholar and towns- 
 man widened into a general broil, and the academical bell 
 of St. Mary's vied with the town bell of St. Martin's Id
 
 210 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BoOK m. 
 
 t^ I — — ^   I — .■■- I I   I — .■■-■.,, , . M , 
 
 clanging to arms. Every phase of ecclesiastical contro- 
 versy or political strife was preluded by some fierce out- 
 break in this turbulent, surging mob. When England 
 growled at the exactions of the Papacy in the years that 
 were to follow the students besieged a legate in the abbot's 
 house at Osney. A murderous town and gown row pre- 
 ceded the opening of the Barons' War. *' When Oxford 
 draws knife," ran an old rhyme, " England's soon at strife.'* 
 But the turbulence and stir was a stir and turbulence of 
 life. A keen thirst for knowledge, a passionate poetry of 
 devotion, gathered thousands round the poorest scholar 
 and welcomed the barefoot friar. Edmund Rich — Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and saint in later days — came about 
 the time we have reached to Oxford, a boy of twelve years 
 old, from a little lane at Abingdon that still bears his 
 name. He found his school in an inn that belonged to the 
 abbey of Eynsham where his father had taken refuge from 
 the world. His mother was a pious woman of the day, 
 too poor to give her boy much outfit besides the hair shirt 
 that he promised to wear every Wednesday ; but Edmund 
 was no poorer than his neighbors. He plunged at once 
 into the nobler life of the place, its ardor for knowledge, 
 its mystical piety. "Secretly," perhaps at eventide when 
 the shadows were gathering in the church of St. Mary and 
 the crowd of teachers and students had left its aisles, the 
 boy stood before an image of the Virgin, and placing a 
 ring of gold upon its finger took Mary for his bride. Years 
 of study, broken by a fever that raged among the crowded, 
 noisome streets, brought the time for completing his edu- 
 cation at Paris ; and Edmund, hand in hand with a brother 
 Robert of his, begged his way as poor scholars were wont 
 to the great school of Western Christendom. Here a 
 damsel, heedless of his tonsure, wooed him so pertina- 
 ciously that Edmund consented at last to an assignation; 
 but when he appeared it was in company of grave academi- 
 cal oflScials who, as the maiden declared in the hour of 
 penitence which followed, " straightway whipped the of-
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 211 
 
 fending Eve out of her." Still true to his Virgin bridal, 
 Edmund on his return from Paris became the most popu- 
 lar of Oxford teachers. It is to him that Oxford owes her 
 first introduction to the Logic of Aristotle. We see him 
 in the little room which he hired, with the Virgin's chapel 
 hard by, nis gray gown reaching to his feet, ascetic in his 
 devotion, falling asleep in lecture time after a sleepless 
 night of prayer, but gifted with a grace and cheerfulness 
 of manner which told of his French training and a chival- 
 rous love of knowledge that let his pupils pay what they 
 would. " Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," the young tutor 
 would say, a touch of scholarly pride perhaps mingling 
 with his contempt of worldly things, as he threw down the 
 fee on the dusty window-ledge whence a thievish student 
 would sometimes run off with it. But even knowledge 
 brought its troubles ; the Old Testament, which with a copy 
 of the Decretals long formed his sole library, frowned 
 down upon a love of secular learning from which Edmund 
 found it hard to wean himself. At last, in some hour of 
 dream, the form of his dead mother floated into the room 
 where the teacher stood among his mathematical diagrams. 
 "What are these?" she seemed to say; and seizing Ed- 
 mund's right hand, she drew on the palm three circles in- 
 terlaced, each of which bore the name of a Person of the 
 Christian Trinity. "Be these," she cried, as the figure 
 faded away, "thy diagrams henceforth, my son." 
 
 The story admirably illustrates the real character of the 
 new training, and the latent opposition between the spirit 
 of the Universities and the spirit of the Church. The 
 feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediaeval world 
 were both alike threatened by this power that had so 
 strangely sprung up in the midst of them. Feudalism 
 rested on local isolation, on the severance of kingdom from 
 kingdom and barony from barony, on the distinction of 
 blood and race, on the supremacy of material or brute 
 force, on an allegiance determined by accidents of place 
 and social position. The University on the other hand waa
 
 212 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IU. 
 
 a protest against this isolation of man from man. The 
 smallest school was European and not local. Not merely 
 every province of France, but every people of Christendom 
 had its place among the " nations" of Paris or Padua. A 
 common language, the Latin tongue, superseded within 
 academical bounds the warring tongues of Europe. A 
 common intellectual kinship and rivalry took the place of 
 the petty strifes which parted province from province or 
 realm from realm. What Church and Empire had both 
 aimed at and both failed in, the knitting of Christian na- 
 tions together into a vast commonwealth, the Universities 
 for a time actually did. Dante felt himself as little a 
 stranger in the " Latin" quarter round Mont St. Genevieve 
 as under the arches of Bologna. Wandering Oxford 
 scholars carried the writings of Wyclif to the libraries of 
 Prague. In England the work of provincial fusion was 
 less diflficult or important than elsewhere, but even in 
 England work had to be done. The feuds of Northerner 
 and Southerner which so long disturbed the discipline of 
 Oxford witnessed at any rate to the fact that Northerner 
 and Southerner had at last been brought face to face in its 
 streets. And here as elsewhere the spirit of national iso- 
 lation was held in check by the larger comprehensiveness 
 of the University. After the dissensions that threatened 
 the prosperity of Paris in the thirteenth century Norman 
 and Gascon mingled with Englishmen in Oxford lecture- 
 halls. Irish scholars were foremost in the fray with the 
 legate. At a later time the rising of Owen Glyndwr found 
 hundreds of Welshmen gathered round its teachers. And 
 within this strangely mingled mass society and govern- 
 ment rested on a purely democratic basis. Among Oxford 
 scholars the son of the noble stood on precisely the same 
 footing with the poorest mendicant. Wealth, physical 
 strength, skill in arms, pride of ancestry and blood, the 
 very grounds on which feudal society rested, went for 
 nothing in the lecture-room. The University was a state 
 absolutely self -governed, and whose citizens were admitted
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CUARTER. 1204— 12«1. 213 
 
 by a purely intellectual franchise. Knowledge made the 
 "master." To know more than one's fellows was a man's 
 sole claim to be a regent or " ruler" in the schools. And 
 within this intellectual aristocracy all were equal. When 
 the free commonwealth of the masters gathered in the 
 aisles of St. Mary's all had an equal right to counsel, all 
 had an equal vote in the final decision. Treasury and 
 library were at their complete disposal. It was their voice 
 that named every oflScer, that proposed and sanctioned every 
 statute. Even the Chancellor, their head, who had at first 
 been an officer of the Bishop, became an elected officer of 
 their own. 
 
 If the democratic spirit of the Universities threatened 
 feudalism, their spirit of intellectual inquiry threatened 
 the Church. To all outer seeming they were purely eccle- 
 siastical bodies. The wide extension which mediaeval 
 usage gave to the word " orders" gathered the whole edu- 
 cated world within the pale of the clergy. Whatever 
 might be their age or proficiency, scholar and teacher alike 
 ranked as clerks, free from lay responsibilities or the con- 
 trol of civil tribunals, and amenable only to the rule of the 
 Bishop and the sentence of his spiritual courts. This ec- 
 clesiastical character of the University appeared in that 
 of its head. The Chancellor, as we have seen, was at first 
 no officer of the University itself, but of the ecclesiastical 
 body under whose shadow it had sprung into life. At 
 Oxford he was simply the local officer of the Bishop of 
 Lincoln within whose immense diocese the University was 
 then situated. But this identification in outer form with 
 the Church only rendered more conspicuous the difference 
 of spirit between them. The sudden expansion of the field 
 of education diminished the importance of those purely 
 ecclesiastical and theological studies which had hitherto 
 absorbed tho whole intellectual energies of mankind. The 
 revival of classical literature, the rediscovery as it were 
 of an older and a greater world, the contact with a larger, 
 freer life v?hether in mind, in society, or in politics intro-
 
 2U HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 duced a spirit of scepticism, of doubt, of denial into the 
 realms of unquestioning belief. Abelard claimed for rea- 
 son a supremacy over faith. Florentine poets discussed 
 with a smile the immortality of the soul. Even to Dante, 
 while he censures these, Virgil is as sacred as Jeremiah. 
 The imperial ruler in whom the new culture took its most 
 notable form, Frederick the Second, the "World's Won- 
 der" of his time, was regarded by half Europe as no better 
 than an infidel. A faint revival of physical science, so 
 "•ong crushed as magic by the dominant ecclesiasticism, 
 brought Christians into perilous contact with the Moslem 
 and the Jew. The books of the Rabbis were no longer an 
 accursed thing to Roger Bacon. The scholars of Cordova 
 were no mere Paynim swine to Adelard of Bath. How 
 slowly indeed and against what obstacles science won its 
 way we know from the witness of Roger Bacon. " Slowly, " 
 he tells us, " has any portion of the philosophy of Aristotle 
 come into use among the Latins. His Natural Philosophy 
 and his Metaphysics, with the Commentaries of Averroes 
 and others, were translated in my time, and interdicted at 
 Paris up to the year of grace 1237 because of their asser- 
 tion of the eternity of the world and of time and because 
 of the book of the divinations by dreams (which is the 
 third book, De Somniis et Vigiliis) and because of many 
 passages erroneously translated. Even his logic was 
 slowly received and lectured on. For St. Edmund, the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first in my time who 
 read the Elements at Oxford. And I have seen Master 
 Hugo, who first read the book of Posterior Analytics, and 
 I have seen his writing. So there were but few, consider- 
 ing the multitude of the Latins, who were of any account 
 in the philosophy of Aristotle ; nay, very few indeed, and 
 scarcely any up to this year of grace 1292." 
 
 If we pass from the English University to the English 
 Town we see a progress as important and hardly less inter- 
 esting. In their origin our boroughs were utterly unlike 
 those of the rest of the western world. The cities of Italy
 
 CaAP. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204— 1S91. ^315 
 
 and Provence had preserved the municipal institutions of 
 their Roman past; the German towns had been founded 
 by Henry the Fowler with the purpose of sheltering indus- 
 try from the feudal oppression around them ; the communes 
 of Northern France sprang into existence in revolt against 
 feudal outrage within their waUs. But in England the 
 tradition of Rome passed utterly away, while feudal op- 
 pression was held fairly in check by the Crown. The 
 English town therefore was in its beginning simply a piece 
 of the general country, organized and governed precisely 
 in the same manner as the townships around it. Its ex- 
 istence witnessed indeed to the need which men felt in 
 those earlier times of mutual help and protection. The 
 burh or borough was probably a more defensible place than 
 the common village ; it may have had a ditch or mound 
 about it instead of the quickset-hedge or " tun" from which 
 the township took its name. But in itself it was simply a 
 township or group of townships where men clustered 
 whether for trade or defence more thickly than elsewhere. 
 The towns were different in the circumstances and date of 
 their rise. Some grew up in the fortified camps of the 
 English invaders. Some dated from a later occupation of 
 the sacked and desolate Roman towns. Some clustered 
 round the country houses of king and earldorman or the 
 walls of church and monastery. Towns like Bristol were 
 the direct result of trade. There was the same variety in 
 the mode in which the various town communities were 
 formed. While the bulk of them grew by simple increase 
 of population from township to town, larger boroughs such 
 as York with its " six shires" or London with its wards 
 and sokes and franchises show how families and groups 
 of settlers settled dowm side by side, and claimed as they 
 coalesced, each for itself, its sliire or share of the town- 
 ground while jealously preserving its individual life within 
 the town-community. But strange as these aggregations 
 might be, the constitution of the borough which resulted 
 from them was simply that of the people at large. Whether
 
 216 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 we regard it as a township, or rather from its size as a 
 hundred or collection of townships, the obligations of the 
 dwellers within its bounds were those of the townships 
 round, to keep fence and trench in good repair, to send a 
 contingent to the fyrd, and a reeve and four men to the 
 hundred court and shire court. As in other townships 
 land was a necessary accompaniment of freedom. The 
 landless man who dwelt in a borough had no share in 
 its corporate life ; for purposes of government or property 
 the town consisted simply of the landed proprietors within 
 its bounds. The common lands which are still attached to 
 many of our boroughs take us back to a time when each 
 township lay within a ring or mark of open ground which 
 served at once as boundary and pasture land. Each of the 
 four wards of York had its common pasture ; Oxford has 
 still its own " Portmeadow. " 
 
 The inner rule of the borough lay as in the townships 
 about it in the hands of its own freemen, gathered in 
 "borough-moot" or "portmannimote." But the social 
 change brought about by the Danish wars, the legal re- 
 quirement that each man should have a lord, affected the 
 towns as it affected the rest of the country. Some passed 
 into the hands of great thegns near to them ; the bulk be- 
 came known as in the demesne of the king. A new officer, 
 the lord's or king's reeve, was a sign of this revolution. 
 It was the reeve who now summoned the borough-moot 
 and administered justice in it; it was he who collected the 
 lord's dues or annual rent of the town, and who exacted 
 the services it owed to its lord. To modem eyes these 
 services would imply almost complete subjection. When 
 Leicester, for instance, passed from the hands of the Con- 
 queror into those of its Earls, its townsmen were bound 
 to reap their lord's corn-crops, to grind at his mill, to re- 
 deem their strayed cattle from his pound. The great 
 forest around was the Earl's, and it was only out of his 
 grace that the little borough could drive its swine into the 
 woods or pasture its cattle in the glades. The justice and
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204-1291. 217 
 
 government of a town lay wholly in its master's hands ; 
 he appointed its bailiffs, received the fines and forfeitures 
 of his tenants, and the fees and tolls of their markets and 
 fairs. But in fact when once these dues were paid and 
 these services rendered the English townsman was practi- 
 cally free. His rights were as rigidly defined by custom 
 as those of his lord. Property and person alike were se- 
 cured against arbitrary seizure. He could demand a fair 
 trial on any charge, and even if justice was administered 
 by his master's reeve it was administered in the presence 
 and with the assent of his fellow-townsmen. The bell 
 which swung out from the town tower gathered the bur- 
 gesses to a common meeting, where they could exercise 
 rights of free speech and free deliberation oq their own 
 affairs. Their merchant-guild over its ale-feast regulated 
 trade, distributed the sums due from the town among the 
 different burgesses, looked to the due repairs of gate and 
 wall, and acted in fact pretty much the same part as a 
 town council of to-day. 
 
 The merchant-guild was the outcome of a tendency to 
 closer association which found support in those principles 
 of mutual aid and mutual restraint that lay at the base of 
 our old institutions. Guilds or clubs for religious, charit- 
 able, or social purposes were common throughout the coun- 
 try, and especially common in boroughs, where men 
 clustered more thickly together. Each formed a sort of 
 artificial family. An oath of mutual fidelity among the 
 its members was substituted for tie of blood, while the 
 guild-feast, held once a month in the common hall, replaced 
 the gathering of the kinsfolk round their family hearth. 
 But within this new family the aim of the guild was to es- 
 tablish a mutual responsibility as close as that of the old. 
 " Let all share the same lot," ran its law; "if any misdo, 
 let all bear it." A member could look for aid from his 
 guild-brothers in atoning for guilt incurred by mishap. 
 He could call on them for assistance in case of violence or 
 wrong. If falsely accused they appeared in court as his
 
 818 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IU. 
 
 compurgators, if poor they supported, and when dead they 
 buried him. On the other hand he was responsible to 
 them, as they were to the State, for order and obedience 
 to the laws. A wrong of brother against brother was also 
 a wrong against the general body of the guild and was pun- 
 ished by fine or in the last resort by an expulsion which 
 left the offender a "lawless" man and an outcast. The 
 one difference between these guilds in country and town 
 was this, that in the latter case from their close local 
 neighborhood thej' tended inevitably to coalesce. Under 
 -^thelstan the London guilds united into one for the pur- 
 pose of carrying out more effectually their common aims, 
 and at a later time we find the guilds of Berwick enacting 
 "that where many bodies are found side by side in one 
 place they may become one, and have one will, and in the 
 dealings of one with another have a strong and hearty 
 love." The process was probably a long and difficult one, 
 for the brotherhoods naturally differed much in social 
 rank, and even after the union was effected we see traces 
 of the separate existence to a certain extent of some one 
 or more of the wealthier or more aristocratic guilds. In 
 London for instance the Knighten-guild which seems to 
 have stood at the head of its fellows retained for a long 
 time its separate property, while its Alderman — as the 
 chief officer of each guild was called — became the Alderman 
 of the united guild of the whole city. In Canterbury we 
 find a similar guild of Thanes from which the chief officers 
 of the town seem commonly to have been selected. Im- 
 perfect however as the union might be, when once it was 
 effected the town passed from a mere collection of brother- 
 hoods into a powerful community, far more effectually 
 organized than in the loose organization of the township, 
 and whose character was inevitably determined by the 
 circumstances of its origin. In their beginnings our bor- 
 oughs seem to have been mainly gatherings of persons en- 
 gaged in agricultural pursuits ; the first Dooms of London 
 provide especially for the recovery of cattle belonging to
 
 Char 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204-1391. 219 
 
 the citizens. But as the increasing security of the coun- 
 try invited the farmer or the landowner to settle apart in 
 his own fields, and the growth of estate and trade told on 
 the towns themselves, the difference between town and 
 country became more sharply defined. London of course 
 took the lead in this new development of civic life. Even 
 in ^thelstan's day every London merchant who had made 
 three long voyages on his own account ranked as a Thegn. 
 Its "lithsmen," or shipman's-guild, were of sufficient im- 
 portance under Harthacnut to figure in the election of a 
 king, and its principal street still tells of the rapid growth 
 of trade in its name of " Cheap-side" or the bargaining 
 place. But at the Norman Conquest the commercial ten- 
 dency had become universal. The name given to the 
 united brotherhood in a borough is in almost every case 
 no longer that of the "town-guild," but of the "merchant- 
 guild." 
 
 This social change in the character of the townsmen 
 produced important results in the character of their muni- 
 cipal institutions. In becoming a merchant-guild the body 
 of citizens who formed the " town" enlarged their powers 
 of civic legislation by applying them to the control of their 
 internal trade. It became their special business to obtain 
 from the crown or from their lords wider commercial 
 privileges, rights of coinage, grants of fairs, and exemp- 
 tion from tolls, while within the town itself they framed 
 regulations as to the sale and quality of goods, the control 
 of markets, and the recovery of debts. It was only by 
 slow and difficult advances that each step in this securing 
 of privilege was won. Still it went steadily on. When- 
 ever we get a glimpse of the inner history of an English 
 town we find the same peaceful revolution in progress, 
 services disappearing through disuse or omission, while 
 privileges and immunities are being purchased in hard 
 cash. The lord of the town, whether he were king, baron, 
 or abbot, was commonly thriftless or poor, and the capture 
 of a noble, or the campaign of a sovereign, or the building
 
 220 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 of some new minster by a prior, brought about an appeal 
 to the thrifty burghers, who were ready to fill again their 
 master's treasury at the price of the strip of parchment 
 which gave them freedom of trade, of justice, and of gov- 
 ernment. In the silent growth and elevation of the Eng- 
 lish people the boroughs thus led the way. Unnoticed and 
 despised by prelate and noble they preserved or won back 
 again the full tradition of Teutonic liberty. The right of 
 self-government, the right of free speech in free meeting, 
 the right to equal justice at the hands of one's equals, 
 were brought safely across ages of tyranny by the burghers 
 and shopkeepers of the towns. In the quiet quaintly- 
 named streets, and town-mead and market-place, in the 
 lord's mill beside the stream, in the bell that swung out 
 its summons to the crowded borough-mote, in merchant- 
 guild, and church-guild and craft-guild, lay the life of Eng- 
 lishmen who were doing more than knight and baron to 
 make England what she is, the life of their home and their 
 trade, of their sturdy battle with oppression, their steady, 
 ceaseless struggle for right and freedom. 
 
 London stood first among English towns, and the privi- 
 leges which its citizens won became precedents for the 
 burghers of meaner boroughs. Even at the Conquest its 
 power and wealth secured it a full recognition of all its 
 ancient privileges from the Conqueror. In one way in- 
 deed it profited by the revolution which laid England at 
 the feet of the stranger. One immediate result of "Wil- 
 liam's success was an immigration into England from the 
 Continent. A peaceful invasion of the Norman traders 
 followed quick on the invasion of the Norman soldiery. 
 Every Norman noble as he quartered himself upon English 
 lands, every Norman abbot as he entered his English 
 cloister, gathered French artists, French shopkeepers, 
 French domestics about him. Round the Abbey of Battle 
 which William founded on the site of his great victory 
 "Gilbert the Foreigner, Gilbert the Weaver, Benet the 
 Steward, Hugh the Secretarv. Baldwin the Tailor," dwelt
 
 Chap. l.J THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 221 
 
 mixed with the English tenantry. But nowhere did these 
 immigrants play so notable a part as in London. The 
 Normans had had mercantile establishments in London as 
 early as the reign of -^thelred, if not of Eadgar. Such 
 settlements, however, naturally formed nothing more than 
 a trading colony like the colony of the " Emperor's Men," 
 or Easterlings. But with the Conquest their number 
 greatly increased. " Many of the citizens of Rouen and 
 Caen passed over thither, preferring to be dwellers in this 
 city, inasmuch as it was fitter for their trading and better 
 stored with the merchandise in which they were wont to 
 traffic." The status of these traders indeed had wholly 
 changed. They could no longer be looked upon as strangers 
 in cities which had passed under the Norman rule. In 
 some cases, as at Norwich, the French colony isolated 
 itself in a separate French town, side by side with the 
 English borough. But in London it seems to have taken 
 at once the position of a governing class. Gilbert Beket, 
 the father of the famous Archbishop, was believed in later 
 days to have been one of the portreeves of London, the 
 predecessor of its mayors; he held in Stephen's time a 
 large property in houses within the walls, and a proof of 
 his civic importance was preserved in the annual visit of 
 each newly-elected chief magistrate to his tomb in a little 
 chapel which he had founded in the churchj-ard of St. 
 Paul's. Yet Gilbert was one of the Norman strangers 
 who followed in the wake of the Conqueror ; he was by 
 birth a burgher of Rouen, as his wife was of a burgher 
 family from Caen. 
 
 It was partly to this infusion of foreign blood, partly 
 no doubt to the long internal peace and order secured by 
 the Norman rule, that London owed the wealth and im- 
 portance to which it attained during the reign of Henry 
 the First. The charter which Henry granted it became 
 a model for lesser boroughs. The King yielded its citi- 
 zens the right of justice ; each townsman could claim to 
 be tried by his fellow-townsmen in the town-court or
 
 222 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 hustings whose sessions took place every week. They 
 were subject onl}^ to the old English trial by oath, and ex- 
 empt from the trial by battle which the Normans intro- 
 duced. Their trade was protected from toll or exaction 
 over the length and breadth of the land. The King, how- 
 ever, still nominated in London as elsewhere the portreeve, 
 or magistrate of the town, nor were the citizens as yet 
 united together in a commune or corporation. But an 
 imperfect civic organization existed in the "wards" or 
 quarters of the town, each governed by its own alderman, 
 and in the " guilds" or voluntary associations of merchants 
 or traders which insured order and mutual protection for 
 their members. Loose too as these bonds may seem, they 
 were drawn firmly together by the older English traditions 
 of freedom which the towns preserved. The London bur- 
 gesses gathered in their town-mote when the bell swung 
 out from tlip bell-tower of St. Paul's to deliberate freely 
 on their own affairs under the presidency of their alder- 
 man. Here too they mustered in arms if danger threat- 
 ened the city, and delivered the town-banner to their cap- 
 tain, the Norman baron Fitz- Walter, to lead them against 
 the enemy. 
 
 Few boroughs had as yet attained to such power as this, 
 but the instance of Oxford shows how the freedom of 
 London told on the general advance of English towns. In 
 spite of antiquarian fancies it is certain that no town had 
 arisen on the site of Oxford for centuries after the with- 
 drawal of the Roman legions from the isle of Britain. 
 Though the monastery of St. Frideswide rose in the tur- 
 moil of the eighth century on the slope which led down to 
 a ford cvcross the Thames, it is long before we get a 
 glimpse of the borough that must have grown up under 
 its walls. The first definite evidence for its existence lies 
 in a brief entry of the English Chronicle which recalls its 
 seizure by Eadward the Elder, but the form of this entry 
 shows that the town was already a considerable one, and 
 in the last wrestle of England -^ith the Dane its position
 
 Chap. l.J THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 223 
 
 on the borders of Mercia and "Wessex combined with its 
 command of the upper valley of the Thames to give it 
 military and political importance. Of the life of its bur- 
 gesses however we still know little or nothing. The names 
 of its parishes, St. Aldate, St. Ebbe, St. Mildred, St. Ed- 
 mund, show how early church after church gathered round 
 the earlier town-church of St. Martin. But the men of 
 the little town remain dim to us. Their town-mote, or the 
 " portmannimote" as it was called, which was held in the 
 churchyard of St. Martin, still lives in a shadow of its 
 older self as the Freeman's Common Hall — their town- 
 mead is still the Portmeadow. But it is only by later 
 charters or the record of Doomsday that we see them going 
 on pilgrimage to the shrines of Winchester, or chaffering 
 in their market-place, or judging and law-making in their 
 hustings, their merchant-guild regulating trade, their reeve 
 gathering his king's dues of tax or money or marshalling 
 his troop of burghers for the king's wars, their boats pay- 
 ing toll of a hundred herrings in Lent-tide to the Abbot 
 of Abingdon, as they floated down the Thames toward 
 London. 
 
 The number of houses marked waste in the survey marks 
 the terrible suffering of Oxford in the Norman Conquest: 
 but the ruin was soon repaired, and the erection of its 
 castle, the rebuilding of its churches, the planting of a 
 Jewry in the heart of the town, showed in what various 
 ways the energy of its new masters was given an impulse 
 to its life. It is a proof of the superiority of the Hebrew 
 dwellings to the Christian houses about them that each of 
 the later town-halls of the borough had, before their ex- 
 pulsion, been houses of Jews. Nearly all the larger dwell- 
 ing houses in fact which were subsequently converted into 
 academic halls bore traces of the same origin in names, 
 Buch as Moysey's Hall, Lombard's Hall, or Jacob's Hall. 
 The Jewish houses were abundant, for besides the greater 
 Jewry in the heart of it, there was a lesser Jewry scattered 
 over its southern quarter, and we can hardly doubt that
 
 224 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 this abundance of substantial buildings in the town was 
 at least one of the causes which drew teachers and scholars 
 within its walls. The Jewry, a town within a town, lay here 
 as elsewhere isolated and exempt from the common justice, 
 the common life and self-government of the borough. On 
 all but its eastern side too the town was hemmed in by 
 jurisdictions independent of its own. The precincts of the 
 Abbey of Osney, the wide " bailey" of the Castle, bounded 
 it narrowly on the west. To the north, stretching away 
 beyond the little church of St. Giles, lay the fields of the 
 royal manor of Beaumont. The Abbot of Abingdon, whose 
 woods of Cumnor and Bagley closed the southern horizon, 
 held his leet-court in the hamlet of Grampound beyond the 
 bridge. Nor was the whole space within the walls subject 
 to the self-government of the citizens. The Jewry had a 
 rule and law of its own. Scores of householders, dotted 
 over street and lane, were tenants of castle or abbey and 
 paid no suit or service at the borough court. 
 
 But within these narrow bounds and amid these vari- 
 ous obstacles the spirit of municipal liberty lived a life the 
 more intense that it was so closely cabined and confined. 
 Nowhere indeed was the impulse which London was giv- 
 ing likely to tell with greater force. The " barge-men" of 
 Oxford were connected even before the Conquest with the 
 "boatmen," or shippers, of the capital. In both cases it 
 is probable that the bodies bearing these names represented 
 what is known as the merchant-guild of the town. Royal 
 recognition enables us to trace the merchant-guild of Oxford 
 from the time of Henry the First. Even then lands, isl- 
 ands, pastures belonged to it, and among them the same 
 Portmeadow which is familiar to Oxford men pulling 
 lazily on a summer's noon to Godstow. The connection 
 between the two guilds was primarily one of trade. " In 
 the time of King Eadward and Abbot Ordric" the channel 
 of the Thames beneath the walls of the Abbey of Abing- 
 don became so blocked up that boats could scarce pass as 
 far as Oxford, and it was at the joint prayer of the bur-
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 225 
 
 gesses of London and Oxford that the abbot dug a new 
 channel through the meadow to the south of his church. 
 But by the time of Henry the Second closer bonds than 
 this linked the two cities together. In case of any doubt 
 or contest about judgments in their own court the bur- 
 gesses of Oxford were empowered to refer the matter to 
 the decision of London, "and whatsoever the citizens of 
 London shall adjudge in such cases shall be deemed right." 
 The judicial usages, the municipal rights of each city 
 were assimilated by Henry's charter. " Of whatsoever 
 matter the men of Oxford be put in plea, they shall de- 
 raign themselves according to the law and custom of the 
 city of London and not otherwise, because they and the 
 citizens of London are of one and the same custom, law, 
 and liberty." 
 
 A legal connection such as this could hardly fail to bring 
 with it an identity of municipal rights. Oxford had al- 
 ready passed through the earlier steps of her advance 
 toward municipal freedom before the conquest of the Nor- 
 man. Her burghers assembled in their own portmanni- 
 mote, and their dues to the crown were assessed at a fixed 
 sum of honey or coin. But the formal definition of their 
 rights dates, as in the case of London, from the time of 
 Henry the First. The customs and exemptions of its 
 townsmen were confirmed by Henry the Second " as ever 
 they enjoyed them in the time of Henry my grandfather, 
 and in like manner as my citizens of London hold them." 
 By this date the town had attained entire judicial and 
 commercial freedom, and liberty of external commerce 
 was secured by the exemption of its citizens from toll on 
 the king's lands. Complete independence was reached 
 when a charter of John substituted a mayor of the town's 
 own choosing for the reeve or bailiff of the crown. But 
 dry details such as these tell little of the quick pulse of 
 popular life that beat in the thirteenth century through 
 Buch a community as that of Oxford. The church of St. 
 Martin in the very heart of it, at the "Quatrevoix" or 
 Vol. L— 15
 
 226 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 Carfax where its four streets met, was the centre of the 
 city life. The town-mote was held in its churchyard. 
 Justice was administered ere yet a town-hall housed the 
 infant magistracy by mayor or bailiff sitting beneath a 
 low pent-house, the " penniless bench" of later days, out- 
 side its eastern wall. Its bell summoned the burghers to 
 council or arms. Around the church the trade-guilds were 
 i-anged as in some vast encampment. To the south of it 
 lay Spicerj'' and Vintner}^, the quarter of the richer bur- 
 gesses. Fish Street fell noisily down to the bridge and 
 the ford. The Corn-market occupied then as now the 
 street which led to Northgate. The stalls of the butchers 
 stretched along the " Butcher-row, " which formed the road 
 to the bailey and the castle. Close beneath the church lay 
 a nest of huddled lanes, broken by a stately synagogue, 
 and traversed from time to time by the yellow gaberdine 
 of the Jew. Soldiers from the castle rode clashing through 
 the narrow streets ; the bells of Osney clanged from the 
 swampy meadows ; processions of pilgrims wound through 
 gates and lanes to the shrine of St. Frideswide. Frays 
 were common enough; now the sack of a Jew's house; 
 now burgher drawing knife on burgher; now an outbreak 
 of the young student lads who were growing every day in 
 numbers and audacity. But as yet the town was well in 
 1:1 and. The clang of the city bell called every citizen to his 
 door ; the call of the mayor brought trade after trade with 
 bow in hand and banners flying to enforce the king's 
 peace. 
 
 The advance of towns which had grown up not on the 
 royal domain but around abbey or castle was slower and 
 more diflficult. The story of St. Edmundsbury shows how 
 gradual was the transition from pure serfage to an imper- 
 fect freedom. Much that had been plough-land here in 
 the Confessor's time was covered with houses by the time 
 of Henry *Jie Second. The building of the great abbey- 
 church drew its craftsmen and masons to mingle with the 
 ploughmeai and reapers of the Abbot's domain. The
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 227 
 
 troubles of the time helped here as elsewhere the progress 
 of the town ; serfs, fugitives from justice or their lord, the 
 trader, the Jew, naturally sought shelter under the strong 
 hand of St. Edmund. But the settlers were wholly at the 
 Abbot's mercy. Not a settler but was bound to pay his 
 pence to the Abbot's treasury, to plough a rood of his land, 
 to reap in his harvest-field, to fold his sheep in the Abbey 
 folds, to help bring the annual catch of eels from the Abbey 
 waters. Within the four crosses that bounded the Abbot's 
 domain land and water were his ; the cattle of the towns- 
 men paid for their pasture on the common ; if the fullers 
 refused the loan of their cloth the cellarer would refuse the 
 use of the stream and seize their looms wherever he found 
 them. No toll might be levied from tenants of the Abbey 
 farms, and customers had to wait before shop and stall tiU 
 the buyers of the Abbot had had the pick of the market. 
 There was little chance of redress, for if burghers com- 
 plained in folk-mote it was before the Abbot's officers that 
 its meeting was held ; if they appealed to the alderman he 
 was the Abbot's nominee and received the horn, the sym- 
 bol of his office, at the Abbot's hands. Like all the greater 
 revolutions of society, the advance from this mere serfage 
 was a silent one ; indeed its more galling instances of op- 
 pression seem to have slipped unconsciously away. Some, 
 like the eel-fishing, were commuted for an easy rent; 
 others, like the slavery of the fullers and the toll of flax, 
 simply disappeared. By usage, by omission, by down- 
 right forgetfulness, here by a little struggle, there by a 
 present to a needy abbot, the town won freedom. 
 
 But progress was not always unconscious, and one in- 
 cident in the history of St. Edmundsbury is remarkable, 
 not merely as indicating the advance of law, but yet more 
 as marking the part which a new moral sense of man's 
 right to equal justice was to play in the general advance 
 of the realm. Rude as the borough was, it possessed the 
 right of meeting in full assembly of the townsmen for 
 government and law. Justice was administered in pres-
 
 238 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 ence of the burgesses, and the accused acquitted or con- 
 demned by the oath of his neighbors. Without the bor- 
 ough bounds however the system of Norman judicature 
 prevailed ; and the rural tenants who did suit and service 
 at the Cellarer's court were subjected to the trial by battle. 
 The execution of a farmer named Kebel who came under 
 this feudal jurisdiction brought the two systems into vivid 
 contrast. Kebel seems to have been guiltless of the crime 
 laid to his charge; but the duel went against him and he 
 was hung just without the gates. The taunts of the towns- 
 men woke his fellow- farmers to a sense of wrong. " Had 
 Kebel been a dweller within the borough," said the bur- 
 gesses, " he would have got his acquittal from the oaths of 
 his neighbors, as our liberty is ;" and even the monks were 
 moved to a decision that their tenants should enjoy equal 
 freedom and justice with the townsmen. The franchise 
 of the town was extended to the rural possessions of the 
 Abbey without it; the farmers "came to the toll-house, 
 were written in the alderman's toll, and paid the town- 
 penny." A chance story preserved in a charter of later 
 date shows the same struggle for justice going on in a 
 greater town. At Leicester the trial by compurgation, 
 the rough predecessor of trial by jury, had been abolished 
 by the Earls in favor of trial by battle. The aim of the 
 burgess was to regain their old justice, and in this a 
 touching incident at last made them successful. "It 
 chanced that two kinsmen, Nicholas the son of Aeon and 
 Geoffrey the son of Nicholas, waged a duel about a certain 
 piece of land concerning which a dispute had arisen be- 
 tween them ; and they fought from the first to the ninth 
 hour, each conquering by turns. Then one of them fleeing 
 from the other till he came to a certain little pit, as he 
 stood on the brink of the pit and was about to fall therein, 
 his kinsman said to him, 'Take care of the pit, turn back, 
 lest thou shouldst fall into it. ' Thereat so much clamor 
 and noise was made by the bystanders and those who were 
 sitting around that the Earl heard these clamors as far off
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 339 
 
 as the castle, and be inquired of some how it was there 
 was such a clamor, and answer was made to him that two 
 kinsmen were fighting about a certain piece of ground, 
 and that one bad fled till be reached a certain little pit, 
 and that as he stood over the pit and was about to fall into it 
 the other warned him. Then the townsmen being moved 
 with pity made a covenant with the Earl that they should 
 give him threepence yearly for each bouse in the High 
 Street that had a gable, on condition that be should grant 
 to them that the twenty-four jurors who were in Leicester 
 from ancient times should from that time forward discuss 
 and decide all pleas they might have among themselves." 
 At the time we have reached this struggle for emancipa- 
 tion was nearly over. The larger towns had secured the 
 privilege of self-government, the administration of justice, 
 and the control of their own trade. The reigns of Eichard 
 and John mark the date in our municipal history at which 
 towns began to acquire the right of electing their own 
 chief magistrate, the Portreeve or Mayor, who had till 
 then been a nominee of the crown. But with the close of 
 this outer struggle opened an inner struggle between the 
 various classes of the townsmen themselves. The growth 
 of wealth and industry was bringing with it a vast in- 
 crease of population. The mass of the new settlers, com- 
 posed as they were of escaped serfs, of traders without 
 landed holdings, of families who had lost their original 
 lot in the borough, and generally of the artisans and the 
 poor, had no part in the actual life of the town. The right 
 of trade and of the regulation of trade in common with all 
 other forms of jurisdiction lay wholly in the hands of the 
 landed burghers whom we have described. By a natural 
 process too their superiority in wealth produced a fresh 
 division between the " burghers" of the merchant-guild and 
 the unenfranchised mass around them. The same change 
 which severed at Florence the seven Greater Arts or trades 
 from the fourteen Lesser Arts, and which raised the three 
 occupations of banking, the manufacture and the dyeing
 
 1230 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE [Book III. 
 
 of cloth to a position of superioritj^ even within the privi- 
 leged circle of the seven, told though with less force on 
 the English boroughs. The burghers of the merchant-guild 
 gradually concentrated themselves on the greater opera- 
 tions of commerce, on trades which required a larger capi- 
 tal, while the meaner employments of general traffic were 
 abandoned to their poorer neighbors. This advance in 
 the division of labor is marked by such severances as we 
 note in the thirteenth century of the cloth merchant from 
 the tailor or the leather merchant from the butcher. 
 
 But the result of this severance was all-important in its 
 influence on the constitution of our towns. The members 
 of the trades thus abandoned by the wealthier burghers 
 formed themselves into Craft-guilds which soon rose into 
 dangerous rivalry with the original Merchant-guild of the 
 town. A seven years' apprenticeship formed the neces- 
 sary prelude to full membership of these trade-guilds. 
 Their regulations were of the minutest character; the 
 quality and value of work were rigidly prescribed, the 
 hours of toil fixed "from daybreak to curfew, "♦and strict 
 provision made against competition in labor. At each 
 meeting of these guilds their members gathered round the 
 Craft-box which contained the rules of their Society, and 
 stood with bared heads as it was opened. The warden 
 and a quorum of guild-brothers formed a court which en- 
 forced the ordinances of the guild, inspected all work done 
 by its members, confiscated unlawful tools or unworthy 
 goods ; and disobedience to their orders was punished by 
 fines or in the last resort by expulsion, which involved the 
 loss of a right to trade. A common fund was raised by 
 contributions among the members, which not only pro- 
 vided for the trade objects of the guild but sufficed to found 
 chantries and masses and set up painted windows in the 
 church of their patron saint. Even at the present day the 
 arms of a craft-guild may often be seen blazoned in cathe- 
 drals side by side with those of prelates and of kings. But 
 it was only by slow degrees that they rose to such a height
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 231 
 
 as this. The first steps in their existence were the most 
 diflScult, for to enable a trade-guild to carry out its objects 
 with any success it was first necessary that the whole body 
 of craftsmen belonging to the trade should be compelled to 
 join the guild, and secondly that a legal control over the 
 trade itself should be secured to it. A royal charter was 
 indispensable for these purposes, and over the grant of 
 these charters took place the first struggle with the mer- 
 chant-guilds which had till then solely exercised jurisdiction 
 over trade within the boroughs. The weavers, who were 
 the first trade-guild to secure royal sanction in the reign of 
 Henry the First, were still engaged in a contest for exist- 
 ence as late as the reign of John, when the citizens of 
 London bought for a time the suppression of their guild. 
 Even under the House of Lancaster Exeter was engaged 
 in resisting the establishment of a tailors' guild. From 
 the eleventh century however the spread of these societies 
 went steadily on, and the control of trade passed more and 
 more from the merchant-guilds to the craft-guilds. 
 
 It is this struggle, to use the technical terms of the time, 
 of the " greater folk" against the "lesser folk," or of the 
 " commune, " the general mass of the inhabitants, against 
 the " prudhommes, " or "wiser" few, which brought about, 
 as it passed from the regulation of trade to the general 
 government of the town, the great civic revolution of the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the Continent, 
 and especially along the Rhine, the struggle was as fierce 
 as the supremacy of the older burghers had been complete. 
 In Koln the craftsmen had been reduced to all but serfage, 
 and the merchant of Brussels might box at his will the 
 ears of " the man without heart or honor who lives by his 
 toil." Such social tyranny of class over class brought a 
 century of bloodshed to the cities of Germany; but in 
 England the tyranny of class over class was restrained by 
 the general tenor of the law, and the revolution took for 
 the most part a milder form. The longest and bitterest 
 strife of all was naturally at London. Nowhere had the
 
 332 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 territorial constitution struck root so deepl}^ and nowhere 
 had the landed oligarchy risen to such a height of wealth 
 and influence. The city was divided into wards, each of 
 which was governed by an alderman drawn from the rul- 
 ing class. In some indeed the office seems to have become 
 hereditary. The "magnates," or "barons," of the mer- 
 chant-guild advised alone on all matters of civic govern- 
 ment or trade regulation, and distributed or assessed at 
 their will the revenues or burdens of the town. Such a 
 position afforded an opening for corruption and oppression 
 of the most galling kind ; and it seems to have been a gen- 
 eral impression of the unfair assessment of the dues levied 
 on the poor and the undue burdens which were thrown 
 on the unenfranchised classes which provoked the first 
 serious discontent. In the reign of Richard the First, 
 William of the Long Beard, though one of the governing 
 body, placed himself at the head of a conspiracy which 
 in the panic-stricken fancy of the burghers numbered fifty 
 thousand of the craftsmen. His eloquence, his bold defi- 
 ance of the aldermen in the town-mote, gained him at any 
 rate a wide popularity, and the crowds who surrounded 
 him hailed him as "the savior of the poor." One of his 
 addresses is luckily preserved to us by a hearer of the 
 time. In mediaeval fashion he began with a text from 
 the Vulgate, "Ye shall draw water with joy from the 
 fountain of the Saviour." "I," he began, "am the savior 
 of the poor. Ye poor men who have felt the weight of 
 rich men's hands, draw from my fountain waters of 
 wholesome instruction and that with joy, for the time of 
 your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters 
 from the waters. It is the people who are the waters, and 
 I will divide the lowly and faithful folk from the proud 
 and faithless folk ; I will part the chosen from the repro- 
 bate as light from darkness." But it was in vain that he 
 strove to win royal favor for the popular cause. The sup- 
 port of the moneyed classes was essential to Richard in 
 the costly wars with Philip of France; and the Justiciar,
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291 333 
 
 Archbishop Hubert, after a moment of hesitation issued 
 orders for William Longbeard's arrest. William felled 
 with an axe the first soldier who advanced to seize him, 
 and taking refuge with a few adherents in the tower of St. 
 Mary-le-Bow summoned his adherents to rise. Hubert, 
 however, who had already flooded the city with troops, 
 with bold contempt of the right of sanctuary set fire to the 
 tower. William was forced to surrender, and a burgher's 
 son, whose father he had slain, stabbed him as he came 
 forth. With his death the quarrel slumbered for more 
 than fifty years. But the movement toward equality 
 went steadily on. Under pretext of preserving the peace 
 the unenfranchised townsmen united in secret frith-guilds 
 of their own, and mobs rose from time to time to sack the 
 houses of foreigners and the wealthier burgesses. Nor 
 did London stand alone in this miovement. In all the 
 larger towns the same discontent prevailed, the same social 
 growth called for new institutions, and in their silent re- 
 volt against the oppression of the Merchant-guild the Craft- 
 guilds were training themselves to stand forward as cham- 
 pions of a wider liberty in the Barons' War. 
 
 Without the towns progress was far slower and more 
 fitful. It would seem indeed that the conquest of the 
 Norman bore harder on the rural population than on any 
 other class of Englishmen. Under the later kings of the 
 house of -(Alfred the number of absolute slaves and the 
 number of freemen had alike diminished. The pure slave 
 class had never been numerous, and it had been reduced 
 by the efforts of the Church, perhaps by the general con- 
 vulsion of the Danish wars. But these wars had often 
 driven the ceorl or freeman of the township to " commend" 
 himself to a thegn who pledged him his protection in con- 
 sideration of payment in a rendering of labor. It is prob- 
 able that these dependent ceorls are the " villeins" of the 
 Norman epoch, the most numerous class of the Domesday 
 Survey, men sunk indeed from pure freedom and bound 
 both to soil and lord, but as yet preserving much of their
 
 234 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book HI 
 
 older rights, retaining their land, free as against all men 
 but their lord, and still sending representatives to hun- 
 dred-moot and shire-moot. They stood therefore far above 
 the " landless man," the man who had never possessed even 
 under the old constitution political rights, w^hom the legis- 
 lation of the English Kings had forced to attach himself 
 to a lord on pain of outlawry, and who served as house- 
 hold servant or as hired laborer or at the best as rent- 
 paying tenant of land which was not his own. The 
 Norman knight or lawyer, however, saw little distinction 
 between these classes; and the tendency of legislation 
 under the Angevins was to blend all in a single class of 
 serfs. While the pure " theow" or absolute slave disap- 
 peared therefore, the ceorl or villein sank lower in the social 
 scale. But though the rural population was undoubtedly 
 thrown more together and fused into a more homogeneous 
 class, its actual position corresponded very imperfectly 
 with the view of the lawyers. All indeed were dependents 
 on a lord. The manor-house became the centre of every 
 English village. The manor-court was held in its hall; it 
 was here that the lord or his steward received homage, re- 
 covered fines, held the view of frank-pledge, or enrolled the 
 villagers in their tithing. Here too, if the lord possessed 
 criminal jurisdiction, was held his justice court, and with- 
 out its doors stood his gallows. Around it lay the lord's 
 demesne or home-farm, and the cultivation of this rested 
 wholly with the " villeins" of the manor. It was by them 
 that the great barn was filled with sheaves, the sheep 
 shorn, the grain malted, the wood hewn for the manor-hall 
 fire. These services were the labor-rent by which they 
 held their lands, and it was the nature and extent of this 
 labor-rent which parted one class of the population from 
 another. The "villein," in the strict sense of the word, 
 was bound only to gather in his lord's harvest and to aid 
 in the ploughing and sowing of autumn and Lent. The 
 cottar, the bordar, and the laborer were bound to help in 
 the work of the home-farm throughout the year.
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 235 
 
 But these services and the time of rendering them were 
 strictly limited by custom, not only in the case of the ceorl 
 or villein but in that of the originally meaner " landless 
 man." The possession of his little homestead v^ith the 
 ground around it, the privilege of turning out his cattle 
 on the waste of the manor, passed quietly and insensibly 
 from mere indulgences that could be granted or withdrawn 
 at a lord's caprice into rights that could be pleaded at law. 
 The number of teams, the fines, the reliefs, the services 
 that a lord could claim, at first mere matter of oral tradi- 
 tion, came to be entered on the court-roll of the manor, a 
 copy of which became the title-deed of the villein. It was 
 to this that he owed the name of " copy-holder" which at 
 a later time superseded his older title. Disputes were set- 
 tled by a reference to this roll or on oral evidence of the 
 custom at issue, but a social arrangement which was emi- 
 nently characteristic of the English spirit of compromise 
 generally secured a fair adjustment of the claims of villein 
 and lord. It was the duty of the lord's bailiff to exact 
 their due services from the villeins, but his coadjutor in 
 this office, the reeve or foreman of the manor, was chosen 
 by the tenants themselves and acted as representative of 
 their interests and rights. A fresh step toward freedom 
 was made by the growing tendency to commute labor- 
 services for money-paj-ments. The population was slowly 
 increasing, and as the law of gavel-kind which was appli- 
 cable to all landed estates not held by military tenure di- 
 vided the inheritance of the tenantry equally among theii 
 3ons the holding of each tenant and the services due from 
 it became divided in a corresponding degree. A labor- 
 rent thus became more difficult to enforce, while the in- 
 erease of wealth among the tenantry and the rise of a new 
 spirit of independence made it more burdensome to those 
 who rendered it. It was probabl}^ from this cause that 
 the commutation of the arrears of labor for a money pay- 
 ment, which had long prevailed on every estate, gradually 
 developed into a general commutation of services. We
 
 286 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 have already witnessed the silent progress of this remark- 
 able change in the case of St. Edmundsbury, but the prac- 
 tice soon became universal, and "malt-silver," "wood- 
 silver, " and " larder-silver" gradually took the place of the 
 older personal services on the court-rolls. The process of 
 commutation was hastened by the necessities of the lords 
 themselves. The luxury of the castle-hall, the splendor 
 and pomp of chivalry, the cost of campaigns drained the 
 purses of knight and baron, and the sale of freedom to a 
 serf or exemption from services to a villein afforded an 
 easy and tempting mode of refilling them. In this process 
 even Kings took part. At a later time, under Edward the 
 Third, commissioners were sent to royal estates for the 
 especial purpose of selling manumissions to the King's 
 serfs ; and we still possess the names of those who were 
 enfranchised with their families by a payment of hard 
 cash in aid of the exhausted exchequer. 
 
 Such was the people which had been growing into a na- 
 tional unity and a national vigor while English king and 
 English baronage battled for rule. But king and baron- 
 age themselves had changed like townsman and ceorl. The 
 loss of Normandy, entailing as it did the loss of their Nor- 
 man lands, was the last of many influences which had been 
 giving through a century and a half a national temper to 
 the baronage. Not only the " new men," the ministers out 
 of whom the two Henries had raised a nobility, were bound 
 to the Crown, but the older feudal houses now owned them- 
 selves as Englishmen and set aside their aims after per- 
 sonal independence for a love of the general freedom of the 
 land. They stood out as the natural leaders of a people 
 bound together by the stern government which had crushed 
 all local division, which had accustomed men to the enjoy- 
 ment of a peace and justice that imperfect as it seems to 
 modern eyes was almost unexampled elsewhere in Europe, 
 and which had trained them to something of their old free 
 government again by the very machinery of election it used 
 10 facilitate its heavy taxation. On the other hand the
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 237 
 
 loss of Normandy brought home the King. The growth 
 which had been going on had easily escaped the eyes of" 
 rulers who were commonly absent from the realm and busy 
 with the affairs of countries beyond the sea. Henry the 
 Second had been absent for years from England : Richard 
 had only visited it twice for a few months : John had as 
 yet been almost wholly occupied with his foreign domin- 
 ions. To him as to his brother England had as yet been 
 nothing but a land whose gold paid the mercenaries that 
 followed him, and whose people bowed obediently to his 
 will. It was easy to see that between such a ruler and 
 such a nation once brought together strife must come : but 
 that the strife came as it did and ended as it did was due 
 above all to the character of the King. 
 
 " Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence 
 of John." The terrible verdict of his contemporaries has 
 passed into the sober judgment of history. Externally 
 John possessed all the quickness, the vivacity, the clever- 
 ness, the good-humor, the social charm which distinguished 
 his house. His worst enemies owned that he toiled stead- 
 ily and closely at the work of administration. He was 
 fond of learned men like Gerald of Wales. He had a 
 strange gift of attracting friends and of winning the love 
 of women. But in his inner soul John was the worst out- 
 come of the Angevins. He united into one mass of wick- 
 edness their insolence, their selfishness, their unbridled 
 lust, their cruelty and tyranny, their shamelessness, their 
 superstition, their cynical indifference to honor or truth. 
 In mere boyhood he tore with brutal levity the beards of 
 the Irish chieftains who came to own him as their lord. 
 His ingratitude and perfidy brought his father with sor- 
 row to the grave. To his brother he was the worst of 
 traitors. All Christendom believed him to be the mur- 
 derer of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. He abandoned 
 one wife and was faithless to another. His punishments 
 were refinements of cruelty, the starvation of children, the 
 crushing old men under copes of lead. His court was a
 
 238 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 brothel where no woman was sale from the royal lust, and 
 where his cynicism loved to publish the news of his vic- 
 tim's shame. He was as craven in his superstition as he 
 was daring in his impiety. Though he scoffed at priests 
 and turned his back on the mass even amid the solemnities 
 of his coronation, he never stirred on a journey without 
 hanging relics round his neck. But with the wickedness 
 of his race he inherited its profound ability. His plan for 
 the relief of Chateau Gaillard, the rapid march by which 
 he shattered Arthur's hopes at Mirabel, showed an inborn 
 genius for war. In the rapidity and breadth of his polit- 
 ical combinations he far surpassed the statesmen of his 
 time. Throughout his reign we see him quick to discern 
 the difficulties of his position, and inexhaustible in the re- 
 sources with which he met them. The overthrow of his 
 continental power only spurred him to the formation of a 
 league which all but brought Philip to the ground ; and 
 the sudden revolt of England was parried by a shameless 
 alliance with the Papacy. The closer study of John's his- 
 tory clears away the charges of sloth and incapacity with 
 which men tried to explain the greatness of his fall. The 
 awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that the king who 
 lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and per- 
 ished in a struggle of despair against English freedom was 
 no weak and indolent voluptuary but the ablest and most 
 ruthless of the Angevins. 
 
 From the moment of his return to England in 1204 John's 
 whole energies were bent to the recovery of his dominions 
 on the Continent. He impatiently collected money and 
 men for the support of those adherents of the House of 
 Anjou who were still struggling against the arms of France 
 in Poitou and Guienne, and in the summer of 1205 he 
 gathered an army at Portsmouth and prepared to cross the 
 Channel. But his project was suddenly thwarted by the 
 resolute opposition of the Primate, Hubert Walter, and 
 the Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal. So completely 
 had both the baronage and the Church been humbled by
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204-1291, 239 
 
 his father that the attitude of their representatives revealed 
 to the King a new spirit of national freedom which was 
 rising around him, and John at once braced himself to a 
 struggle with it. The death of Hubert Walter in July, 
 only a f^w days after his protest, removed his most for- 
 midable opponent, and the King resolved to neutralize the 
 opposition of the Church by placing a creature of his own 
 at its head. John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, was elected 
 by the monks of Canterbury at his bidding, and enthroned 
 as Primate. But in a previous though informal gathering 
 the convent had already chosen its sub-prior, Reginald, as 
 Archbishop. The rival claimants hastened to appeal to 
 Rome, and their appeal reached the Papal Court before 
 Christmas. The result of the contest was a startling one, 
 both for themselves and for the King. After a year's care- 
 ful examination Innocent the Third, who now occupied 
 the Papal throne, quashed at the close of 1206 both the 
 contested elections. The decision was probably a just one, 
 but Innocent was far from stopping there. The monks 
 who appeared before him brought powers from the convent 
 to choose a new Primate should their earlier nomination 
 be set aside; and John, secretly assured of their choice of 
 Grey, had promised to confirm their election. But the 
 bribes which the King lavished at Rome failed to win the 
 Pope over to this plan ; and whether from mere love of 
 power, for he was pushing the Papal claims of supremacy 
 over Christendom further than any of his predecessors, or as 
 may fairly be supposed in despair of a free election within 
 English bounds, Innocent commanded the monks to elect 
 in his presence Stephen Langton to the archiepiscopal see.' 
 Personally a better choice could not have been made, 
 for Stephen was a man who by sheer weight of learning 
 and holiness of life had risen to the dignity of Cardinal 
 and whose after-career placed him in the front rank of 
 English patriots. But in itself the step was an usurpation 
 of the rights both of the Church and of the Crown. The 
 King at once met it with resistance. When Innocent c^u-
 
 240 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book ILL 
 
 secrated the new Primate in June, 1207, and threatened 
 the realm with interdict if Langton were any longer ex- 
 cluded from his see, John replied by a counter-threat that 
 the interdict should be followed by the banishment of the 
 clergy and the mutilation of every Italian he could seize in 
 the realm. How little he feared the priesthood he showed 
 when the clergy refused his demand of a thirteenth of 
 movables for the whole country and Archbishop Geoffry 
 of York resisted the tax before the Council. John banished 
 the Archbishop and extorted the money. Innocent, how- 
 ever, was not a man to draw back from his purpose, and 
 in March, 1208, the interdict he had threatened fell upon the 
 land. All worship save that of a few privileged orders, 
 all administration of Sacraments save that of private bap- 
 tism, ceased over the length and breadth of the country : 
 the church-bells were silent, the dead lay unburied on the 
 ground. Many of the bishops fled from the country. The 
 Church in fact, so long the main support of the royal power 
 against the baronage, was now driven into opposition. 
 Its change of attitude was to be of vast moment in the 
 struggle which was impending ; but John recked little of 
 the future ; he replied to the interdict by confiscating the 
 lands of the clergy who observed it, by subjecting them 
 in spite of their privileges to the royal courts, and by leav- 
 ing outrages on them unpunished. "Let him go," said 
 John, when a Welshman was brought before him for the 
 murder of a priest, "he has killed my enemy." In 1209 
 the Pope proceeded to the further sentence of excommuni- 
 cation, and the King was formally cut off from the pale 
 of the Church. But the new sentence was met with the 
 same defiance as the old. Five of the bishops fled ove? 
 fioa, and secret disaffection was spreading widely, but there 
 was no public avoidance of the excommunicated King. 
 An Archdeacon of Norwich who withdrew from his ser- 
 vice was crushed to death under a cope of lead, and the 
 hint was sufficient to prevent either prelate or noble from 
 following his example.
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1391. 241 
 
 The attitude of John showed the power which the ad- 
 ministrative reforms of his father had given to the Crown. 
 He stood alone, with nobles estranged from him and the 
 Church against him, but his strength seemed utterly un- 
 broken. ' From the first moment of his rule John had defied 
 the baronage. The promise to satisfy their demand for 
 redress of wrongs in the past reign, a promise made at hia 
 election, remained unfulfilled ; when the demand was re- 
 peated he answered it by seizing their castles and taking 
 their children as hostages for their loyalty. The cost of 
 his fruitless threats of war had been met by heavy and re- 
 peated taxation, by increased land tax and increased scut- 
 age. The quarrel with the Church and fear of their revolt 
 only deepened his oppression of the nobles. He drove De 
 Braose, one of the most powerful of the Lords Marchers, 
 to die in exile, while his wife and grandchildren were be- 
 lieved to have been starved to death in the royal prisons. 
 On the nobles who still clung panic-stricken to the court 
 of the excommunicate king John heaped outrages worse 
 than death. Illegal exactions, the seizure of their castles, 
 the preference shown to foreigners, were small provoca- 
 tions compared with his attacks on the honor of their wives 
 and daughters. But the baronage still submitted. The 
 financial exactions indeed became light as John filled his 
 treasury with the goods of the Church ; the King's vigor 
 was seen in the rapidity with which he crushed a rising 
 of the nobles in Ireland and foiled an outbreak of the 
 Welsh ; while the triumphs of his father had taught the 
 baronage its weakness in any single-handed struggle 
 against the Crown. Hated therefore as he was the land 
 remained still. Only one weapon was now left in Inno- 
 cent's hands. Men held then that a King, once excom- 
 municate, ceased to be a Christian or to have claims on 
 the obedience of Christian subjects. As spiritual heads 
 of Christendom, the Popes had ere now asserted their 
 right to remove such a ruler from his throne and to give 
 it to a worthier than he; and it was this right which lu- 
 VOL. L— 16 .
 
 24:2 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 nocent at last felt himself driven to exercise. After use- 
 less threats he issued in 1312 a bull of deposition against 
 John, absolved his subjects from their allegiance, pro- 
 claimed a crusade against him as an enemy to Christianity 
 and the Church, and committed the execution of the sen- 
 tence to the King of the French. John met the announce- 
 ment of this step with the same scorn as before. His in- 
 solent disdain suffered the Roman legate. Cardinal Pandult, 
 to proclaim his deposition to his face at Northampton. 
 When Philip collected an army for an attack on England 
 an enormous host gathered at the King's call on Barham 
 Down; and the English fleet dispelled all danger of inva- 
 sion by crossing the Channel, by capturing a number of 
 French ships, and by burning Dieppe. 
 
 But it was not in England only that the King showed 
 his strength and activity. Vile as he was, John possessed 
 in a high degree the political ability of his race, and in 
 the diplomatic efforts with which he met the danger from 
 France he showed himself his father's equal. The barons 
 of Poitou were roused to attack Philip from the south. 
 John bought the aid of the Count of Flanders on his north- 
 ern border. The German King, Otto, pledged himself to 
 bring the knighthood of Germany to support an invasion 
 of France. But at the moment of his success in diplomacy 
 John suddenly gave way. It was in fact the revelation 
 of a danger at home which shook him from his attitude of 
 contemptuous defiance. The bull of deposition gave fresh 
 energy to every enemy. The Scotch King was in corre- 
 spondence with Innocent. The Welsh princes who had 
 just been forced to submission broke out again in war. 
 John hanged their hostages, and called his host to muster 
 for a fresh inroad into Wales, but the army met only to 
 become a fresh source of danger. Powerless to oppose the 
 King openly, the baronage had plunged almost to a man 
 into secret conspiracies. The hostility of Philip had dis- 
 pelled their dread of isolated action ; many indeed had even 
 promised aid to the French King on his landing, John
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 243 
 
 found himself in the midst of hidden enemies ; and noth- 
 ing could have saved him but the haste — whether of panic 
 or quick decision — with which he disbanded his army and 
 took refuge in Nottingham Castle. The arrest of some of 
 the barons showed how true were his fears, for the heads 
 of the French conspiracy, Robert Fitzwalter and Eustace 
 de Vesci, at once fled over sea to Philip. His daring self- 
 confidence, the skill of his diplomacy, could no longer hide 
 from John the utter loneliness of his position. At war 
 with Rome, with France, with Scotland, Ireland and 
 Wales, at war with the Church, he saw himself disarmed 
 by this sudden revelation of treason in the one force left at 
 his disposal. With characteristic suddenness he gave 
 way. He endeavored by remission of fines to win back 
 his people. He negotiated eagerly with the Pope, con- 
 sented to receive the Archbishop, and promised to repay 
 the money he had extorted from the Church. 
 
 But the shameless ingenuity of the King's temper was 
 seen in his resolve to find in his very humiliation a new 
 source of strength. If he yielded to the Church he had no 
 mind to yield to the rest of his foes ; it was indeed in the 
 Pope who had defeated him that he saw the means of 
 baffling their efforts. It was Rome that formed the link 
 between the varied elements of hostility which combined 
 against him. It was Rome that gave its sanction to 
 Philip's ambition and roused the hopes of Scotch and 
 Welsh, Rome that called the clergy to independence and 
 nerved the barons to resistance. To detach Innocent by 
 submission from the league which hemmed him in on 
 every side was the least part of John's purpose. He re- 
 solved to make Rome his ally, to turn its spiritual thun- 
 ders on his foes, to use it in breaking up the confederacy 
 it had formed, in crushing the baronage, in oppressing the 
 clergy, in paralyzing — as Rome only could paralyze — the 
 energy of the Primate. That greater issues even than 
 these were involved in John's rapid change of policy time 
 was to show; but there is no need to credit the King with
 
 244 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 the foresight that would have discerned them. His quick 
 versatile temper saw no doubt little save the momentary- 
 gain. But that gain was immense. Nor was the price 
 as hard to pay as it seems to modern eyes. The Pope 
 stood too high above earthly monarchs, his claims, at least 
 as Innocent conceived and expressed them, were too spir- 
 tual, too remote from the immediate business and interests 
 of the day, to make the owning of his suzerainty any very 
 practical burden. John could recall a time when his father 
 was willing to own the same subjection as that which he 
 was about to take on himself. He could recall the parallel 
 allegiance which his brother had pledged to the Emperor. 
 Shame indeed there must be in any loss of independence, 
 but in this less than any and with Rome the shame of sub- 
 mission had already been incurred. But whatever were 
 the King's thoughts his act was decisive. On the 15th of 
 May, 1213, he knelt before the legate Pandulf, surrendered 
 his kingdom to the Roman See, took it back again as a 
 tributary vassal, swore fealty and did liege homage to the 
 Pope. 
 
 In after-times men believed that England thrilled at the 
 news with a sense of national shame such as she had never 
 felt before. " He has become the Pope's man," the whole 
 country was said to have murmured ; " he has forfeited the 
 very name of King ; from a free man he has degraded him- 
 self into a serf." But this was the belief of a time still to 
 come when the rapid growth of national feeling which 
 this step and its issues did more than anything to foster 
 made men look back on the scene between John and Pan- 
 dulf as a national dishonor. We see little trace of such a 
 feeling in the contemporary accounts of the time. All 
 seem rather to have regarded it as a complete settlement 
 of the difficulties in which king and kingdom were in- 
 volved. As a political measure its success was immediate 
 and complete. The French armj'- at once broke up in im- 
 potent rage, and when Philip turned on the enemy John 
 had raised up t^v him in Flande::^ ^va hundred Englifc«
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 245 
 
 ships under the Earl of Salisbury fell upon the fleet which 
 accompanied the French army along the coast and utterly 
 destroyed it. The league which John had so long matured 
 at once disclosed itself. Otto, reinforcing his German 
 army by the kniglithood of Flanders and Boulogne as well 
 as by a body of mercenaries in the pay of the English 
 King, invaded France from the north. John called on his 
 baronage to follow him over sea for an attack on Philip 
 from the South. 
 
 Their plea that he remained excommunicate was set 
 aside by the arrival of Langton and his formal absolution 
 of the King on a renewal of his coronation oath and a 
 pledge to put away all evil customs. But the barons still 
 stood aloof. They would serve at home, they said, but 
 they refused to cross the sea. Those of the north took a 
 more decided attitude of opposition. From this point in- 
 deed the northern barons begin to play their part in our 
 constitutional history. Lacies, Vescies, Percies, Stute- 
 villes, Bruces, houses such as those of de Ros or de Vaux, 
 all had sprung to greatness on the ruins of the Mowbrays 
 and the great houses of the Conquest and had done service 
 to the Crown in its strife with the older feudatories. But 
 loyal as was their tradition they were English to the core ; 
 they had neither lands nor interest over sea, and they now 
 declared themselves bound by no tenure to follow the King 
 in foreign wars. Furious at this check to his plans John 
 marched in arms northward to bring these barons to sub- 
 mission. But he had now to reckon with a new antago- 
 nist in the Justiciar, Geoffry Fitz-Poter. Geoffry had 
 hitherto beat to the King's will ; but the political sagacity 
 which he drew from fhe school of Henry the Second in 
 which he had been trained showed him the need of con- 
 cession, and his wealth, his wide kinship, and his experi- 
 ence of affairs gave his interposition a decisive weight. 
 He seized on the political opportunity which was offered 
 by the gathering of a Council at St. Alban's at the opening 
 of August with the purpose of assessing the damages done
 
 246 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 to the Church. Besides the bishops and barons, a reeve 
 and his four men were summoned to this Council from 
 each royal demesne, no doubt simply as witnesses of the 
 sums due to the plundered clergy. Their presence, how- 
 ever, was of great import. It is the first instance which 
 our history presents of the summons of such representa- 
 tives to a national Council, and the instance took fresh 
 weight from the great matters which came to be discussed. 
 In the King's name the Justiciar promised good govern- 
 ment for the time to come, and forbade all royal officers 
 to practise extortion as they prized life and limb. The 
 King's peace was pledged to those who had opposed him 
 in the past ; and observance of the laws of Henry the First 
 was enjoined upon all within the realm. 
 
 But it was not in Geoffry Fitz-Peter that English free- 
 dom was to find its champion and the baronage their leader. 
 From the moment of his landing in England Stephen 
 Langton had taken up the constitutional position of the 
 Primate in upholding the old customs and rights of the 
 realm against the personal despotism of the kings. As 
 Anselm had withstood William the Red, as Theobald had 
 withstood Stephen, so Langton prepared to withstand and 
 rescue his country from the tyranny of John. He had 
 already forced him to swear to observe the laws of Edward 
 the Confessor, in other words the traditional liberties of 
 the realm. When the baronage refused to sail for Poitou 
 he compelled the King to deal with them not by arms but 
 by process of law. But the work which he now undertook 
 was far greater and weightier than this. The pledges of 
 Henry the First had long been forgotten when the Justi- 
 ciar brought them to light, but Langton saw the vast im- 
 portance of such a precedent. At the close of the month 
 he produced Henry's charter in a fresh gathering of barons 
 at St. Paul's, and it was at once welcomed as a base for 
 the needed reform. From London Langton hastened to 
 the King, whom he reached at Northampton on his way 
 to attack the nobles of the north, and wrested from him
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 24? 
 
 a promise to bring his strife with them to legal judgment 
 before assailing them in arms. With his allies gathering 
 abroad John had doubtless no wish to be entangled in a 
 long quarrel at home, and the Archbishop's mediation 
 allowed him to withdraw with seeming dignit3^ After a 
 demonstration therefore at Durham John marched hastily 
 south again, and reached London in October. His Jus- 
 ticiar at once laid before him the claims of the Councils of 
 St. Alban's and St. Paul's; but the death of Geoffry at 
 this juncture freed him from the pressure which his min- 
 ister was putting upon him. " Now, by God's feet," cried 
 John, " I am for the first time King and Lord of England," 
 and he entrusted the vacant justiciarship to a Poitevin, 
 Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, whose tem- 
 per was in harmony with his own. But the death of Geoffry 
 only called the Archbishop to the front, and Langton at 
 once demanded the King's assent to the Charter of Henry 
 the First. In seizing on this Charter as a basis for na- 
 tional action, Langton showed a political ability of the 
 highest order. The enthusiasm with which its recital was 
 welcomed showed the sagacity with which the Archbishop 
 had chosen his ground. From that moment the baronage 
 was no longer drawn together in secret conspiracies by a 
 sense of common wrong or a vague longing for common 
 deliverance : they were openly united in a definite claim 
 of national freedom and national law. 
 
 John could as yet only me«t the claim by delay. His 
 policy had still to wait for its fruits at Rome, his diplo- 
 macy to reap its harvest in Flanders, ere he could deal 
 with England. From the hour of his submission to the 
 Papacy his one thought had been that of vengeance on the 
 barons who, as he held, had betrayed him ; but vengeance 
 was impossible till he should return a conqueror from the 
 fields of France. It was a sense of this danger which 
 nerved the baronage to their obstinate refusal to follow 
 him over sea : but furious as he was at their resistance, 
 the Archbishop's interjiosition condemned John still to
 
 248 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 wait for the hour of his revenge. In the spring of 1214 
 he crossed with what forces he could gather to Poitou, 
 rallied its nobles round him, passed the Loire in triumph, 
 and won back again Angers, the home of his race. At 
 the same time Otto and the Count of Flanders, their Ger- 
 man and Flemish knighthood strengthened by reinforce- 
 ments from Boulogne as well as by a body of English 
 troops under the Earl of Salisbury, threatened France from 
 the north. For the moment Philip seemed lost : and yet 
 on the fortunes of Philip hung the fortunes of English free- 
 dom. But in this crisis of her fate, France was true to 
 herself and her King. From every borough of Northern 
 France the townsmen marched to his rescue, and the vil- 
 lage priests led their flocks to battle with the Church-ban- 
 ners flying at their head. The two armies met at the close 
 of July near the bridge of Bouvines, between Lille and 
 Tournay, and from the first the day went against the allies. 
 The Flemish knights Avere the first to fly ; then the Ger- 
 mans in the centre of the host were crushed by the over- 
 whelming numbers of the French ; last of all the English 
 on the right of it were broken by a fierce onset of the Bishop 
 of Beauvais, who charged mace in hand and struck the 
 Earl of Salisbury to the ground. The news of this com- 
 plete overthrow reached John in the midst of his triumphs 
 in the South, and scattered his hopes to the winds. He 
 was at once deserted by the Poitevin nobles ; and a hasty 
 retreat alone enabled him to return in October, baffled and 
 humiliated, to his island kingdom. 
 
 His return forced on the crisis to which events had so 
 long been drifting. The victory at Bouvines gave strength 
 to his opponents. The open resistance of the northern 
 Barons nerved the rest of their order to action. The great 
 houses who had cast away their older feudal traditions for 
 a more national policy were drawn by the crisis into close 
 union with the families which had sprung from the min- 
 isters and councillors of the two Henries. To the first 
 group belonged such men as Saher de Quinci, the Earl of
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 249 
 
 Winchester, Geoffrey of Mandeville, Earl of Essex, the 
 Earl of Clare, Fulk Fitz-Warin, William Mallet, the 
 houses of Fitz-Alan and Gant. Among the second group 
 were Henry Bohun and Roger Bigod, the Earls of Here- 
 ford and Norfolk, the younger William Marshal and Rob- 
 ert de Vere. Robert Fitz- Walter, who took the command 
 of their united force, represented both parties equally, for 
 he was sprung from the Norman house of Brionne, while 
 the Justiciar of Henry the Second, Richard de Lucy, had 
 been his grandfather. Secretly, and on the pretext of pil- 
 grimage, these nobles met at St. Edmundsbury, resolute 
 to bear no longer with John's delaj's. If he refused to 
 restore their liberties they swore to make war on him till 
 he confirmed them by charter under the King's seal, and 
 they parted to raise forces with the purpose of presenting 
 their demands at Christmas. John, knowing nothing of 
 the coming storm, pursued his policy of winning over the 
 Church by granting it freedom of election, while he em- 
 bittered still more the strife with his nobles by demanding 
 scutage from the northern nobles who had refused to fol- 
 low him to Poitou. But the barons were now ready to 
 act, and early in January in the memorable year 1215 they 
 appeared in arms to lay, as they had planned, their de- 
 mands before the King. 
 
 John was taken by surprise. He asked for a truce till 
 Easter-tide, and spent the interval in fevered efforts to 
 avoid the blow. Again he offered freedom to the Church, 
 and took vows as a Crusader against whom war was a sac- 
 rilege, while he called for a general oath of allegiance and 
 fealty from the whole body of his subjects. But month 
 after month only showed the King the uselessness of fur- 
 ther resistance. Though Pandulf was with him, his vas- 
 salage had as yet brought little fruit in the way of aid 
 from Rome ; the commissioners whom he sent to plead his 
 cause at the shire-courts brought back news that no man 
 would help him against the charter that the barons claimed ; 
 and his efforts to detach the clergy from the league of his
 
 250 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IH. 
 
 opponents utterly failed. The nation was against the 
 King. Ho was far indeed from being utterly deserted. 
 His ministers still clung to him, men such as Geoffrey de 
 Lucy, Geoffrey de Furnival, Thomas Basset, and William 
 Briwere, statesmen trained in the administrative school of 
 his father, and who, dissent as they might from John's 
 mere oppression, still looked on the power of the Crown as 
 the one barrier against feudal anarchy ; and beside them 
 stood some of the great nobles of royal blood, his father's 
 bastard Earl William of Salisbury, his cousin Earl Wil< 
 liam of Warenne, and Henry Earl of Cornwall, a grand- 
 son of Henry the First. With him too remained Ranulf 
 Earl of Chester, and the wisest and noblest of the barons, 
 William Marshal the elder Earl of Pembroke. William 
 Marshal had shared in the rising of the younger Henry 
 against Henry the Second, and stood by him as he died ; 
 he had shared in the overthrow of William Longchamp 
 and in the outlawry of John. He was now an old man, 
 firm, as we shall see in his after-course, to recall the gov- 
 ernment to the path of freedom and law, but shrinking 
 from a strife which might bring back the anarchy of Ste- 
 phen's day, and looking for reforms rather in the bring- 
 ing constitutional pressure to bear upon the King than in 
 forcing them from him by arms. 
 
 But cling as such men might to John, they clung to 
 him rather as mediators than adherents. Their sympa- 
 thies went with the demands of the barons when the delay 
 which had been granted was over and the nobles again 
 gathered in arms at Brackley in ISTorthamptonshire to lay 
 their claims before the King. Nothing marks more 
 strongly the absolutely despotic idea of his sovereignty 
 which John had formed than the passionate surprise which 
 breaks out in his reply. " Why do they not ask for my 
 kingdom?" he cried, " I will never grant such liberties 
 as will make me a slave !" The imperialist theories of the 
 lawyers of his father's court had done their work. Held 
 at bay by the practical sense of Henry, they had told on
 
 KIMG JOHN
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 251 
 
 I. II   -I.I.. I ..   — --...I..! ...   .III .^ 
 
 the more headstroncr nature of his sons. Richard and 
 John both held with Glanvill that the will of the prince 
 was the law of the land ; and to fetter that will by the cus- 
 toms and franchises which were embodied in the barons' 
 claims seemed to John a monstrous usurpation of his riglits. 
 But no imperialist theories had touched the minds of his 
 people. The country rose as one man at his refusal. At 
 the close of May London threw open her gates to the forces 
 of the barons, now arraj^ed under Robert Fitz- Walter as 
 " Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church." Exeter 
 and Lincoln followed the example of the capital ; promises 
 of aid came from Scotland and Wales ; the northern barons 
 marched hastily under Eustace de Vesci to join their com 
 rades in London. Even the nobles who had as yet clung 
 to the King, but whose hopes of conciliation were blasted 
 by his obstinacy, yielded at last to the summons of the 
 "Army of God." Pandulf indeed and Archbishop Lang- 
 ton still remained with John, but they counselled, as Earl 
 Ranulf and William Marshal counselled, his acceptance of 
 the Charter. None in fact counselled its rejection save 
 his new Justiciar, the Poitevin Peter des Roches, and other 
 foreigners who knew the barons purposed driving them 
 from the land. But even the number of these was small ; 
 there was a moment when John found himself with but 
 seven knights at his back and before him a nation in arms. 
 Quick as he was, he had been taken utterly by surprise. 
 It was in vain that in the short respite he had gained from 
 Christmas to Easter he had summoned mercenaries to his 
 aid and appealed to his new suzerain, the Pope. Sum- 
 mons and appeal were alike too late. Nursing wrath in 
 his heart, John bowed to necessity and called the barons 
 to a conference on an island in the Thames, between Wind- 
 sor and Staines, near a marshj' meadow by the riverside, 
 the meadow of Runnymede. The King encamped on one 
 bank of the river, the barons covered the flat of Runny- 
 mede on the other. Their delegates met on the 15th of 
 July in the island between them, but the negotiations wert
 
 252 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IH. 
 
   '   ~— ' '   I.       — II.-. — " —         ^ 
 
 a mere cloak to cover John's purpose of unconditional sub- 
 mission. The Great Charter was discussed and agreed to 
 in a single day. 
 
 Copies of it were made and sent for preservation to the 
 cathedrals and churches, and one copy may still be seen in 
 the British Museum, injured by age and fire, but with the 
 royal seal still hanging from the brown, shrivelled parch- 
 ment. It is impossible to gaze without reverence on the 
 earliest monument of English freedom which we can see 
 with our own eyes and touch with our own hands, the 
 great Charter to which from age to age men have looked 
 back as the groundwork of English liberty. But in itself 
 the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish 
 any new constitutional principles. The Charter of Henry 
 the First formed the basis of the whole, and the additions 
 to it are for the most part formal recognitions of the judi- 
 cial and administrative changes introduced by Henry the 
 Second. What was new in it was its origin. In form, 
 like the Charter on which it was based, it was nothing but 
 a royal grant. In actual fact it was a treaty between the 
 whole English people and its king. In it England found 
 itself for the first time since the Conquest a nation bound 
 together by common national interests, by a common na- 
 tional sympathy. In words which almost close the Char- 
 ter, the " community of the whole land" is recognized as 
 the great body from which the restraining power of the 
 baronage takes its validity. There is no distinction of 
 blood or class, of Norman or not Norman, of noble or not 
 noble. All are recognized as Englishmen, the rights of 
 all are owned as English rights. Bishops and nobles 
 claimed and secured at Runnymede the rights not of baron 
 and churchman only but those of freeholder and merchant, 
 of townsman and villein. The provisions against wrong 
 and extortion which the barons drew up as against the 
 King for themselves they drew up as against themselves 
 for their tenants. Based too as it professed to be on Henry's 
 Charter it was far from being a mere copy of what had
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 253 
 
 gone before. The vague expressions of the old Charter 
 were now exchanged for precise and elaborate provisions. 
 The bonds of unwritten custom which the older grant did 
 little more than recognize had proved too weak to hold the 
 Angevins; and the baronage set them aside for the re- 
 straints of written and defined law. It is in this way that 
 the Great Charter marks the transition from the age of 
 traditional rights, preserved in the nation's memory and 
 officially declared by the Primate, to the age of written leg- 
 islation, of Parliaments and Statutes, which was to come. 
 Its opening indeed is in general terms. The Church 
 had shown its power of self-defence in the struggle over 
 the interdict, and the clause which recognized its rights 
 alone retained the older and general form. But all vague- 
 ness c«ases when the Charter passes on to deal with the 
 rights of Englishmen at large, their right to justice, to se- 
 curity of person and property, to good government. " No 
 freeman," ran a memorable article that lies at the base of 
 our whole judicial system, " shall be seized or imprisoned, 
 or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to 
 ruin : we will not go against any man nor send against 
 him, save by legal judgment of his peers or by the law of 
 the land." "To no man will we sell," runs another, "or 
 deny, or delay, right or justice." The great reforms of 
 the past reigns were now formally recognized; judges of 
 assize were to hold their circuits four times in the year, 
 and the King's Court was no longer to follow the King in 
 his wanderings over the realm but to sit in a fixed place. 
 But the denial of justice under John was a small danger 
 compared with the lawless exactions both of himself and 
 his predecessor. Richard had increased the amount of 
 the scutage which Henry the Second had introduced, and 
 applied it to raise funds for his ransom. He had restored 
 the Danegeld, or land-tax, so often abolished, under the 
 new name of " carucage," had seized the wool of the Cister- 
 cians and the plate of the churches, and rated movables as 
 well as land. John had again raised the rate of scutage,
 
 254 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, [Book IIL 
 
 and imposed aids, flues, and ransoms at his pleasure with- 
 out counsel of the baronage. The Great Charter met this 
 abuse by a provision on which our constitutional system 
 rests. " No scutage or aid [other than the three custom- 
 ary feudal aids] shall be imposed in our realm save by the 
 common council of the realm ;" and to this Great Council 
 it was provided that prelates and the greater barons should 
 be summoned by special writ and all tenants in chief 
 through the sheriffs and bailiffs at least forty days before. 
 The provision defined what had probably been the com- 
 mon usage of the realm ; but the definition turned it into 
 a national right, a right so momentous that on it rests our 
 whole Parliamentary life. Even the baronage seem to 
 have been startled when they realized the extent of their 
 claim ; and the provision was dropped from the later issue 
 of the Charter at the outset of the next reign. But the 
 clause brought home to the nation at large their possession 
 of a right which became dearer as years went by. More 
 and more clearly the nation discovered that in these sim- 
 ple words lay the secret of political power. It was the 
 right of self -taxation that England fought for under Earl 
 Simon as she fought for it under Hampden. It was the 
 establishment of this right which established English free- 
 dom. 
 
 The rights which the barons claimed for themselves they 
 claimed for the nation at large. The boon of free and un- 
 bought justice was a boon for all, but a special provision 
 protected the poor. The forfeiture of the freeman on con- 
 viction of felony was never to include his tenement, or that 
 of the merchant his wares, or that of the countryman, as 
 Henry the Second had long since ordered, his wain. The 
 means of actual livelihood were to be left even to the worst. 
 The seizure of provisions, the exaction of forced labor, by 
 royal officers was forbidden ; and the abuses of the forest 
 system were checked by a clause which disafforested all 
 forests made in John's reign. The under-tenants were 
 protected against all lawless exactions of their lords in
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 255 
 
 precisely the same terms as these were protected against 
 the lawless exactions of the Crown. The towns were se- 
 cured in the enjoyment of their municipal privileges, their 
 freedom from arbitrary taxation, their rights of justice, 
 of comraon deliberation, of regulation of trade. " Let the 
 city of London have all its old liberties and its free cus- 
 toms, as well by land as by water. Besides this, we will 
 and grant that all other cities, and boroughs, and towns, 
 and ports, have all their liberties and free customs." The 
 influence of the trading class is seen in two other enact- 
 ments by which freedom of journeying and trade was se- 
 cured to foreign merchants and an uniformity of weights 
 and measures was ordered to be enforced throughout the 
 realm. 
 
 There remained only one question, attd that the most 
 difficult of all : the question how to secure this order which 
 tbe Charter established in the actual government of the 
 realm. It was easy to sweep away the immediate abuses ; 
 the hostages were restored to their homes, the foreigners 
 "Danished by a clause in the Charter from the country. 
 But it was less easy to provide means for the control of a 
 King whom no man could trust. By the treaty as settled 
 at Runnymede a council of twenty-four barons were to be 
 chosen from the general body of their order to enforce on 
 John the observance of the Charter, with the right of de- 
 claring war on the King should its provisions be infringed, 
 and it was provided that the Charter should not only be 
 published throughout the whole country but sworn to at 
 every hundred-mote and town-mote by order from the 
 King. " They have given me four-and-twenty over-kings," 
 cried John in a burst of fury, flinging himself on the floor 
 and gnawing sticks and straw in his impotent rage. But 
 the rage soon passed into the subtle policy of which he was 
 a master. After a few days he left Windsor; and lin- 
 gered for months along the southern shore, waiting for 
 news of the aid he had solicited from Rome and from the 
 Continent. It was not without definite purpose that he
 
 256 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 had become the vassal of the Papacy. While Innocent- 
 was dreaming of a vast Christian Empire with the Pope 
 at its head to enforce justice and religion on his under- 
 kings, John believed that the Papal protection would 
 enable him to rule as tyrannically as he would. The thun- 
 ders of the Papacy were to be ever at hand for his protec- 
 tion, as the armies of England are at hand to protect the 
 vileness and oppression of a Turkish Sultan or a Nizam 
 of Hyderabad. His envoys were already at Rome, plead- 
 ing for a condemnation of the Charter. The after-action 
 of the Papacy shows that Innocent was moved by no hos- 
 tility to English freedom. But he was indignant that a 
 matter which might have been brought before his court 
 of appeal as over-lord should have been dealt with by armed 
 revolt, and in this crisis both his imperious pride and the 
 legal tendency of his mind swayed him to the side of the 
 King who submitted to his justice. He annulled the Grep;*, 
 Charter by a bull in August, and at the close of the year 
 excommunicated the barons. 
 
 His suspension of Stephen Langton from the exercise 
 of his office as Primate was a more fatal blow. Langton 
 hurried to Rome, and his absence left the barons without 
 a head at a moment when the very success of their efforts 
 Was dividing them. Their forces were already disorgan- 
 ized when autumn brought a host of foreign soldiers from 
 over sea to the King's standard. After starving Roches- 
 ter into submission John found himself strong enough to 
 march ravaging through the Midland and Northern coun- 
 ties, while his mercenaries spread like locusts over the 
 whole face of the land. From Berwick the King turned 
 back triumphant to coop up his enemies in London, while 
 fresh Papal excommunications fell on the barons and the 
 city. But the burghers set Innocent at defiance. " The 
 ordering of secular matters appertaineth not to the Pope," 
 they said, in words that seem like mutterings of the com- 
 ing Lollardism ; and at the advice of Simon Langton, the 
 Archbishop's brother, bells swung out and mass was cele
 
 Chap. 1.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 257 
 
 brated as before. Success however was impossible for the 
 undisciplined militia of the country and the towns against 
 the trained forces of the King, and despair drove the barons 
 to listen to Fitz-Walter and the French party in their 
 ranks, and to seek aid from over sea. Philip had long 
 been waiting the opportunity for his revenge upon John. 
 In the April of 1216 his son Lewis accepted the crown in 
 spite of Innocent's excommunications, and landed soon 
 after in Kent with a considerable force. As the barons 
 had foreseen, the French mercenaries who constituted 
 John's host refused to fight against the French sovereign 
 and the whole aspect of affairs was suddenly reversed. 
 Deserted by the bulk of his troops, the King was forced 
 to fall rapidly back on the Welsh Marches, while his rival 
 entered London and received the submission of the larger 
 part of England. Only Dover held out obstinately against 
 Lewis. By a series of rapid marches John succeeded in 
 distracting the plans of the barons and in relieving Lin- 
 coln ; then after a short stay at Lynn he crossed the Wash 
 in a fresh movement to the north. In crossing, however, 
 his army was surprised by the tide, and his baggage with 
 the royal treasures washed away. Fever seized the baffled 
 tyrant as he reached the Abbey of Swineshead, his sick- 
 ness was inflamed by a gluttonous debauch, and on the 
 19th of October John breathed his last at Newark. 
 Vol. I.— 17
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 HENRY TUE THIKD. 
 1316—1232. 
 
 The death of John changed the whole face of English 
 affairs. His son, Henry of Winchester, was but nine 
 years old, and the j)ity which was stirred by the child's 
 helplessness was ai(U.'d by a sense of injustice in burden- 
 ing him with the iniquity of his father. At his death 
 John had driven from iiis side even tlie most loyal of his 
 barons; but William Marshal had clung to him to the 
 last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of Innocent's 
 successor, Honorius the Third. The position of Gualo as 
 representative of the Papal over-lord of the realm was of 
 the highest importance, and his action showed the real at- 
 titude of Rome toward English freedom. The boy-king 
 was hardly crowned at Gloucester when Legate and Earl 
 issued in his name the very Charter against which his 
 father had died fighting. Only the clauses which regulated 
 taxation and the summoning of parliament were as yet de- 
 clared to be suspended. The choice of William Marshal 
 as " governor of King and kingdom" gave weight to this 
 step ; and its effect Avas seen when the contest was renewed 
 in 1217. Lewis was at first successful in the eastern coun- 
 ties, but the political reaction was aided by jealousies 
 which broke out between the English and French nobles 
 in his force, and the first drew gradually away from him. 
 So general was the defection that at the opening of sum- 
 mer William Marshal felt himself strong enough for a blow 
 at his foes. Lewis himself was investing Dover, and a joint 
 army of French and English barons under the Count of 
 Perche and Robert Fitz- Walter was besieging Lincoln,
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 259 
 
 when gathering troops rapidly from the royal castles the 
 regent marched to the relief of the latter town. Cooped 
 up in its narrow streets and attacked at once by the Earl 
 and the garrison, the barons fled in utter rout ; the Count 
 of Perche fell on the field, Robert Fitz-Walter was taken 
 prisoner. Lewis at once retreated on London and called 
 for aid from France. But a more terrible defeat crushed 
 his remaining hopes. A small English fleet which set sail 
 from Dover under Hubert de Burgh fell boldly on the re- 
 inforcements which were crossing under escort of Eustace 
 the Monk, a well-known freebooter of the Channel. Some 
 incidents of the fight light up for us the naval warfare of 
 the time. From the decks of the English vessels bowmen 
 poured their arrows into the crowded transports, others 
 hurled quicklime into their enemies' faces, while the more 
 active vessels crashed with their armed prows into the sides 
 of the French ships. The skill of the mariners of the Cinque 
 Ports turned the day against the larger forces of their op- 
 ponents, and the fleet of Eustace was utterly destroyed. 
 The royal army at once closed upon London, but resistance 
 was really at an end. By a treaty concluded at Lambeth 
 in September, Lewis promised to withdraw from England 
 on payment of a sum which he claimed as debt; his ad- 
 herents were restored to their possessions, the liberties of 
 London and other towns confirmed, and the prisoners on 
 either side set at liberty. A fresh issue of the Charter, 
 though in its modified form, proclaimed yet more clearly 
 the temper and policy of the Earl Marshal. 
 
 His death at the opening of 1219, after a year spent in 
 giving order to the realm, brought no change in the sys- 
 tem he had adopted. The control of affairs passed into 
 the hands of a new legate, Pandulf, of Stephen Langton 
 who had just returned forgiven from Rome, and of the 
 Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh. It was a time of transition, 
 and the temper of the Justiciar was eminently transitional. 
 Bred in the school of Henry the Second, Hubert had little 
 sympathy with national freedom, and though resolute to
 
 260 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 maintain the Charter he can have had small love for it ; 
 his conception of good government, like that of his mas- 
 ter, lay in a wise personal administration, in the preser- 
 vation of order and law. But he combined with this a 
 thoroughly English desire for national independence, a 
 hatred of foreigners, and a reluctance to waste English 
 blood and treasure in Continental struggles. Able as he 
 proved himself, his task was one of no common difficulty. 
 He was hampered by the constant interference of Rome. 
 A Papal legate resided at the English court, and claimed 
 a share in the administration of the realm as the represent- 
 ative of its over-lord and as guardian of the young sover- 
 eign. A foreign party too had still a footing in the king- 
 dom, for William Marshal had been unable to rid himself 
 of men like Peter des Roches or Faukes de Breaute, who 
 had fought on the royal side in the struggle against Lewis. 
 Hubert had to deal too with the anarchy which that strug- 
 gle left behind it. From the time of the Conquest the cen- 
 tre of England had been covered with the domains of great 
 houses, whose longings were for feudal independence and 
 whose spirit of revolt had been held in check partly by the 
 stern rule of the Kings and partly by the rise of a baron- 
 age sprung from the Court and settled for the most part 
 in the North. The oppression of John united both the 
 earlier and these newer houses in the struggle for the Char- 
 ter. But the character of each remained unchanged, and 
 the close of the struggle saw the feudal party break out in 
 their old lawlessness and defiance of the Crown. 
 
 For a time the anarchy of Stephen's days seem to re- 
 vive. But the Justiciar was resolute to crush it, and he 
 was backed by the strenuous efforts of Stephen Langton. 
 A new and solemn coronation of the young King in 1220 
 was followed by a demand for the restoration of the royal 
 castles which had been seized by the barons and foreign- 
 ers. The Earl of Chester, the head of the feudal baron- 
 age, though he rose m armed rebellion, quailed before tba 
 march of Hubert and the Primate's threats of excommuni-
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204-1291. 261 
 
 cation. A more formidable foe remained in the French- 
 man, Faukes de Breaute, the sheriff of six counties, with 
 six royal castles in his hands, and allied both with the rebel 
 barons and Llewelyn of Wales. But in 1224 his castle of 
 Bedford^ was besieged for two months ; and on its surren- 
 der the stern justice of Hubert hung the twenty-four 
 knights and their retainers who formed the garrison be- 
 fore its walls. The blow was effectual ; the royal castles 
 were surrendered by the barons, and the land was once' 
 more at peace. Freed from foreign soldiery, the country 
 was freed also from the presence of the foreign legate. 
 Langton wrested a promise from Rome that so long as 
 he lived no future legate should be sent to England, and 
 with Pandulf's resignation in 1221 the direct interference 
 of the Papacy in the government of the realm came to an 
 end. But even these services of the Primate were small 
 compared with his services to English freedom. Through- 
 out his life the Charter was the first object of his care. 
 The omission of the articles which restricted the royal 
 power over taxation in the Charter which was published 
 at Henry's accession in 1216 was doubtless due to the 
 Archbishop's absence and disgrace at Rome. The sup- 
 pression of disorder seems to have revived the older spirit 
 of resistance among the royal ministers ; for when Lang- 
 ton demanded a fresh confirmation of the Charter in Par- 
 liament at London William Brewer, one of the King's 
 councillors, protested that it had been extorted by force 
 and was without legal validity. " If you loved the King, 
 William," the Primate burst out in anger, "you would 
 not throw a stumbling-block in the way of the peace of the 
 realm." The young King was cowed by the Archbishop's 
 wrath, and promised observance of the Charter. But it 
 may have been their consciousness of such a temper among 
 the royal councillors that made Langton and the baron- 
 age demand two years later a fresh promulgation of the 
 Charter as the price of a subsidy, and Henry's assent 
 established the principle, so fruitful of constitutional
 
 262 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 results, that redress of wrongs precedes a grant to the 
 Crown. 
 
 These repeated sanctions of the Charter and the govern- 
 ment of the reahn year after year in accordance with its 
 provisions were gradually bringing the new freedom home 
 to the mass of Englishmen. But the sense of liberty was 
 at this time quickened and intensified by a religious move- 
 ment which stirred English society to its depths. Never 
 had the priesthood wielded such boundless power over 
 Christendom as in the days of Innocent the Third and his 
 immediate successors. But its religious hold on the peo- 
 ple was loosening day by day. The old reverence for the 
 Papacy was fading away before the universal resentment 
 at its political ambition, its lavish use of interdict and ex- 
 communication for purely secular ends, its degradation of 
 the most sacred sentences into means of financial extor- 
 tion. In Italy the struggle that was opening between 
 Rome and Frederick the Second disclosed a spirit of scep- 
 ticism which among the Epicurean poets of Florence de- 
 nied the immortality of the soul and attacked the very 
 foundations of the faith itself. In Southern Gaul, Langue- 
 doc and Provence had embraced the heresy of the Albi- 
 genses and thrown off all allegiance to the Papacy. Even 
 in England, though there were no signs as yet of religious 
 revolt, and though the political action of Rome had been 
 in the main on the side of freedom, there was a spirit of 
 resistance to its interference with national concerns which 
 broke out in the struggle against John. " The Pope has 
 no part in secular matters," had been the reply of London 
 to the interdict of Honorius. And within the English 
 Church itself there was much to call for reform. Its atti- 
 tude in the strife for the Charter as well as the after- work 
 of the Primate had made it more popular than ever; but 
 its spiritual energy was less than its political. The disuse 
 of preaching, the decline of the monastic orders into rich 
 landowners, the non-residence and ignorance of the parish- 
 priests, lowered the religious influence of the clergy. The
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 263 
 
 abuses of the time foiled even the energy of such men as 
 Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln. His constitutions forbid 
 the clergy to haunt taverns, to gamble, to share in drink- 
 ing bouts, to mix in the riot and debauchery of the life of 
 the baronage. But such prohibitions witness to the prev- 
 alence of the evils they denounce. Bishops and deans 
 were still withdrawn from their ecclesiastical duties to act 
 as ministers, judges, or ambassadors. Benefices were 
 heaped in hundreds at a time on royal favorites like John 
 Mansel. Abbeys absorbed the tithes of parishes and then 
 served them by half-starved vicars, while exemptions pur- 
 chased from Rome shielded the scandalous lives of canons 
 and monks from all episcopal discipline. And behind all 
 this was a group of secular statesmen and scholars, the 
 successors of such critics as Walter Map, waging indeed 
 no open warfare with the Church, but noting with bitter 
 sarcasm its abuses and its faults. 
 
 To bring the world back again within the pale of the 
 Church was the aim of two religious orders which sprang 
 suddenly to life at the opening of the thirteenth century. 
 The zeal of the Spaniard Dominic was roused at the sight 
 of the lordly prelates who sought by fire and sword to win 
 the Albigensian heretics to the faith. "Zeal," he cried, 
 " must be met by zeal, lowliness by lowliness, false sanc- 
 tity by real sanctity, preaching lies by preaching truth," 
 His fieiy ardor and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the 
 mystical piety, the imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of 
 Assisi. The life of Francis falls like a stream of tender 
 light across the darkness of the time. In the frescoes of 
 Giotto or the verse of Dante we see him take Poverty for 
 his bride. He strips himself of all, he flings his very 
 clothes at his father's feet, that he may be one with Nature 
 and God. His passionate verse claims the moon for his 
 sister and the sun for his brother, he calls on his brother 
 the Wind, and his sister the Water. His last faint cry 
 was a " Welcome, Sister Death !" Strangely as the two 
 men differed from each other, their aim was tho sanio — to
 
 2G4 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 convert the heathen, to extirpate heresy, to reconcile 
 knowledge with orthodoxy, above all to carry the Gospel 
 to the poor. The work was to be done by an utter reversal 
 of the older monasticism, by seeking personal salvation in 
 effort for the salvation of their fellow-men, by exchanging 
 the solitary of the cloister for the preacher, the monk for 
 the " brother" or friar. To force the new " brethren" into 
 entire dependence on those among whom they labored their 
 vow of Poverty was turned into a stern reality ; the " Beg- 
 ging Friars" were to subsist solely on alms, they might 
 possess neither money nor lands, the very houses in which 
 they lived were to be held in trust for them by others. 
 The tide of popular enthusiasm which welcomed their ap- 
 pearance swept before it the reluctance of Rome, the 
 jealousy of the older orders, the opposition of the parochial 
 priesthood. Thousands of brethren gathered in a few 
 years round Francis and Dominic; and the begging 
 preachers, clad in coarse frock of serge with a girdle of 
 rope round their waist, wandered barefooted as missiona- 
 ries over Asia, battled with heresy in Italy and Gaul, lec- 
 tured in the Universities, and preached and toiled among 
 the poor. 
 
 To the towns especially the coming of the Friars was a 
 religious revolution. They had been left for the most part 
 to the worst and most ignorant of the clergy, the mass- 
 priest, whose sole subsistence lay in his fees. Burgher 
 and artisan were left to spell out what religious instruction 
 they might from the gorgeous ceremonies of the Church's 
 ritual or the scriptural pictures and sculptures which were 
 graven on the walls of its minsters. We can hardly 
 wonder at the burst of enthusiasm wdiich welcomed the 
 itinerant preacher whose fervid appeal, coarse wit, and 
 familiar story brought religion into the fair and the mar- 
 ket place. In England, where the Black Friars of Domi- 
 nic arrived in 1231, the Gray Friars of Francis in 1224, 
 both were received with the same delight. As the older 
 orders had chosen the country, the Friars chose the town.
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 265 
 
 They had hardly landed at Dover before they made straight 
 for London and Oxford. In their ignorance of the road 
 the first two Gray Brothers lost their way in the woods 
 between Oxford and Baldon, and fearful of night and of 
 the floods turned aside to a grange of the monks of Abing- 
 don. Their ragged clothes and foreign gestures, as they 
 prayed for hospitality, led the porter to take them for 
 jongleurs, the jesters and jugglers of the day, and the 
 news of this break in the monotony of their lives brought 
 prior, sacrist, and cellarer to the door to welcome them 
 and witness their tricks. The disappointment was too 
 much for the temper of the monks, and the brothers were 
 kicked roughly from the gate to find their night's lodging 
 under a tree. But the welcome of the townsmen made up 
 everywhere for the ill-will and opposition of both clergy 
 and monks. The work of the Friars was physical as well 
 as moral. The rapid progress of population within the 
 boroughs had outstripped the sanitary regulations of the 
 Middle Ages, and fever or plague or the more terrible 
 scourge of leprosy festered in the wretched hovels of the 
 suburbs. It was to haunts such as these that Francis had 
 pointed his disciples, and the Gray Brethren at once fixed 
 themselves in the meanest and poorest quarters of each 
 town. Their first work lay in the noisome lazar-houses ; 
 it was among the lepers that they commonly chose the site 
 of their homes. At London they settled in the shambles 
 of Newgate ; at Oxford they made their way to the swampy 
 ground between its walls and the streams of Thames. 
 Huts of mud and timber, as mean as the huts around them, 
 rose within the rough fence and ditch that bounded the 
 Friary. The order of Francis made a hard fight against 
 the taste for sumptuous buildings and for greater personal 
 comfort which characterized the time. " I did not enter 
 into religion to build walls," protested an English provin- 
 cial when the brethren pressed for a larger house; and 
 Albert of Pisa ordered a stone cloister which the burgesses 
 of Southampton had built for them to be razed to the
 
 266 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 ground. " You need no little mountains to lift your heads 
 to heaven," was his scornful reply to a claim for pillows. 
 None but the sick went shod. An Oxford Friar found a 
 pair of shoes one morning, and wore them at matins. At 
 night he dreamed that robbers leaped on him in a danger- 
 ous pass between Gloucester and Oxford with shouts of 
 "Kill, kill!" "I am a friar," shrieked the terror-stricken 
 brother. "You lie," was the instant answer, "for you go 
 shod." The Friar lifted up his foot in disproof, but the 
 shoe was there. In an agony of repentance he woke and 
 flung the pair out of window. 
 
 It was with less success that the order struggled against 
 the passion of the time for knowledge. Their vow of 
 poverty, rigidly interpreted as it was by their founders, 
 would have denied them the possession of books or mate- 
 rials for study. " I am your breviary, I am your breviary," 
 Francis cried passionately to a novice who asked for a 
 psalter. When the news of a great doctor's reception was 
 brought to him at Paris, his countenance fell. " I am 
 afraid, my son," he replied, "that such doctors will be the 
 destruction of my vineyard. They are the true doctors 
 who with the meekness of wisdom show forth good works 
 for the edification of their neighbors." One kind of 
 knowledge indeed their work almost forced on them. The 
 popularity of their preaching soon led them to the deeper 
 study of theology ; within a short time after their estab- 
 lishment in England we find as many as thirty readers 
 or lecturers appointed at Hereford, Leicester, Bristol, and 
 other places, a-nd a regular succession of teachers provided 
 at each University. The Oxford Dominicans lectured on 
 theology in the nave of their new church while philosophy 
 was taught in the cloister. The first provincial of the 
 Gray Friars built a school in their Oxford house and per- 
 suaded Grosseteste to lecture there. His influence after 
 his promotion to the see of Lincoln was steadily exerted to 
 secure theological study among the Friars, as well as their 
 establishment in ^/-'e University; and in this work he was
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 267 
 
 ably seconded by his scholar, Adam Marsh, or de Marisco, 
 under whom the Franciscan school at Oxford attained a 
 reputation throughout Christendom. Lyons, Paris, and 
 Koln borrowed from it their professors: it was through 
 its influence indeed that Oxford rose to a position hardly 
 Inferior to that of Paris itself as a centre of scholasticism. 
 But the result of this powerful impulse was soon seen to 
 be fatal to the wider intellectual activity which had till 
 now characterized the Universities. Theology in its 
 scholastic form resumed its supremacy in the schools. Its 
 orvy efficient rivals were practical studies such as medi- 
 crie and law. The last, as he was by far the greatest, 
 ir stance of the freer and wider culture which had been the 
 glory of the last century was Roger Bacon, and no name 
 better illustrates the rapidity and completeness with which 
 it passed away. 
 
 Roger Bacon was the child of royalist parents who were 
 driven into exile and reduced to poverty by the civil wars. 
 From Oxford, where he studied under Edmund of Abing- 
 don, to whom he owed his introduction to the works of 
 Aristotle, he passed to the University of Paris, and spent 
 his whole heritage there in costly studies and experiments. 
 "From my youth up," he writes, "I have labored at the 
 sciences and tongues. I have sought the friendship of all 
 men among the Latins who had any reputation for knowl- 
 edge. I have caused youths to be instructed in languages, 
 geometry, arithmetic, the construction of tables and in- 
 struments, and many needful things besides," The diffi- 
 culties in the way of such studies as he had resolved to 
 pursue were immense. He was without instruments or 
 means of experiment, " Without mathematical instru- 
 ments no science can be mastered," he complains after- 
 ward, " and these instruments are not to be found among 
 the Latins, nor could they be made for two or three hun- 
 dred pounds. Besides, better tables are indispensably 
 necessary, tables on which the motions of the heavens are 
 certified from the beginning to the end of the world with-
 
 268 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book Hi. 
 
 out daily labor, but these tables are worth a king's ransom 
 and could not be made without a vast expense. I have 
 often attempted the composition of such tables, but could 
 not finish them through failure of means and the folly of 
 those whom I had to employ." Books were difficult and 
 sometimes even impossible to procure. "The scientific 
 works of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and 
 other ancients cannot be had without great cost; their 
 principal works have not been translated into Latin, and 
 copies of others are not to be found in ordinary libraries 
 or elsewhere. The admirable books of Cicero de Republi«a 
 are not to be found anywhere, so far as I can hear, though 
 I have made anxious inquiry for them in different parts 
 of the world, and by various messengers. I could never 
 find the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search 
 for them during twenty years and more. And so it is 
 with many more most useful books connected with the 
 science of morals." It is only words like these of his own 
 that bring home to us the keen thirst for knowledge, the 
 patience, the energy of Roger Bacon. He returned as a 
 teacher to Oxford, and a touching record of his devotion 
 to those whom he taught remains in the story of John of 
 London, a boy of fifteen, whose ability raised him above 
 the general level of his pupils. " When he came to me as 
 a poor boy," says Bacon in recommending him to the 
 Pope, " I caused him to be nurtured and instructed for the 
 love of God, especially since for aptitude and innocence I 
 have never found so towardly a youth. Five or six years 
 ago I caused him to be taught in languages, mathematics, 
 and optics, and I have gratuitously instructed him with 
 my own lips since the time that I received your mandate. 
 There is no one at Paris who knows so much of the root 
 of philosophy, though he has not produced the branches, 
 flowers, and fruit because of his youth, and because he 
 has had no experience in teaching. But he has the means 
 of surpassing all the Latins if he live to grow old and goes 
 on as he has begun."
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 2G9 
 
 The pride with which he refers to his system of instruc- 
 tion was justified by the wide extension which he gave to 
 scientific teaching in Oxford. It is probably of himself 
 that he speaks when he tells us that " the science of optics 
 has not hitherto been lectured on at Paris or elsewhere 
 among the Latins, save twice at Oxford. " It was a science 
 on which he had labored for ten years. But his teaching 
 seems to have fallen on a barren soil. From the moment 
 when the Friars settled in the Universities scholasticism 
 absorbed the whole mental energy of the student world. 
 The temper of the age was against scientific or philosophi- 
 cal studies. The older enthusiasm for knowledge was 
 dying down ; the study of law was the one source of pro- 
 motion, whether in Church or State; philosophy was dis- 
 credited, literature in its purer forms became almost ex- 
 tinct. After forty years of incessant study. Bacon found 
 himself in his own words "unheard, forgotten, buried." 
 He seems at one time to have been wealthy, but his wealth 
 was gone. " During the twenty years that I have specially 
 labored in the attainment of wisdom, abandoning the path 
 of common men, I have spent on these pursuits more than 
 two thousand pounds, not to mention the cost of books, 
 experiments, instruments, tables, the acquisition of lan- 
 guages, and the like. Add to all this the sacrifices I have 
 made to procure the friendship of the wise and to obtain 
 well- instructed assistants." Ruined and baffled in his 
 hopes, Bacon listened to the counsels of his friend Grosse- 
 teste and renounced the world. He became a friar of the 
 order of St. Francis, an order where books and study were 
 looked upon as hindrances to the work which it had spe- 
 cially undertaken, that of preaching among the masses of 
 the poor. He had written little. So far was he from at- 
 tempting to write that his new superiors prohibited him 
 from publishing anything under pain of forfeiture of the 
 book and penance of bread and water. But we can see 
 the craving of his mind, the passionate instinct of creation 
 which marks the man of genius, in the joy with which be
 
 270 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 seized a strange opportunity that suddenly opened before 
 him. " Some few chapters on different subjects, written 
 at the entreaty of friends," seem to have got abroad, and 
 were brought by one of the Pope's chaplains under the 
 notice of Clement the Fourth. The Pope at once invited 
 Bacon to write. But difficulties stood in his way. Ma- 
 terials, transcription, and other expenses for such a work 
 as he projected would cost at least £60, and the Pope sent 
 not a penny. Bacon begged help from his family, but 
 they were ruined like himself. No one would lend to a 
 mendicant friar, and when his friends raised the money 
 he needed it was by pawning their goods in the hope of 
 repayment from Clement. Nor was this all; the work 
 itself, abstruse and scientific as was its subject, had to be 
 treated in a clear and popular form to gain the Papal ear. 
 But difficulties which would have crushed another man only 
 roused Roger Bacon to an almost superb viman energy. By 
 the close of 12G7 the work was done. The " greater work," 
 itself in modern formal closely printed folio, with its suc- 
 cessive summaries and appendices in the " lesser" and the 
 " third" works (which make a good octavo more) , were pro- 
 duced and forwarded to the Pope within fifteen months. 
 
 No trace of this fiery haste remains in the book itself. 
 The " Opus Majus" is alike wonderful in plan and detail. 
 Bacon's main purpose, in the words of Dr. Whewell, is 
 " to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of philoso- 
 phizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not 
 made a greater progress, to draw back attention to sources 
 of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to dis- 
 cover other sources which were yet wholly unknown, and 
 to animate men to the undertaking by a prospect of the 
 vast advantages which it offered. " The development of his 
 scheme is on the largest scale; he gathers together the 
 whole knowledge of his time on every branch of science 
 which it possessed, and as he passes them in review he 
 sviggests improvements in nearly all. His labors, both here 
 and in his after- works, in the field of grammar and philol-
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 271 
 
 ogy, his perseverance in insisting on the necessity of cor- 
 rect texts, of an accurate knowledge of languages, of an 
 exact interpretation, are hardly less remarkable than his 
 scientific investigations. From grammar he passes to 
 mathematics, from mathematics to experimental philoso- 
 phy. Under the name of mathematics indeed was in- 
 cluded all the physical science of the time. " The neglect 
 of it for nearly thirty or forty years," pleads Bacon pas- 
 sionately, "hath nearlj^ destroyed the entire studies of 
 Latin Christendom. For he who knows not mathematics 
 cannot know any other sciences; and what is more, he 
 cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper reme- 
 dies." Geography, chronology, arithmetic, music, are 
 brought into something of scientific form, and like rapid 
 sketches are given of the question of climate, hydrography, 
 geography, and astrology. The subject of optics, his own 
 especial study, is treated with greater fulness ; he enters 
 into the question of the anatomy of the eye besides dis- 
 cussing problems which lie more strictly within the prov- 
 ince of optical science. In a word, the "Greater Work," 
 to borrow the phrase of Dr. Whewell, is " at once the En- 
 cyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth 
 century." The whole of the after- works of Roger Bacon 
 — and treatise after treatise has of late been disentombed 
 from our libraries — are but developments in detail of the 
 magnificent conception he laid before Clement. Such a 
 work was its own great reward. From the world around 
 Roger Bacon could look for and found small recognition. 
 No word of acknowledgment seems to have reached its 
 author from the Pope. If we may credit a more recent 
 story, his writings only gained him a prison from his order. 
 " Unheard, forgotten, buried, " the old man died as he had 
 lived, and it has been reserved for later ages to roll away 
 the obscurity that had gathered round his memory, and to 
 place first in the great roll of modern science the name of 
 Roger Bacon. 
 The failure of Bacon shows the overpowering strength
 
 27'i HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 of the drift toward the practical studies, and above all 
 toward theology in its scholastic guise. Aristotle, who 
 had been so long held at bay as the most dangerous foe of 
 mediaeval faith, was now turned by the adoption of his 
 logical method in the discussion and definition of theologi- 
 cal dogma into its unexpected ally. It was this very 
 method that led to " that unprofitable subtlety and curi- 
 osity" which Lord Bacon notes as the vice of the scholastic 
 philosophy. But "certain it is" — to continue the same 
 great thinker's comment on the Friars — "that if these 
 schoolmen to their great thirst of truth and unwearied 
 travel of wit had joined variety of reading and contem- 
 plation, they had proved excellent lights to the great ad- 
 vancement of all learning and knowledge. " What, amid 
 all their errors, they undoubtedly did was to insist on the 
 necessity of rigid demonstration and a more exact use of 
 words, to introduce a clear and methodical treatment of 
 all subjects into discussion, and above all to substitute an 
 appeal to reason for unquestioning obedience to authority. 
 It was by this critical tendency, by the new clearness and 
 precision which scholasticism gave to inquiry, that in 
 spite of the trivial questions with which it often concerned 
 itself it trained the human mind through the next two 
 centuries to a temper which fitted it to profit by the great 
 disclosure of knowledge that brought about the Renas- 
 cence. And it is to the same spirit of fearless inquiry as 
 well as to the strong popular sympathies which their very 
 constitution necessitated that we must attribute the influ- 
 ence which the Friars undoubtedly exerted in the coming 
 struggle between the people and the Crown. Their posi- 
 tion is clearly and strongly marked throughout the whole 
 contest. The University of Oxford, which soon fell under 
 the direction of their teaching, stood first in its resistance 
 to Papal exactions and its claim of English liberty. The 
 classes in the towns, on whom the influence of the Friars 
 told most directly, were steady supporters of freedom 
 throughout the Barons' Wars.
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 273 
 
 Politically indeed the teaching of the schoolmen was of 
 immense value, for it set on a religious basis and gave 
 an intellectual form to the constitutional theory of the rela- 
 tions between King and people which was slowly emerging 
 from .the struggle with the Crown. In assuming the re- 
 sponsibility of a Christian king to God for the good gov- 
 ernment of his realm, in surrounding the pledges whether 
 of ruler or ruled with religious sanctions, the mediaeval 
 Church entered its protest against any personal despotism. 
 The schoolmen pushed further still to the doctrine of a 
 contract between King and people; and their trenchant 
 logic made short work of the royal claims to irresponsible 
 power and unquestioning obedience. " He who would be 
 in truth a king," ran a poem which embodies their teach- 
 ing at this time in pungent verse — "he is a 'free king' 
 indeed if he rightly rule himself and his realm. All 
 things are lawful to him for the government of his realm, 
 but nothing is lawful to him for its destruction. It is 
 one thing to rule according to a king's duty, another to 
 destroy a kingdom by resisting the law." " Let the com- 
 munity of the realm advise, and let it be known what the 
 generality, to whom their laws are best known, think on 
 the matter. They who are ruled by the laws know those 
 laws best ; they who make daily trial of them are best ac- 
 quainted with them; and since it is their own affairs 
 which are at- stake they will take the more care and will 
 act with an eye to their own peace." "It concerns the 
 community to see what sort of men ought justly to be 
 chosen for the weal of the realm." The constitutional re- 
 strictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole 
 nation to deliberate and decide on its own affairs and to 
 have a voice in the selection of the administrators of gov- 
 ernment, had never been so clearly stated before. But the 
 importance of the Friar's work lay in this, that the work 
 of the scholar was supplemented by that of the popular 
 preacher. The theory of government wrought out in cell 
 and lecture-room was carried over the length and breadth 
 Vol. I.— 18
 
 274 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 of the land by the mendicant brother, begging his way 
 from town to town, chatting with farmer or housewife at 
 the cottage door, and setting up his portable pulpit in 
 village green or market-place. His open-air sermons, rang- 
 ing from impassioned devotion to coarse story and homely 
 mother-wit, became the journals as well as the homilies of 
 the day ; political and social questions found place in them 
 side by side with spiritual matters ; and the rudest coun- 
 tryman learned his tale of a king's oppression or a patriot's 
 hopes as he listened to the rambling, passionate, humorous 
 discourse of the begging friar. 
 
 Never had there been more need of such a political edu- 
 cation of the whole people than at the moment we have 
 reached. For the triumph of the Charter, the constitu- 
 tional government of Governor and Justiciar, had rested 
 mainly on the helplessness of the King. As boy or youth, 
 Henry the Third had bowed to the control of William 
 Marshal or Langton or Hubert de Burgh. But he was 
 now grown to manhood, and his character was from this 
 hour to tell on the events of his reign. From the cruelty, 
 the lust, the impiety of his father the young King was 
 absolutely free. There was a geniality, a vivacity, a 
 refinement in his temper which won a personal affection 
 for him even in his worst days from some who bitterly 
 censured his rale. The Abbey-church of Westminster, 
 with which he replaced the ruder minster of the Con- 
 fessor, remains a monument of his artistic taste. He was 
 a patron and friend of men of letters, and himself skilled 
 in the "gay science" of the troubadours. But of the 
 political capacity which was the characteristic of his 
 house he had little or none. Profuse, changeable, false 
 from sheer meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good 
 and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in in- 
 gult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of 
 an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of 
 government was a dream of arbitrary power. But friv- 
 olous as the King^'s mood was, he clung with a weak man's
 
 Chap. 2.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 275 
 
 obstinacy to a distinct line of policy; and this was the 
 policy not of Hubert or Langton but of John. He cher- 
 ished the hope of recovering his heritage across the sea. 
 He believed in the absolute power of the Crown; and 
 looked on the pledges of the Great Charter as promises 
 which force had wrested from the King and which force 
 could wrest back again. France was telling more and 
 more on English opinion ; and the claim which the French 
 kings were advancing to a divine and absolute power gave 
 a sanction in Henry's mind to the claim of absolute au- 
 thority which was still maintained by his favorite advisers 
 in the royal council. Above all he clung to the alliance 
 with the Papacy. Henry was personally devout ; and his 
 devotion only bound him the more firmly to his father's 
 system of friendship with Rome. Gratitude and self- 
 interest alike bound him to the Papal See. Rome had 
 saved him from ruin as a child; its legate had set the 
 crown on his head ; its threats and excommunications had 
 foiled Lewis and built up again a royal party. Above all 
 it was Rome which could alone free him from his oath 
 to the Charter, and which could alone defend him if like 
 his father he had to front the baronage in arms. 
 
 His temper was now to influence the whole system of 
 government. In 1227 Henry declared himself of age; and 
 though Hubert still remained Justiciar every year saw 
 him more powerless in his struggle with the tendencies of 
 the King. The death of Stephen Langton in 1228 was a 
 yet heavier blow to English freedom. In persuading 
 Rome to withdraw her Legate the Primate had averted a 
 conflict between the national desire for self-government 
 and the Papal claims of overlordship. But his death gave 
 the signal for a more serious struggle, for it was in the 
 oppression of the Church of England by the Popes through 
 the reign of Henry that the little rift first opened which 
 was destined to widen into the gulf that parted the one 
 from the other at the Reformation. In the mediaeval 
 theory of the Papacy, as Innocent and his successors held
 
 27 G HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 it, Christendom, as a spiritual realm of which the Popes 
 were the head, took the feudal form of the secular realms 
 which lay within its pale. The Pope was its sovereign, 
 the Bishops were his barons, and the clergy were his 
 under- vassals. As the King demanded aids and subsidies 
 in case of need from his liegemen, so in the theory of Rome 
 might the head of the Church demand aid in need from 
 the priesthood. And at this moment the need of the Popes 
 was sore. Rome had plunged into her desperate conflict 
 with the Emperor, Frederick the Second, and was looking 
 everywhere for the means of recruiting her drained ex- 
 chequer. On England she believed herself to have more 
 than a spiritual claim for support. She regarded the king- 
 dom as a vassal kingdom, and as bound to aid its overlord. 
 It was only by the promise of a heavy subsidy that Henry 
 in 1229 could buy the Papal confirmation of Langton's 
 successor. But the baronage was of other mind than 
 Henry as to this claim of overlordship, and the demand of 
 an aid to Rome from the laity was at once rejected by 
 them. Her spiritual claim over the allegiance of the 
 clergy, however, remained to fall back upon, and the 
 clergy were in the Pope's hand. Gregory the Ninth had 
 already claimed for the Papal see a right of nomination 
 to some prebends in each cathedral church ; he now de- 
 manded a tithe of all the movables of the priesthood, and 
 a threat of excommunication silenced their murmurs. 
 Exaction followed exaction as the needs of the Papal treas- 
 ury grew greater. The very rights of lay patrons were 
 set aside, and under the name of " reserves" presentations 
 to English benefices were sold in the Papal market, while 
 Italian clergy were quartered on the best livings of the 
 Church. 
 
 The general indignation at last found vent in a wide 
 conspiracy. In 1231 letters from " the whole body of those 
 who prefer to die rather than be ruined by the Romans" 
 were scattered over the kingdom by armed men; tithes 
 gathered for the Pope or the foreign priests were seized
 
 Chap. 9.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 277 
 
 and given to the poor; the Papal collectors were beaten 
 and their bulls trodden under foot. The remonstrances of 
 Rome only made clearer the national character of the 
 movement ; but as inquiry went on the hand of the Justi- 
 ciar himself was seen to have been at work. Sheriffs had 
 stood idly by while violence was done ; royal letters had 
 been shown by the rioters as approving their acts ; and the 
 Pope openly laid the charge of the outbreak on the secret 
 connivance of Hubert de Burgh. No charge could have 
 been more fatal to Hubert in the mind of the King. But 
 he was already in full collision with the Justiciar on other 
 grounds. Henry was eager to vindicate his right to the 
 great heritage his father had lost : the Gascons, who still 
 clung to him, not because they loved England but because 
 they hated France, spurred him to war; and in 1229 a 
 secret invitation came from the Norman barons. But 
 while Hubert held power no serious effort was made to 
 carry on a foreign strife. The Norman call was rejected 
 through his influence, and when a great armament gath- 
 ered at Portsmouth for a campaign in Poitou it dispersed 
 for want of transports and supplies. The young King 
 drew his sword and rushed madly on the Justiciar, charg- 
 ing him with treason and corruption by the gold of France. 
 But the quarrel was appeased and the expedition deferred 
 for the year. In 1230 Henry actually took the field in 
 Brittany and Poitou, but the failure of the campaign was 
 again laid at the door of Hubert whose opposition was 
 said to have prevented a decisive engagement. It was at 
 this moment that the Papal accusation filled up the meas- 
 ure of Henry's wrath against his minister. In the sum- 
 mer of 1232 he was deprived of his olBfice of Justiciar, 
 and dragegd from the chapel at Brentwood where threats 
 of death had driven him to take sanctuary. A smith who 
 was ordered to shackle him stoutly refused. " I will die 
 any death," he said, "before I put iron on the man who 
 freed England from the stranger and saved Dover from 
 France." The remonstrances of the Bishop of London
 
 278 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 forced the King to replace Hubert in sanctuary, but hun- 
 ger compelled him to surrender; he was thrown a prisoner 
 into the Tower, and though soon released he remained 
 powerless in the realm. His fall left England without a 
 check to the rule of Henry himself.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE barons' war. 
 1232—1273. 
 
 Once master of his realm, Henry the Third was quick 
 to declare his plan of government. The two great checks 
 on a merely personal rule lay as yet in the authority of 
 the great ministers of State and in the national character 
 of the administrative body which had been built up by 
 Henry the Second. Both of these checks Henry at once 
 set himself to remove. He would be his own minister. 
 The Justiciar ceased to be the Lieutenant-General of the 
 King and dwindled into a presiding judge of the law- 
 courts. The Chancellor had grown into a great officer of 
 State, and in 122G this office had been conferred on the 
 Bishop of Chichester by the advice and consent of the 
 Great Council. But Henry succeeded in wresting the seal 
 from him and naming to this as to other offices at his 
 pleasure. His policy was to intrust all high posts of 
 government to mere clerks of the royal chapel; trained 
 administrators, but wholly dependent on the royal will. 
 He found equally dependent agents of administration by 
 surrounding himself with foreigners. The return of Peter 
 des Roches to the royal councils was the first sign of the 
 new system ; and hosts of hungry Poitevins and Bretons 
 were summoned over to occupy the royal castles and fill 
 the judicial and administrative posts about the Court. The 
 King's marriage in 123G to Eleanor of Provence was fol- 
 lowed by the arrival in England of the new Queen's 
 uncles. The "Savoy," as his house in the Strand was 
 named, still recalls Peter of Savoy who arrived five years 
 later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's coun-
 
 280 HISTORY OF TIU: ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 cil-board; another brother, Boniface, was consecrated on 
 Archbishop Edmund's death to the highest post in the 
 realm save the Crown itself, the Archbishopric of Canter- 
 bury. The young Primate, like his brother, brought with 
 him foreign fashions strange enough to English folk. His 
 armed retainers pillaged the markets. His own archi- 
 episcopal fist felled to the ground the prior of St. Bartholo- 
 mew-by-Smithfield who opposed his visitation. London 
 was roused by the outrage; on the King's refusal to do 
 justice a noisy crowd of citizens surrounded the Primate's 
 house at Lambeth with cries of vengeance, and the " hand- 
 some archbishop," as his followers styled him, was glad 
 to escape over sea. This brood of Provengals was followed 
 in 1243 by the arrival of the Poitevin relatives of John'5 
 queen, Isabella of Angouleme. Aymer was made Bishop 
 of Winchester ; William of Valence received at a later time 
 the earldom of Pembroke. Even the King's jester was a 
 Poitevin. Hundreds of their dependants followed these 
 great nobles to find a fortune in the English realm. The 
 Poitevin lords brought in their train a bevy of ladies in 
 search of husbands, and three English earls who were in 
 royal wardship were wedded by the King to foreigners. 
 The whole machinery of administration passed into the 
 hands of men who were ignorant and contemptuous of the 
 principles of English government or English law. Their 
 rule was a mere anarchy ; the very retainers of the royal 
 household turned robbers and pillaged foreign merchants 
 in the precincts of the Court ; corruption invaded the judi- 
 cature; at the close of this period of misrule Henry de 
 Bath, a justiciary, was proved to have openly taken bribes 
 and to have adjudged to himself disputed estates. 
 
 That misgovemment of this kind should have gone on 
 unchecked in defiance of the provisions of the Charter was 
 owing to the disunion and sluggishness of the English 
 baronage. On the first arrival of the foreigners Richard, 
 the Earl Mareschal, a son of the great Regent, stood forth as 
 their leader to demand the expulsion of the strangers from
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 281 
 
 the royal Council. Though deserted by the bulk of the 
 nobles he defeated the foreign troops sent against him and 
 forced the King to treat for peace. But at this critical 
 moment the Earl was drawn by an intrigue of Peter des 
 Roches 4o Ireland; he fell in a petty skirmish, and the 
 barons were left without a head. The interposition of a 
 new primate, Edmund of Abingdon, forced the King to 
 dismiss Peter from court ; but there was no real change of 
 system, and the remonstrances of the Archbishop and of 
 Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, remained fruit- 
 less. In the long interval of misrule the financial straits 
 of the King forced him to heap exaction on exaction. The 
 Forest Laws were used as a means of extortion, sees and 
 abbej'S were kept vacant, loans were wrested from lords 
 and prelates, the Court itself lived at free quarters when- 
 ever it moved. Supplies of this kind, however, were ut- 
 terly insufficient to defray the cost of the King's prodigal- 
 ity. A sixth of the royal revenue was wasted in pensions 
 to foreign favorites. The debts of the Crown amounted 
 to four times its annual income. Henry was forced to 
 appeal for aid to the great Council of the realm, and aid 
 was granted in 1237 on promise of control in its expendi- 
 ture and on condition that the King confirmed the Charter. 
 But Charter and promise were alike discarded; and in 
 1242 the resentment of the barons expressed itself in a de- 
 termined protest and a refusal of further subsidies. In 
 spite of their refusal, however, Henry gathered money 
 enough for a costly expedition for the recovery of Poitou. 
 The attempt ended in failure and shame. At Taillebourg 
 the King's force fled in disgraceful rout before the French 
 as far as Saintes, and only the sudden illness of Lewis the 
 Ninth and a disease which scattered his army saved Bor- 
 deaux from the conquerors. The treasury was utterly 
 drained, and Henry was driven in 1244 to make a fresh 
 appeal with his own mouth to the baronage. But the 
 barons had now rallied to a plan of action, and we can 
 hardly fail to attribute their union to the man who appeara
 
 282 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOFLE. [Book III. 
 
 at their head. This was the Earl of Leicester, Simon of 
 Moiitfort. 
 
 Simon was the son of another Simon of Montfort, whose 
 name had become memorable for his ruthless crusade 
 against the Albigensian heretics in Southern Gaul, and 
 who had inherited the Earldom of Leicester through his 
 mother, a sister and co-heiress of the last Earl of the house 
 of Beaumont. But as Simon's tendencies were for the^ 
 most part French, John had kept the revenues of the earl- 
 dom in his own hands, and on his death the claim of his 
 elder son, Amaury, was met by the refusal of Henry the 
 Third to accept a divided allegiance. The refusal marks 
 the rapid growth of that sentiment of nationality which 
 the loss of Normandy had brought home. Amaury chose 
 to remain French, and by a family arrangement with the 
 King's sanction the honor of Leicester passed in 1231 to 
 his younger brother Simon. His choice made Simon an 
 Englishman, but his foreign blood still moved the jealousy 
 of the barons, and this jealousy was quickened by a secret 
 match in 1238 with Eleanor, the King's sister and widow 
 of the second William Marshal. The match formed prob- 
 ably part of a policy which Henry pursued throughout his 
 reign of bringing the great earldoms into closer connection 
 with the Crown. That of Chester had fallen to the King 
 through the extinction of the family of its earls; Cornwall 
 was held by his brother, Richard ; Salisbury by his cousin. 
 Simon's marriage linked the Earldom of Leicester to the 
 royal house. But it at once brought Simon into conflict 
 with the nobles and the Church. The baronage, justly 
 indignant that such a step should have been taken withom: 
 their consent, for the Queen still remained childless and 
 Eleanor's children by one whom they looked on as a 
 stranger promised to be heirs of the Crown, rose in a re- 
 volt which failed only through the desertion of their head, 
 Earl Richard of Cornwall, who was satisfied with Earl 
 Simon's withdrawal from the royal Council. The cen- 
 sures of the Church on Eleanor's breach of a vow of chaste
 
 Chap. 3.} THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 283 
 
 widowhood which she had made at her first husband's 
 death W6»"e averted with hardly less difficulty by a journey 
 to Rome. It was after a year of trouble that Simon re- 
 turned to England to reap as it seemed the fruits of his 
 high alliance. He was now formally made Earl of Leices- 
 ter and re-entered the royal Council. But it is probable 
 that he still found there the old jealousy which had forced 
 from him a pledge of retirement after his marriage ; and 
 that his enemies now succeeded in winning over the King. 
 In a few months, at any rate, he found the changeable 
 King alienated from him, he was driven by a burst of 
 royal passion from the realm, and was forced to spend 
 seven months in France. 
 
 Henry's anger passed as quickly as it had risen, and in 
 the spring of 1240 the Earl was again received with honor 
 at court. It was from this moment, however, that his 
 position changed. As yet it had been that of a foreigner, 
 confounded in the eyes of the nation at large with the 
 Poitevins and Provenyals who swarmed about the court. 
 But in the years of retirement which followed Simon's 
 return to England his whole attitude was reversed. There 
 was as yet no quarrel with the King : he followed him in 
 a campaign across the Channel, and shared in his defeat 
 at Saintes. But he was a friend of Grosseteste and a 
 patron of the Friars, and became at last known as a steady 
 opponent of the misrule about him. When prelates and 
 barons chose twelve representatives to confer with Henry 
 in 1244 Simon stood with Earl Richard of Cornwall at the 
 head of them. A definite plan of reform disclosed his 
 hand. The confirmation of the Charter was to be followed 
 by the election of Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer in the 
 Great Council. Nor was this restoration of a responsible 
 ministry enough ; a perpetual Council was to attend the 
 King and devise further reforms. The plan broke against 
 Henry's resistance and a Papal prohibition ; but from this 
 time the Earl took his stand in the front rank of the patriot 
 leaders. The struggle of the following years was chiefly
 
 280 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE [Book HI 
 
 Friar Adam, " than a strong man, and be who can rule his 
 own temper than he who storms a city." But the one 
 characteristic which overmastered all was what men at 
 that time called his "constancy," the firm immovable re- 
 solve which trampled even death under foot in its loyalty 
 to the right. The motto which Edward the First chose as 
 his device, "Keep troth," was far truer as the device 
 of Earl Simon. We see in bis correspondence with what 
 a clear discernment of its difficulties both at home and 
 abroad he " thought it unbecoming to decline the danger 
 of so great an exploit" as the reduction of Gascony to peace 
 and order ; but once undertaken, he persevered in spite of 
 the opposition he met with, the failure of all support or 
 funds from England, and the King's desertion of his cause, 
 till the work was done. There was the same steadiness of 
 will and purpose in his patriotism. The letters of Robert 
 Grosseteste show how early Simon had learned to sympa- 
 thize with the Bishop in his resistance to Rome, and at 
 the crisis of the contest he offered him his own support 
 and that of his associates. But I-obert passed away, and 
 as the tide of misgovernment mounted higher and higher 
 the Earl silently trained himself for the day of trial. The 
 fruit of his self-discipline was seen when the crisis came. 
 While other men wavered and faltered and fell away, the 
 enthusiastic love of the people clung to the grave, stem 
 soldier who "stood like a pillar," unshaken by promise or 
 threat or fear of death, by the oath he had sworn. 
 
 While Simon had been warring with Gascon rebels af- 
 fairs in England had been going from bad to worse. The 
 scourge of Papal taxation fell heavier on the clergy. After 
 vain appeals to Rome and to the King, Archbishop Ed- 
 mund retired to an exile of despair at Pontigny, and tax- 
 gatherer after tax-gatherer with powers of excommunica- 
 tion, suspension from orders, and presentation to benefices, 
 descended on the unhappy priesthood. The wholesale pil- 
 lage kindled a wide spirit of resistance. Oxford gave the 
 signal by hunting a Papal legate out of the city amid cries
 
 Chap. B.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 287 
 
 of "usurer" and "simoniac" from the mob of students. 
 Fulk Fitz-Warenne in the name of the barons bade a 
 Papal collector begone out of England. "If you tarry- 
 here three days longer," he added, "you and your com- 
 pany sliall be cut to pieces." For a time Henry himself 
 was swept away by the tide of national indignation. Let- 
 ters from the King, the nobles, and the prelates, protested 
 against the Papal exactions, and orders were given that 
 no money should be exported from the realm. But the 
 threat of interdict soon drove Henry back on a policy of 
 spoliation in which he went hand in hand with Rome. 
 The temper which this oppression begot among even the 
 most sober churchmen has been preserved for us by an an- 
 nalist whose pages glow with the new outburst of patriotic 
 feeling. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he in reality 
 is the last, of our monastic historians. The school of St. 
 Alban's survived indeed till a far later time, but its writers 
 dwindle into mere annalists, whose view is bounded by the 
 abbey precincts and whose work is as colorless as it is je- 
 june. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the nar- 
 rative, the copiousness of his information on topics whether 
 national or European, the general fairness and justice of 
 his comments, are only surpassed by the patriotic fire and 
 enthusiasm of the whole. He had succeeded Rover of 
 Wendover as chronicler at St. Alban's ; and the Greater 
 Chronicle with an abridgement of it which long passed 
 under the name of Matthew of Westminster, a " History 
 of the English," and the "Lives of the Earlier Abbots," 
 are onl}' a few among the voluminous works which attest 
 his prodigious industry. He was an artist as well as an 
 historian, and many of the manuscripts which are pre- 
 served are illustrated by his own hand. A large circle of 
 correspondents — bishops like Grosseteste, ministers like 
 Hubert de Burgh, oiSicials like Alexander de Swereford — 
 furnished him with minute accounts of political and eccle- 
 siastical proceedings. Pilgrims from the East and Papal 
 agents brought news of foreign events to his scriptorium
 
 •288 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 at St. Alban's. He had access to and quotes largely from 
 state documents, charters and exchequer rolls. The fre- 
 quency of royal visits to the abbey brought him a store of 
 political intelligence, and Henry himself contributed to 
 the great chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a 
 faithfulness the memory of his weakness and misgovem- 
 ment. On one solemn feast-day the King recognized Mat- 
 thew, and bidding him sit on the middle step between the 
 floor and the throne begged him to write the story of the 
 day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Alban's he in- 
 vited him to his table and chamber, and enumerated by 
 name two hundred and fifty of the English baronies for 
 his information. But all this royal patronage has left lit- 
 tle mark on his work. " The case," as Matthew says, "of 
 historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they 
 provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend 
 God." With all the fulness of the school of court histori- 
 ans, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which in form he 
 belonged, Matthew Paris combines an independence and 
 patriotism which is strange to their pages. He denounces 
 with the same unsparing energy the oppression of the Pa- 
 pacy and of the King. His point of aim is neither that of 
 a courtier nor of a churchman, but of an Englishman, and 
 the new national tone of his chronicle is but the echo of 
 a national sentiment which at last bound nobles and yeo- 
 men and churchmen together into a people resolute to wrest 
 freedom from the Crown. 
 
 The nation was outraged like the Church. Two solemn 
 confirmations of the Charter failed to bring about any 
 compliance with its provisions. In 1248, in 1249, and 
 again in 1255 the great Council fruitlessly renewed its de- 
 mand for a regular ministry, and the growing resolve of 
 the nobles to enforce good government was seen in their 
 offer of a grant on condition that the great officers of the 
 Crown were appointed in the Council of the Baronage. 
 But Henry refused their offer with scorn and sold his plate 
 to the citizens of London to find payment for his hous©-
 
 CUAP. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 289 
 
 hold. A spirit of mutinous defiance broke out on the fail- 
 ure of all legal remedy. When the Earl of Norfolk refused 
 him aid Henry answered with a threat. " I will send reap- 
 ers and reap your fields for you," he said. "And I will 
 send you back the heads of your reapers, " replied the Earl. 
 Hampered by the profusion of the court and the refusal of 
 supplies, the Crown was in fact penniless; and j-et never 
 was money more wanted, for a trouble which had long 
 pressed upon the English kings had now grown to a height 
 that called for decisive action. Even his troubles at home 
 could not blind Henry to the need of dealing with the difii- 
 culty of "Wales. Of the three Welsh states into which all 
 that remained unconquered of Britain had been broken by 
 the victories of Deorham and Chester, two had long ceased 
 to exist. The country between the Clyde and the Dee had 
 been gradually absorbed by the conquests of Northumbria 
 and the growth of the Scot monarchy. West Wales, be- 
 tween the British Channel and the estuary of the Severn, 
 had yielded to the sword of Ecgberht. But a fiercer re- 
 sistance prolonged the independence of the great central 
 portion which alone in modem language preserves the name 
 of Wales. Comprising in itself the largest and most pow- 
 erful of the British kingdoms, it was aided in its struggle 
 against Mercia by the weakness of its assailant, the young- 
 est and feeblest of the English States, as well as by an in- 
 ternal warfare which distracted the energies of the invad- 
 ers. But Mercia had no sooner risen to supremacy among 
 the English kingdoms than it took the work of conquest 
 vigorously in hand. Offa tore from Wales the borderland 
 between the Severn and the Wye ; the raids of his success- 
 ors carried fire and sword into the heart of the country; 
 and an acknowledgment of the Mercian over-lordship was 
 wrested from the Welsh princes. On the fall of Mercia 
 this overlordship passed to the AVest-Saxon kings, and the 
 Laws of Howel Dda own the payment of a yearly tribute 
 by "the prince of Aberffraw" to "the King of London." 
 The weakness of England during her long struggle with 
 Vol. I.— 19
 
 288 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 at St. Alban's. He had access to and quotes largely from 
 state documents, charters and exchequer rolls. The fre- 
 quency of royal visits to the abbey brought him a store of 
 political intelligence, and Henry himself contributed to 
 the great chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a 
 faithfulness the memory of his weakness and misgovem- 
 ment. On one solemn feast-day the King recognized Mat- 
 thew, and bidding him sit on the middle step between the 
 floor and the throne begged him to write the story of the 
 day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Alban's he in- 
 vited him to his table and chamber, and enumerated by 
 name two hundred and fifty of the English baronies for 
 his information. But all this royal patronage has left lit- 
 tle mark on his work. " The case," as Matthew says, " of 
 historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they 
 provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend 
 God." With all the fulness of the school of court histori- 
 ans, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which in form he 
 belonged, Matthew Paris combines an independence and 
 patriotism which is strange to their pages. He denounces 
 with the same unsparing energy the oppression of the Pa- 
 pacy and of the King. His point of aim is neither that of 
 a courtier nor of a churchman, but of an Englishman, and 
 the new national tone of his chronicle is but the echo of 
 a national sentiment which at last bound nobles and yeo- 
 men and churchmen together into a people resolute to wrest 
 freedom from the Crown. 
 
 The nation was outraged like the Church. Two solemn 
 confirmations of the Charter failed to bring about any 
 compliance with its provisions. In 1248, in 1249, and 
 again in 1255 the great Council fruitlessly renewed its de- 
 mand for a regular ministry, and the growing resolve of 
 the nobles to enforce good government was seen in their 
 offer of a grant on condition that the great officers of the 
 Crown were appointed in the Council of the Baronage. 
 But Henry refused their offer with scorn and sold his plate 
 to the citizens of London to find payment for his house-
 
 CilAP. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 289 
 
 hold. A spirit of mutinous defiance broke out on the fail- 
 ure of all legal remedy. When the Earl of Norfolk refused 
 him aid Henry answered with a threat. " I will send reap- 
 ers and reap j'our fields for you," he said. "And I will 
 send you back the heads of your reapers, " replied the Earl. 
 Hampered by the profusion of the court and the refusal of 
 supplies, the Crown was in fact penniless ; and yet never 
 was money more wanted, for a trouble which had long 
 pressed upon the English kings had now grown to a height 
 that called for decisive action. Even his troubles at home 
 could not blind Henry to the need of dealing with the difii- 
 culty of Wales. Of the three Welsh states into which all 
 that remained unconquered of Britain had been broken by 
 the victories of Deorham and Chester, two had long ceased 
 to exist. The country between the Clyde and the Dee had 
 been gradually absorbed by the conquests of Northumbria 
 and the growth of the Scot monarchy. West Wales, be- 
 tween the British Channel and the estuary of the Severn, 
 had yielded to the sword of Ecgberht. But a fiercer re- 
 sistance prolonged the independence of the great central 
 portion which alone in modern language preserves the name 
 of Wales. Comprising in itself the largest and most pow- 
 erful of the British kingdoms, it was aided in its struggle 
 against Mercia by the weakness of its assailant, the young- 
 est and feeblest of the English States, as well as by an in- 
 ternal warfare which distracted the energies of the invad- 
 ers. But Mercia had no sooner risen to supremacy among 
 the English kingdoms than it took the work of conquest 
 vigorously in hand. Offa tore from Wales the borderland 
 between the Severn and the Wye ; the raids of his success- 
 ors carried fire and sword into the heart of the country; 
 and an acknowledgment of the Mercian over-lordship was 
 wrested from the Welsh princes. On the fall of Mercia 
 this overlordship passed to the West-Saxon kings, and the 
 Laws of Howel Dda own the payment of a yearly tribute 
 by "the prince of Aberffraw" to "the King of London." 
 The weakness of England during her long struggle with 
 Vol. I.— 19
 
 290 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IH. 
 
 the Danes revived the hopes of British independence; i\ 
 was the co-operation of the Welsh on which the Northmen 
 reckoned in their attack on the house of Ecgberht. But 
 with the fall of the Danelagh the British princes were 
 again brought to submission, and when in the midst of the 
 Confessor's reign the Welsh seized on a quarrel between 
 the houses of Leof ric and God wine to cross the border and 
 carry their attacks into England itself, the victories of 
 Harold reasserted the English supremacy. Disembark- 
 ing on the coast his light-armed troops he penetrated to 
 the heart of the mountains, and the successors of the Welsh 
 prince Gruffydd, whose head was the trophy of the cam- 
 paign, swore to observe the old fealty and render the 
 whole tribute to the English crown. 
 
 A far more desperate struggle began when the wave of 
 Norman conquest broke on the Welsh frontier. A chain 
 of great earldoms, settled by William along the border- 
 land, at once bridled the old marauding forays. From his 
 county palatine of Chester Hugh the Wolf harried Flint- 
 shire into a desert. Robert of Belesme in his earldom of 
 Shrewsbury "slew the Welsh," says a chronicler, "like 
 sheep, conquered them, enslaved them and flayed them with 
 nails of iron." The earldom of Gloucester curbed Britain 
 along the lower Severn. Backed by these greater baronies 
 a horde of lesser adventurers obtained the royal " license 
 to make conquest on the W^elsh. " Monmouth and Aberga- 
 venny were seized and guarded by Norman castellans; 
 Bernard of Neuf marche won the lordship of Brecknock ; 
 Roger of Montgomery raised the town and fortress in Po- 
 W3'sland which still preserves his name. A great rising of 
 the whole people in the days of the second William won 
 back some of this Norman spoil. The new castle of Mont- 
 gomery was burned, Brecknock and Cardigan were cleared 
 of the invaders, and the Welsh poured ravaging over the 
 English border. Twice the Red King carried his arms 
 fruitlessly among the mountains against enemies who took 
 refuge in their fastnesses till famine and hardship drove
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 291 
 
 his broken host into retreat. The wiser policy of Henry 
 the First fell back on his father's system of gradual con- 
 quest. A new tide of invasion flowed along the southern 
 coast, where the land was level and open and accessible 
 from the sea. The attack was aided bj^ strife in the country 
 itself. Robert Fitz-Hamo, the lord of Gloucester, was sum- 
 moned to his aid by a Welsh chieftain ; and his defeat of 
 Rhys ap Tewdor, the last prince under whom Southern 
 Wales was united, produced an anarchy which enabled 
 Robert to land safely on the coast of Glamorgan, to conquer 
 the country round, and to divide it among his soldiers. A 
 force of Flemings and Englishmen followed the Earl of 
 Clare as he landed near Milford Haven and pushing back 
 the British inhabitants settled a " Little England" in the 
 present Pembrokeshire. A few daring adventurers ac- 
 companied the Norman Lord of Kemeys into Cardigan, 
 where land might be had for the winning by any one who 
 would "wage war on the Welsh." 
 
 It was at this moment, when the utter subjugation of 
 the British race seemed at hand, that a new outburst 
 of energy roiled back the tide of invasion and changed the 
 fitful resistance of the separate Welsh provinces into a 
 national effort to regain independence. To all outer seem- 
 ing Wales had become utterly barbarous. Stripped of 
 every vestige of the older Roman civilization by ages of 
 bitter warfare, of civil strife, of estrangement from the 
 general culture of Christendom, the unconquered Britons 
 had sunk into a mass of savage herdsmen, clad in the skins 
 and fed by the milk of the cattle they tended. Faithless, 
 greedy, and revengeful, retaining no higher political or- 
 ganization than that of the clan, their strength was broken 
 by ruthless feuds, and they were united only in battle or 
 in raid against the stranger But in the heart of the wild 
 people there still lingered a spark of the poetic fire which 
 had nerved it four hundred years before through Aneurin 
 and Lly warch Hen to its struggle with the earliest Eng- 
 lishmen. At the hour of its lowest degradation the silence
 
 293 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 of Wales was suddenly broken by a crowd of singers. The 
 Bong of the twelfth century burst forth, not from one bard 
 or another, but from the nation at large. The Welsh 
 temper indeed was steeped in poetry. " In every house," 
 says the shrewd Gerald du Barri, " strangers who arrived 
 in the i.^orning were entertained till eventide with the talk 
 of maidens and the music of the harp." A romantic lit- 
 erature, which was destined to leaven the fancy of Western 
 Europe, had grown up among this wild people and found 
 an admirable means of utterance in its tongue. The Welsh 
 language was as real a development of the old Celtic Ian 
 guage heard by Csesar as the Romance tongues are devel- 
 opments of Caesar's Latin, but at a far earlier date than 
 any other language of modern Europe it had attained to 
 definite structure and to settled literary form. No other 
 mediaeval literature shows at its outset the same elaborate 
 and completed organization as that of the Welsh. But 
 within these settled forms the Celtic fancy played with a 
 startling freedom. In one of the later poems Gwion the 
 Little transforms himself into a hare, a fish, a bird, a grain 
 of wheat ; but he is only the symbol of the strange shapes 
 in which the Celtic fancy embodies itself in the romantic 
 tales which reached their highest perfection in the legends 
 of Arthur. 
 
 The gay extravagance of these " Mabinogion" flings de- 
 fiance to all fact, tradition, probability, and revels in the im- 
 possible and unreal. When Arthur sails into the unknown 
 world it is in a ship of glass. The " descent into hell," as 
 a Celtic poet paints it, shakes off the mediaeval horror 
 with the mediaeval reverence, and the knight who 
 achieves the quest spends his years of infernal du- 
 rance in hunting and minstrelsy, and in converse with 
 fair women. The world of the Mabinogion is a world 
 of pure fantasy, a new earth of marvels and enchant- 
 ments, of dark forests whose silence is broken by the her- 
 mit's bell and sunny glades where the light pla.ys on tho 
 hero's armor. Each figure as it moves across the poet's
 
 CbxP. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 293 
 
 canvas is bright with glancing color. " The maiden was 
 clothed in a robe of flame-colored silk, and about her neck 
 was a collar of ruddy gold in which were precious emer- 
 alds and rubies. Her head was of brighter gold than the 
 flower of the broom, her skin was whiter than the foam 
 of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers 
 than the blossoms of the wood-anemone amid the spray of 
 the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the 
 glance of the falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her 
 bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, 
 her cheek was redder than the reddest roses." Every- 
 where there is an Oriental profusion of gorgeous imagery, 
 but the gorgeousness is seldom oppressive. The sensibil- 
 ity of the Celtic temper, so quick to perceive beauty, so 
 eager in its thirst for life, its emotions, its adventures, its 
 sorrows, its joys, is tempered by a passionate melancholy 
 that expresses its revolt against the impossible, by an in- 
 stinct of what is noble, by a sentiment that discovers the 
 weird charm of nature. The wildest extravagance of the 
 tale-teller is relieved by some graceful play of pure fancy, 
 some tender note of feeling, some magical touch of beauty. 
 As Kalweb's greyhounds bound from side to side of their 
 master's steed, they " sport round him like two sea-swal- 
 lows." His spear is "swifter than the fall of the dew- 
 drop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth when the 
 dew of June is at the heaviest. " A subtle, observant love 
 of nature and natural beauty takes fresh color from the 
 passionate human sentiment with which it is imbued. " I 
 love the birds," sings Gwalchmai, "and their sweet voices 
 in the lulling songs of the wood ;" he watches at night be- 
 side the fords " among the untrodden grass" to hear the 
 nightingale and watch the play of the sea-mew. Even 
 patriotism takes the same picturesque form. The Welsh 
 poet hates the flat and sluggish land of the Saxon ; as he 
 dwells on his own he tells of " its sea-coast and its moun- 
 tains, its towns on the forest border, its fair landscape, its 
 dales, its waters, and its valleys, its white sea-mews, its
 
 294 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 beauteous women." Here as everywhere the sentiment of 
 nature passes swiftly and subtly into the sentiment of a 
 human tenderness : " I love its fields clothed with tender 
 trefoil," goes on the song; " I love the marches of Merion- 
 eth where m}' head was pillowed on a snow-white arm." 
 In the Celtic love of woman there is little of the Teutonic 
 depth and earnestness, but in its stead a childlike spirit of 
 delicate enjoyment, a faint distant flush of passion like 
 the rose-light of dawn on a snowy mountain peak, a play- 
 ful delight in beauty. " White is my love as the apple blos- 
 som, as the ocean's spray ; her face shines like the pearly 
 dew on Eryri ; the glow of her cheeks is like the light of 
 sunset." The buoyant and elastic temper of the French 
 trouveur was spiritualized in the Welsh singers by a more 
 refined poetic feeling. " Whoso beheld her was filled with 
 her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she 
 trod." A touch of pure fancy such as this removes its ob- 
 ject out of the sphere of passion into one of delight and 
 reverence. 
 
 It is strange to pass from the world of actual Welsh his- 
 tory into such a world as this. But side by side with this 
 wayward, fanciful stream of poesy and romance ran a 
 torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier bards, 
 their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew 
 in ode after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often 
 prosaic, but fused into poetry by the intense fire of patri- 
 otism which glowed within them. Every fight, every 
 hero had its verse. The names of older singers, of Talie- 
 sin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hen, were revived in bold 
 forgeries to animate the national resistance and to proph- 
 esy victory. It was in North Wales that the spirit of pa- 
 triotism received its strongest inspiration from this burst 
 of song. Again and again Henry the Second was driven 
 to retreat from the impregnable fastnesses where the " Lords 
 of Snowdon," the princes of the house of Gruffydd ap 
 Conan, claimed supremacy over the whole of Wales. 
 Once in the pass of Consilt a cry arose that the King was
 
 Chap. 8.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 295 
 
 slain, Henry of Essex flung down the royal standard, and 
 the King's desperate efforts could hardly save his army 
 from utter rout. The bitter satire of the Welsh singers 
 bade him knight his horse, since its speed had alone saved, 
 him from capture. In a later campaign the invaders were 
 met by storms of rain, and forced to abandon their bag 
 gage in a headlong flight to Chester. The greatest of the 
 Welsh odes, that known to English readers in Gray's trans- 
 lation as "The Triumph of Owen," is Gwalchmai's song 
 of victory over the repulse of an English fleet from Aber- 
 menai. 
 
 The long reign of Llewelyn, the son of Jorwerth, seemed 
 destined to realize the hopes of his countrymen. The hom- 
 age which he succeeded in extorting from the whole of the 
 Welsh chieftains during a reign which lasted from 1194 
 to 1240 placed him openly at the head of his race, and 
 gave a new character to its struggle with the English 
 King. In consolidating his authority within his own do- 
 mains, and in the assertion of his lordship over the princes 
 of the south, Llewelyn ap Jorwerth aimed steadily at se- 
 curing the means of striking off the yoke of the Saxon. 
 It was in vain that John strove to buy his friendship by 
 the hand of his natural daughter Johanna. Fresh raids 
 on the Marches forced the King to enter Wales in 1211; 
 but though his army reached Snowdon it fell back like its 
 predecessors, starved and broken before an enemy it could 
 never reach. A second attack in the same j^ear had better 
 success. The chieftains of South Wales were drawn from 
 their new allegiance to join the English forces, and 
 Llewelyn, prisoned in his fastnesses, was at last driven to 
 submit. But the ink of the treaty was hardly dry before 
 Wales was again on fire ; a common fear of the English 
 once more united its chieftains, and the war between John 
 and his barons soon removed all dread of a new invasion. 
 Absolved from his allegiance to an excommunicated King, 
 and allied with the barons under Fitzwalter — too glad to 
 enlist in their cause a prince who could hold in check the
 
 :!9G HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 nobles of the border country where the royalist cause was 
 strongest — Llewelyn seized his opportunity to reduce 
 Shrewsbur}', to annex Powys, the central district of Wales 
 where the English influence had always been powerful, 
 to clear the royal garrisons from Caermarthen and Cardi- 
 gan, and to force even the Flemings of Pembroke to do 
 him homage. 
 
 England watched these efforts of the subject race with 
 an anger still mingled with contempt. " Who knows not," 
 exclaims Matthew Paris as he dwells on the new preten- 
 sions of the Welsh ruler, " who knows not that the Prince 
 of Wales is a petty vassal of the King of England?" But 
 the temper of Llewelyn's own people was far other than 
 the temper of the English chronicler. The hopes of Wales 
 rose higher and higher with each triumph of the Lord of 
 Snowdon. His court was crowded with bardic singers. 
 " He pours," sings one of them, "his gold into the lap of 
 the bard as the ripe fruit falls from the trees." Gold 
 however was hardly needed to wake their enthusiasm. 
 Poet after poet sang of "the Devastator of England," the 
 "Eagle of men that loves not to lie nor sleep," "towering 
 above the rest of men with his long red lance," his "red 
 helmet of battle crested with a fierce wolf. " " The sound 
 of his coming is like the roar of the wave as it rushes to 
 the shore, that can neither be stayed nor hushed." Lesser 
 bards strung together Llewelyn's victories in rough jingle 
 of rhyme and hounded him on to the slaughter. " Be of 
 good courage in the slaughter," sings Elidir; "cling to thy 
 work, destroy England, and plunder its multitudes." A 
 fierce thirst for blood runs through the abrupt passionate 
 verses of the court singers. "Swansea, that tranquil 
 town, was broken in heaps," bursts out a triumphant 
 bard; "St. Clears, with its bright white lands, it is not 
 Saxons who hold it now!" "In Swansea, the key of 
 Lloegria, we made widows of all the wives." " The dread 
 Eagle is wont to lay corpses in rows, and to feast with the 
 leader of wolves and with hovering ravens glutted with
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 297 
 
 flesh, butchers with keen scent of carcasses." "Better," 
 closes the song, " better the grave than the life of man 
 who sighs when the horns call him forth to the squares of 
 battle." 
 
 But even in bardic verse Llewelyn rises high out of the 
 mere mob of chieftains who live by rapine, and boast as 
 the Hirlas-horn passes from hand to hand through the hall 
 that " they take and give no quarter." "Tender-hearted, 
 wise, witty, ingenious," he was "the great Csesar" who 
 was to gather beneath his sway the broken fragments of 
 the Celtic race. Mysterious prophecies, the prophecies of 
 Merlin the Wise which floated from lip to lip and were 
 heard even along the Seine and the Rhine, came home 
 again to nerve Wales to its last struggle with the stranger. 
 Medrawd and Arthur, men whispered, would appear once 
 more on earth to fight over again the fatal battle of Camlan 
 in which the hero-king perished. The last conqueror of 
 the Celtic race, Cadwallon, still lived to combat for his 
 people. The supposed verses of Taliesin expressed the un- 
 dying hope of a restoration of the Cymry. " In their hands 
 shall be all the land from Brittany to Man : . . . a rumor 
 shall arise that the Germans are moving out of Britain 
 back again to their fatherland." Gathered up in the 
 strange work of Geoff ry of Monmouth, these predictions 
 had long been making a deep impression not on Wales 
 only but on its conquerors. It was to meet the dreams of 
 a yet living Arthur that the grave of the legendary hero- 
 king at Glastonbury was found and visited by Henry the 
 Second. But neither trick nor conquest could shake the 
 firm faith of the Celt in the ultimate victory of his race. 
 " Think you," said Henry to a Welsh chieftain who joined 
 his host, " that your people of rebels can withstand my 
 army?" "My people," replied the chieftain, "may be 
 weakened by your might, and even in great part destroyed, 
 but unless the wrath of God be on the side of its foe it 
 will not perish utterly. Nor deem I that other race or 
 other tongue will answer for this corner of the world be-
 
 tOS HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPI.E. [Book III, 
 
 fore the Judge of all at the last day save this people and 
 tongue of Wales." So ran the popular rhyme, " Their Lord 
 they will praise, their speech they shall keep, their land 
 they shall lose — except wild Wales." 
 
 Faith and prophecy seemed justified by the growing 
 strength of the British people. The weakness and dissen- 
 sions which characterized the reign of Henry the Third 
 enabled Llewelyn ap Jorwerth to preserve a practical inde- 
 pendence till the close of his life, when a fresh acknowledg- 
 ment of the English supremacy was wrested from him by 
 Archbishop Edmund. But the triumphs of his arms were 
 renewed by Llewelyn, the son of Gryffydd, who followed 
 him in 1246. The raids of the new chieftain swept the 
 border to the very gates of Chester, while his conquest of 
 Glamorgan seemed to bind the whole people together in a 
 power strong enough to meet any attack from the stranger. 
 So pressing was the danger that it called the King's eldest 
 son, Edward, to the field; but his first appearance in arms 
 ended in a crushing defeat. The defeat however remained 
 unavenged. Henry's dreams were of mightier enterprises 
 than the reduction of the Welsh. The Popes were still 
 fighting their weary battle against the House of Hohen- 
 staufen, and were offering its kingdom of Sicily, which 
 they regarded as a forfeited fief of the Holy See, to any 
 power that would aid them in the struggle. In 1254 it 
 was offered to the King's second son, Edmund. With 
 imbecile pride Henry accepted the offer, prepared to send 
 an army across the Alps, and pledged England to repay 
 the sums which the Pope was borrowing for the purposes 
 of his war. In a Parliament at the opening of 1257 he 
 demanded an aid and a tenth from the clergy. A fresh 
 demand was made in 1258. But the patience of the realm 
 was at last exhausted. Earl Simon had returned in 1253 
 from his government of Gascony, and the fruit of his med- 
 itations during the four years of his quiet stay at home, a 
 quiet broken only by short embassies to France and Scot- 
 land which showed there was as yet no open quarrel with
 
 Chap. 3. J THF CHARTER. 1204—1291. 299 
 
 Henry, was seen in a league of the baronage and in their 
 adoption of a new and startling policy. The past half 
 century had shown both the strength and weakness of the 
 Charter : its strength as a rallying-point for the baronage 
 and a definite assertion of rights which the King could be 
 made to acknowledge ; its weakness in providing no means 
 for the enforcement of its own stipulations. Henry had 
 sworn again and again to observe the Charter, and his 
 oath was no sooner taken than it was unscrupulously 
 broken. The barons had secured the freedom of the 
 realm ; the secret of their long patience during the reign 
 of Henry lay in the difficulty of securing its right admin- 
 istration. It was this difficulty which Earl Simon was 
 prepared to solve when action was forced on him by the 
 stir of the realm. A great famine added to the sense of 
 danger from Wales and from Scotland and to the irrita- 
 tion at the new demands from both Henry and Rome with 
 which the year 1258 opened. It was to arrange for a cam- 
 paign against Wales that Henry called a parliament in 
 April. But the baronage appeared in arms, with Glouces- 
 ter and Leicester at their head. The King was forced to 
 consent to the appointment of a committee of twenty-four 
 to draw up terms for the reform of the state. The Twenty- 
 four again met the Parliament at Oxford in June, and 
 although half the committee consisted of royal ministers 
 and favorites it was impossible to resist the tide of popular 
 feeling. Hugh Bigod, one of the firmest adherents of the 
 two Earls, was chosen as Justiciar. The claim to elect 
 this great officer was in fact the leading point in the baro- 
 nial policy. But further measures were needed to hold in 
 check such arbitrary misgovernment as had prevailed dur- 
 ing the past twenty years. By the " Provisions of Oxford" 
 it was agreed that the Great Council should assemble thrice 
 in the year, whether summoned by the King or no ; and 
 on each occasion "the Commonalty shall elect twelve 
 honest men who shall come to the Parliaments, and at 
 .other times when occasion shall be when the King and hia
 
 300 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book in. 
 
 Council shall send for them, to treat of the wants of the 
 King and of his kingdom. And the Commonalty shall 
 hold as established that which these Twelve shall do." 
 Three permanent committees of barons and prelates were 
 named to carry out the work of reform and administration. 
 The reform of the Church was left to the original Twenty- 
 four ; a second Twenty-four negotiated the financial aids ; 
 a Permanent Council of Fifteen advised the King in the 
 ordinary work of Government. The complexity of such 
 an arrangement was relieved by the fact that the members 
 of each of these committees were in great part the same 
 persons. The Justiciar, Chancellor, and the guardians of 
 the King's castles swore to act only with the advice and 
 assent of the Permanent Council, and the first two great 
 officers, with the Treasurer, were to give account of their 
 proceedings to it at the end of the year. Sheriffs were to 
 be appointed for a single year only, no doubt by the Coun- 
 cil, from among the chief tenants of the county, and no 
 undue fees were to be exacted for the administration of 
 justice in their court. 
 
 A royal proclamation in the English tongue, the first in 
 that tongue since the Conquest which has reached us, 
 ordered the observance of these Provisions. The King 
 was in fact helpless, and resistance came only from the 
 foreign favorites, who refused to surrender the castles and 
 honors which had been granted to them. But the Twenty- 
 four were resolute in their action ; and an armed demon- 
 stration of the barons drove the foreigners in flight over 
 sea. The whole royal power was now in fact in the hands 
 of the committees appointed by the Great Council. But 
 the measures of the barons showed little of the wisdom 
 and energy which the country had hoped for. In October, 
 1259, the knighthood complained that the barons had done 
 nothing but seek their own advantage in the recent 
 changes. This protest produced the Provisions of West- 
 minster, which gave protection to tenants against their 
 feudal lords» regulated legal procedure in the feudal courts.
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 301 
 
 appointed four knights in each shire to watch the justice 
 of the sheriffs, and made other temporary enactments for 
 the furtherance of justice. But these Provisions brought 
 little fruit, and a tendency to mere feudal privilege showed 
 itself in an exemption of all nobles and prelates from at- 
 tendance at the Sheriff's courts. Their foreign policy was 
 more vigorous and successful. All further payment to 
 Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical, was prohibited; 
 formal notice was given to the Pope of England's with- 
 drawal from the Sicilian enterprise, peace put an end to 
 the incursions of the Welsh, and negotiations on the foot- 
 ing of a formal abandonment of the King's claim to Nor- 
 mandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou ended in 
 October, 1259, in a peace with France. 
 
 This peace, the triumph of that English policy which 
 had been struggling ever since the days of Hubert de 
 Burgh with the Continental policy of Henry and his for- 
 eign advisers, was the work of the Earl of Leicester. The 
 revolution had doubtless been mainly Simon's doing. In 
 the summer of 1258, while the great change was going 
 on, a thunder-storm drove the King as he passed along 
 the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the 
 Earl was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shel- 
 ter with him and have no fear of the storm. The King 
 refused with petulant wit, " If I fear the thunder, I fear 
 you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." 
 But Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous sys- 
 tem of government which the Barons devised, and it was 
 with reluctance that he was brought to swear to the Pro- 
 visions of Oxford which embodied it. With their home 
 government he had little to do, for from the autumn of 
 1258 to that of 1250 he was chiefly busied in negotiation 
 in France. But already his breach with Gloucester and 
 the bulk of his fellow-councillors was marked. In the 
 Lent Parliament of 1259 he had reproached them, and 
 Gloucester above all, with faithlessness to their trust. 
 " The things we are treating of," he cried, " we have sworn
 
 303 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 to carry out. With such feeble and faithless men I care 
 not to have aught to do !" The peace with France was 
 hardly signed when his distrust of his colleagues was 
 verified. Henry's withdrawal to the French court at the 
 close of the year for the formal signature of the treaty was 
 the signal for a reactionary movement. From France the 
 King forbade the summoning of a Lent Parliament in 
 12G0 and announced his resumption of the enterprise 
 against Sicily. Both acts were distinct breaches of the 
 Provisions of Oxford, but Henry trusted to the divisions 
 of the Twenty-four. Gloucester was in open feud with 
 Leicester; the Justiciar, Hugh Bigod, resigned his office 
 in the spring ; and both of these leaders drew cautiously 
 to the King. Roger Mortimer and the Earls of Hereford 
 and Norfolk more openly espoused the royal cause, and in 
 February, 1260, Henry had gained confidence enough to 
 announce that as the barons had failed to keep their part 
 of the Provisions he should not keep his. 
 
 Earl Simon almost alone remained unshaken. But his 
 growing influence was seen in the appointment of his sup- 
 porter, Hugh Despenser, as Justiciar in Bigod's place, 
 while his strength was doubled by the accession of the 
 King's son Edward to his side. In the moment of the 
 revolution Edward had vehemently supported the party of 
 the foreigners. But he had sworn to observe the Provi- 
 sions, and the fidelity to his pledge which remained 
 throughout his life the chief note of his temper at once 
 showed itself. Like Simon he protested against the faith- 
 lessness of the barons in the carrying out of their reforms, 
 and it was his strenuous support of the petition of the 
 knighthood that brought about the additional Provisions 
 of 1259. He had been brought up with Earl Simon's sons, 
 and with the Earl himself his relations remained friendly 
 even at the later time of their fatal hostilities. But as 
 yet he seems to have had no distrust of Simon's purposes 
 or policy. His adhesion to the Earl recalled Henry from 
 France ; and the King was at once joined by Gloucester
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 303 
 
 in London while Edward and Simon remained without the 
 walls. But the love of father and son proved too strong 
 to bear political severance, and Edward's reconciliation 
 foiled the Earl's plans. He withdrew to the Welsh border, 
 where fresh troubles were breaking out, while Henry pre- 
 pared to deal his final blow at the government which, tot-= 
 taring as it was, still held him in check, Rome had re- 
 sented the measures which had put an end to her extortions, 
 and it was to Rome that Henry looked for a formal ab- 
 solution from his oath to observe the Provisions. In 
 June, 1261, he produced a Bull annulling the Provisions 
 and freeing him from his oath in a Parliament at Win- 
 chester. The suddenness of the blow forbade open protest 
 and Henry quickly followed up his victory. Hugh Bigod, 
 who had surrendered the Tower and Dover in the spring, 
 surrendered the other castles he held in the autumn. Hugh 
 Despenser was deposed from the Justiciarship and a roy- 
 alist, Philip Basset, appointed in bis place. 
 
 The news of this counter-revolution reunited for a mo- 
 ment the barons. Gloucester joined Earl Simon in calling 
 an autumn Parliament at St. Alban's, and in summoning 
 to it three knights from every shire south of Trent. But 
 the union was a brief one. Gloucester consented to refer 
 the quarrel with the King to arbitration and the Earl of 
 Leicester withdrew in August to France. He saw that 
 for the while there was no means of withstanding Henry, 
 even in his open defiance of the Provisions. Foreign i^ol- 
 diers were brought into the land; the King won back 
 again the appointment of sheriffs. For eighteen months 
 of this new rule Simon could do nothing but wait. But 
 his long absence lulled the old jealousies against him. 
 The confusion of the realm and a fresh outbreak of trou- 
 bles in Wales renewed the disgust at Henry's government, 
 while his unswerving faithfulness to the Provisions fixed 
 the eyes of all Englishmen upon the Earl as their natural 
 leader. The death of Gloucester in the summer of 12G2 
 removed the one barrier to action ; and in the spring of
 
 30-lr HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 1263 Simon landed again in England as the unquestioned 
 head of the baronial party. What immediately forced him 
 to action was a march of Edward with a body of foreign 
 troops against Llewelyn, who was probably by this time 
 in communication if not in actual alliance with the Earl. 
 The chief opponents of Llewelyn among the Marcher 
 Lords were ardent supporters of Henry's misgovernment, 
 and when a common hostility drew the Prince and Earl 
 together, the constitutional position of Llewelyn as an 
 English noble gave formal justification for co-operation 
 with him. At Whitsuntide the barons met Simon at Ox- 
 ford and finally summoned Henry to observe the Provi- 
 sions. His refusal was met by an appeal to arms. 
 Throughout the country the younger nobles flocked to 
 Simon's standard, and the young Earl of Gloucester, Gil- 
 bert of Clare, became his warmest supporter. His rapid 
 movements foiled all opposition. While Henry vainly 
 strove to raise money and men, Simon swept the Welsh 
 border, marched through Reading on Dover, and finally 
 appeared before London. 
 
 The Earl's triumph was complete. Edward after a 
 brief attempt at resistance was forced to surrender Wind- 
 sor and disband his foreign troops. The rising of London 
 in the cause of the barons left Henry helpless. But at the 
 moment of triumph the Earl saw himself anew forsaken. 
 The bulk of the nobles again drew toward the King ; only 
 six of the twelve barons who had formed the patriot half 
 of the committee of 1258, only four of the twelve repre- 
 sentatives of the community at that date, were now with 
 the Earl. The dread too of civil war gave strength to the 
 cry for a compromise, and at the end of the year it was 
 agreed that the strife should be left to the arbitration of 
 the French King, Lewis the Ninth. But saint and just 
 ruler as he was, the royal power was in the conception of 
 Lewis a divine thing, which no human power could limit 
 or fetter, and his decision, which was given in January, 
 1264, annulled the whole of the Provisions. Only the
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 305 
 
 Charters granted before the Provisions were to be ob- 
 served. The appointment and removal of all officers of 
 state was to be wholly with the King, and he was suffered 
 to call aliens to his councils if he would. The Mise of 
 Amiens was at once confirmed by the Pope, and crushing 
 blow as it was, the barons felt themselves bound by the 
 award. It was only the exclusion of aliens — a point 
 which they had not purposed to submit to arbitration — 
 which they refused to concede. Luckily Henry was as 
 inflexible on this point as on the rest, and the mutual dis- 
 trust prevented any real accommodation. 
 
 But Henry had to reckon on more than the baronage. 
 Deserted as he was by the greater nobles, Simon was far 
 from standing alone. Throughout the recent struggle the 
 new city governments of the craft-guilds, which were 
 known by the name of " Communes, " had shown an en- 
 thusiastic devotion to his cause. The Queen was stopped 
 in her attempt to escape from the Tower by an angry mob, 
 who drove her back with stones and foul words. When 
 Henry attempted to surprise Leicester in his quarters at 
 South wark, the Londoners burst the gates which had been 
 locked by the richer burghers against him, and rescued 
 him by a welcome into the city. , The clergy and the uni- 
 versities went in sympathy with the towns, and in spite 
 of the taunts of the royalists, who accused him of seeking 
 allies against the nobility in the common people, the popu- 
 lar enthusiasm gave a strength to the Earl which sustained 
 him even in this darkest hour of the struggle. He at once) 
 resolved on resistance. The French award had luckily 
 reserved the rights of Englishmen to the liberties they had 
 enjoyed before the Provisions of Oxford, and it was easy 
 for Simon to prove that the arbitrary power it gave to the 
 Crown was as contrary to the Charter as to the Provisions 
 themselves. London was the first to reject the decision ; 
 in March, 1264, its citizens mustered at the call of the 
 town-bell at Saint Paul's, seized the royal officials, and 
 plundered the royal parks. But an army had already 
 Vol. I.— 20
 
 306 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IH. 
 
 mustered in great force at the King's summons, while 
 Leicester found himself deserted bj'- the bulk of the baron- 
 age. Every daj' brought news of ill. A detachment from 
 Scotland joined Heur^^'s forces. The younger De Mont- 
 fort was taken prisoner. Northampton was captured, the 
 King raised the siege of Rochester, and a rapid march of 
 Earl Simon's onh* saved London itself from a surprise by 
 Edward. But betrayed as he was, the Earl remained 
 firm to the cause. He would fight to the end, he said, 
 even were he and his sons left to fight alone. With an 
 army reinforced by 15,000 Londoners, he marched in May 
 to the relief of the Cinque Ports which were now threat- 
 ened by the King. Even on the march he was forsaken 
 by many of the nobles who follow^ed him. Halting at 
 Fletching in Sussex, a few miles from Lewes, w^here the 
 royal army was encamped, Earl Simon with the 3'Oung 
 Earl of Gloucester offered the King compensation for all 
 damage if he would observe the Provisions. Henry's 
 answer was one of defiance, and though numbers were 
 against him, the Earl resolved on battle. His skill as a 
 soldier reversed the advantages of the ground; marching 
 at dawn on the llth of May he seized the heights east- 
 ward of the town and moved down these slopes to an at- 
 tack. His men with white crosses on back and Keast 
 knelt in prayer before the battle opened, and all but reached 
 the town before their approach was perceived. F-dward 
 however opened the fight b}- a furious charge wi»L')i broke 
 the Londoners on Leicester's left. In the bitterjiess of his 
 hatred for the insult to his mother he piirsued them for 
 four miles, slaughtering three thousand men. But he ro- 
 turn.ed to find the battle lost. Cr...\\00(l in the narro\f 
 space between the heights and c>.e river Ouse, a spaca 
 broken by marshes and by the loug street of the town, the 
 royalist centre and left were crushed by Earl Simon. The 
 Earl of Cornwall, now King of the Romans, who, as the 
 mocking song of the victors ran, " makede him a castel of 
 a mulne post" (" he weened that the will-sails were man-
 
 Chap. 3.j tllE CHATtTOR. nOi—mn. SO? 
 
 j^ffiolH," goes on the narcastio verse), was takf^n priHoner, 
 and Honry hini.sfjif captiirf;f]. P^dward cut his way into 
 the Priory only to join in his fatFior'.s HUirend^jr. 
 
 ni'hie victory of Lewes placed i'^arl Simon at the head of 
 the state. " Now England hreathes in the hojKi of lil^ierty," 
 sang a fx>et of the time; "the P^iglinh were despised like 
 dogs, but now they have lifte<l up their head and their 
 {(XiH are vanquished." Ijut the mofleration of the terms 
 agreed upon in the Mise of Lfjwen, a convention fx^tween 
 the King and his captors, shows Simon's sens^i of the diffi- 
 culties of his f/jsition. ""J'he question of the Provisions 
 wfis again to Ixj submitted to arbitration; and a parlia- 
 ment in June, to which four knights were summoned from 
 every cr^unty, placed the administration till this arbitra- 
 tion was complete in the liands of a new council of nine 
 to be nominated Tjy the Karls of Leicester and Glouc^jstxT 
 and the- patriotic Bishop of Chichester. R^^sfx^nsihility to 
 the community was provided for by the declaration of a 
 right in the Vx^dy of barons and prelates to remove either 
 of the Three Elect<jrs, who in turn could displace or ap- 
 \xAnt the members of the Council. Such a constitution 
 was of a different order from the cumbrous and oligarchi- 
 cal committ^^es of 12.08. But it harl little time to work in. 
 The plans for a fresh arbitration broke down. Lewis re- 
 fused t() review his decision, and all schemes for setting 
 fresh judges >>etween the King and his itaoiAa were de< 
 feated by a formal condemnation of the barons' cause is- 
 sued by the Pope. Triumphant as he was indeed Earl 
 Simon's difficulties thickened every day. The Quf^;n with 
 Archbishop Boniface gathered an army in France for an 
 invasion; Roger Mortimer with the Ixjrder barons was 
 still in arms and only held in check by Llewelyn. It was 
 impossible t^> make binding terms with an imprisoned 
 King, yet to relea.se Henry without terms was to renew 
 the war. The imprisonment t<';o gave a shock to pu}>lic 
 feeling which thinner] tlie Earl's ranks. In the new Par- 
 liament which he called at the ox>ening of 12fJo the weak-
 
 308 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 nes8 of the patriotic party among the baronage was shown 
 in the fact that only twenty-three earls and barons could be 
 found to sit beside the hundred and twenty ecclesiastics. 
 
 But it was just this sense of his weakness which 
 prompted the Earl to an act that has done more than any 
 incident of this struggle to immortalize his name. Had 
 the strife been simply a strife for power between the king 
 and the baronage the victory of either would have been 
 equally fatal in its results. The success of the one would 
 have doomed England to a royal despotism, that of the 
 other to a feudal aristocracy. Fortunately for our free- 
 dom the English baronage had been brought too low by 
 the policy of the kings to be able to withstand the crown 
 single-handed. From the first moment of the contest it 
 had been forced to make its cause a national one. The 
 summons of two knights from each county, elected in its 
 county court, to a Parliament in 1254, even before the 
 opening of the struggle, was a recognition of the political 
 weight of the country gentry which was confirmed by the 
 summons of four knights from every county to the Par- 
 liament assembled after the battle of Lewes. The Provi- 
 sions of Oxford, in stipulating for attendance and counsel 
 on the part of twelve delegates of the " commonalty, " gave 
 the first indication of a yet wider appeal to the people at 
 large. But it was the weakness of his party among the 
 baronage at this great crisis which drove Earl Simon to 
 a constitutional change of mighty issue in our history. 
 As before, he summoned two knights from every county. 
 But he created a new force in English politics when he 
 summoned to sit beside them two citizens from every 
 borough. The attendance of delegates from the towns 
 had long been usual in the county courts when any matter 
 respecting their interests was in question ; but it was the 
 writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the mer- 
 chant and the trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, 
 the baron, and the bishop in the parliament of the realm. 
 
 It is only this great event however which enables us to
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 309 
 
 understand the large and prescient nature of Earl Simon's 
 designs. Hardly a few months had passed away since 
 the victory of Lewes when the burghers took their seats at 
 Westminster, yet his government was tottering to its fall. 
 We know little of the Parliament's acts. It seems to 
 have chosen Simon as Justiciar and to have provided for 
 Edward's liberation, though he was still to live under 
 surveillance at Hereford and to surrender his earldom of 
 Chester to Simon, who was thus able to communicate with 
 his Welsh allies. The Earl met the dangers from with- 
 out with complete success. In September, 1264, a general 
 muster of the national forces on Barham Down and a con- 
 trary wind put an end to the projects of invasion enter- 
 tained by the mercenaries whom the Queen had collected 
 in Flanders ; the threats of France died away into nego- 
 tiations ; the Papal legate was forbidden to cross the 
 Channel, and his bulls of excommunication were flung 
 into the sea. But the difficulties at home grew more for- 
 midable every day. The restraint upon Henry and Ed- 
 ward jarred against the national feeling of loyalty, and 
 estranged the mass of Englishmen who always side with 
 the weak. Small as the patriotic party among the barons 
 had been from the first, it grew smaller as dissensions 
 broke out over the spoils of victory. The Earl's justice 
 and resolve to secure the public peace told heavily against 
 him. John Giffard left him because he refused to allow 
 him to exact ransom from a prisoner, contrary to the 
 agreement made after Lewes. A greater danger opened 
 when the young Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with 
 the estates of the foreigners, held himself aloof from the 
 Justiciar, and resented Leicester's prohibition of a tourna- 
 ment, his naming the wardens of the royal castles by his 
 own authority, his holding Edward's fortresses on the 
 Welsh marches by his own garrisons. 
 
 Gloucester's later conduct proves the wisdom of Leices- 
 ter's precautions. In the spring Parliament of 12G5 he 
 openly charged the Earl with violating the Mise of Lewes,
 
 310 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 with t3Tann5^, and with aiming at the crown. Before its 
 close he withdrew to his own hinds in the west and secretly 
 allied himself with Roger Mortimer and the Marcher bar- 
 ons. Earl Simon soon followed him to the west, taking 
 with him the King and Edward. He moved along the 
 Severn, securing its towns, advanced westward to Here- 
 ford, and was marching at the end of June along bad 
 roads into the heart of South Wales to attack the fortresses 
 of Earl Gilbert in Glamorgan when Edward suddenly- 
 made his escape from Hereford and joined Gloucester at 
 Ludlow. The moment had been skilfully chosen, and Ed- 
 ward showed a rare ability in the movements by which 
 he took advantage of the Earl's position. Moving rapidly 
 along the Severn he seized Gloucester and the bridges 
 across the river, destroyed the ships by which Leicester 
 strove to escape across the Channel to Bristol, and cut him 
 off altogether from England. By this movement too he 
 placed himself between the Earl and his son Simon, who 
 was advancing from the east to his father's relief. Turn- 
 ing rapidly on this second force Edward surprised it at 
 Kenilworth and drove it with heavy loss within the walls 
 of the castle. But the success was more than compensated 
 by the opportunity which his absence gave to the Earl of 
 breaking the line of the Severn. Taken by surprise and 
 isolated as he was, Simon had been forced to seek for aid 
 and troops in an avowed alliance with Llewelyn, and it 
 was with Welsh reinforcements that he turned to the east. 
 But the seizure of his ships and of the bridges of the 
 Severn held him a prisoner in Edward's grasp, and a 
 fierce attack drove him back, with broken and starving 
 forces, into the Welsh hills. In utter despair he struck 
 northward to Hereford ; but the absence of Edward now 
 enabled him on the '^d of August to throw his troops in 
 boats across the Severn below Worcester. The news drew 
 Edward quickly back in a fruitless counter-march to the 
 river, for the Earl had already reached Evesham by a long 
 night march on the morning of the 4th, while his son, re-
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 311 
 
 lieved in turn by Edward's coimter-march, had pushed in 
 the same night to the little town of Alcester. The two 
 armies were now but some ten miles apart, and their junc- 
 tion seemed secured. But both were spent with long 
 marching, and while the Earl, listening reluctantly to the 
 request of the King who accompanied him, halted at Eve- 
 sham for mass and dinner, the army of the younger Simon 
 halted for the same purpose at Alcester. 
 
 "Those two dinners doleful were, alas!" sings Robert 
 of Gloucester; for through the same memorable night Ed- 
 ward was hurrying back from the Severn by country cross- 
 lanes to seize the fatal gap that lay between them. As 
 morning broke his army lay across the road that led 
 northward from Evesham to Alcester. Evesham lies in a 
 loop of the river Avon where it bends to the south ; and a 
 height on which Edward ranged his troops closed the one 
 outlet from it save across the river. But a force had been 
 thrown over the river under Mortimer to seize the bridges, 
 and all retreat was thus finally cut off. The approach of 
 Edward's army called Simon to the front, and for the mo- 
 ment he took it for his son's. Though the hope soon died 
 away a touch of soldierly pride moved him as he recog- 
 nized in the orderly advance of his enemies a proof of his 
 own training. "By the arm of St. James," he cried, 
 " they come on in wise fashion, but it was from me that 
 they learned it." A glance however satisfied him of the 
 hopelessness of a struggle ; it was impossible for a hand- 
 ful of horsemen with a mob of half -armed Welshmen to 
 resist the disciplined knighthood of the royal army. " Let 
 us commend our souls to God," Simon said to the little 
 group around him, "for our bodies are the foe's." He 
 bade Hugh Despenser and the rest of his comrades fly 
 from the field. " If he died," was the noble answer, " they 
 had no will to live." In three hours the butchery was 
 over. The Welsh fled at the first onset like sheep, and 
 were cut ruthlessly down in the cornfields and gardens 
 where they sought refuge. The little group of knights
 
 312 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book nt 
 
 around Simon fought desperately, falling one by one till 
 the Earl was left alone. So terrible were his sword-strokes 
 that he had all but gained the hill-top when a lance thrust 
 brought his horse to the ground, but Simon still rejected 
 the summons to yield till a blow from behind felled him 
 mortally wounded to the ground. Then with a last cry 
 of " It is God's grace " the soul of the great patriot passed 
 away. 
 
 The triumphant blare of trumpets which welcomed the 
 rescued King into Evesham, "his men weeping for joy," 
 rang out in bitter contrast to the mourning of the realm. 
 It sounded like the announcement of a reign of terror. 
 The rights and laws for which men had toiled and fought 
 so long seemed to have been swept away in an hour. 
 Every town which had supported Earl Simon was held to 
 be at the King's mercy, its franchises to be forfeited. 
 The Charter of Lynn was annulled ; London was marked 
 out as the special object of Henry's vengeance, and the 
 farms and merchandise of its citizens were seized as first- 
 fruits of its plunder. The darkness which on that fatal 
 morning hid their books from the monks of Evesham as 
 they sang in choir was but a presage of the gloom which 
 fell on the religious houses. From Ramsey, from Eve- 
 sham, from St. Alban's rose the same cry of havoc and 
 rapine. But the plunder of monk and burgess was little 
 to the vast sentence of confiscation which the mere fact of 
 rebellion was held to have passed on all the adherents of 
 Earl Simon. To " disinherit" these of their lands was to 
 confiscate half the estates of the landed gentry of England ; 
 but the hotter royalists declared them disinherited, and 
 Henry was quick to ' lavish their lauds away on favorites 
 and foreigners. The very chroniclers of their party recall 
 the pillage with shame. But all thought of resistance lay 
 hushed in a general terror. Even the younger Simon 
 "saw no other rede" than to release his prisoners. His 
 army, after finishing its meal, was again on its march to 
 join the Earl when the ne\^s of his defeat met it, heralded
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 313 
 
 by a strange darkness that, rising suddenly in the north- 
 west and following as it were on Edward's track served to 
 shroud the mutilations and horrors of the battle-field. The 
 news was soon fatally confirmed. Simon himself could see 
 from ^ar his father's head borne off on a spear-point to 
 be mocked at Wigmore. But the pursuit streamed away 
 southward and westward through the streets of Tewkes- 
 bury, heaped with corpses of the panic-struck Welshmen 
 whom the townsmen slaughtered without pity ; and there 
 was no attack as the little force fell back through the dark- 
 ness and big thunder-drops in despair upon Kenil worth. 
 "I may hang up my axe," are the bitter words which a 
 poet attributes to their leader, " for feebly have I gone ;" 
 and once within the castle he gave way to a wild sorrow, 
 day after day tasting neither meat nor drink. 
 
 He was roused into action again by news of the shame- 
 ful indignities which the Marcher lords had offered to the 
 body of the great Earl before whom they had trembled so 
 long. The knights around him broke out at the tidings 
 in a passionate burst of fury, and clamored for the blood 
 of Richard of Cornwall and his son, who were prisoners in 
 the castle. But Simon had enough nobleness left to inter- 
 pose. "To God and him alone was it owing," Richard 
 owned afterward, " that I was snatched from death." The 
 captives were not only saved, but set free. A Parliament 
 had been called at Winchester at the opening of Septem- 
 ber, and its mere assembly promised an end to the reign 
 of utter lawlessness. A powerful party, too, was known 
 to exist in the royal camp, which, hostile as it had shown 
 itself to Earl Simon, shared his love for English liberties, 
 and the liberation of Richard was sure to aid its efforts. 
 At the head of this party stood the young Earl of Gloucester, 
 Gilbert of Clare, to whose action above all the Earl's 
 overthrow was due. And with Gilbert stood Edward 
 himself. The passion for law, the instinct of good gov- 
 ernment, which were to make his reign so memorable in 
 our history, had declared themselves from the first. He
 
 314 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 had sided with the barons at the outset of their struggle 
 with Henrj' ; he had striven to keep his father true to the 
 Provisions of Oxford. It was only when the figure of 
 Earl Simon seemed to tower above that of Henry himself, 
 vhen the Crown seemed falling into bondage, that Edward 
 •assed to the royal side ; and now that the danger which 
 jie dreaded was over he returned to his older attitude. In 
 the first flush of victory, while the doom of Simon was as 
 yet unknown, Edward had stood alone in desiring his cap- 
 tivity against the cry of the Marcher-lords for his blood. 
 When all was done he wept over the corpse of his cousin 
 and playfellow, Henry de Montfort, and followed the Earl's 
 body to the tomb. But great as was Edward's position 
 after the victory of Evesham, his moderate counsels were 
 as yet of little avail. His efforts in fact were met by those 
 of Henry's second son, Edmund, who had received the 
 lands and earldom of Earl Simon, and whom the dread of 
 any restoration of the house of De Montfort set at the head 
 of the ultra-royalists. Nor was any hope of moderation 
 to be found in the Parliament which met in September, 
 1265. It met in the usual temper of a restoration-Parlia- 
 ment to legalize the outrages of the previous month. The 
 prisoners who had been released from the dungeons of the 
 barons poured into Winchester to add fresh violence to 
 the demands of the Marchers. The wives of the captive 
 loyalists and the widows of the slain were summoned to 
 give fresh impulse to the reaction. Their place of meet- 
 ing added fuel to the fiery passions of the throng, for Win- 
 chester was fresh from its pillage by the younger Simon 
 on his way to Kenilworth, and its stubborn loyalty must 
 have been fanned into a flame by the losses it had endured. 
 In such an assembly no voice of moderation could find a 
 hearing. The four bishops who favored the national cause, 
 the bishops of London and Lincoln, of Worcester and Chi- 
 chester, were excluded from it, and the heads of the relig- 
 ious houses were summoned for the mere purpose of ex- 
 tortion. Its measures were but a confirmation of the
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 315 
 
 violence which had been wrought. All grants made dur- 
 ing the King's " captivity" were revoked. The house of 
 De Montfort was banished from the realm. The charter 
 of London was annulled. The adherents of Earl Simon 
 were disinherited and seizin of their lands was given to 
 the King. 
 
 Henry at once appointed commissioners to survey and 
 take possession of his spoil while he moved to Windsor to 
 triumph in the humiliation of London, Its mayor and 
 forty of its chief citizens waited in the castle yard only to 
 be thrown into prison in spite of a safe-conduct, and Henry 
 entered his capital in triumph as into an enemy's city. 
 The surrender of Dover cu,me to fill his cup of joy, for Rich- 
 ard and Amaury of Montfort had sailed with the Earl's 
 treasure to enlist foreign mercenaries, and it was by this 
 port that their force was destined to land. But a rising 
 of the prisoners detained there compelled its surrender in 
 October, and the success of the royalists seemed complete. 
 In reality their difficulties were but beginning. Their tri- 
 umph over Earl Simon had been a triumph over the relig- 
 ious sentiment of the time, and religion avenged itself 
 in its own way. Everywhere the Earl's death was looked 
 upon as a martyrdom ; and monk and friar united in pray- 
 ing for the souls of the men who fell at Evesham as for 
 soldiers of Christ. It was soon whispered that Heaven 
 was attesting the sanctity of De Montfort by miracles at 
 his tomb. How great was the effect of this belief was seen 
 in the efforts of King and Pope to suppress the miracles^ 
 and in their continuance not only through the reign of 
 Edward the First but even in the days of his successor. 
 But its immediate result was a sudden revival of hope. 
 "Sighs are changed into songs of praise," breaks out a 
 monk of the time, '' and the greatness of our former joy 
 has come to life again !" Nor was it in miracles alone 
 that the "faithful," as they proudly styled themselves, be- 
 gan to look for relief " from the oppression of the malig- 
 nants." A monk of St. Alban's who was penning a eulogy
 
 316 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 of Earl Simon in the midst of this uproar saw the rise of 
 a new spirit of resistance in the streets of the little town. 
 In dread of war it was guarded and strongly closed with 
 bolts and bars, and refused entrance to all strangers, and 
 above all to horsemen, who wished to pass through. The 
 Constable of Hertford, an old foe of the townsmen, boasted 
 that spite of bolts and bars he would enter the place and 
 carry off four of the best villeins captive. He contrived 
 to make his way in ; but as he loitered idly about a butcher 
 who passed by heard him ask his men how the wind stood. 
 The butcher guessed his design to burn the town, and 
 felled him to the ground. The blow roused the townsmen. 
 They secured the Constable and his followers, struck off 
 their heads, and fixed them at the four corners of the 
 borough. 
 
 The popular reaction gave fresh heart to the younger 
 Simon. Quitting Kenilworth, he joined in November John 
 D'Eyvill and Baldewin Wake in the Isle of Axholme where 
 the Disinherited were gathering in arms. So fast did 
 horse and foot flow in to him that Edward himself hur- 
 ried into Lincolnshire to meet this new danger. He saw 
 that the old strife was just breaking out again. The gar- 
 rison of Kenilworth scoured the country ; the men of the 
 Cinque Ports, putting wives and children on board their 
 barks, swept the Channel and harried the coasts; while 
 Llewelyn, who had brought about the dissolution of Par- 
 liament by a raid upon Chester, butchered the forces sent 
 against him and was master of the border. The one thing 
 needed to link the forces of resistance together was a head, 
 and such a head the appearance of Simon at Axholme 
 seemed to promise. But Edward was resolute in his plan 
 of conciliation. Arriving before the camp at the close of 
 1265, he at once entered into negotiations with his cousin, 
 and prevailed on him to quit the island and appear before 
 the King. Richard of Cornwall welcomed Simon at the 
 court, he presented him to Henry as the savior of hie life, 
 and on his promise to surrender Kenilworth Henry gave
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 317 
 
 him the kiss of peace. In spite of the opposition of Roger 
 Mortimer and the Marcher-lords success seemed to be 
 crowning this bold stroke of the peace party when the Earl 
 of Gloucester interposed. Desirous as he was of peace, 
 the blood of De Montfort lay between him and the Earl's 
 sons, and the safety of the one lay in the ruin of the other. 
 In the face of this danger Earl Gilbert threw his weight 
 into the scale of the ultra-royalists, and peace became im- 
 possible. The question of restitution was shelved by a 
 reference to arbitrators ; and Simon, detained in spite of a 
 safe-conduct, moved in Henry's train at Christmas to wit- 
 ness the surrender of Kenilworth which had been stipu- 
 lated as the price of his full reconciliation with the King. 
 But hot blood was now stirred again on both sides. The 
 garrison replied to the royal summons by a refusal to sur- 
 render. They had received ward of the castle, they said, 
 not from Simon but from the Countess, and to none but 
 her would they give it up. The refusal was not likely to 
 make Simon's position an easier one. On his return to 
 London the award of the arbitrators bound him to quit the 
 realm and not to return save with the assent of King and 
 baronage when all were at peace. He remained for awhile 
 in free custody at London; but warnings that he was 
 doomed to life-long imprisonment drove him to flight, and 
 he finally sought a refuge over sea. 
 
 His escape set England again on fire. Llewelyn wasted 
 the border; the Cinque Ports held the sea; the garrison 
 of Kenilworth pushed their raids as far as Oxford ; Balde- 
 win Wake with a band of the Disinherited threw himself 
 into the woods and harried the eastern counties; Sir Adam 
 Gurdon, a knight of gigantic size and renowned prowess, 
 wasted with a smaller party the shires of the south. In 
 almost every county bands of outlaws were seeking a live- 
 lihood in rapine and devastation, while the royal treasury 
 stood empty and the enormous fine imposed upon London 
 had been swept into the coffers of French usurers. But a 
 stronger hand than the King's was now at the head of
 
 318 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IH 
 
 affairs, and Edward met his assailants with untiring en- 
 ergy. King Richard's son, Henry of Ahnaine, was sent 
 with a large force to the north ; Mortimer hurried to hold 
 the Welsh border; Edmund was despatched to Warwick 
 to hold Kenilworth in check; while Edward himself 
 marched at the opening of March to the south. The 
 Berkshire woods were soon cleared, and at Whitsuntide 
 Edward succeeded in dispersing Adam Gurdon's band and 
 in capturing its renowned leader in single combat. The 
 last blow was already given to the rising in the north, 
 where Henry of Almaine surprised the Disinherited at 
 Chesterfield and took their leader, the Earl of Derby, in 
 his bed. Though Edmund had done little but hold the 
 Kenilworth knights in check, the submission of the rest 
 of the country now enabled the royal army to besiege it 
 in force. But the King was penniless, and the Parliament 
 which he called to replenish his treasury in August showed 
 the resolve of the nation that the strife should cease. They 
 would first establish peace, if peace were possible, they 
 said, and then answer the King's demand. Twelve com- 
 missioners, with Earl Gilbert at their head , were appointed 
 on Henry's assent to arrange terms of reconciliation. They 
 at once decided that none should be utterly disinherited 
 for their part in the troubles, but that liberty of redemp- 
 tion should be left open to all. Furious at the prospect of 
 being forced to disgorge their spoil, Mortimer and the 
 ultra-royalists broke out in mad threats of violence, even 
 against the life of the Papal legate who had pressed for 
 the reconciliation. But the power of the ultra-royalists 
 was over. The general resolve was not to be shaken by 
 the clamor of a faction, and Mortimer's rout at Brecknock 
 by Llewelyn, the one defeat that checkered the tide of suc- 
 cess, had damaged that leader's influence. Backed by 
 Edward and Earl Gilbert, the legate met their opposition 
 with a threat of excommunication, and Mortimer with- 
 drew sullenly from the camp. Fresh trouble in the coun- 
 try and the seizure of the Islf» of Ely by a band of the Dis-
 
 Chap. 3.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 319 
 
 inherited quickened the labors of the Twelve. At the 
 close of September they pronounced their award, restoring 
 their lands to all who made submission on a graduated 
 scale of redemption, promising indemnity for all wrongs 
 done during the troubles, and leaving the restoration of 
 the house of De Montfort to the royal will. But to these 
 provisions were added an emphatic demand that " the King 
 fully keep and observe those liberties of the Church, char- 
 ters of liberties, and forest charters, which he is expressly 
 and by his own mouth bound to preserve and keep. " " Let 
 the King," they add, "establish on a lasting foundation 
 those concessions which he has hitherto made of his own 
 will and not on compulsion, and those needful ordinances 
 which have been devised by his subjects and by his own 
 good pleasure." 
 
 With this Award the struggle came to an end. The gar- 
 rison of Kenilworth held out indeed till November, and the 
 full benefit of the Ban was only secured when Earl Gilbert 
 in the opening of the following year suddenly appeared in 
 arms and occupied London. But the Earl was satisfied, 
 the Disinherited were at last driven from Ely, and Llew- 
 elyn was brought to submission by the appearance of an 
 army at Shrewsbury. All was over by the close of 1267. 
 His father's age and weakness, his own brilliant military 
 successes, left Edward practically in possession of the royal 
 power ; and his influence at once made itself felt. There 
 was no attempt to return to the misrule of Henry's reign, 
 to his projects of continental aggrandizement or internal 
 despotism. The constitutional system of government for 
 which the Barons had fought was finally adopted by the 
 Crown, and the Parliament of Marlborough which as- 
 sembled in November, 12G7, renewed the provisions by 
 which the baronage had remedied the chief abuses of the 
 time in their Provisions of Oxford and Westminster. 
 The appointment of all officers of state indeed was jealously 
 reserved to the crown. But the royal expenditure was 
 brought within bounds. Taxation was only imposed with
 
 320 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book HI. 
 
 the assent of the Great Council, So utterly was the land 
 at rest that Edward felt himself free to take the cross in 
 12G8 and to join the Crusade which was being undertaken 
 by St. Lewis of France, He reached Tunis only to find 
 Lewis dead and his enterprise a failure, wintered in Sicily, 
 made his way to Acre in the spring of 1271, and spent 
 more than a year in exploits which want of force prevented 
 from growing into a serious campaign. He was already 
 on his way home when the death of Henry the Third in 
 November, 1272, called him to the throne.
 
 CHAPTER ly. 
 
 EDWAKD THE FIKST. 
 1272—1307. 
 
 In his own day and among his own subjects Edward 
 the First was the object of an almost boundless admiration. 
 He was in the truest sense a national King. At the mo- 
 ment when the last trace of foreign conquest passed away, 
 when the descendants of those who won and those who 
 lost at Senlac blended forever into an English people, Eng- 
 land saw in her ruler no stranger, but an Englishman. 
 The national tradition returned in more than the golden 
 hair or the English name which linked him to our earlier 
 Kings. Edward's very temper was English to the core. 
 In good as in evil he stands out as the typical representa- 
 tive of the race he ruled, like them wilful and imperious, 
 tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, 
 stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow of sympathy, but 
 like them, too, just in the main, unselfish, laborious, con- 
 scientious, haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, 
 temperate, reverent of duty, religious. It is this oneness 
 with the character of his people which parts the temper of 
 Edward from w^hat had till now been the temper of his 
 house. He inherited indeed from the Angevins their fierce 
 and passionate wrath ; his punishments, when he punished 
 in anger, w^ere without pity ; and a priest who ventured 
 at a moment of storm into his presence with a remon- 
 strance dropped dead from sheer fright at his feet. But 
 his nature had nothing of the hard selfishness, the vindic- 
 tive obstinacy which had so long characterized the house 
 
 of Anjou. His wrath passed as quickly as it gathered; 
 Vol. L— 21
 
 3-yi niSTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book HI. 
 
 and for the most part liisconduct was thatof an impulsive, 
 generous man, trustful, averse from cruelty, prone to for- 
 give. "No man ever asked mercy of me," he said in his 
 old age, " and was refused. " The rough soldierly noble- 
 ness of his natui'e broke out in incidents like that at Fal- 
 kirk where ho lay on the bare ground among his men, or 
 in his refusal during a Welsh campaign to drink of the 
 one cask of wine which had been saved from marauders. 
 "It is I who have brought j'ou into this strait," he said 
 to hif! thirsty fellow-soldiers, " and I will have no advan- 
 tage of you in meat or drink." Beneath the stern imperi- 
 ousness of his outer bearing lay in fact a strange tenderness 
 and sensitiveness to alTection. Every subject throughout 
 his realm was drawn closer to the King who wept bitterly 
 at the news of his father's death though it gave him a 
 crown, whose fiercest burst of vengeance was called out 
 by an insult to his mother, whose crosses rose as memorials 
 of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife's bier 
 rested. " I loved her tenderly in her lifetime," wrote Ed- 
 ward to Eleanor's friend, the Abbot of Clugny ; " I do not 
 cease to love her now she is dead." And as it was with 
 mother and wife, so it was with his people at large. All 
 the self -concentrated isolation of the foreign Kings disap- 
 peared in Edward. He was the first English ruler since 
 the Conquest who loved his people with a personal love 
 and craved for their love back again. To his trust in them 
 we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great 
 statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws. Even 
 in his struggles with her England understood a temper 
 which was so perfectly her own, and the quarrels between 
 King and people during his reign are quarrels where, dog- 
 gedly as they fought, neither disputant doubted for a mo- 
 ment the worth or affection of the other. Few scenes in 
 our history are more touching than a scene during the long 
 contest over the Charter, when Edward stood face to face 
 with his people in Westminster Hall and with a sudden 
 burst of tears owned himself frankly in the wrong.
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 323 
 
 But it was just this sensitiveness, this openness to outer 
 impressions and outer influences, that led to the strange 
 contradictions which meet us in Edward's career. His 
 reign was a time in which a for(3ign influence told strongly 
 on our manners, our literature, our national spirit, for the 
 sudden rise of France into a compact and organized mon- 
 archy was now making its influence dominant in Western 
 Europe. The " chivalry" so familiar to us in the pages of 
 Froissart, that picturesque mimicry of high sentiment, of 
 heroism, love, and courtesy before which all depth and 
 reality of nobleness disappeared to make room for the coars- 
 est profligacy, the narrowest caste-spirit, and a brutal in- 
 difference to human suffering, was specially of French 
 creation. There was a nobleness in Edward's nature from 
 which the baser influences of this chivalry fell away. His 
 life was pure, his piety, save when it stooped to the super- 
 stition of the time, manly and sincere, while his high sense 
 of duty saved him from the frivolous self-indulgence of 
 his successors. But he was far from being wholl}^ free 
 from the taint of his age. His passionate desire was to 
 be a model of the fashionable chivalry of his day. His 
 frame was that of a born soldier — tall, deep-chested, long 
 of limb, capable alike of endurance or action, and he shared 
 to the full his people's love of venture and hard fighting. 
 When he encountered Adam Gurdon after Evesham he 
 forced him single-handed to beg for mercy. At the open- 
 ing of his reign he saved his life by sheer fighting in a 
 tournament at Challon. It was this love of adventure 
 which lent itself to the frivoloufs unreality of the new chiv- 
 alry. His fame as a general sfiemed a small thing to Ed- 
 ward when compared with his fame as a knight. At his 
 " Round Table of Kenilworth" n hundred lords and ladies, 
 "clad all in silk," renewed the faded glories of Arthur's 
 Court. The false air of romance which was soon to turn 
 the gravest political resolutions into outbursts of senti- 
 mental feeling appeared in his "Vow of the Swan," when 
 rising at the royal board he swore on the dish before him
 
 324 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IH. 
 
 to avenge on Scotland the murder of Comyn, Chivalry 
 exerted on him a yet more fatal influence in its narrowing 
 of his sympathy to the noble class and in its exclusion of 
 the peasant and the craftsman from all claim to pity. 
 " Knight without reproach" as he was, he looked calmly 
 on at the massacre of the burghers of Berwick, and saw 
 in William Wallace nothing but a common robber. 
 
 The French notion of chivalry had hardly more power 
 over Edward's mind than the French conception of king- 
 ship, feudality, and law. The rise of a lawyer class was 
 everywhere hardening customary into written rights, alle- 
 giance into subjection, loose ties such as commendation 
 into a definite vassalage. But it was specially through 
 French influence, the influence of St. Lewis and his suc- 
 cessors, that the imperial theories of the Roman Law were 
 brought to bear upon this natural tendency of the time. 
 When the " sacred majesty" of the Csesars was transferred 
 by a legal fiction to the royal head of a feudal baronage 
 every constitutional relation was changed. The " defiance" 
 by which a vassal renounced service to his lord became 
 treason, his after resistance "sacrilege." That Edward 
 could appreciate what was sound and noble in the legal 
 spirit around him was shown in his reforms of our judica- 
 ture and our Parliament ; but there was something as con- 
 genial to his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its nar- 
 row technicalities. He was never wilfully unjust, but 
 he was too often captious in his justice, fond of legal chi- 
 canery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. 
 The high conception of royalty which he borrowed from 
 St. Lewis united with this legal turn of mind in the worst 
 acts of his reign. Of rights or liberties unregistered in 
 charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while his own 
 good sense was overpowered by the majestj^ of his crown. 
 It was incredible to him that Scotland should revolt against 
 a legal bargain which made her national independence 
 conditional on the terms extorted from a claimant of her 
 throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 325 
 
 the resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxa- 
 tion which their fathers had borne. 
 
 It is in the anomahes of such a character as this, in its 
 strange mingling of justice and wrong-doing, of grandeur 
 and littleness, that we must look for any fair explanation 
 of much that has since been bitterly blamed in Edward's 
 conduct and policy. But what none of these anomalies 
 can hide from us is the height of moral temper which shows 
 itself in the tenor of his rule. Edward was every inch a 
 king ; but his notion of kingship was a lofty and a noble 
 one. He loved power ; he believed in his sovereign rights 
 and clung to them with a stubborn tenacitj'. But his main 
 end in clinging to them was the welfare of his people. 
 Nothing better proves the self-command which he drew 
 from the purpose he set before him than his freedom from 
 the common sin of great rulers — the lust of military glory. 
 He was the first of our kings since William the Conqueror 
 who combined military genius with political capacity ; but 
 of the warrior's temper, of the temper that finds delight in 
 war, he had little or none. His freedom from it was the 
 more remarkable that Edward was a great soldier. His 
 strategy in the campaign before Evesham marked him as 
 a consummate general. Earl Simon was forced to admire 
 the skill of his advance on the fatal field, and the opera- 
 tions by which he met the risings that followed it were a 
 model of rapidity and military grasp. In his Welsh cam- 
 paigns he was soon to show a tenacity and force of will 
 which wrested victory out of the midst of defeat. He 
 could head a furious charge of horse as at Lewes, or or- 
 ganize a commissariat which enabled him to move army 
 after army across the harried Lowlands. In his old age 
 he was quick to discover the value of the English archery 
 and to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk. But 
 master as he was of the art of war, and forced from time 
 to time to show his mastery in great campaigns, in no 
 single instance was he the assailant. He fought only 
 when he was forced to fight ; and when fighting was over
 
 326 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 he turned back quietly to the work of administration and 
 the making of laws. 
 
 War in fact was with Edward simply a means of carry- 
 ing out the ends of statesmanship, and it was in the char- 
 acter of his statesmanship that his real greatness made 
 itself felt. His policy was an English policy ; he was firm 
 to retain what was left of the French dominion of his race, 
 but he abandoned from the first all dreams of recovering 
 the wider dominions which his grandfather had lost. His 
 mind was not on that side of the Channel, but on this. 
 He concentrated his energies on the consolidation and 
 good government of England itself. We can only fairly 
 judge the annexation of Wales or his attempt to annex 
 Scotland if we look on his efforts in either quarter as parts 
 of the same scheme of national administration to which 
 we owe his final establishment of our judicature, our leg- 
 islation, our parliament. The character of his action was 
 no doubt determined in great part by the general mood of 
 his age, an age whose special task and aim seemed to be 
 that of reducing to distinct form the principles which had 
 sprung into a new and vigorous life during the age which 
 preceded it. As the opening of the thirteenth century had 
 been an age of founders, creators, discoverers, so its close 
 was an age of lawyers, of rulers such as St. Lewis of France 
 or Alfonzo the Wise of Castille, organizers, administrators, 
 framers of laws and institutions. It was to this class that 
 Edward himself belonged. He had little of creative genius, 
 of political originality, but he possessed in a high degree 
 the passion for order and good government, the faculty of 
 organization, and a love of law which broke out even in 
 the legal chicanery to which he sometimes stooped. In 
 the judicial reforms to which so much of his attention was 
 directed he showed himself, if not an " English Justinian," 
 at any rate a clear-sighted and judicious man of business, 
 developing, reforming, bringing into a shape which has 
 borne the test of five centuries' experience the institutions 
 of his predecessors. If the excellence of a statesman's work
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 827 
 
 is to be measured by its duration and the faculty it has 
 shown of adapting itself to the growth and development 
 of a nation, then the work of Edward rises to the highest 
 standard of excellence. Our law courts preserve to this 
 very day the form which he gave them. Mighty as has 
 been the growth of our Parliament, it has grown on the 
 lines which he laid down. The great roll of English Stat- 
 utes reaches back in unbroken series to the Statutes of Ed- 
 ward. The routine of the first Henry, the administrative 
 changes which had been imposed on the nation by the clear 
 head and imperious will of the second, were transformed 
 under Edward into a political organization with carefully 
 defined limits, directed not by the King's will alone but 
 by the political impulse of the people at large. His social 
 legislation was based in the same fashion on principles 
 which had already been brought into practical working by 
 Henry the Second. It was ro doubt in great measure 
 owing to this practical sense of its financial and adminis- 
 trative value rather than to any foresight of its political 
 importance that we owe Edward's organization of our Par- 
 liament. But if the institutions which we commonly as- 
 sociate with his name owe their origin to others, they owe 
 their form and their perpetuity to him. 
 
 The King's English policy, like his English name, was 
 in fact the sign of a new epoch. England was made. The 
 long period of national formation had come practically to 
 an end. With the reign of Edward begins the constitu- 
 tional England in which we live. It is not that any chasm 
 separates our history before it from our history after it, as 
 the chasm of the Revolution divides the history of France, 
 for we have traced the rudiments of our constitution to the 
 first moment of the English settlement in Britain. But it 
 is with these as with our language. The tongue of JElfred 
 is the very tongue we speak, but in spite of its identity 
 with modern English it has to be learned like the tongue of 
 a stranger. On the other hand, the English of Chaucer is 
 almost as intelligible as our own. In the first the histo-
 
 328 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 rian aud pliilologer can study the origin and development 
 of our national speech, in the last a school-boy can enjoy 
 the story of Troilus and Cressida or listen to the gay chat 
 of the Canterbury Pilgrims. In precisely the same way 
 a knowledge of our earliest laws is indispensable for the 
 right understanding of later legislation, its origin and its 
 development, while the principles of our Parliamentary 
 system must necessarily be studied in the Meetings of 
 Wise Men before the Conquest or the Great Council of 
 barons after it. But the Parliaments which Edward gath- 
 ered at the close of his reign are not merely illustrative of 
 the history of later Parliaments, they are absolutely iden- 
 tical with those which still sit at St. Stephen's. At the 
 close of his reign King, Lords, Commons, the Courts of 
 Justice, the forms of public administration, the relations 
 of Church and State, all local divisions and provincial 
 jurisdictions, in great measure the framework of society 
 itself, have taken the shape which they essentially retain. 
 In a word, the long struggle of the constitution for actual 
 existence has come to an end. The contests which foUow 
 are not contests that tell, like those that preceded them, on 
 the actual fabric of our institutions ; they are simply stages 
 in the rough discipline by which England has learned and 
 is still learning how best to use and how wisely to develop 
 the latent powers of its national life, how to adjust the bal- 
 ance of its social and political forces, how to adapt its con- 
 stitutional forms to the varying conditions of the time. 
 
 The news of his father's death found Edward at Capua 
 in the opening of 1273; but the quiet of his realm under 
 a regency of which Roger Mortimer was the practical head 
 left him free to move slowly homeward. Two of his acts 
 while thus journeying through Italy show that his mind 
 was already dwelling on the state of English finance and 
 of English law. His visit to the Pope at Orvieto was with 
 a view of gaining permission to levy from the clergy a 
 tenth of their income for the three coming years, while he 
 drew from Bologna its most eminent' jurist, Francesco Ac-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 32« 
 
 cursi, to aid in the task of legal reform. At Paris he did 
 homage to Philip the Third for his French possessions, 
 and then turning southward he devoted a year to the or- 
 dering of Gascony. It was not till the summer of 12?4 
 that «the King reached England. But he had already 
 planned the w^ork he had to do, and the measures which 
 he laid before the Parliament of 1275 were signs of the 
 spirit in which he was to set about it. The First Statute 
 of Westminster was rather a code than a statute. It con- 
 tained no less than fifty-one clauses, and was an attempt 
 to summarize a number of previous enactments contained 
 in the Great Charter, the Provisions of Oxford, and the 
 Statute of Marlborough, as well as to embody some of the 
 administrative measures of Henry the Second and his son. 
 But a more pressing need than that of a codification of the 
 law was the need of a reorganization of finance. While 
 the necessities of the Crown were growing with the widen- 
 ing of its range of administrative action, the revenues of 
 the Crown admitted of no corresponding expansion. In 
 the earliest times of oiir history the outgoings of the Crown 
 were as small as its income. AU local expenses, whether 
 for Justice or road-making or fortress-building, were paid 
 by local funds; and the national "fyrd" served at its own 
 cost in the field. The produce of a king's private estates 
 with the provisions due to him from the public lands scat- 
 tered over each county, whether gathered by the King 
 himself as he moved over his realm, or as in later days 
 fixed at a stated rate and collected by his sheriff, were 
 sufficient to defray the mere expenses of the Court. The 
 Danish wars gave the first shock to this simple system. 
 To raise a ransom which freed the land from the invader, 
 the first land-tax, under the name of the Danegeld, was 
 laid on every hide of ground ; and to this national taxation 
 the Norman kings added the feudal burdens of the new 
 military estates created by the Conquest, reliefs paid on 
 inheritance, profits of marriages and wardship, and the 
 three feudal aids. But foreign warfare soon exhausted
 
 3'M) HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 these means of revenue ; the barons and bishops in their 
 Great Council were called on at each emergency for a grant 
 from their lands, and at each grant a corresponding de- 
 mand was made by the King as a landlord on the towns, 
 as lying for the most part in the royal demesne. The ces- 
 sation of Danegeld under Henry the Second and his levy 
 of scutage made little change in the general incidence of 
 taxation: it still fell wholly on the land, for even the towns- 
 men paid as holders of their tenements. But a new prin- 
 ciple of taxation was disclosed in the tithe levied for a 
 Crusade at the close of Henry's reign. Land was no longer 
 the only source of wealth. The growth of national pros- 
 perity, of trade and commerce, was creating a mass of per- 
 sonal property which offered irresistible temptations to the 
 Angevin financiers. The old revenue from landed property 
 was restricted and lessened by usage and compositions. 
 Scutage was only due for foreign campaigns : the feudal 
 aids only on rare and stated occasions: and though the 
 fines from the shire-courts grew with the growth of society, 
 the dues from the public lands were fixed and incapable of 
 development. But no usage fettered the Crown in dealing 
 with personal property, and its growth in value promised 
 a growing revenue. From the close of Henry the Second's 
 reign therefore this became the most common form of tax- 
 ation. Grr4,nts of from a seventh to a thirtieth of mova- 
 bles, household-property, and stock were demanded ; and 
 it was the necessity of procuring their assent to these de- 
 mands which enabled the baronage through the reign of 
 Henry the Third to bring a financial pressure to bear on 
 the Crown. 
 
 But in addition to these two forms of direct taxation in- 
 direct taxation also was coming more and more to the front. 
 The right of the King to grant licenses to bring goods into 
 or to trade within the realm, a right springing from the 
 need for his protection felt by the strangers who came there 
 for purposes of traffic, laid the foundation of our taxes on 
 imports. Those on exports were only a part of the general
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204-1291. 331 
 
 system of taxing personal property which we have already 
 noticed. How tempting this source of revenue was prov- 
 ing we see from a provision of the Great Charter which 
 forbids the levy of more than the ancient customs on mer- 
 chants entering or leaving the realm. Commerce was in 
 fact growing with the growing wealth of the people. The 
 crowd of civil and ecclesiastical buildings which date from 
 this period shows the prosperity of the country. Christian 
 architecture reached its highest beauty in the opening of 
 Edward's reign; a reign marked by the completion of the 
 abbey church of Westminster and of the cathedral church 
 at Salisbury. An English noble was proud to be styled 
 "an incomparable builder," while some traces of the art 
 which was rising into life across the Alps flowed in, it 
 may be, with the Italian ecclesiastics whom the Papacy 
 forced on the English Church. The shrine of the Con- 
 fessor at Westminster, the mosaic pavement beside the 
 altar of the abbey, the paintings on the walls of its chap- 
 ter-house remind us of the schools which were springing 
 up under Giotto and the Pisans. But the wealth which 
 this art progress shows drew trade to English shores. 
 England was as yet simply an agricultural country. Gas- 
 cony sent her wines; her linens were furnished by the 
 looms of Ghent and Liege ; Genoese vessels brought to her 
 fairs the silks, the velvets, the glass of Italy. In the barks 
 of the Hanse merchants came fur and amber from the Bal- 
 tic, herrings, pitch, timber, and naval stores from the 
 countries of the north. Spain sent us iron and war-horses. 
 Milan sent armor. The great Venetian merchant-galleys 
 touched the southern coasts and left in our ports the dates 
 of Egypt, the figs and currants of Greece, the silk of Sicily, 
 the sugar of Cyprus and Crete, the spices of the Eastern 
 seas. Capital too came from abroad. The bankers of 
 Florence and Lucca were busy with loans to the court or 
 vast contracts with the wool-growers. The bankers of 
 Cahors had already dealt a death-blow to the usury of the 
 Jew. Against all this England had few exports to set.
 
 332 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 The lead supplied by the mines of Derbyshire, the salt of 
 the Worcestershire springs, the iron of the Weald, were 
 almost wholly consumed at home. The one metal export 
 of any worth was that of tin from the tin-mines of Corn- 
 wall. But the production of wool was fast becoming a 
 main element of the nation's wealth. Flanders, the great 
 manufacturing country of the time, lay fronting our east- 
 ern coast ; and with this market close at hand the pastures 
 of England found more and more profit in the supply of 
 wool. The Cistercian order which possessed vast ranges 
 of moorland in Yorkshire became famous as wool-growers ; 
 and their wool had been seized for Richard's ransom. The 
 Florentine merchants were developing this trade by their 
 immense contracts ; we find a single company of merchants 
 contracting for the purchase of the Cistercian wool through- 
 out the year. It was after counsel with the Italian bank- 
 ers that Edward devised his scheme for drawing a perma- 
 nent revenue from this source. In the Parliament of 1375 
 he obtained the grant of half a mark, or six shillings and 
 eightpence, on each sack of wool exported ; and this grant, 
 a grant memorable as forming the first legal foundation of 
 our customs-revenue, at once relieved the necessities of the 
 Crown. 
 
 The grant of the wool tax enabled Edward in fact to 
 deal with the great difficulty of his realm. The troubles 
 of the Barons' war, the need which Earl Simon felt of 
 Llewelyn's alliance to hold in check the Marcher-barons, 
 had all but shaken off from Wales the last traces of de- 
 pendence. Even at the close of the war the threat of an 
 attack from the now united kingdom only forced Llewelyn 
 to submission on a practical acknowledgment of his sov- 
 ereignty. Although the title which Llewelyn ap Jorwerth 
 claimed of Prince of North Wales was recognized by the 
 English court in the earlier days of Henry the Third, it 
 was withdrawn after 1229 and its claimant known only as 
 Prince of Aberffraw. But the loftier title of Prince of 
 Wales which Llewelyn ap Gryffydd assumed in 1256 was
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 333 
 
 formally conceded to hira in 1267, and his right to receive 
 homage from the other nobles of his principality was for- 
 mally sanctioned. Near however as he seemed to the final 
 realization of his aims, Llewelyn was still a vassal of the 
 English crown, and the accession of Edward to the throne 
 was at once followed by the demand of homage. But the 
 summons was fruitless; and the next two years were 
 wasted in as fruitless negotiation. The kingdom however 
 was now well in hand. The royal treasury was filled 
 again, and in 1277 Edward marched on North Wales. 
 The fabric of Welsh greatness fell at a single blow. The 
 chieftains who had so lately sworn fealty to Llewelyn in 
 the southern and central parts of the country deserted him 
 to join his English enemies in their attack; an English 
 fleet reduced Anglesea ; and the Prince was cooped up in 
 his mountain fastnesses and forced to throw himself on 
 Edward's mercy. With characteristic moderation the 
 conqueror contented himself with adding to the English 
 dominions the coast-district as far as Conway and with 
 providing that the title of Prince of Wales should cease at 
 Llewelyn's death. A heavy fine which he had incurred 
 by his refusal to do homage was remitted ; and Eleanor, 
 a daughter of Earl Simon of Montf ort, whom he had sought 
 as his wife but who had been arrested on her way to him, 
 was wedded to the Prince at Edward's court. 
 
 For four years all was quiet across the Welsh Marches, 
 and Edward was able again to turn his attention to the 
 work of internal reconstruction. It is probably to this 
 time, certainly to the earlier years of his reign, that we 
 may attribute his modification of our judicial system. 
 The King's Court was divided into three distinct tribu- 
 nals, the Court of Exchequer which took cognizance of all 
 causes in which the royal revenue was concerned; the 
 Court of Common Pleas for suits between private persons ; 
 and the King's Bench, which had jurisdiction in all mat- 
 ters that affected the sovereign as well as in " pleas of the 
 crown" or criminal causes expressly reserved for his de-
 
 334 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 cision. Each court was now provided with a distinct staff 
 of judges. Of yet greater importance than this change, 
 which was in effect but the completion of a process of sev- 
 erance that Imd long been going on, was the establishment 
 of an equitable jurisdiction side by side with that of the 
 common law. In his reform of 1178 Henry the Second 
 broke up the older King's Court, which had till then served 
 as the final Court of Appeal, by the severance of the purely 
 'legal judges who had been gradually added to it from the 
 general body of his councillors. The judges thus severed 
 from the Council retained the name and the ordinary ju- 
 risdiction of " the King's Court," but the mere fact of their 
 severance changed in an essential way the character of the 
 justice they dispensed. The King in Council wielded a 
 power which was not only judicial but executive; his de- 
 cisions though based upon custom were not fettered by it ; 
 they were the expressions of his will, and it was as his 
 will that they w^ere carried out by officers of the Crown. 
 But the separate bench of judges had no longer this un- 
 limited power at their command. They had not the King's 
 right as representative of the community to make the law 
 for the redress of a wrong. They professed simply to de- 
 clare what the existing law was, even if it was insufficient 
 for the full purpose of redress. The authority of their de- 
 cision rested mainly on their adhesion to ancient custom, 
 or as it was styled the "common law," which had grown 
 up in the past. Thej^ could enforce their decisions only 
 by directions to an independent officer, the sheriff, and 
 here again their right was soon rigidly bounded by set form 
 and custom. These bonds in fact became tighter every 
 day, for their decisions were now beginning to be reported, 
 and the cases decided by one bench of judges became au- 
 thorities for their successors. It is plain that such a state 
 of things has the utmost value in many ways, whether in 
 creating in men's minds that impersonal notion of a sover- 
 eign law which exercises its imaginative force on human 
 action, or in furnishing by the accumulation and sacred-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 335 
 
 ness of precedents a barrier against the invasion of arbi- 
 trary power. But it threw a terrible obstacle in the way 
 of the actual redress of wrong. The increasing complexity 
 of human action as civilization advanced outstripped the 
 efforts of the law. Sometimes ancient custom furnished 
 no redress for a wrong which sprang from modern ciwum- 
 stances. Sometimes the very pedantry and inflexibility of 
 the law itself became in individual cases the highest in- 
 justice. 
 
 It was the consciousness of this that made men cling 
 even from the first moment of the independent existence of 
 these courts to the judicial power which still remained in- 
 herent in the Crown itself. If his courts fell short in any 
 matter the duty of the King to do justice to all still re- 
 mained, and it was this obligation which was recognized 
 in the provision of Henry the Second by which all cases 
 in which his judges failed to do justice were reserved for 
 the special cognizance of the royal Council itself. To this 
 final jurisdiction of the King in Council Edward gave a 
 wide development. His assembly of the ministers, the 
 higher permanent ofiicials, and the law officers of the 
 Crown for the first time reserved to itself in its judicial 
 capacity the correction of all breaches of the law which 
 the lower courts had failed to repress, whether from weak- 
 ness, partiality, or corruption, and especially of those law- 
 less outbreaks of the more powerful baronage which defied 
 the common authority of the judges. Such powers were 
 of course capable of terrible abuse, and it shows what real 
 need there was felt to be for their exercise that though re- 
 garded with jealousy by Parliament the jurisdiction of 
 the royal Council appears to have been steadily put into 
 force through the two centuries wliich followed. In the 
 reign of Henry the Seventh it took legal and statutory form 
 in the shape of the Court of Star Chamber, and its powers 
 are still exercised in our own day by the Judicial Com^ 
 mittee of the Privy Council. But the same duty of the 
 Crown to do justice where its courts fell short of giving
 
 yM< HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 due redress for wrong expressed itself in the jurisdiction 
 of the Chancellor. This great officer of State, who had 
 perhaps originally acted only as President of the Council 
 when discharging its judicial functions, acquired at a 
 very early date an independent judicial position of the 
 same nature. It is by remembering this origin of the 
 Court of Chancery that we understand the nature of the 
 powers it gradually acquired. All grievances of the sub- 
 ject, especially those which sprang from the misconduct of 
 government officials or of powerful oppressors, fell within 
 its cognizance as they fell within that of the Royal Coun- 
 cil, and to these were added disputes respecting the ward- 
 ship of infants, dower, rent-charges, or tithes. Its equit- 
 able jurisdiction sprang from the defective nature and the 
 technical and unbending rules of the common law. As 
 the Council had given redress in cases where law became 
 injustice, so the Court of Chancery interfered without re- 
 gard to the rules of procedure adopted by the common law 
 courts on the petition of a party for whose grievance the 
 common law provided no adequate remedy. An analogous 
 extension of his powers enabled the Chancellor to afford 
 relief in cases of fraud, accident, or abuse of trust, and 
 this side of his jurisdiction was largely extended at a later 
 time by the results of legislation on the tenure of land by 
 ecclesiastical bodies. The separate powers of the Chan- 
 cellor, whatever was the original date at which they were 
 first exercised, seem to have been thoroughly established 
 under Edward the First. 
 
 What reconciled the nation to the exercise of powers 
 such as these by the Crown and its council was the need 
 which was still to exist for centuries of an effective means 
 of bringing the baronage within the reach of the law. 
 Constitutionally the position of the English nobles had now 
 become established. A King could no longer make laws 
 or levy taxes or even make war without their assent. The 
 nation reposed in them an unwavering trust, for they were 
 no longer the brutal foreigners from whose violence the
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 337 
 
 strong hand of a Norman ruler had been needed to protect 
 his subjects ; they were as English as the peasant or the 
 trader. They had won English liberty by their swords, 
 and the tradition of their order bound them to look on 
 themselves as its natural guardians. The close of the 
 Barons' War solved the problem which had so long troubled 
 the realm, the problem how to ensure the government of 
 the realm in accordance with the provisions of the Great 
 Charter, by the transfer of the business of administration 
 into the hands of a standing committee of the greater 
 barons and prelates, acting as chief officers of state in con- 
 junction with specially appointed ministers of the Crown. 
 The body thus composed was kno^\Ti as the Continual Coun- 
 cil ; and the quiet government of the kingdom by this body 
 in the long interval between the death of Henry the Third 
 and his son's return shows how effective this rule of the 
 nobles was. It is significant of the new relation which 
 they were to strive to establish between themselves and 
 the Crown that in the brief which announced Edward's 
 accession the Council asserted that the new monarch 
 mounted his throne " by the will of the peers." But while 
 the political influence of the baronage as a leading element 
 in the whole nation thus steadily mounted, the personal 
 and purely feudal power of each individual baron on his 
 own estates as steadily fell. The hold which the Crown 
 gained on every noble family by its rights of wardship and 
 marriage, the circuits of the royal judges, the ever nar- 
 rowing bounds within which baronial justice saw itself 
 circumscribed, the blow dealt by scutage at their military 
 power, the prompt intervention of the Council in their 
 feuds, lowered the nobles more and more to the common 
 level of their fellow subjects. Much yet remained to be 
 done ; for within the general body of the baronage there 
 existed side by side with the nobles whose aims were purely 
 national nobles who saw in the overthrow of the royal des- 
 potism simpl}' a chance of setting up again their feudal 
 privileges ; and different as the English baronage, taken as 
 Vol. I. —22
 
 338 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 a whole, was from a feudal noblesse like that of Germany 
 or France there is in every military class a natural drift 
 toward violence and lawlessness. Throughout Edward's 
 reign his strong hand was needed to enforce order on war- 
 ring nobles. Great earls, such as those of Gloucester and 
 Hereford, carried on private war; in Shropshire the Earl 
 of Arundel waged his feud with Fulk Fitz- Warine. To 
 the lesser and poorer nobles the wealth of the trader, the 
 long wain of goods as it passed along the highway, re- 
 mained a tempting prey. Once, under cover of a mock 
 tournament of monks against canons, a band of country 
 gentlemen succeeded in introducing themselves into the 
 great merchant fair at Boston ; at nightfall every booth was 
 on fire, the merchants robbed and slaughtered, and the 
 booty carried off to ships which lay ready at the quay. 
 Streams of gold and silver, ran the tale of jDopular horror, 
 flowed melted down the gutters to the sea ; " all the money 
 in England could hardly make good the loss." Even at 
 the close of Edward's reign lawless bands of " trail-bas- 
 tons," or club-men, maintained themselves by general out- 
 rage, aided the country nobles in their feuds, and wrested 
 money and goods from the great tradesmen. 
 
 The King was strong enough to face and imprison the 
 warring earls, to hang the chiefs of the Boston marauders, 
 and to suppress the outlaws by rigorous commissions. But 
 the repression of baronial outrage was only a part of Ed- 
 ward's policy in relation to the Baronage. Here, as else- 
 where, he had to carry out the political policy of his house, 
 a policy defined by the great measures of Henry the Sec- 
 ond, his institution of scutage, his general assize of arms, 
 his extension of the itinerant judicature of the royal judges. 
 Forced by the first to an exact discharge of their military 
 duties to the Crown, set by the second in the midst of a 
 people trained equally with the nobles to arms, their judi- 
 cial tyranny curbed and subjected to the King's justice by 
 the third, the barons had been forced from their old stand- 
 point of an isolated class to the new and nobler position of
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1291. 339 
 
 a people's leaders. Edward watched jealously over the 
 ground which the Crown had gained. Immediately after 
 his landing he appointed a commission of inquiry into the 
 judicial franchises then existing, and on its report (of which 
 the existing " Hundred-Rolls" are the result) itinerant jus- 
 tices were sent in 1278 to discover by what right these 
 franchises were held. The writs of *' quo warranto" were 
 roughly met here and there. Earl Warenne bared a rusty 
 sword and flung it on the justices' table. "This, sirs," he 
 said, "is my warrant. By the sword our fathers won 
 their lands when they came over with the Conqueror, and 
 by the sword we will keep them." But the King was far 
 from limiting himself to the mere carrying out of the plans 
 of Henry the Second. Henry had aimed simply at lower- 
 ing the power of the great feudatories; Edward aimed 
 rather at neutralizing their power by raising the whole 
 body of landowners to the same level. We shall see at a 
 later time the measures which were the issues of this pol- 
 icy, but in the very opening of his reign a significant step 
 pointed to the King's drift. In the summer of 1278 a 
 roj^al writ ordered all freeholders who held lands to the 
 value of twenty pounds to receive knighthood at the King's 
 hands. 
 
 Acts as significant announced Edward's purpose of car- 
 rying out another side of Henry's policy, that of limiting 
 in the same way the independent jurisdiction of the Church. 
 He was resolute to force it to become thoroughly national 
 by bearing its due part of the common national burdens, 
 and to break its- growing dependence upon Rome. But 
 the ecclesiastical body was jealous of its position as a 
 power distinct from the power of the Crown, and Edward's 
 policy had hardly declared itself when in 1279 Archbishop 
 Peckham obtained a canon from the clergy by which copies 
 of the Great Charter, with its provisions in favor of the 
 liberties of the Church, were to be affixed to the doors of 
 churches. The step was meant as a defiant protest against 
 all interference, and it was promptly forbidden. An order
 
 340 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 issued by the Primate to the clergy to declare to their flocks 
 the seDteuces of excommunication directed against all who 
 obtained royal writs to obstruct suits in church courts, or 
 who, whether royal officers or no, neglected to enforce their 
 sentences, was answered in a yet more emphatic way. By 
 fallinsr into the " dead hand" or " mortmain" of the Church 
 land ceased to render its feudal services; and in 1279 the 
 Statute "de Religiosis," or as it is commonl}^ called "of 
 Mortmain," forbade any further alienation of land to re- 
 ligious bodies in such wise that it should cease to render 
 its due service to the King. The restriction was probably 
 no beneficial one to the country at large, for Churchmen 
 were the best landlords, and it was soon evaded by the in- 
 genuity of the clerical lawyers ; but it marked the growing 
 jealousy of any attempt to set aside what was national from 
 serving the general need and profit of the nation. Its im- 
 mediate effect was to stir the clergy to a bitter resentment. 
 But Edward remained firm, and when the bishops pro- 
 posed to restrict the royal courts from dealing with causes 
 of patronage or causes which touched the chattels of Cburch- 
 men he met their proposals by an instant prohibition. 
 
 The resentment of the clergy had soon the means of 
 showing itself during a new struggle with Wales. The 
 persuasions of his brother David, who had deserted him 
 in the previous war but who deemed his desertion insuffi- 
 ciently rewarded by an English lordship, roused Llewelyn 
 to a fresh revolt. A prophecy of Merlin was said to prom- 
 ise that when English money became round a Prince of 
 Wales should be crowned in London ; and at this moment 
 a new coinage of copper money, coupled with a prohibition 
 to break the silver penny into halves and quarters, as had 
 been commonly done, was supposed to fulfil the prediction. 
 In 1282 Edward marched in overpowering strength into 
 the heart of Wales. But Llewelyn held out in Snowdon 
 with the stubbornness of despair, and the rout of an Eng- 
 lish force which had crossed into Anglesea prolonged the 
 contest into the winter. The cost of the war fell on the
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 341 
 
 King's treasury, Edward had called for but one general 
 grant through the past eight years of his reign ; but he 
 was now forced to appeal to his people, and by an expedi- 
 ent hitherto without precedent two provincial Councils 
 were called for this purpose. That for Southern England 
 met at Northampton, that for Northern at York ; and clergy 
 and laity were summoned, though in separate session, to 
 both. Two knights came from every shire, two burgesses 
 from every borough, while the bishops brought their arch- 
 deacons, abbots, and the proctors of their cathedral clergy. 
 The grant of the laity was quick and liberal. But both 
 at York and Northampton the clergy showed their grudge 
 at Edward's measures by long delays in supplying his 
 treasury. Pinched however as were his resources and ter- 
 rible as were the sufferings of his army through the win- 
 ter Edward's firmness remained vmbroken; and rejecting 
 all suggestions of retreat he issued orders for the formation 
 of a new army at Caermarthen to complete the circle of in- 
 vestment round Llewelyn. But the war came suddenly 
 to an end. The Prince sallied from his mountain hold for 
 a raid upon Radnorshire and fell in a petty skirmish on 
 the banks of the Wye. With him died the independence 
 of his race. After six months of flight his brother David 
 was made prisoner ; and a Parliament summoned at Shrews- 
 bury in the autumn of 1283, to which each county again 
 sent its two knights and twenty boroughs their two bur 
 gesses, sentenced him to a traitor's death. The submission 
 of the lesser chieftains soon followed : and the country was 
 secured by the building of strong castles at Conway and 
 Caernarvon, and the settlerrent of English barons on the 
 confiscated soil. The Statute or Wales which Edward 
 promulgated at Rhuddlan in 1284 proposed to introduce 
 English law and the English administration of justice and 
 government into Wales. But little came of the attempt; 
 and it was not till the time of Henry the Eighth that the 
 country was actually incorporated with England and rep- 
 resented in the English Parliament. What Edward had
 
 342 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 really done was to break the Welsh resistance. The policy 
 with which he followed up his victory (for the " massacre 
 of the bards" is a mere fable) accomplished its end, and 
 though two later rebellions and a ceaseless strife of the 
 natives with the English towns in their midst showed that 
 the country was still far from being reconciled to its con- 
 quest, it ceased to be any serious danger to England for a 
 hundred years. 
 
 From the work of conquest Edward again turned to the 
 work of legislation. In the midst of his struggle with 
 Wales he had shown his care for the commercial classes 
 by a Statute of Merchants in 1283, which provided for the 
 registration of the debts of traders and for their recovery 
 by distraint of the debtor's goods and the imprisonment of 
 his person. The close of the war saw two measures of 
 even greater importance. The second Statute of West- 
 minster which appeared in 1285 is a code of the same sort 
 as the first, amending the Statutes of Mortmain, of Merton, 
 and of Gloucester as well as the laws of dower and advow- 
 sou, remodelling the system of justices of assize, and curb- 
 ing the abuses of manorial jurisdiction. In the same year 
 appeared the greatest of Edward's measures for the en- 
 forcement of public order. The Statute of Winchester re- 
 vived and reorganized the old institutions of national police 
 and national defence. It regulated the action of the hun- 
 dred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of 
 the fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had 
 moulded it into form in his Assize of Arms. Every man 
 was bound to hold hia\self in readiness, duly armed, for 
 the King's service in case of invasion or revolt, and to 
 pursue felons when hue and cry were made after them. 
 Every district was held responsible for crimes committed 
 within its bounds ; the gates of each town were to be shut 
 at nightfall ; and all strangers were required to give an 
 account of themselves to the magistrates of any borough 
 which they entered. By a provision which illustrates at 
 once the social and physical condition of the country at the
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 343 
 
 time all brushwood was ordered to be destroyed within a 
 space of two hundred feet on either side of the public high- 
 way as a security for travellers against sudden attacks 
 from robbers. To enforce the observance of this act 
 knights were appointed in every shire under the name of 
 Conservators of the Peace, a name which as the benetit of 
 these local magistrates was more sensibly felt and their 
 powers were more largely extended was changed into that 
 which they still retain of Justices of the Peace. So or- 
 derly however was the realm that Edward was able in 1286 
 to pass over sea to his foreign dominions, and to spend the 
 next three years in reforming their government. But the 
 want of his guiding hand was at last felt ; and the Parlia- 
 ment of 1289 refused a new tax till the King came home 
 again. 
 
 He returned to find the Earls of Gloucester and Here- 
 ford at war, and his judges charged with violence and cor- 
 ruption. The two Earls were brought to peace, and Earl 
 Gilbert allied closely to the royal house by a marriage with 
 the King's daughter Johanna. After a careful investiga- 
 tion the judicial abuses were recognized and amended. 
 Two of the chief justices were banished from the realm 
 and their colleagues imprisoned and fined. But these ad- 
 ministrative measures were only preludes to a great legis- 
 lative act which appeared in 1290. The Third Statute of 
 Westminster, or, to use the name by which it is more com- 
 monly known, the Statute "Quia Emptores," is one of 
 those legislative efforts which mark the progress of a wide 
 social revolution in the country at large. The number of 
 the greater barons was diminishing every day, while the 
 number of the country gentry and of the more substantial 
 yeomanry was increasing with the increase of the national 
 wealth. The increase showed itself in a growing desire 
 to become proprietors of land. Tenants of the barons re- 
 ceived under-tenants on condition of their rendering them 
 similar services to those which they themselves rendered 
 to their lords ; and the baronage, while duly receiving the
 
 344 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 services in compensation for which they had originally 
 granted their lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal 
 profits of these new under-tenants, the profits of wardships 
 or of reliefs and the like, in a word the whole increase in 
 the value of the estate consequent on its subdivision and 
 higher cultivation passing into other hands than their own. 
 The purpose of the statute " Quia Emptores" was to check 
 this process by providing that in any case of alienation 
 the sub-tenant should henceforth hold, not of the tenant, 
 but directly of the superior lord. But its result was to 
 promote instead of hindering the transfer and subdivision 
 of land. The tenant who was compelled before the pass- 
 ing of the statute to retain in any case so much of the es- 
 tate as enabled him to discharge his feudal services to the 
 over-lord of whom he held it, was now enabled by a pro- 
 cess analogous to the modern sale of "tenant-right," to 
 transfer both land and services to new holders. However 
 small the estates thus created might be, the bulk were held 
 directly of the Crown ; and this class of lesser gentry and 
 freeholders grew steadily from this time in numbers and 
 importance. 
 
 The year which saw " Quia Emptores" saw a step which 
 remains the great blot upon Edward's reign. The work 
 abroad had exhausted the royal treasury, and he bought a 
 grant from his Parliament by listening to their wishes in 
 the matter of the Jews. Jewish traders had followed Wil- 
 liam the Conqueror from Normandy, and had been enabled 
 by his protection to establish themselves in separate quar- 
 ters or "Jewries" in all larger English towns. The Jew 
 had no right or citizenship in the land. The Jewr}'- in 
 which he lived was exempt from the common law. He 
 was simply the King's chattel, and his life and goods were 
 at the King's mercy. But he was too valuable a posses- 
 sion to be lightly thrown away. If the Jewish merchant 
 had no standing-ground in the local court the king enabled 
 him to sue before a special justiciar; his bonds were de- 
 posited for safety in a chamber of the royal palace at West-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204^1291. 345 
 
 minster ; he was protected against the popular hatred in 
 the free exercise of his religion and allowed to build syna- 
 gogues and to manage his own ecclesiastical affairs by 
 means of a chief rabbi. The royal protection was dictated 
 Dy no-spirit of tolerance or mercy. To the kings the Jew 
 was a mere engine of finance. The wealth which he ac- 
 cumulated was wrung from him whenever the crown had 
 need, and torture and imprisonment were resorted to when 
 milder means failed. It was the gold of the Jew that filled 
 tne royal treasury at the outbreak of war or of revolt. It 
 was in the Hebrew coffers that the foreign kings found 
 strength to hold their baronage at bay. 
 
 That the presence of the Jew was, at least in the earlier 
 years of his settlement, beneficial to the nation at large 
 there can be little doubt. His arrival was the arrival of 
 a capitalist; and heavy as was the usury he necessarily 
 exacted in the general insecurity of the time his loans gave 
 an impulse to industry. The century which followed the 
 Conquest witnessed an outburst of architectural energy 
 which covered the land with castles and cathedrals ; but 
 castle and cathedral alike owed their erection to the loans 
 of the Jew. His own example gave a new vigor to do- 
 mestic architecture. The buildings which, as at Lincoln 
 and Bury St. Edmund's, still retain their name of "Jews' 
 Houses" were almost the first houses of stone which super- 
 seded the mere hovels of the English burghers. Nor was 
 their influence simply industrial. Through their connec- 
 tion with the Jewish schools in Spain and the East they 
 opened a way for the revival of physical sciences. A Jew- 
 ish medical school seems to have existed at Oxford ; Koger 
 Bacon himself studied under English rabbis. But the 
 general progress of civilization now drew little help from 
 the Jew, while the coming of the Cahorsine and Italian 
 bankers drove him from the field of commercial finance. 
 He fell back on the petty usury of loans to the poor, a trade 
 necessarily accompanied with much of extortion and which 
 roused into fiercer life the religious hatred against their
 
 346 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 race. Wild stories floated about of children carried off to 
 be circumcised or crucified, and a Lincoln boy who was 
 found slain in a Jewish house was canonized by popular 
 reverence as "St, Hugh." The first work of the Friars 
 was to settle in the Jewish quarters and attempt their con- 
 version, but the popular fury rose too fast for these gentler 
 means of reconciliation. When the Franciscans saved sev- 
 enty Jews from hanging by their prayer to Henry the 
 Third the populace angrily refused the brethren alms. 
 
 But all this growing hate was met with a bold defiance. 
 The picture which is commonly drawn of the Jew as timid, 
 silent, crouching under oppression, however truly it may 
 represent the general position of his race throughout mediae- 
 val Europe, is far from being borne out by historical fact 
 on this side the Channel. In England the attitude of the 
 Jew, almost to the very end, was an attitude of proud and 
 even insolent defiance. He knew that the royal policy ex- 
 empted him from the common taxation, the common jus- 
 tice, the common obligations of Englishmen. Usurer, 
 extortioner as the realm held him to be, the royal justice 
 would secure him the repayment of his bonds. A royal 
 commission visited with heavy penalties any outbreak of 
 violence against the King's "chattels." The Red King 
 actually forbade the conversion of a Jew to the Christian 
 faith ; it was a poor exchange, he said, that would rid him 
 of a valuable property and give him only a subject. We 
 see in such a case as that of Oxford the insolence that grew 
 out of this consciousness of the royal protection. Here as 
 elsewhere the Jewry was a town within a town, with its 
 own language, its own religion and law, its peculiar com- 
 merce, its peculiar dress. No city bailiff could penetrate 
 into the square of little alleys which lay behind the present 
 Town Hall ; the Church itself was powerless to prevent a 
 synagogue from rising in haughty rivalry over against the 
 cloister of St. Frideswide. Prior Philip of St. Frideswide 
 complains bitterly of a certain Hebrew who stood at his 
 door as the procession of the saint passed by, mocking at
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTEH. 1204-1291. 347 
 
 the miracles which were said to be wrought at her shrine. 
 Halting and then walking firmly on his feet, showing his 
 hands clenched as if with palsy and then flinging open his 
 fingers, the Jew claimed gifts and oblations from the crowd 
 that flocked to St. Frideswide's shrine on the ground that 
 such recoveries of life and limb were quite as real as any 
 that Frideswide ever wrought. Sickness and death in the 
 prior's story avenge the saint on her blasphemer, but no 
 earthly power, ecclesiastical or civil, seems to have ven- 
 tured to deal with him. A more daring act of fanaticism 
 showed the temper of the Jews even at the close of Henry 
 the Third's reign. As the usual procession of scholars 
 and citizens returned from St. Frideswide's, on the As- 
 cension Day of 12G8, a Jew suddenly burst from a group of 
 his comrades in front of the synagogue, and wrenching 
 the crucifix from its bearer trod it under foot. But even 
 in presence of such an outrage as this the terror of the 
 Crown sheltered the Oxford Jews from any burst of popu- 
 lar vengeance. The sentence of the King condemned them 
 to set up a cross of marble on the spot where the crime 
 was committed, but even this sentence was in part remitted, 
 and a less offensive place was found for the cross in an 
 open plot by Merton College. 
 
 Up to Edward's day indeed the royal protection had 
 never wavered. Henry the Second granted the Jews a 
 right of burial outside every city where they dwelt. Rich- 
 ard punished heavil}^ a massacre of the Jews at York, and 
 organized a mixed court of Jews and Christians for the 
 registration of their contracts. John suffered none to 
 plunder them save himself, though he once wrested from 
 them a sum equal to a year's revenue of his realm. The 
 troubles of the next reign brought in a harvest greater 
 than even the royal greed could reap; the Jews grew 
 wealthy enough to acquire estates ; and only a burst of 
 popular feeling prevented a legal decision which would 
 have enabled them to own freeholds. But the sack of 
 Jewry after Jewry showed the popular hatred during the
 
 348 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 Barons' war, and at its close fell on the Jews the more 
 terrible persecution of the law. To the cry against usury 
 and the religious fanaticism which threatened them was 
 now added the jealousy with which the nation that had 
 grown up round the Charter regarded all exceptional juris- 
 dictions or exemptions from the common law and the com- 
 mon burdens of the realm. As Edward looked on the 
 privileges of the Church or the baronage, so his people 
 looked on the privileges of the Jews. The growing weight 
 of the Parliament told against them. Statute after statute 
 hemmed them in. They were forbidden to hold real prop- 
 erty, to employ Christian servants, to move through the 
 streets without the two white tablets of wool on their 
 breasts which distinguished their race. They were pro- 
 hibited from building new synagogues or eating with 
 Christians or acting as physicians to them. Their trade, 
 already crippled by the rivalry of the bankers of Cahors, 
 was annihilated by a royal order which bade them renounce 
 usury under pain of death. At last persecution could do 
 no more, and Edward, eager at the moment to find sup- 
 plies for his treasury- and himself swayed by the fanaticism 
 of his subjects, bought the grant of a fifteenth from clergy 
 and laity by consenting to drive the Jews from his realm. 
 No share of the enormities which accompanied this expul- 
 sion can fall upon the King, for he not only suffered the 
 fugitives to take their personal wealth with them, but pun- 
 ished with the halter those who plundered them at sea. 
 But the expulsion was none the less cruel. Of the sixteen 
 thousand who preferred exile to apostasy few reached the 
 shores of France. Many were wrecked, others robbed and 
 flung overboard. One ship-master turned out a crew of 
 wealthy merchants on to a sandbank and bade them call a 
 new Moses to save them from the sea. 
 
 From the expulsion of the Jews, as from his nobler 
 schemes of legal and administrative reforms, Edward was 
 suddenly called away to face complex questions which 
 awaited him in the North. At the moment which we
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 349 
 
 have reached the kingdom of the Scots was still an aggre- 
 gate of four distinct countries, each with its different 
 people, its different tongue, its different history. The old 
 Pictish kingdom across the Firth of Forth, the original 
 Scot kingdom in Argyle, the district of Cumbria or Strath- 
 clyde, and the Lowlands which stretched from the Firth 
 of Forth to the English border, had become united under 
 the Kings of the Scots ; Pictland by inheritance, Cumbria 
 by a grant from the English King Eadmund, the Low- 
 lands by conquest, confirmed as English tradition alleged 
 by a grant from Cnut. The shadowy claim of dependence 
 on the English Crown which dated from the days when a 
 Scotch King " commended" himself and his people to Al- 
 fred's son Eadward, a claim strengthened by the grant of 
 Cumbria to Malcolm as a " fellow worker" of the English 
 sovereign "by sea and land," may have been made more 
 real through this last convention. But whatever change 
 the acquisition of the Lowlands made in the relation of the 
 Scot Kings to the English sovereigns, it certainly affected 
 in a very marked way their relation both to England and 
 to their own realm. Its first result was the fixing of the 
 royal residence in their new southern dominion at Edin- 
 burgh ; and the English civilization which surrounded them 
 from the moment of this settlement on what was purely 
 English ground changed the Scot Kings in all but blood 
 into Englishmen. The marriage of King Malcolm with 
 Margaret, the sister of Eadgar -^theling, not only has- 
 tened this change but opened a way to the English crown. 
 Their children were regarded by a large party within Eng- 
 land as representatives of the older royal race and as claim- 
 ants of the throne, and this danger grew as William's 
 devastation of the North not only drove fresh multitudes 
 of Englishmen to settle in the Lowlands but filled the 
 Scotch court with English nobles who fled thither for ref- 
 uge. So formidable indeed became the pretensions of the 
 Scot Kings that they forced the ablest of our Norman sov- 
 ereigns into a complete change of policy. The Conqueror
 
 350 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 and William the Red had met the threats of the Scot sov- 
 ereigns by invasions which ended again and again in an 
 illusory homage, but the marriage of Henry the First with 
 the Scottish Matilda robbed the claims of the Scottish line 
 of much of their force, while it enabled him to draw their 
 kinii'S into far closer relations with the Norman throne. 
 King David not only abandoned the ambitious dreams of 
 his predecessors to place himself at the head of his niece 
 Matilda's party in her contest with Stephen, but as Henry's 
 brother-in-law he figured as the first noble of the English 
 Court and found English models and English support in 
 the work of organization which he attempted within his 
 own dominions. As the marriage with Margaret had 
 changed Malcolm from a Celtic chieftain into an English 
 King, so that of Matilda brought abovit the conversion of 
 David into a Norman and feudal sovereign. His court 
 was filled with Norman nobles from the South, such as the 
 Balliols and Bruces who were destined to play so great a 
 part afterward but who now for the first time obtained 
 fiefs in the Scottish realm, and a feudal jurisprudence mod- 
 elled on that of England was introduced into the Lowlands. 
 A fresh connection between Scotland and the English 
 sovereigns began with the grant of lordships within Eng- 
 land itself to the Scot kings or their sons. The Earldom 
 of Northumberland was held by David's son Henry, that 
 of Huntingdon by Henry the Lion. Homage was some- 
 times rendered, whether for these lordships, for the Low- 
 lands, or for the whole Scottish realm, but it was the cap- 
 ture of William the Lion during the revolt of the English 
 baronage which first suggested to the ambition of Henry 
 the Second the project of a closer dependence of Scotland 
 on the English Crown. To gain his freedom William 
 consented to hold his kingdom of Henry and his heirs. 
 The prelates and lords of Scotland did homage to Henry 
 as to their direct lord, and a right of appeal in all Scotch 
 causes was allowed to the superior court of the English 
 ■uzerain. From this bondage however Scotland was freed
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 351 
 
 by the prodigality of Ricliard who allowed her to buy back 
 the freedom she had forfeited. Both sides fell into their 
 old position, but both were ceasing gradually to remember 
 the distinctions between the various relations in which the 
 Scot King stood for his different provinces to the English 
 Crown, Scotland had come to be thought of as a single 
 country; and the court of London transferred to the whole 
 of it those claims of direct feudal suzerainty which at most 
 applied only to Strathclyde, while the court of Edinburgh 
 looked on the English Lowlands as holding no closer rela- 
 tion to England than the Pictish lands beyond the Forth. 
 Any difficulties which arose were evaded by a legal com- 
 promise. The Scot Kings repeatedly did homage to the 
 English sovereign, but with a reservation of rights which 
 were prudently left unspecified. The English King ac- 
 cepted the homage on the assumption that it was rendered 
 to him as overlord of the Scottish realm, and this assump- 
 tion was neither granted nor denied. For nearly a hun- 
 dred years the relations of the two countries were thus kept 
 peaceful and friendly, and the death of Alexander the Third 
 seemed destined to remove even the necessity of protests 
 by a closer union of the two kingdoms. Alexander had 
 wedded his only daughter to the King of Norway, and 
 after long negotiation the Scotch Parliament proposed the 
 marriage of Margaret, "the Maid of Norway," the girl 
 who was the only issue of this marriage and so heiress of 
 the kingdom, with the son of Edward the First. It was 
 however carefully provided in the marriage treaty which 
 was concluded at Brigham in 1290 that Scotland should 
 remain a separate and free kingdom, and that its laws and 
 customs should be preserved inviolate. No military aid 
 was to be claimed by the English King, no Scotch appeal 
 to be carried to an English court. But this project was 
 abruptly frustrated by the child's death during her voyage 
 to Scotland in the following October, and with the rise of 
 claimant after claimant of the vacant throne Edward was 
 drawn into far other relations to the Scottish realm.
 
 352 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 Of the thirteen pretenders to the throne of Scotland only 
 three could be regarded as serious claimants. By the ex- 
 tinction of the line of William the Lion the rights of suc- 
 cession passed to the daughters of his brother David. The 
 claim of John Balliol, Lord of Galloway, rested on his de- 
 scent from the elder of these; that of Robert Bruce, Lord 
 of Annandale, on his descent from the second ; that of John 
 Hastings, Lord of Abergavemiy, on his descent from the 
 third. It is clear that at this crisis every one in Scotland 
 or out of it recognized some sort of overlordship in Edward, 
 for the Norwegian King, the Primate of St. Andrew's, and 
 seven of the Scotch Earls had already appealed to him be- 
 fore Margaret's death ; and her death was followed by the 
 consent both of the claimants and the Council of Regency 
 to refer the question of the succession to his decision in a 
 Parliament at Norham. But the overlordship which the 
 Scots acknowledged was something far less direct and 
 definite than the superiority which Edward claimed at the 
 opening of this conference in May, 1291. His claim was 
 supported by excerpts from monastic chronicles and by the 
 slow advance of an English army ; while the Scotch lords, 
 taken by surprise, found little help in the delay which was 
 granted them. At the opening of June therefore in com- 
 mon with nine of the claimants they formally admitted 
 Edward's direct suzerainty. To the nobles in fact the 
 concession must have seemed a small one, for like the prin- 
 cipal claimants they were for the most part Norman in 
 blood, with estates in both countries, and looking for hon- 
 ors and pensions from the English Court. From the Com- 
 mons who were gathered with the nobles at Norham no 
 such admission of Edward's claims could be extorted; but 
 in Scotland, feudalized as it had been by David, the Com- 
 mons were aa yet of little weight and their opposition was 
 quietly passed by. All the rights of a feudal suzerain 
 were at once assumed by the English King; he entered 
 into the possession of the country as into that of a disputed 
 fief to be held by its overlord till the dispute was settled.
 
 EDWARD I.
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 353 
 
 his peace was sworn throughout the land, its castles deliv- 
 ered into his charge, while its bishops and nobles swore 
 homage to him directly as their lord superior. Scotland 
 was thus reduced to the subjection which she had experi- 
 enced under Henry the Second; but the full discussion 
 which followed over the various claims to the throne 
 showed that while exacting to the full what he believed to 
 be his right Edward desired to do justice to the country 
 itself. The body of commissioners which the King named 
 to report on the claims to the throne were mainly Scotch. 
 A proposal for the partition of the realm among the claim- 
 ants was rejected as contrary to Scotch law. On the re- 
 port of the commissioners after a twelvemonth's investiga- 
 tion in favor of Balliol as representative of the elder branch 
 at the close of the year 1292, his homage was accepted for 
 the whole kingdom of Scotland with a full acknowledg- 
 ment of the services due from him to its overlord. The 
 castles were at once delivered to the new monarch, and for 
 a time there was peace. 
 
 With the accession of Balliol and the rendering of his 
 homage for the Scottish realm the greatness of Edward 
 reached its height. He was lord of Britain as no English 
 King had been before. The last traces of Welsh independ- 
 ence were trodden under foot. The shadowy claims of 
 supremacy over Scotland were changed into a direct over- 
 lordship. Across the one sea Edward was lord of Guienne, 
 across the other of Ireland, and in England itself a wise 
 and generous policy had knit the whole nation round his 
 throne. Firmly as he still clung to prerogatives which 
 the baronage were as firm not to own, the main struggle 
 for the Charter was over. Justice and good government 
 were secured. The personal despotism which John had 
 striven to build up, the imperial autocracy which had 
 haunted the imagination of Henry the Third, were alike 
 set aside. The rule of Edward, vigorous and effective as 
 it was, was a rule of law, and of law enacted not by the 
 royal will, but by the common council of the realm. 
 Vol. I.— 23
 
 354 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 Never had English ruler reached a greater height of power, 
 nor was there any sign to warn the King of the troubles 
 which awaited him. France, jealous as it was of his 
 greatness and covetous of his Gascon possessions, he could 
 hold at bay. Wales was growing tranquil. Scotland 
 gave few signs of discontent or restlessness in the first year 
 that followed the homage of its King. Under John Bal- 
 liol it had simply fallen back into the position of depend- 
 ence which it held under William the Lion, and Edward 
 had no purpose of pushing further his rights as suzerain 
 than Henry the Second had done. One claim of the Eng- 
 lish Crown indeed was soon a subject of dispute between 
 the lawyers of the Scotch and of the English Council 
 boards. Edward would have granted as freely as Balliol 
 himself that though Scotland was a dependent kingdom it 
 was far from being an ordinary fief of the English Crown. 
 By feudal custom a distinction had always been held to 
 exist between the relations of a dependent king to a supe- 
 rior lord and those of a vassal noble to his sovereign. At 
 Balliol's homage indeed Edward had disclaimed any right 
 to the ordinary feudal incidents of a fief, those of wardship 
 or marriage, and in this disclaimer he was only repeating 
 the reservations of the marriage treaty of Brigham. There 
 were other customs of the Scotch realm as incontestable as 
 these. Even after the treaty of Falaise the Scotch King 
 had not been held bound to attend the council of the Eng- 
 lish baronage, to do service in English warfare, or to con- 
 tribute on the *)art of his Scotch realm to English aids. If 
 no expresfci acknowledgment of these rights had been made 
 by Edward, for some time after his acceptance of Balliol's 
 homage they were practically observed. The claim of in- 
 dependent justice was more doubtful, as it was of higher 
 import than these. The judicial independence of Scotland 
 had been expressly reserved in the marriage treaty. It 
 wap "jertain that no appeal from a Scotch King's court to 
 that of his overlord had been allowed since the days of 
 WyUam the Lion. But in the jurisprudence of the feudal
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 355 
 
 lawyers the right of ultimate appeal was the test of sover- 
 eignty, and Edward regarded Balliol's homage as having 
 placed him precisely in the position of William the Lion 
 and subjected his decisions to those of his overlord. He 
 was resolute therefore to assert the supremacy of his court 
 and to receive Scotch appeals. 
 
 Even here however the quarrel seemed likely to end only 
 in legal bickering. Balliol at first gave way, and it was 
 not tiU 1293 that he alleged himself forced by the resent- 
 ment both of his Baronage and his people to take up an 
 attitude of resistance. While appearing therefore formally 
 at Westminster he refused to answer an appeal before the 
 English courts save by advice of his Council. But real as 
 the resentment of his barons may have been, it was not 
 Scotland which really spurred Balliol to this defiance. 
 His wounded pride had made him the tool of a power be- 
 yond the sea. The keenness with which France had 
 watched every step of Edward's success in the north sprang 
 not merely from a natural jealousy of his greatness but 
 from its bearing on a great object of French ambition. 
 One fragment of Eleanor's inheritance still remained to 
 her descendants, Guienne and Gascony, the fair lands 
 along the Garonne and the territory which stretched south 
 of that river to the Pyrenees. It was this territory that 
 now tempted the greed of Philip the Fair, and it was in 
 feeding the strife between England and the Scotch King 
 that Philip saw an opening for winning it. French envoys 
 therefore brought promises of aid to the Scotch Court; and 
 no sooner had these intrigues moved Balliol to resent the 
 claims of his overlord than Philip found a pretext for open 
 quarrel with Edward in the frays which went constantly 
 on in the Cliannel between the mariners of Normandj" and 
 those of the Cinque Ports. They culminated at this mo- 
 ment in a great sea-fight which proved fatal to eight thou- 
 sand Frenchmen, and for this Philip haughtily demanded 
 redress. Edward saw at once the danger of his position. 
 He did his best to allay the storm by promise of satisfac-
 
 356 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 tion to France, and by addressing threats of punishment 
 to the English seamen . But Philip still clung to his wrong, 
 while the national passion which was to prove for a hun- 
 dred years to come strong enough to hold down the royal 
 policy of peace showed itself in a characteristic defiance 
 with which the seamen of the Cinque Ports met Edward's 
 menaces. " Be the King's Council well advised," ran this 
 remonstrance, " that if wrong or grievance be done them 
 in any fashion against right, they will sooner forsake 
 wives, children, and all that they have, and go seek through 
 the seas where they shall think to make their profit. " In 
 spite therefore of Edward's efforts the contest continued, 
 and Philip found in it an opportunity to cite the King be- 
 fore his court at Paris for wrongs done to him as suzerain. 
 It was hard for Edward to dispute the summons without 
 weakening the position which his own sovereign courts 
 had taken up toward the Scotch King, and in a final effort 
 to avert the conflict the King submitted to a legal decision 
 of the question, and to a formal cession of Guienne into 
 Philip's hands for forty days in acknowledgment of his 
 supremacy. Bitter as the sacrifice must have been it failed 
 to win peace. The forty days had no sooner passed than 
 Philip refused to restore the fortresses which had been left 
 in pledge. In February, 1294, he declared the English king 
 contumacious, and in May declared his fiefs forfeited to 
 the French Crown. Edward was driven to take up arms, 
 but a revolt in Wales deferred the expedition to the follow- 
 ing year. No sooner however was it again taken in hand 
 than it became clear that a double danger had to be met. 
 The summons which Edward addressed to the Scotch bar- 
 ons to foUow him in arms to Guienne was disregarded. 
 It was in truth, as we have seen, a breach of customary 
 law, and was probably meant to force Scotland into an 
 open declaration of its connection with France. A second 
 summons was followed by a more formal refusal. The 
 greatness of the danger threw Edward on England itself. 
 For a war in Guienne and the north he needed supplies :
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 357 
 
 but he needed yet more the firm support of his people in a 
 struggle which, little as he foresaw its ultimate results, 
 would plainly be one of great difficulty and danger. In 
 1295 he called a Parliament to counsel with him on the 
 affairs of the realm, but with the large statesmanship 
 which distinguished him he took this occasion of giving 
 the Parliament a shape and organization which has left its 
 assembly the most important event in English history. 
 
 To realize its importance we must briefly review the 
 changes by which the Great Council of the Norman Kings 
 had been gradually transforming itself into what was 
 henceforth to be known as the English Parliament. Nei- 
 ther the Meeting of the Wise Men before the Conquest nor 
 the Great Council of the Barons after it had been in any 
 legal or formal way representative bodies. The first theo- 
 retically included all free holders of land, but it shrank at 
 an early time into a gathering of earls, higher nobles, and 
 bishops with the officers and thegns of the royal house- 
 hold. Little change was made in the composition of this 
 assembly by the Conquest, for the Great Council of the 
 Norman kings was supposed to include all tenants who 
 held directly of the Crown, the bishops and greater abbots 
 (whose character as independent spiritual members tended 
 more and more to merge in their position as barons) , and 
 the high officers of the Court. But though its composition 
 remained the same, the character of the assembly was es- 
 sentially altered; from a free gathering of "Wise Men" it 
 sank to a Royal Court of feudal vassals. Its functions too 
 seem to have become almost nominal and its powers to 
 have been restricted to the sanctioning, without debate or 
 possibility of refusal, all grants demanded from it by the 
 Crown. But nominal as such a sanction might be, the 
 " counsel and consent" of the Great Council was necessary 
 for the legal validity of every considerable fiscal or politi- 
 cal measure. Its existence therefore remained an effectual 
 protest against the imperial theories advanced by the law- 
 yers of Henry the Second which declared aU legislative
 
 358 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 power to reside wholly in the sovereign. It was in fact 
 under Henry that these assemblies became more regular, 
 and their functions more important. The reforms which 
 marked his reign were issued in the Great Council, and 
 even financial matters were suffered to be debated there. 
 But it was not till the grant of the Great Charter that the 
 powers of this assembly over taxation were formaUy rec- 
 ognized, and the principle established that no burden be- 
 yond the customary feudal aids might be imposed "save 
 by the Common Council of the Realm." 
 
 The same document first expressly regulated its form. In 
 theory, as we have seen, the Great Council consisted of 
 aU who held laud directly of the Crown. But the same 
 causes which restricted attendance at the Witenagemote 
 to the greater nobles told on the actual composition of the 
 Council of Barons. While the attendance of the ordinary 
 tenants in chief, the Knights or " Lesser Barons" as they 
 were called, was burdensome from its expense to them- 
 selves, their numbers and their dependence on the higher 
 nobles made the assembly of these knights dangerous to 
 the Crown. As early therefore as the time of Henry the 
 First we find a distinction recognized between the " Greater 
 Barons," of whom the Council was usually composed, and 
 the "Lesser Barons," who formed the bulk of the tenants 
 of the Crown. But though the attendance of the latter 
 had become rare their right of attendance remained intact. 
 While enacting that the prelates and greater barons should 
 be summoned by special writs to each gathering of the 
 Council a remarkable provision of the Great Charter orders 
 a general summons to be issued through the Sheriff to all 
 direct tenants of the Crown. The provision was probably 
 intended to rouse the lesser Baronage to the exercise of 
 rights which had practically passed into desuetude, but as 
 the clause is omitted in later issues of the Charter we may 
 doubt whether the principle it embodied ever received more 
 than a very limited application. There are traces of the 
 attendance of a few of the lesser knighthood, gentry per-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHAETER. 1204—1291. 359 
 
 haps of the neighborhood where the assembly was held, in 
 some of its meetings under Henry the Third, but till a late 
 period in the reign of his successor the Great Council prac- 
 tically remained a gathering of the greater barons, the prel- 
 ates, ^nd the high officers of the Crown. 
 
 The change which the Great Charter had failed to ac- 
 complish was now however brought about by the social 
 circumstances of the time. One of the most remarkable 
 of these was a steady decrease in the number of the greater 
 nobles. The bulk of the earldoms had already lapsed to 
 the Crown through the extinction of the families of their 
 possessors; of the greater baronies, many had practically 
 ceased to exist by their division among female co-heiresses, 
 many through the constant struggle of the poorer nobles 
 to rid themselves of their rank by a disclaimer so as to es- 
 cape the burden of higher taxation and attendance in Par- 
 liament which it involved. How far this diminution had 
 gone we may see from the fact that hardly more than a 
 hundred barons sat in the earlier Councils of Edward's 
 reign. But while the number of those who actually exer- 
 cised the privilege of assisting in Parliament was rapidly 
 diminishing, the numbers and wealth of the "lesser baron- 
 age, " whose right of attendance had become a mere con- 
 stitutional tradition, was as rapidly increasing. The long 
 peace and prosperity of the realm, the extension of its com- 
 merce and the increased export of wool, were swelling the 
 ranks and incomes of the country gentry as well as of the 
 freeholders and substantial yeomanry. We have already 
 noticed the effects of the increase of wealth in begetting a 
 passion for the possession of land which makes this reign 
 so critical a period in the history of the English freeholder ; 
 but the same tendency had to some extent existed in the 
 preceding century, and it was a consciousness of the grow- 
 ing importance of this class of rural proprietors which in- 
 duced the barons at the moment of the Great Charter to 
 make their fruitless attempt to induce them to take part in 
 the deliberations of the Great Council. But while the
 
 3G0 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IU. 
 
 barons desired their presence as an aid against the Crown, 
 the Crown itself desired it as a means of rendering taxa- 
 tion more eflficient. So long as the Great Council remained 
 a mere assembly of magnates it was necessary for the 
 King's ministers to treat separately with the other orders 
 of the state as to the amount and assessment of their con- 
 tributions. The grant made in the Great Council was 
 binding only on the barons and prelates who made it; but 
 before the aids of the boroughs, the Church, or the shires 
 could reach the royal treasury, a separate negotiation had 
 to be conducted by the officers of the Exchequer with the 
 reeves of each town, the sheriff and shire-court of each 
 county, and the archdeacons of each diocese. Bargains 
 of this sort would be the more tedious and disappointing 
 as the necessities of the Crown increased in the later years 
 of Edward, and it became a matter of fiscal expediency to 
 obtain the sanction of any proposed taxation through the 
 presence of these classes in the Great Council itself. 
 
 The effort however to revive the old personal attendance 
 of the lesser baronage which had broken down half a cen- 
 tury before could hardly be renewed at a time when the 
 increase of their numbers made it more impracticable than 
 ever ; but a means of escape from this difficulty was for- 
 tunately suggested by the very nature of the court through 
 which alone a summons could be addressed to the landed 
 knighthood. Amid the many judicial reforms of Henry 
 or Edward the shire court remained unchanged. The 
 haunted mound or the immemorial oak round which the 
 assembly gathered (for the court was often held in the open 
 air) were the relics of a time before the free kingdom had 
 sunk into a shire and its Meetings of the Wise into a 
 county court. But save that the King's reeve had taken 
 the place of the King and that the Norman legislation had 
 displaced the Bishop and set four Coroners by the Sheriff's 
 side, the gathering of the freeholders remained much as of 
 old. The local knighthood, the yeomanry, the husband- 
 men of the county, were all represented in the crowd that
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 361 
 
 gathered round the Sheriff, as guarded by his liveried fol- 
 lowers he published the King's writs, announced his de- 
 mand of aids, received the presentment of criminals and 
 the inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation of each 
 district, or listened solemnly to appeals for justice, civil 
 and criminal, from all who held themselves oppressed in 
 the lesser courts of the hundred or the soke. It was in 
 the County Court alone that the Sheriff could legally 
 summon the lesser baronage to attend the Great Council, 
 and it was in the actual constitution of this assembly that 
 the Crown found a solution of the difficult}^ which we have 
 stated. For the principle of representation by which it 
 was finally solved was coeval with the Shire Court itself. 
 In all cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn as- 
 sessors of the Sheriff, as members of a class, though not 
 formally deputed for that purpose, practically represented 
 the judicial opinion of the county at large. From every 
 hundred came groups of twelve sworn deputies, the " ju- 
 rors" through whom the presentments of the district were 
 made to the royal officer and with whom the assessment of 
 its share in the general taxation was arranged. The hus- 
 bandmen on the outskirts of the crowd, clad in the brown 
 smock frock which still lingers in the garb of our carters 
 and ploughmen, were broken up into little knots of five, a 
 reeve and four assistants, each of which knots formed the 
 representative of a rural township. If in fact we regard 
 the Shire Courts as lineally the descendants of our earliest 
 English Witenagemotes, we may justly claim the princi- 
 ple of parliamentary representation as among the oldest of 
 our institutions. 
 
 It was easy to give this principle a further extension by 
 the choice of representatives of the lesser barons in the 
 shire courts to which they were summoned; but it was 
 only slowly and tentatively that this process was applied 
 to the reconstitution of the Great Council. As early as 
 the close of John's reign there are indications of the ap- 
 proaching change in the summons of "four discreet
 
 3G3 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book HI 
 
 knicfhts" from every county. Fresh need of local support 
 was felt by both parties in the conflict of the succeeding 
 reign, and Henry and his barons alike summoned knights 
 from each shire " to meet on the common business of the 
 realm." It was no doubt with the same purpose that the 
 writs of Earl Simon ordered the choice of knights in each 
 shire for his famous Parliament of 12G5. Something like 
 a continuous attendance may be dated from the accession 
 of Edward, but it was long before the knights were re- 
 garded as more than local deputies for the assessment of 
 taxation or admitted to a share in the general business of 
 the Great Council. The statute "Quia Emptores," for 
 instance, was passed in it before the knights who had been 
 summoned could attend. Their participation in the delib- 
 erative power of Parliament, as well as their regular and 
 continuous attendance, dates only from the Parliament of 
 1295. But a far greater constitutional change in their po- 
 sition had already taken place through the extension of 
 electoral rights to the freeholders at large. The one class 
 entitled to a seat in the Great Council was, as we have 
 seen, that of the lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser 
 baronage alone that the knights were in theory the repre- 
 sentatives. But the necessity of holding their election in 
 the County Court rendered any restriction of the electoral 
 body physically impossible. The court was composed of 
 the whole body of freeholders, and no sheriff could distin- 
 guish the " aye, aye" of the yeoman from the " aye, aye" 
 of the lesser baron. From the first moment therefore of 
 their attendance we find the knights regarded not as mere 
 representatives of the baronage but as knights of the shire, 
 and by this silent revolution the whole body of the rural 
 freeholders were admitted to a share in the government of 
 the realm. 
 
 The financial difficulties of the Crown led to a far more 
 radical revolution in the admission into the Great Council 
 of representatives from the boroughs. The presence of 
 knights from each shire was the recognition of an older
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1304—1391. 363 
 
 right, but no right of attendance or share in the national 
 " counsel and assent" could be pleaded for the burgesses of 
 the towns. On the other hand the rapid development of 
 their wealth made them every day more important as ele- 
 ment« in the national taxation. From all payment of the 
 dues or fines exacted by the King as the original lord of 
 the soil on which they had in most cases grown up the 
 towns had long since freed themselves by what was called 
 the purchase of the " farm of the borough ;" in other words, 
 by the commutation of these uncertain dues for a fixed sum 
 paid annually to the Crown and apportioned by their own 
 magistrates among the general body of the burghers. All 
 that the King legall}^ retained was the right enjoyed by 
 every great proprietor of levying a corresponding taxation 
 on his tenants in demesne under the name of "a free aid" 
 whenever a grant was made for the national necessities by 
 the barons of the Great Council. But the temptation of 
 appropriating the growing wealth of the mercantile class 
 proved stronger than legal restrictions, and we find both 
 Henry the Third and his son assuming a right of imposing 
 t'ixes at pleasure and without any authority from the Coun- 
 cil even over London itself. The burgesses could refuse 
 indeed the invitation to contribute to the " free aids" de- 
 manded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their 
 markets or trading privileges brought them in the end to 
 submission. Each of these " free aids" however had to be 
 extorted after a long wrangle between the borough and the 
 officers of the Exchequer ; and if the towns were driven to 
 comply with what they considered an extortion they could 
 generally force the Crown by evasions and delays to a 
 compromise and abatement of its original demands. 
 
 The same financial reasons therefore existed for desiring 
 the presence of borough representatives in the Great Coun- 
 cil as existed in tlie case of the shires; but it was the genius 
 oi' Earl Simon which first broke through the older consti- 
 tutional tradition and summoned two burgesses from each 
 town to the ParJiamfiul of lii65. Time luid indeed to pas»
 
 364 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 before the large and statesmanlike conception of the great 
 patriot could meet with full acceptance. Through the 
 earlier part of Edward's reign we find a few instances of 
 the presence of representatives from the towns, but their 
 scant}^ numbers and the irregularity of their attendance 
 show that they were summoned rather to afford financial 
 information to the Great Council than as representatives 
 in it of an Estate of the Realm. But every year pleaded 
 stronger and stronger for their inclusion, and in the Par- 
 liament of 1295 that of 1265 found itself at last reproduced. 
 "It was from me that he learnt it," Earl Simon had cried, 
 as he recognized the military skill of Edward's onset at 
 Evesham; "it was from me that he learnt it," his spirit 
 might have exclaimed as he saw the King gathering at 
 last two burgesses " from every city, borough, and leading 
 town" within his realm to sit side by side with the knights, 
 nobles, and barons of the Great Council. To the Crown 
 the change was from the first an advantageous one. The 
 grants of subsidies by the burgesses in Parliament proved 
 more profitable than the previous extortions of the Ex- 
 chequer. The proportions of their grant generally ex- 
 ceeded that of the other estates. Their representatives too 
 proved far more compliant with the royal will than the 
 barons or knights of the shire ; only on one occasion dur- 
 ing Edward's reign did the burgesses waver from their 
 general support of the Crown. 
 
 It was easy indeed to control them, for the selection of 
 boroughs to be represented remained wholly in the King's 
 hands, and their numbers could be increased or diminished 
 at the King's pleasure. The determination was left to the 
 sheriff, and at a hint from the royal Council a sheriff of 
 Wilts would cut down the number of represented boroughs 
 in his shire from eleven to three, or a sheriff of Bucks 
 declare he could find but a single borough, that of i 
 Wycomb, within the bounds of his county. Nor was this 
 exercise of the prerogative hampered by any anxiety on 
 the part of the towns to claim representative privileges.
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 365 
 
 It was hard to suspect that a power before which the 
 Crown would have to bow lay in the ranks of soberly- 
 clad traders, summoned only to assess the contributions of 
 their boroughs, and whose attendance was as difficult to 
 secure, as it seemed burdensome to themselves and the 
 towns who sent them. The mass of citizens took little or 
 no part in their choice, for they were elected in the county 
 court by a few of the principal burghers deputed for the 
 purpose ; but the cost of their maintenance, the two shil- 
 lings a day paid to the burgess by his town as four were 
 paid to the knight by his county, was a burden from which 
 the boroughs made desperate efforts to escape. Some per- 
 sisted in making no return to the sheriff. Some bought 
 charters of exemption from the troublesome privilege. Of 
 the 165 who were summoned by Edward the First more 
 than a third ceased to send representatives after a single 
 compliance with the royal summons. During the whole 
 time from the reign of Edward the Third to the reign of 
 Henry the Sixth the sheriff of Lancashire declined to re- 
 turn the names of any boroughs at all within that county 
 "on account of their poverty." Nor were the representa- 
 tives themselves more anxious to appear than their 
 boroughs to send them. The busy country squire and the 
 thrifty trader were equally reluctant to undergo the trouble 
 and expense of a journey to Westminster. Legal meas- 
 ures were often necessary to ensure their presence. Writs 
 still exist in abundance such as that by which Walter le 
 Rous is " held to bail in eight oxen and four cart-horses to 
 come before the King on the day specified" for attendance 
 in Parliament. But in spite of obstacles such as these the 
 presence of representatives from the boroughs may be re- 
 garded as continuous from the Parliament of 1295. As 
 the representation of the lesser barons had widened 
 through a silent change into that of the shire, so that of 
 the boroughs — restricted in theory to those in the royal 
 demesne — seems practically from Edward's time to have 
 been extended to all who were in a condition to pay the
 
 3G0 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BoOK III 
 
 cost of their representatives' support. By a change as 
 silent within the Parliament itself the burgess, originally 
 summoned to take part only in matters of taxation, was at 
 last admitted to a full share in the deliberations and 
 authority of the other orders of the State, 
 
 The admission of the burgesses and knights of the shire 
 to the assembly of 1295 completed the fabric of our repre- 
 sentative constitution. The Great Council of the Barons 
 became the Parliament of the Realm. Every order of the 
 state found itself represented in this assembly, and took 
 part in the grant of supplies, the work of legislation, and 
 in the end the control of government. But though in all 
 essential points the character of Parliament has remained 
 the same from that time to this, there were some remark- 
 able particulars in which the assembly of 1295 differed 
 widely from the present Parliament at St, Stephen's. 
 Some of these differences, such as those which sprang from 
 the increased powers and changed relations of the different 
 orders among themselves, we shall have occasion to con- 
 sider at a later time. But a difference of a far more start- 
 ling kind than these lay in the presence of the clergy. If 
 there is any part in the parliamentary scheme of Edward 
 the First which can be regarded as especially his own, it 
 is his project for the representation of the ecclesiastical 
 order. The King had twice at least summoned its " proc- 
 tors" to Great Councils before 1295, but it was then only 
 that the complete representation of the Church was defi- 
 nitety organized by the insertion of a clause in the writ 
 which summoned a bishop to Parliament requiring the 
 personal attendance of all archdeacons, deans, or priors of 
 cathedral churches, of a proctor for each cathedral chapter, 
 and two for the clergy within his diocese. The clause is 
 repeated in the writs of the present day, but its practical 
 effect was foiled almost from the first by the resolute op- 
 position of those to whom it was addressed. "What the 
 towns failed in doing the clergy actually did. Even when 
 forced to comply with the royal summons, as they seem to
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204-1291. 3G7 
 
 have been forced during Edward's reign, they sat jealously 
 by themselves, and their refusal to vote supplies in any 
 but their own provincial assemblies, or convocations, of 
 Canterbury and York left the Crown without a motive for 
 insisting on their continued attendance. Their presence 
 indeed, though still at times granted on some solemn oc- 
 casions, became so pure a formality that by the end of 
 the fifteenth century it had sunk wholl}^ into desuetude. 
 In their anxiety to preserve their existence as an isolated 
 and privileged order the clergy flung away a power which, 
 had they retained it, would have ruinously hampered the 
 healthy development of the state. To take a single in- 
 stance, it is difficult to see how the great changes of the 
 Reformation could have been brought about had a good 
 half of the House of Commons consisted purel}' of church- 
 men, whose numbers would have been backed by the 
 weight of their property, as possessors of a third of the 
 landed estates of the realm. 
 
 A hardly less important difference may be found in the 
 gradual restriction of the meetings of Parliament to West- 
 minster. The names of Edward's statutes remind us of 
 its convocation at the most various quarters, at Win- 
 chester, Acton Burnell, Northampton. It was at a later 
 time that Parliament became settled in the straggling vil- 
 lage which had grown up in the marshy swamp of the Isle 
 of Thorns beside the palace whose embattled pile towered 
 over the Thames and the new West-minster which was 
 still rising in Edward's day on the site of the older church 
 of the Confessor. It is possible that, while contributing 
 greatly to its constitutional importance, this settlement of 
 the Parliament may have helped to throw into the back- 
 ground its character as a supreme court of appeal. The 
 proclamation by which it was called together invited " all 
 who had any grace to demand of the King in Parliament, 
 or any plaint to make of matters which could not be re- 
 dressed or determined by ordinary course of law, or who 
 had been in any way aggrieved by any of the King's
 
 368 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISlI PEOPLE. [Book III 
 
 ministers or justices or sheriffs, or their bailiffs, or any 
 other officer, or have been unduly assessed, rated, charged, 
 or sur-charged to aids, subsidies, or taxes, " to deliver their 
 petitions to receivers who sat in the Great Hall of the 
 Palace of Westminster. The petitions were forwarded to 
 the King's Council, and it was probably the extension of 
 the jurisdiction of that body and the rise of the Court of 
 Chancery which reduced this ancient right of the subject 
 to the formal election of " Triers of Petitions" at the 
 opening of every new Parliament by the House of Lords, a 
 usage which is still continued. But it must have been 
 owing to some memory of the older custom that the sub- 
 ject always looked for redress against injuries from the 
 Crown or its ministers to the Parliament of the realm. 
 
 The subsidies granted by the Parliament of 1295 fur- 
 nished the King with the means of warfare with both 
 Scotland and France, while they assured him of the sym- 
 pathy of his people in the contest. But from the first the 
 reluctance of Edward to enter on the double war was 
 strongly marked. The refusal of the Scotch baronage to 
 obey his summons had been followed on Balliol's part by 
 two secret steps which made a struggle inevitable, by a 
 request to Rome for absolution from his oath of fealty and 
 by a treaty of alliance with Philip the Fair. As yet how- 
 ever no open breach had taken place, and while Edward 
 in 1296 summoned his knighthood to meet him in the 
 north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the hope of 
 bringing about an accommodation with the Scot King. 
 But all thought of accommodation was roughly ended by 
 the refusal of Balliol to attend the Parliament, by the rout 
 of a small body of English troops, and by the Scotch in- 
 vestment of Carlisle. Taken as he was by surprise, Ed- 
 ward showed at once the vigor and rapidity of his temper. 
 His army marched upon Berwick. The town was a rich 
 and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade 
 furnished its only rampart the serried ranks of citizens^ 
 behind it gave little hope of an easy conquest. Their
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204^1291. 369 
 
 taunts indeed stung the King to the quick. As his en- 
 gineers threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging 
 army the burghers bade him wait till he won the town 
 before he began digging round it. "Kynge Edward,** 
 they shouted, "waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; 
 waune thou havest geten, dike thee." But the stockade 
 was stormed with the loss of a single knight, nearly eight 
 thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless 
 carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the 
 town-hall stoutly against all assailants were burned alive 
 in it. The massacre only ceased when a procession of 
 priests bore the host to the King's presence, praying for 
 mercy. Edward with a sudden and characteristic burst 
 of tears called off his troops ; but the town was ruined for- 
 ever, and the greatest merchant city of northern Britain 
 sank from that time into a petty sea- port. 
 
 At Berwick Edward received Balliol's formal defiance. 
 " Has the fool done this folly?" the King cried in haughty 
 scorn; "if he will not come to us, we will come to him." 
 The terrible slaughter however had done its work, and his 
 march northward was a triumphal progress. Edinburgh, 
 Stirling, and Perth opened their gates, Bruce joined the 
 English army, and Balliol himself surrendered and passed 
 without a blow from his throne to an English prison. No 
 further punishment however was exacted from the pros- 
 trate realm. Edward simply treated it as a fief, and de- 
 clared its forfeiture to be the legal consequence of Balliol's 
 treason. It lapsed in fact to its suzerain ; and its earls, 
 barons, and gentry swore homage in Parliament at Ber- 
 wick to Edward as their King. The sacred stone on 
 which its older sovereigns had been installed, an oblong 
 block of limestone which legend asserted to have been the 
 pillow of Jacob as angels ascended and descended upon 
 him, was removed from Scone and placed in Westminster 
 by the shrine of the Confessor. It was enclosed by Ed- 
 ward's order in a stately seat, which became from that 
 hour the coronation chair of English Kings. To the King 
 Vol. I.— 24
 
 370 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 himself the whole business must have seemed another and 
 easier conquest of Wales, and the mercy and just govern- 
 ment which had followed his first success followed his 
 second also. The government of the new dependency was 
 entrusted to John of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, at the head 
 of an English Council of Regency. Pardon was freely 
 extended to all who had resisted the invasion, and order 
 and public peace were rigidly enforced. 
 
 But the triumph, rapid and complete as it was, had 
 more than exhausted the aids granted by the Parliament. 
 The treasury was utterly drained. The struggle indeed 
 widened as every month went on ; the costly fight with 
 the French in Gascony called for supplies, while Edward 
 was planning a yet costlier attack on northern France 
 with the aid of Flanders. Need drove him on his return 
 from Scotland in 1297 to measures of tyrannical extortion 
 which seemed to recall the times of John. His first blow 
 fell on the Church. At the close of 1294 he had already 
 demanded half their annual income from the clergy, and 
 so terrible was his wrath at their resistance that the Dean 
 of St. Paul's, who stood forth to remonstrate, dropped 
 dead of sheer terror at his feet. " If any oppose the King's 
 demand," said a royal envoy in the midst of the Convoca- 
 tion, " let him stand up that he may be noted as an enemy 
 to the King's peace." The outraged Churchmen fell back 
 on an untenable plea that their aid was due solely to Rome, 
 and alleged the bull of " Clericis Laicos," issued by Boni- 
 face the Eighth at this moment, a bull which forbade the 
 clergy to pay secular taxes from their ecclesiastical rev- 
 enues, as a ground for refusing to comply with further 
 taxation. In 1297 Archbishop Winch elsey refused on the 
 ground of this bull to make any grant, and Edward met 
 his refusal by a general outlawry of the whole order. The 
 King's courts were closed, and all justice denied to those 
 who refused the King aid. By their actual plea the clergy 
 had put themselves formally in the wrong, and the out- 
 lawry soon forced them to submission ; but their aid did
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 371 
 
 little to recruit the exhausted treasury. The pressure of 
 the war steadily increased, and far wider measures of 
 arbitrary taxation were needful to equip an expedition 
 which Edward prepared to lead in person to Flanders. 
 The country gentlemen were compelled to take up knight- 
 hood or to compound for exemption from the burdensome 
 honor, and forced contributions of cattle and corn were 
 demanded from the counties. Edward no doubt purposed 
 to pay honestly for these supplies, but his exactions from 
 the merchant class rested on a deliberate theory of his 
 royal rights. He looked on the customs as levied abso- 
 lutely at his pleasure, and the export duty on wool — now 
 the staple produce of the country — was raised to six times 
 its former amount. Although he infringed no positive 
 provision of charter or statute in his action, it was plain 
 that his course really undid all that had been gained by 
 the Barons' war. But the blow had no sooner been struck 
 than Edward found stout resistance within his realm. 
 The barons drew together and called a meeting for the 
 redress of their grievances. The two greatest of the Eng- 
 lish nobles, Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and 
 Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, placed themselves at the 
 head of the opposition. The first was Constable, the sec- 
 ond Earl Marshal, and Edward bade them lead a force to 
 Gascony as his lieutenants while he himself sailed to 
 Flanders. Their departure would have left the Baronage 
 without leaders, and the two earls availed themselves of a 
 plea that they were not bound to foreign service save in 
 attendance on the King to refuse obedience to the royal 
 orders. "By God, Sir Earl," swore the King to the Earl 
 Marshal, "you shall either go or hang!" "By God, Sir 
 King," was the cool reply, "I will neither go nor hang!" 
 Both parties separated in bitter anger; the King to seize 
 fresh wool, to outlaw the clergy, and to call an army to 
 his aid ; the barons to gather in arms, backed by the excom- 
 munication of the Primate. But the strife went on further 
 than words. Ere the Parliament he had convened could
 
 372 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 meet, Edward had discovered his own powerlessness ; 
 Winchelsey offered his mediation ; and Edward confirmed 
 the Great Charter and the Charter of Forests as the price 
 of a grant from the clergj'- and a subsidy from the Com- 
 mons. With one of those sudden revulsions of feeling of 
 which his nature was capable the King stood before his 
 people in Westminster Hall and owned with a burst of 
 tears that he had taken their substance without due war- 
 rant of law. His passionate appeal to their loyalty wrested 
 a reluctant assent to the prosecution of the war, and in 
 August Edward sailed for Flanders, leaving his son regent 
 of the realm. But the crisis had taught the need of fur- 
 ther securities against the royal power, and as Edward 
 was about to embark the barons demanded his acceptance 
 of additional articles to the Charter, expressly renouncing 
 his right of taxing the nation without its own consent. 
 The King sailed without complying, but Winchelsey 
 joined the two earls and the citizens of London in forbid- 
 ding any levy of supplies till the Great Charter with 
 these clauses was again confirmed, and the trouble in 
 Scotland as well as the still pending strife with France left 
 Edward helpless in the barons' hands. The Great Charter 
 and the Charter of the Forests were solemnly confirmed by 
 him at Ghent in November ; and formal pardon was issued 
 to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk. 
 
 The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation of any 
 right to the exactions by which the people were aggrieved, 
 the pledge that the King would no more take " such aids, 
 tasks, and prizes, but by common assent of the realm," the 
 promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or 
 " maletot" without the same assent, was the close of the 
 great struggle which had begun at Runnymede. The 
 clauses so soon removed from the Great Charter were now 
 restored ; and evade them as they might, the kings were 
 never able to free themselves from the obligation to seek 
 aid solely from the general consent of their subjects. It 
 was Scotland which had won this victory for English free-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1391. 373 
 
 dom. At the moment when Edward and the earls stood 
 face to face the King saw his work in the north suddenly 
 undone. Both the justice and injustice of the new rule 
 proved fatal to it. The wrath of the Scots, already kindled 
 by the intrusion of English priests into Scotch livings and 
 by the grant of lands across the border to English barons, 
 was fanned to fury by the strict administration of law and 
 the repression of feuds and cattle-lifting. The disbanding 
 too of troops, which was caused by the penury of the roj'^al 
 exchequer, united with the license of the soldiery who 
 remained to quicken the national sense of wrong. The 
 disgraceful submission of their leaders brought the people 
 themselves to the front. In spite of a hundred years of 
 peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and the artisan 
 of the towns remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Eng- 
 lishmen. They had never consented to Edward's suprem- 
 acy, and their blood rose against the insolent rule of the 
 stranger. The genius of an outlaw knight, William Wal- 
 lace, saw in their smouldering discontent a hope of free- 
 dom for his country, and his daring raids on outlying 
 parties of the English soldiery roused the country at last 
 into revolt. 
 
 Of Wallace himself, of his life or temper, we know little 
 or nothing ; the very traditions of his gigantic stature and 
 enormous strength are dim and unhistorical. But the in- 
 stinct of the Scotch people has guided it aright in choosing 
 him for its national hero. He was the first to assert free- 
 dom as a national birthright, and amidst the despair of 
 nobles and priests to call the people itself to arms. At the 
 head of an army drawn principally from the coast dis- 
 tricts north of the Tay, which were inhabited by a popu- 
 lation of the same blood as that of the Lowlands, Wallace 
 in September, 1297, encamped near Stirling, the pass be- 
 tween the north and the south, and awaited the English 
 advance. It was here that he was found by the English 
 army. The offers of John of Warenne were scornfully 
 rejected: "We have come," said the Scottish leader, "not
 
 374 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 to make peace, but to free our country." The position of 
 Wallace behind a loop of Forth was in fact chosen with 
 consummate skill. The one bridge which crossed the 
 river was only broad enough to admit two horsemen 
 abreast ; and though the English army had been passing 
 from daybreak but half its force was across at noon when 
 Wallace closed on it and cut it after a short combat to 
 pieces in sight of its comrades. The retreat of the Earl of 
 Surrey over the border left Wallace head of the country 
 he had freed, and for a few months he acted as " Guardian 
 of the Realm" in Balliol's name, and headed a wild foray 
 into Northumberland in which the barbarous cruelties of 
 his men left a bitter hatred behind them which was to 
 wreak its vengeance in the later bloodshed of the war. 
 His reduction of Stirling Castle at last called Edward to 
 the field. In the spring of 1298 the King's diplomacy had 
 at last wrung a truce for two years from Philip the Fair; 
 and he at once returned to England to face the troubles in 
 Scotland. Marching northward with a larger host than 
 had ever followed his banner, he was enabled by treachery 
 to surprise Wallace as he fell back to avoid an engage- 
 ment, and to force him on the twenty-second of July to 
 battle near Falkirk. The Scotch force consisted almost 
 wholly of foot, and Wallace drew up his spearmen in four 
 great hollow circles or squares, the outer ranks kneeling 
 and the whole supported by bowmen within, while a small 
 force of horse were drawn up as a reserve in the rear. It 
 was the formation of Waterloo, the first appearance in our 
 history since the day of Senlac of "that unconquerable 
 British infantry" before which chivalry was destined to 
 go down. For a moment it had all Waterloo's success. 
 " I have brought you to the ring, hop (dance) if you can," 
 are words of rough humor that reveal the very soul of the 
 patriot leader, and the serried ranks answered well to his 
 appeal. The Bishop of Durham who led the English van 
 shrank wisely from the look of the squares. "Back to 
 yovir mass, Bishop," shouted the reckless knights bebin<3
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 375 
 
 him, but the body of horse dashed itself vainly on the wall 
 of spears. Terror spread through the English army, and 
 its Welsh auxiliaries drew off in a body from the field. 
 But the generalship of Wallace was met by that of the 
 King. Drawing his bowmen to the front, Edward riddled 
 the Scottish ranks with arrows and then hurled his cav- 
 alry afresh on the wavering line. In a moment all was 
 over, the maddened knights rode in and out of the broken 
 ranks, slaying without mercy. Thousands fell on the 
 field, and Wallace himseK escaped with diflQculty, followed 
 by a handful of men. 
 
 But ruined as the cause of freedom seemed, his work 
 was done. He had roused Scotland into life, and even a 
 defeat like Falkirk left her unconquered. Edward re- 
 mained master only of the ground he stood on : want of 
 supplies forced him at last to retreat ; and in the summer 
 of the following year, 1299, when Balliol, released from 
 his English prison, withdrew into France, a regency of 
 the Scotch nobles under Robert Bruce and John Comyn 
 continued the struggle for independence. Troubles at 
 home and danger from abroad stayed Edward's hand. 
 The barons still distrusted his sincerity, and though at 
 their demand he renewed the Confirmation in the spring 
 of 1299, his attempt to add an evasive clause saving the 
 right of the Crown proved the justice of their distrust. In 
 spite of a fresh and unconditional renewal of it a strife 
 over the Forest Charter went on till the opening of 1301, 
 when a new gathering of the barons in arms with the 
 support of Archbishop Winchelsey wrested from him its 
 full execution. What aided freedom within was as of old 
 the peril without. France was still menacing, and a claim 
 advanced by Pope Boniface the Eighth at its suggestion 
 to the feudal superiority over Scotland arrested a new ad- 
 vance of the King across the border. A quarrel, however, 
 which broke out between Philip le Bel and the Papacy 
 removed all obstacles. It enabled Edward to defy Boni- 
 face and to wring from France a treaty in which Scotland
 
 376 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IIL 
 
 was abandoned. In 1304 he resumed the work of inva- 
 sion, and again the nobles flung down their arms as he 
 marched to the North. Comyn, at the head of the Regency, 
 acknowledged his sovereignty, and the surrender of Stir- 
 ling completed the conquest of Scotland. But the triumph 
 of Edward was only the prelude to the carrying out of his 
 designs for knitting the two countries together by a gen- 
 erosity and wisdom which reveal the greatness of his 
 statesmanship. A general amnesty was extended to all 
 who had shared in the resistance. Wallace, who refused 
 to avail himself of Edward's mercy, was captured and 
 condemned to death at Westminster on charges of treason, 
 sacrilege, and robbery. The head of the great patriot, 
 crowned in mockery with a circlet of laurel, was placed 
 upon London Bridge. But the execution of Wallace was 
 the one blot on Edward's clemency. With a masterly 
 boldness he entrusted the government of the country to a 
 council of Scotch nobles, many of whom were freshly par- 
 doned for their share in the war, and anticipated the policy 
 of Cromwell by allotting ten representatives to Scotland in 
 the Common Parliament of his realm. A Convocation 
 was summoned at Perth for the election of these repre- 
 sentatives, and a great judicial scheme which was pro- 
 mulgated in this assembly adopted the amended laws of 
 King David as the base of a new legislation, and divided 
 the country for judicial purposes into four districts, Loth- 
 ian, Galloway, the Highlands, and the land between the 
 Highlands and the Forth, at the head of each of which 
 were placed two justiciaries, the one English and the other 
 Scotch. 
 
 With the conquest and settlement of Scotland the glory 
 of Edward seemed again complete. The bitterness of his 
 humiliation at home indeed still preyed upon him, and in 
 measure after measure we see his purpose of renewing the 
 strife with the baronage. In 1303 he found a means of 
 evading his pledge to levy no new taxes on merchandise 
 save by assent of the realm in a consent of the foreign
 
 Chap. 4.] THE CHARTER. 1204—1291. 377 
 
 merchants, whether procured by royal pressure or no, to 
 purchase by stated payments certain privileges of trading. 
 In this " New Custom" lay the origin of our import duties. 
 A formal absolution from his promises which he obtained 
 from Pope Clement the Fifth in 1305 showed that he 
 looked on his triumph in the North as enabling him to re- 
 open the questions which he had yielded. But again Scot- 
 land stajxd his hand. Only four months had passed since 
 its submission, and he was preparing for a joint Parlia- 
 ment of the two nations at Carlisle, when the conquered 
 country suddenly sprang again to arms. Its new leader 
 was Robert Bruce, a grandson of one of the original claim- 
 ants of the crown. The Norman house of Bruce formed 
 a part of the Yorkshire baronage, but it had acquired 
 through intermarriages the Earldom of Carrick and the 
 Lordship of Annandale. Both the claimant and his son 
 had been pretty steadily on the English side in the con- 
 test with Balliol and Wallace, and Robert had himself 
 been trained in the English court and stood high in the 
 King's favor. But the withdrawal of Balliol gave a new 
 force to his claims upon the crown, and the discovery of 
 an intrigue which he had set on foot with the Bishop of 
 St. Andrews so roused Edward's jealousy that Bruce fled 
 for his life across the border. Early in 1306 he met 
 Comyn, the Lord of Badenoch, to whose treachery he at- 
 tributed the disclosure of his plans, in the church of the 
 Gray Friars at Dumfries, and after the interchange of a 
 few hot words struck him with his dagger, to the ground. 
 It was an outrage that admitted of no forgiveness, and 
 Bruce for very safety was forced to assume the crown six 
 weeks after in the Abbey of Scone. The news roused 
 Scotland again to arms, and summoned Edward to a fresh 
 contest with his unconquerable foe. But the murder of 
 Comyn had changed the King's mood to a terrible pitiless- 
 ness. He threatened death against all concerned in the 
 outrage, and exposed the Countess of Buchan, who had 
 set the crown on Bruce's head, in a cage or open chamber
 
 378 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book III. 
 
 built for the purpose in one of the towers of Berwick. At 
 the solemn feast which celebrated his son's knighthood 
 Edward vowed on the swan which formed the chief dish 
 at the banquet to devote the rest of his days to exact 
 vengeance from the murderer himself. But even at the 
 moment of the vow Bruce was already flying for his life to 
 the western islands. "Henceforth," he said to his wife 
 at their coronation, "thou art Queen of Scotland and I 
 King." " I fear," replied Mary Bruce, " we are only play- 
 ing at royalty like children in their games." The play 
 was soon turned into bitter earnest. A small English 
 force under Aymer de Valence sufficed to rout the disor- 
 derly levies which gathered round the new monarch, and 
 the flight of Bruce left his followers at Edward's mercy. 
 Noble after noble was sent to the block. The Earl of 
 Athole pleaded kindred with royalty. "His only privi- 
 lege," burst forth the King, " shall be that of being hanged 
 on a higher gallows than the rest." Knights and priests 
 were strung up side by side by the English justiciaries ; 
 while the wife and daughters of Robert Bruce were flung 
 into Edward's prisons. Bruce himself had offered to 
 capitulate to Prince Edward. But the offer only roused 
 the old King to fury. " Who is so bold," he cried, " as to 
 treat with our traitors without our knowledge?" and ris- 
 ing from his sick bed he led his army northward in the 
 summer of 1307 to complete the conquest. But the hand 
 of death was upon him, and in the very sight of Scotland 
 the old man breathed his last at Burgh-upon-sands.
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT 
 
 1307— 1461
 
 AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK lY. 
 
 For Edward the Second we have three important contemporaries : 
 Thomas de la More, Trokelowe's Annals, and the life by a monk of 
 Malmesbury printed by Hearne. The sympathies of the first are 
 with the King, those of the last two with the Barons. Murimuth's 
 short Chronicle is also contemporary. John Barbour's "Bruce," 
 the great legendary storehouse for his hero's adventures, is histori- 
 cally worthless. 
 
 Important as it is, the reign of Edward the Third is by no means 
 fortunate in its annalists. The concluding part of the Chronicle of 
 Walter of Hemingford or Heminburgh seems to have been jotted 
 down as news of the passing events reached its author : it ends at 
 the battle of Cregy. Hearne has published another contemporary 
 account, that of Robert of Avesbury, which closes in 1356. A third 
 account by Knyghton, a canon of Leicester, will be found in the 
 collection of Twysden. At the end of this century and the begin- 
 ning of the next the annals which had been carried on in the Abbey 
 of St. Albans were thrown together by Walsingham in the "Historia 
 Anglicana" which bears his name, a compilation whose history may 
 be found in the prefaces, to the "Chronica Monasterii S. Albani" 
 issued in the Rolls Series. An anonymous chronicler whose work 
 is printed in the 23d volume of the " Archaeologia" has given us 
 the story of the Good Parliament, another accoimt is preserved in 
 the "Chronica Anglise from 1328 to 1388, " published in the Rolls 
 Series, and fresh light has been recently thrown on the time by the 
 publication of a Chronicle by Adam of Usk which extends from 
 1377 to 1404. Fortunately the scantiness of historical narrative is 
 compensated by the growing fulness and abundance of our State- 
 papers. Rymer's Foedera is rich in diplomatic and other documents 
 for this period, and from this time we have a storehouse of political 
 and social information in the Parliamentary Rolls. 
 
 For the French war itself our primary authority is the Chronicle 
 of Jehan le Bel, a canon of the church of St. Lambert of Liege, wlio 
 himself served in Edward's campaign against the Scots and spent 
 the rest of his life at the court of John of Hainault. Up to the 
 Treaty of Bretigny, where it closes, Froissart has done little more 
 than copy this work, making, however, large additions from his own 
 inquiries, especially in the Flemish and Breton campaigns and in 
 the account of Cregy. Froissart was himself a Hainaulter of Valen- 
 ciennes ; he held a post in Queen Philippa's household from 1301 to 
 1369, and under this influence produced in 1873 the first edition of 
 his well-known Chronicle. A later edition is far less English in 
 tone, and a third version, begun by him in his old age after long 
 absence from England, is distinctly French in it-! sympathies. 
 Froissart's vivacity and picturesqueness blind us to the inaccuracy 
 of his details; as an historical authority he is of little value. The 
 " Fasciculi Zizaniorum" in the Rolls Series with the documents ap- 
 pended to it is a work of primary anthoritj'^ for the history of Wyclif 
 and his followers : a selection from his English tracts has been made 
 by Mr. T. Arnold for the University of Oxford, which haa also pub-
 
 382 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 
 
 lished his "Trias. " The version of the Bible that bears his name 
 has been edited with a valuable preface by the Rev. J. Forshall and 
 Sir F. Madden. William Lougland's poem, "The Complaint of Piers 
 the Plouj^hman" (edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early English Text 
 Society) tlirovvs a tiood of light on the social state of England after 
 the Treaty of Bretiguy. 
 
 The " Annals of Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth, " now 
 published by the Master of the Rolls, are our main authority for the 
 period which follows Edward's death. They serve as the basis of 
 the St. Alban's compilation which bears the name of Walsingham, 
 and from which the "Life of Richard," by a monk of Evesham is 
 for the most part derived. The same violent Lancastrian sympathy 
 runs through Walsingham and the fifth book of Knyghton's Chroni- 
 cle. The French authorities on the other hand are vehemently on 
 Richard's side. Froissart, who ends at this time, is supplemented 
 by the metrical history of Creton (" Archaeologia, " vol. xx. ) and by 
 the "Chronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart" (English Histori- 
 cal Society) , both works of French authors and published in France 
 in the time of Henry the Fourth, probably with the aim of arousing 
 French feeling against the House of Lancaster and the war-policy 
 which it had revived. The popular feeling in England may be seen 
 in '• Political Songs from Edward HI. to Richard HI." (Rolls Series). 
 A poem on "The Deposition of Richard 11." which has been pub- 
 lished by the Camden Society is now ascribed to William Longland. 
 With Henry the Fifth our historic materials become more abun- 
 dant. We have the "Acta Henrici Quinti" by Titus Livius, a chap- 
 lain in the royal army ; a life by Elmham, prior of Lenton, simpler 
 in style but identical in arrangement and facts with the former 
 work ; a biography by Robert Redman ; a metrical chronicle by 
 Elmham (published in Rolls Series in "Memorials of Henry the 
 Fifth") ; and the meagre chronicles of Hardyng and Otterbourne. 
 The King's Norman campaigns may be studied in M. Puiseux's 
 "Siege de Rouen" (Caen, 1867). The "Wars of the English in 
 France" and Blondel's work "De Reductione Normannise" (both in 
 Rolls Series) give ample information on the military side of this 
 and the next reign. But with the accession of Henry the Sixth we 
 again enter on a period of singular dearth in its historical authori- 
 ties. The"Proces de Jeanne d' Arc" (published by the Societe de 
 I'Histoire de France) is the only real authority for her history. 
 For English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of William 
 of Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland Chronicle, and of 
 Fabyan. Fabyan is a London alderman with a strong bias in favor 
 of the House of Lancaster, and his work is useful for London only. 
 The Continuator is one of the best of his class ; and though con- 
 nected with the house of York, the date of his work, which appeared 
 soon after Bosworth Field, makes him fairly impartial ; but he is 
 sketchy and deficient in information. The more copious narrative 
 of Polydore Vergil is far superior to these in literary ability, but of 
 later date, and strongly Lancastrian in tone. For the struggle be- 
 tweer. Edward and Warwick, the valuable narrative of " The Arrival 
 of Edward the Fourth" (Camden Society) may be taken as the offi- 
 cial account on the royal side. The Paston Letters are the first in- 
 stance in English history of a family correspondence, and throw 
 oTftat lierht on the social condition ot the timet
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EDWARD II. 
 1307—1337. 
 
 In his calling together the estates of the realm Edward 
 the First determined the course of English historj-. From 
 the first moment of its appearance the Parliament became 
 the centre of English affairs. The hundred years indeed 
 which follow its assembly at Westminster sav/ its rise into 
 a power which checked and overawed the Crown. 
 
 Of the Kings in whose reigns the Parliament gathered 
 this mighty strength not one was likely to look with in- 
 difference on the growth of a rival authority, and the bulk 
 of them were men who in other times would have roughly 
 checked it. What held their hand was the need of the 
 Crown. The century and a half that followed the gather- 
 ing of the estates at Westminster was a time of almost 
 continual war, and of the financial pressure that springs 
 from war. It was indeed v/ar that had gathered them. 
 In calling his Parliament Edward the First sought mainly 
 an effective means of procuring supplies for that policy of 
 national consolidation wdiich had triumphed in Wales and 
 which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the tri- 
 umph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the 
 strife brought wider strifes in its train. When Edward 
 wrung from Balliol an acknowledgment of his suzerainty 
 he foresaw little of the war with France, the war with 
 Spain, the quarrel with tlie Papacy, the upgrowth of so- 
 cial, of political, of religious revolution within England 
 itself, of which that acknowledgment was to be the pre- 
 lude. But the thicker troubles gathered round England 
 the more the royal treasurv was drained, and now that ar-
 
 384 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 bitrary taxation was impossible the one means of filling it 
 Jay in a summons of the Houses. The Crown was chained 
 to the Parliament by a tie of absolute need. From the 
 first moment of parliamentary existence the life and power 
 of the estates assembled at Westminster hung on the ques- 
 tion of supplies. So long as war went on no ruler could 
 dispense with the grants which fed the war and which 
 Parliament alone could afford. But it was impossible to 
 procure supplies save by redressing the grievances of which 
 Parliament complained and by granting the powers which 
 Parliament demanded. It was in vain that King after 
 King, conscious that war bound them to the Parliament, 
 strove to rid themselves of the war. So far was the ambi- 
 tion of our rulers from being the cause of the long struggle 
 that, save in the one case of Henry the Fifth, the desperate 
 effort of every ruler was to arrive at peace. Forced as 
 they were to fight, their restless diplomacy strove to draw 
 from victory as from defeat a means of escape from the 
 strife that was enslaving the Crown. The royal Council, 
 the royal favorites, were alwaj^s on the side of peace. But 
 fortunately for English freedom peace was impossible. 
 The pride of the English peoj)le, the greed of France, foiled 
 every attempt at accommodation. The wisest ministers 
 sacrificed themselves in vain. King after King patched 
 up truces which never grew into treaties, and concluded 
 marriages which brought fresh discord instead of peace. 
 "War went ceaselessly on, and with the march of war went 
 on the ceaseless growth of the Parliament. 
 
 The death of Edward the First arrested only for a mo- 
 ment the advance of his army to the north. The Earl of 
 PembroKe led it across the border, and found himself mas- 
 ter of the country without a blow, Bruce 's career became 
 that of a desperate adventurer, for even the Highland 
 chiefs in whose fastnesses he found shelter were bitterly 
 hostile to one who claimed to be King of their foes in the 
 Lowlands. It was this adversity that transformed the 
 murderer of Comjm into the noble leader of a nation's
 
 Chap. 1.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 385 
 
 cause. Strong and of commanding presence, brave and 
 genial in temper, Bruce bore the hardships of his career 
 with a courage and hopefulness that never failed. In the 
 legends that clustered round his name we see him listening 
 in Highland glens to the bay of the bloodhounds on his 
 track, or holding a pass single-handed against a crowd of 
 savage clansmen. Sometimes the small band which clung 
 to him were forced to support themselves by hunting and 
 fishing, sometimes to break up for safety as their enemies 
 tracked them to their lair. Bruce himself had more than 
 once to fling off his coat-of-mail and scramble barefoot for 
 very life up the crags. Little by little however the dark 
 sky cleared. The English pressure relaxed. James Doug- 
 las, the darling of Scottish story, was the first of the Low- 
 land Barons to rally to the Bruce, and his daring gave 
 heart to the King's cause. Once he surprised his own 
 house, which had been given to an Englishman, ate the 
 dinner which was prepared for its new owner, slew his 
 captives, and tossed their bodies on to a pile of wood at 
 the castle gate. Then he staved in the wine-vats that the 
 wine might mingle with their blood, and set house and 
 wood-pile on fire. 
 
 A ferocity like this degraded everywhere the work of 
 freedom ; but the revival of the country went steadily on. 
 Pembroke and the English forces were in fact paralyzed 
 by a strife which had broken out in England between the 
 new King and his baronage. The moral purpose which 
 had raised his father to grandeur was wholly wanting in 
 Edward the Second ; he was showy, idle, and stubborn in 
 temper ; but he was far from being destitute of the intel- 
 lectual quickness which seemed inborn in the Plantagenets. 
 He had no love for his father, but he had seen him in the 
 later years of his reign struggling against the pressure of 
 the baronage, evading his pledges as to taxation, and pro- 
 curing absolution from his promise to observe the clauses 
 added to the Charter. The son's purpose was the same, 
 that of throwing off what he looked on as the yoke of the 
 Vol. I.— 25
 
 386 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV, 
 
 baronage; but the means by which he designed to bring 
 about his purpose was the choice of a minister wholly de- 
 pendent on the Crown. We have already noticed the 
 change by which the "clerks of the King's chapel," who 
 had been the ministers of arbitrary government under the 
 Norman and Angevin sovereigns, had been quietly super- 
 seded by the prelates and lords of the Continual Council, 
 At the close of the late reign a direct demand on the part 
 of the barons to nominate the great officers of state had 
 been curtly rejected ; but the royal choice had been practi- 
 cally limited in the selection of its ministers to the class 
 of prelates and nobles, and however closely connected with 
 royalty they might be such officers always to a great ex- 
 tent shared the feelings and opinions of their order. The 
 aim of the young King seems to have been to undo the 
 change which had been silently brought about, and to imi- 
 tate the policy of the contemporary sovereigns of France 
 by choosing as his ministers men of an inferior position, 
 wholly dependent on the Crown for their power, and rep- 
 resentatives of nothing but the policy and interests of 
 their master. Piers Gaveston, a foreigner sprung from 
 a family of Guienne, had been his friend and companion 
 during his father's reign, at the close of which he had 
 been banished from the realm for his share in intrigues 
 which divided Edward from his son. At the accession of 
 the new king he was at once recalled, created Earl of Corn- 
 wall, and placed at the head of the administration. When 
 Edward crossed the sea to wed Isabella of France, the 
 daughter of Philip the Pair, a marriage planned by his 
 father to provide against any further intervention of 
 France in his difficulties with Scotland, the new minister 
 was left as Regent in his room. The offence given by this 
 rapid promotion was embittered by his personal temper. 
 Gay, genial, thriftless, Gaveston showed in his first acts 
 the quickness and audacity of Southern Gaal. The olde* 
 ministers were dismissed, all claims of precedence or in- 
 heritance were set aside in the distribution of offices at the
 
 Chap, 1.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 387 
 
 coronation, while taunts and defiances goaded the proud 
 baronage to fury. The favorite was a fine soldier, and hid 
 lance unhorsed his opponents in tourne}' after tourney. 
 His reckless wit flung nicknames about the Court; tho 
 Earl of, Lancaster was "the Actor," Pembroke "the Jew," 
 Warwick " the Black Dog." But taunt and defiance broke 
 helplessly against the iron mass of the baronage. After a 
 few months of power the formal demand of the Parliament 
 for his dismissal could not bo resisted, and in May, 1308, 
 Gaveston was formally banished from the realm. 
 
 But Edward was far from abandoning his favorite. In 
 Ireland he was unfettered by the Baronage, and here Gav- 
 eston found a refuge as the King's Lieutenant while Ed- 
 ward sought to obtain his recall by the intervention of 
 France and the Papacy. But the financial pressure of the 
 Scotch war again brought the King and his Parliament 
 together in the spring of 1309. It was only by conceding 
 the rights which his father had sought to establish of im- 
 posing import duties on the merchants by their own assent 
 that he procured a subsidy. The firmness of the baronage 
 sprang from their having found a head. In no point had 
 the policy of Henry the Third more utterly broken down 
 than in his attempt to weaken the power of the nobles by 
 filling the great earldoms with kinsmen of the royal house. 
 He had made Simon of Montfort his brother-in-law only 
 to furnish a leader to the nation in the Barons' war. In 
 loading his second son, Edmund Crouchback, with honors 
 and estates he raised a family to greatness which overawed 
 the Crown. Edmund had been created Earl of Lancaster ; 
 after Evesham he had received the forfeited Earldom of 
 Leicester ; he had been made Earl of Derby on the extinc- 
 tion of the house of Ferrers. His son, Thomas of Lancas- 
 ter, was the son-in-law of Henry de Lacy, and was soon 
 to add to these lordships the Earldom of Lincoln. And 
 to the weight of these great baronies was added his royal 
 blood. The father of Thomas had been a titular King of 
 Sicily. His mother was dowager Queen of Navarre. His
 
 388 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV 
 
 half-sister by the mother's side was wife of the French 
 King Philip le Bel and mother of the English Queen Isa- 
 bella. He was himself a grandson of Henry the Third 
 and not far from the succession to the throne. Had Earl 
 Thomas been a wiser and a nobler man, his adhesion to 
 the cause of the baronage might have guided the King into 
 a really national policy. As it was his weight proved ir- 
 resistible. When Edward at the close of the Parliament 
 recalled Gaveston the Earl of Lancaster withdrew from 
 the royal Council, and a Parliament which met in the 
 spring of 1310 resolved that the affairs of the realm should 
 be entrusted for a year to a body of twenty-one " Ordain- 
 ers" with Archbishop Winchelsey at their head. 
 
 Edward with Gaveston withdrew sullenly to the North. 
 A triumph in Scotland would have given him strength to 
 baffle the Ordainers, but he had little of his father's mili- 
 tary skill, the wasted country made it hard to keep an 
 army together, and after a fruitless campaign he fell back 
 to his southern realm to meet the Parliament of 1311 and 
 the " Ordinances" which the twenty-one laid before it. By 
 this long and important statute Gaveston was banished, 
 other advisers were driven from the Council, and the Flor- 
 entine bankers whose loans had enabled Edward to hold 
 the baronage at bay sent out of the realm. The customs 
 duties imposed b}^ Edward the First were declared to be 
 illegal. Its administrative provisions showed the relations 
 which the barons sought to establish between the new Par- 
 liament and the Crown. Parliaments were to be called 
 every year, and in these assemblies the King's servants 
 were to be brought, if need were, to justice. The great 
 officers of state were to be appointed with the counsel and 
 consent of the baronage, and to be sworn in Parliament. 
 The same consent of the barons in Parliament was to be 
 needful ere the King could declare war or absent himself 
 from the realm. As the Ordinances show, the baronage 
 still looked on Parliament rather as a political organization 
 of the nobles than as a ga.thering of the three Estates of
 
 Chap. 1.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 389 
 
 the realm. The lower clergy pass unnoticed; the Com- 
 mons are regarded as mere tax-payers whose part was still 
 confined to the presentation of petitions of grievances and 
 the grant of money. But even in this imperfect fashion 
 the Parliament was a real representation of the country. 
 The barons no longer depended for their force on the rise 
 of some active leader, or gathered in exceptional assem- 
 blies to wrest reforms from the Crown by threat of war. 
 Their action was made regular and legal. Even if the 
 Commons took little part in forming decisions, their force 
 when formed hung on the assent of the knights and bur- 
 gesses to them ; and the grant which alone could purchase 
 from the Crown the concessions which the Baronage de- 
 manded lay absolutely within the control of the Third 
 Estate. It was this which made the King's struggles so 
 fruitless. He assented to the Ordinances, and then with- 
 drawing to the North recalled Gaveston and annulled them. 
 But Winchelsey excommunicated the favorite and the bar- 
 ons, gathering in arms, besieged him in Scarborough. 
 His surrender in May, 1312, ended the strife. The " Black 
 Dog" of Warwick had sworn that the favorite should feel 
 his teeth ; and Gaveston flung himself in vain at the feet 
 of the Earl of Lancaster, praying for pity " from his gen- 
 tle lord." In defiance of the terms of his capitulation he 
 was beheaded on Blacklow Hill. 
 
 The King's burst of grief was as fruitless as his threats 
 of vengeance ; a feigned submission of the conquerors com- 
 pleted the royal humiliation and the barons knelt before 
 Edward in Westminster Hall to receive a pardon which 
 seemed the deathblow of the royal power. But if Edward 
 was powerless to conquer the baronage he could still by 
 evading the observances of the Ordinances throw the whole 
 realm into confusion. The two years that follow Gaves- 
 ton 's death are among the darkest in our history. A ter- 
 rible succession of famines intensified the suffering which 
 sprang from the utter absence of all rule as dissension 
 raged between the barons and the King. At last a cow
 
 390 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 men peril drew both parties together. The Scots had 
 profited by the English troubles and Bruce's "harrying of 
 Eiichan" after his defeat of its Earl, who had joined the 
 English army, fairly turned the tide of success in his 
 favor. Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Perth, and most of the 
 Scotch fortresses fell one by one into King Robert's hands. 
 The clergy met in council and owned him as their lawful 
 lord. Gradually the Scotch barons who still held to the 
 English cause were coerced into submission, and Bruce 
 found himself strong enough to invest Stirling, the last 
 and the most important of the Scotch fortresses which held 
 out for Edward. Stirling was in fact the key of Scotland, 
 and its danger roused England out of its civil strife to an 
 effort for the recovery of its prey. At the close of 1313 
 Edward recognized the Ordinances, and a liberal grant 
 from the Parliament enabled him to take the field. Lan- 
 caster indeed still held aloof on the ground that the King 
 had not sought the assent of Parliament to the war, but 
 thirty thousand men followed Edward to the North, and a 
 host of wild marauders were summoned from Ireland and 
 Wales. The army which Bruce gathered to oppose this 
 inroad was formed almost wholly of footmen, and was 
 stationed to the south of Stirling on a rising ground flanked 
 by a little brook, the Bannockburn, which gave its name 
 to the engagement. The battle took place on the twenty- 
 fourth of June, 1314. Again two systems of warfare were 
 brought face to face as they had been brought at Falkirk, 
 for Robert like Wallace drew up his forces in hollow- 
 squares or circles of spearmen. The English were dis- 
 pirited at the very outset by the failure of an attempt to 
 relieve Stirling and by the issue of a single combat between 
 Bruce and Henr}' de Bohun, a knight who bore down upon 
 him as he was riding peacefuhy along the front of his 
 army. Robert was mounted on a small hackney and held 
 only a light battle-axe in his hand, but warding off his 
 opponent's spear he cleft his skull with so terrible a blow 
 that the handle of his axe was shattere^d in his grasp. A*
 
 Chap. 1.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 391 
 
 the opening c^ the battle the English archers were thrown 
 forward to rake the Scottish squares, but they were with- 
 out support and were easily dispersed by a handful of horse 
 whom Bruce held in reserve for the purpose. The body 
 of meh-at-arms next ilung themselves on the Scottish front, 
 but their charge was embarrassed by the narrow space 
 along which the line was forced to move, and the steady 
 resistance of the squares soon threw the knighthood into 
 disorder. " The horses that were stickit, " says an exult- 
 ing Scotch writer, "rushed and reeled right rudely," In 
 the moment of failure the sight of a body of camp-follow- 
 ers, whom they mistook for reinforcements to the enemy, 
 spread panic through the English host. It broke in a 
 headlong rout. Its thousands of brilliant horsemen were 
 soon floundering in pits which guarded the level ground 
 to Bruce's left, or riding in wild haste for the border. 
 Few however were fortunate enough to reach it. Edward 
 himself, with a body of five hundred knights, succeeded 
 in escaping to Dunbar and the sea. But the flower of his 
 knighthood fell into the hands of the victors, while the 
 Irishry and the footmen were ruthlessly cut down by the 
 country folk as they fled. For centuries to come the rich 
 plunder of the English camj) left its traces on the treasure- 
 rolls and the vestment-rolls of castle and abbej^ throughout 
 the Lowlands. 
 
 Bannockburn left Bruce the master of Scotland: but 
 terrible as the blow was England could not humble herself 
 to relinquish her claim on the Scottish crown. Edward 
 was eager indeed for a truce, but with equal firmness 
 Bruce refused all negotiation while the royal title was 
 withheld from him and steadily pushed on the recovery 
 of his southern dominions. His progress was unhindered. 
 Bannockburn left Edward powerless, and Lancaster at the 
 head of the Ordainers became supreme. But it was still 
 impossible to trust the King or to act with him, and in the 
 dead-lock of both parties the Scots plunden-ed as they 
 would. Their ravages in the North brought shame oa
 
 392 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 England such as it had never known. At last Bnice's 
 capture of Berwick in the spring of 1318 forced the King 
 to give way. The Ordinances were formally accepted, an 
 amnesty granted, and a small number of peers belonging to 
 the barons' party added to the great officers of State. Had 
 a statesman been at the head of the baronage the weakness 
 of Edward might have now been turned to good purpose. 
 But the character of the Earl of Lancaster seems to have 
 fallen far beneath the greatness of his position. Distrust- 
 ful of his cousin, yet himself incapable of governing, he 
 stood sullenly aloof from the royal Council and the royal 
 armies, and Edward was able to lay his failure in recov- 
 ering Berwick during the campaign of 1319 to the Earl's 
 charge. His influence over the country was sensibly weak- 
 ened ; and in this weakness the new advisers on whom the 
 King was leaning saw a hope of destroying his power. 
 These were a younger and elder Hugh Le Despenser, son 
 and grandson of the Justiciar who had fallen beside Earl 
 Simon at Evesham. Greedy and ambitious as they may 
 have been, they were able men. and their policy was of a 
 higher stamp than the wilful defiance of Gaveston. It 
 lay, if we may gather it from the faint indications which 
 remain, in a frank recognition of the power of the three 
 Estates as opposed to the separate action of the baronage. 
 The rise of the younger Hugh, on whom the King be- 
 stowed the county of Glamorgan with the hand of one of 
 its coheiresses, a daughter of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, 
 was rapid enough to excite general jealousy; and in 1321 
 Lancaster found little difficulty in extorting by force of 
 arms his exile from the kingdom. But the tide of popular 
 sympathy was already wavering, and it was turned to the 
 royal cause by an insult offered to the Queen, against 
 whom Lady Badlesmere closed the doors of Ledes Castle. 
 The unexpected energy shown by Edward in avenging 
 this insult gave fresh strength to his cause. At the open- 
 ing of 1322 he found himself strong enough to recall De- 
 spenser, and when Lancaster convoked the baronage to
 
 Chap. 1.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 393 
 
 force him again into exile the weakness of their party was 
 shown by some negotiations into which the Earl entered 
 with the Scots and by his precipitate retreat to the north 
 on the advance of the royal army. At Boroughbridge his 
 forces were arrested and dispersed, and Thomas himself, 
 brought captive before Edward at Pontefract, was tried 
 and condemned to death as a traitor. " Have mercy on 
 me. King of Heaven," cried Lancaster, as, mounted on a 
 gray pony without a bridle, he was hurried to execution, 
 "for my earthly King has forsaken me." His death was 
 followed by that of a number of his adherents and by the 
 captivity of others ; while a Parliament at York annulled 
 the proceedings against the Despensers and repealed the 
 Ordinances, 
 
 It is to this Parliament, however, and perhaps to the 
 victorious confidence of the royalists, that we owe the 
 famous provision which reveals the policy of the Despens- 
 ers, the provision that all laws concerning " the estate of 
 our Lord the King and his heirs or for the estate of the 
 realm and the people shall be treated, accorded, and estab- 
 lished in Parliaments by our Lord the King and by the 
 consent of the prelates, earls, barons, and commonalty of 
 the realm according as hath been hitherto accustomed." 
 It would seem from the tenor of this remarkable enact- 
 ment that much of the sudden revulsion of popular feeling 
 had been owing to the assumption of all legislative action 
 by the baronage alone. The same policy was seen in a 
 reissue in the form of a royal Ordinance of some of the 
 most beneficial provisions of the Ordinances which had 
 been formally repealed. But the arrogance of the Despens- 
 ers gave new offence ; and the utter failure of a fresh cam- 
 paign against Scotland again weakened the Crown. The 
 barbarous forays in which the borderers under Earl Doug- 
 las were wasting Northumberland woke a general indig- 
 nation ; and a grant from the Parliament at York enabled 
 Edward to march with a great army to the North. But 
 Bruce as of old declined an engagement till the wasted
 
 39i HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 Lowlands starved the invaders into a ruinous retreat. The 
 faikire forced England in the spring of 1323 to stoop to a 
 truce for thirteen years, in the negotiation of which Bruce 
 was suffered to take the royal title. We see in this act of 
 the Despensers the first of a series of such attempts by 
 which minister after minister strove to free the Crown 
 from the bondage under which the war-pressure laid it to 
 the growing power of Parliament ; but it ended as these 
 after attempts ended only in the ruin of the counsellors 
 who planned it. The pride of the country had been roused 
 by the struggle, and the humiliation of such a truce robbed 
 the Crown of its temporary popularity. It led the way 
 to the sudden catastrophe which closed this disastrous 
 
 reign. 
 
 In his struggle with the Scots Edward, like his father, 
 had been hampered not only by internal divisions but by 
 the harassing intervention of France. The rising under 
 Bruce had been backed by French aid as well as by a re- 
 vival of the old quarrel over Guienne, and on the accession 
 of Charles the Fourth in 1322 a demand of homage for 
 Ponthieu and Gascony called Edward over sea. But the 
 Despensers dared not let him quit the realm, and a fresh 
 dispute as to the right of possession in the Agenois brought 
 about the seizure of the bulk of Gascony by a sudden at- 
 tack on the part of the French. The quarrel verged upon 
 open war, and to close it Edward's Queen, Isabella, a 
 sister of the French King, undertook in 1325 to revisit her 
 home and bring about a treaty of peace between the two 
 countries. Isabella hated the Despensers ; she was alien- 
 ated from her husband ; but hatred and alienation were as 
 yet jealously concealed. At the close of the year the terms 
 of peace seemed to be arranged ; and though declining to 
 cross the sea, Edward evaded the difficulty created by the 
 demand for personal homage by investing his son with 
 the Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, and despatching 
 him to join his mother at Paris. The boy did homage to 
 King Charles for the two Duchies, the question of the
 
 Chap. 1.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 395 
 
 Agenois being reserved for legal decision, and Edward at 
 once recalled his wife and sou to England. Neither threats 
 nor prayers, however, could induce either wife or child to 
 return to his court. Roger Mortimer, the most powerful of 
 the Marcher barons and a deadly foe to the Despensers, had 
 taken refuge in France ; and his influence over the Queen 
 made her the centre of a vast conspiracy. With the young 
 Edward in her hands she was able to procure soldiers from 
 the Count of Hainault by promising her son's hand to his 
 daughter ; the Italian bankers supplied funds ; and after 
 a j^ear's preparation the Queen set sail in the autumn of 
 1326. A secret consiDiracy of the baronage was revealed 
 when the primate and nobles hurried to her standard on 
 her landing at Orwell. Deserted by all and repulsed by 
 the citizens of London whose aid he implored, the King 
 fled hastily to the west and embarked with the Despensers 
 for Lundy Island, which Despenser had fortified as a possi- 
 ble refuge; but contrary winds flung him again on the 
 Welsh coast, where he fell into the hands of Earl Henry 
 of Lancaster, the brother of the Earl whom they had slain. 
 The younger Despenser, who accompanied him, was at 
 once hung on a gibbet fifty feet high, and the King placed 
 in ward at Kenilworth till his fate could be decided by a 
 Parliament summoned for that purpose at Westminster in 
 January, 1327. 
 
 The peers who assembled fearlessly revived the consti- 
 tutional usage of the earlier English freedom, and asserted 
 their right to depose a King who had proved himself un- 
 worthy to rule. Not a voice was raised in Edward's be- 
 half, and only four prelates protested when the young 
 Prince was proclaimed King by acclamation and presented 
 as their sovereign to the multitudes without. The revolu- 
 tion took legal form in a biU which charged the captive 
 monarch with indolence, incapacity, the loss of Scotland, 
 the violation of his coronation oath, and oppression of the 
 Church and baronage; and on the approval of this it was 
 resolved that the reign of Edward of Caernarvon had
 
 396 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 ceased and that the crown had passed to his son, Edward 
 of Windsor. A deputation of the Parliament proceeded 
 to Kenilworth to procure the assent of the discrowned 
 King to his own deposition, and Edward, " clad in a plain 
 black gown," bowed quietly to his fate. Sir William 
 Trussel at once addressed him in words which better than 
 any other mark the nature of the step which the Parlia- 
 ment had taken. "I, William Trussel, proctor of the 
 earls, barons, and others, having for this full and sufficient 
 power, do render and give back to you, Edward, once 
 King of England, the homage and fealty of the persons 
 named in my procuracy ; and acquit and discharge them 
 thereof in the best manner that law and custom will give. 
 And I now make protestation in their name that they will 
 no longer be in your fealty and allegiance, nor claim to 
 hold anything of you as king, but will account you here- 
 after as a private person, without any manner of royal 
 dignity. " A significant act followed these emphatic words. 
 Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the household, broke 
 his staff of office, a ceremony used only at a king's death, 
 and declared that all persons engaged in the royal service 
 were discharged. The act of Blount was only an omen 
 of the fate which awaited the miserable King. In the 
 following September he was murdered in Berkeley Castle.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EDWARD THE THIRD. 
 
 1327—1347. 
 
 The deposition of Edward the Second proclaimed to the 
 world the power which the English Parliament had gained. 
 In thirty years from their first assembly at Westminster 
 the Estates had wrested from the Crown the last relic of 
 arbitrary taxation, had forced on it new ministers and a 
 new system of government, had claimed a right of con- 
 firming the choice of its councillors and of punishing their 
 misconduct, and had established the principle that redress 
 of grievances precedes a grant of supply. Nor had the 
 time been less important in the internal growth of Parlia- 
 ment. Step by step the practical sense of the Houses them- 
 selves completed the work of Edward by bringing about 
 change after change in its composition. The very division 
 into a House of Lords and a House of Commons formed no 
 part of the original plan of Edward the First ; in the ear- 
 lier Parliaments each of the four orders of clergy, barons, 
 knights, and burgesses met, deliberated, and made their 
 grants apart from each other. This isolation however of 
 the Estates soon showed signs of breaking down. Though 
 the clergy held steadily aloof from any real union with its 
 fellow-orders, the knights of the shire were drawn by the 
 similarity of their social position into a close connection 
 with the lords. They seemed in fact to have been soon 
 admitted by the baronage to an almost equal position with 
 themselves, whether as legislators or counsellors of the 
 Crown. The burgesses on the other hand took little part 
 at first in Parliamentary proceedings, save in those which 
 related to the taxation of their class. But their position
 
 398 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 was raised by the strifes of the reign of Edward the Sec- 
 ond when their aid was needed by the baronage in its 
 struggle with the Crown ; and their right to share fully in 
 all legislative action was asserted in the statute of 1322 
 From this moment no proceedings can have been consid- 
 ered as formally legislative save those conducted in full 
 Parliament of all the estates. In subjects of public policy 
 however the barons were still regarded as the sole advis- 
 ers of the Crown, though the knights of the shire were 
 sometimes consulted with them. But the barons and 
 knighthood were not fated to be drawn into a single body 
 whose weight would have given an aristocratic impress to 
 the constitution. Gradually, through causes with which 
 we are imperfectly acquainted, the knights of the shire 
 drifted from their older connection with the baronage into 
 so close and intimate a union with the representatives of 
 the towns that at the opening of the reign of Edward the 
 Third the two orders are found grouped formally together, 
 under the name of "The Commons." It is difficult to 
 over-estimate the importance of this change. Had Par- 
 liament remained broken up into its four orders of clergy, 
 barons, knights, and citizens, its power would have been 
 neutralized at every great crisis by the jealousies and 
 difficulty of co-operation among its component parts. A 
 permanent union of the knighthood and the baronage on 
 the other hand would have converted Parliament into the 
 mere representative of an aristocratic caste, and would 
 have robbed it of the strength which it has drawn from 
 its connection with the great body of the commercial 
 classes. The new attitude of the knighthood, their social 
 connection as landed gentry with the baronage, their polit- 
 ical union with the burgesses, really welded the three 
 orders into one, and gave that unity of feeling and action 
 to our Parliament on which its power has ever since mainly 
 depended. 
 
 The weight of the two Houses was seen in their settle- 
 ment of the new government by the nomination of a Coun-
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 309 
 
 cil with Earl Henry of Lancaster at its head. The Coun- 
 cil had at once to meet fresh difficulties in the North. 
 The truce so recently made ceased legally with Edward's 
 deposition; and the withdrawal of his royal title in fur- 
 ther offers of peace warned Bruce of the new temper of 
 the English rulers. Troops gathered on either side, and 
 the English Council sought to pave the way for an attack 
 by dividing Scotland against itself. Edward Balliol, a 
 son of the former King John, was solemnly received as a 
 vassal-king of Scotland at the English court. Robert was 
 disabled by leprosy from taking the field in person, but 
 the insult roused him to hurl his marauders again over 
 the border under Douglas and Sir Thomas Randolph. 
 The Scotch army has been painted for us by an eye-wit- 
 ness whose description is embodied in the work of Jehan 
 le Bel. " It consisted of four thousand men-at-arms, 
 knights, and esquires, well mounted, besides twenty thou- 
 sand men bold and hardy, armed after the manner of their 
 country, and mounted upon little hackneys that are never 
 tied up or dressed, but turned immediately after the day's 
 march to pasture on the heath or in the fields. . . . They 
 bring no carriages with them on account of the mountains 
 they have to pass in Northumberland, neither do they 
 carry with them any provisions of bread or wine, for their 
 habits of sobriety are such in time of war that they will 
 live for a long time on flesh half-sodden without bread, 
 and drink the river water without wine. They have there- 
 fore no occasion for pots or pans, for they dress the flesh 
 of the cattle in their skins after they have flayed them, 
 and being sure to find plentj'" of them in the country which 
 they invade they carry none with them. Under the flaps 
 of his saddle each man carries a broad piece of metal, be- 
 hind him a little bag of oatmeal : when they have eaten 
 too much of the sodden flesh and their stomach appears 
 weak and empty, they set this plate over the fire, knead 
 the meal with water, and when the plate is hot put a little 
 of the paste upon it in a thin cake like a biscuit, which
 
 400 HISTORY Or THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book l\ 
 
 they eat to warm their stomachs. It is therefore no won- 
 der that they perform a longer day's march than other 
 soldiers." Though twenty thousand horsemen and forty 
 thousand foot marched under their boy-king to protect the 
 border, the English troops were utterly helpless against 
 such a foe as this. At one time the whole army lost its 
 way in the border wastes; at another all traces of the 
 enemy disappeared, and an offer of knighthood and a hun- 
 dred marks was made to any who could tell where the 
 Scots were encamped. But when they were found their 
 position behind the Wear proved unassailable, and after 
 a bold sally on the English camp Douglas foiled an at- 
 tempt at intercepting him by a clever retreat. The Eng- 
 lish levies broke hopelessly up, and a fresh foray into 
 Northumberland forced the English Court in 1328 to sub- 
 mit to peace. By the treaty of Northampton which was 
 solemnly confirmed by Parliament in September the inde- 
 pendence of Scotland was recognized, and Robert Bruce 
 owned as its King. Edward formally abandoned his c^.aim 
 of feudal superiority over Scotland; while Bruce prom- 
 ised to make compensation for the damage done in the 
 North, to marry his son David to Edward's sister Joan, 
 and to restore their forfeited estates to those nobles who 
 bad sided with the English King. 
 
 But the pride of England had been too much roused by 
 the struggle with the Scots to bear this defeat easily, and 
 the first result of the treaty of Northampton was the over- 
 throw of the government which concluded it. This result 
 was hastened by the pride of Roger Mortimer, who was 
 now created Earl of March, and who had made himself 
 supreme through his influence over Isabella and his exclu- 
 sion of the rest of the nobles from all practical share in the 
 administration of the realm. The first efforts to shake 
 Roger's power were unsuccessful. The Earl of Lancaster 
 stood, like his brother, at the head of the baronage; the 
 parliamentary settlement at Edward's accession had placed 
 him first in the royal CounciU and it was to him that the
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 401 
 
 task of defying Mortimer naturally fell. At the close of 
 1328 therefore Earl Henry formed a league with the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and with the young King's uncles, 
 the Earls of Norfolk and Kent, to bring Mortimer to ac- 
 count ,for the peace with Scotland and the usurpation of 
 the government as well as for the late King's murder, a 
 murder which had been the work of his private partisans 
 and which had profoundly shocked the general conscience. 
 But the young King clave firmly to his mother, the Earls 
 of Norfolk and Kent deserted to Mortimer, and powerful 
 as it seemed the league broke up without result. A feel- 
 ing of insecurity however spurred the Earl of March to a 
 bold stroke at his opponents. The Earl of Kent, who was 
 persuaded that his brother, Edward the Second, still lived 
 a prisoner in Corfe Castle, was arrested on a charge of 
 conspiracy to restore him to the throne, tried before a Par- 
 liament filled with Mortimer's adherents, and sent to the 
 block. But the death of a prince of the royal blood roused 
 the young King to resentment at the greed and arrogance 
 of a minister who treated Edward himself as little more 
 than a state-prisoner, A few months after his uncle's ex- 
 ecution the King entered the Council chamber in Notting- 
 ham Castle with a force which he had introduced through 
 a secret passage in the rock on which it stands, and ar- 
 rested Mortimer with his own hands. A Parliament which 
 was at once summoned condemned the Earl of March to a 
 traitor's death, and in November, 1330, he was beheaded at 
 Tyburn, while the Queen-mother was sent for the rest of 
 her life into confinement at Castle Rising. 
 
 Young as he was, and he had only reached his eigh- 
 teenth year, Edward at once assumed the control of affairs. 
 His first care was to restore good order throughout the 
 country, which under the late government had fallen into 
 ruin, and to free his hands by a peace with France for 
 further enterprises in the North. A formal peace had 
 been concluded by Isabella after her husband's fall; but 
 the death of Charles the Fourth soon brought about new 
 Vol. I.— 26
 
 402 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 jealousies between the two courts. The three sons of 
 Philip the Fair had followed him on the throne in succes- 
 sion, but all had now died without male issue, and Isabella, 
 as Philip's daughter, claimed the crown for her son. The 
 claim in any case was a hard one to make out. Though 
 her brothers had left no sons, they had left daughters, and 
 if female succession were admitted these daughters of 
 Philip's sons would precede a son of Philip's daughter. 
 Isabella met this difficulty by a contention that though 
 females could transmit the right of succession they could 
 not themselves possess it, and that her son, as the nearest 
 living male descendant of Philip the Fair, and born in the 
 lifetime of the King from whom he claimed, could claim 
 in preference to females who were related to Philip in as 
 near a degree. But the bulk of French jurists asserted 
 that only male succession gave right to the French throne. 
 On such a theory the right inheritable from Philip the 
 Fair was exhausted ; and the crown passed to the son of 
 Philip's younger brother, Charles of Valois, who in fact 
 peacefully mounted the throne as Philip the Fifth. Purely 
 formal as the claim which Isabella advanced seems to have 
 been, it revived the irritation between the two courts, and 
 though Edward's obedience to a summons which Philip 
 addressed to him to do homage for Aquitaine brought 
 about an agreement that both parties should restore the 
 gains they had made since the last treaty the agreement 
 was never carried out. Fresh threats of war ended in the 
 conclusion of a new treaty of peace, but the question 
 whether liege or simple homage was due for the duchies 
 lemained unsettled when the fall of Mortimer gave the 
 young King full mastery of affairs. His action was rapid 
 and decisive. Clad as a merchant, and with but fifteen 
 horsemen at his back, Edward suddenly made his appear- 
 ance in 1331 at the French court and did homage as fully 
 as Philip required. The question of the Agenois remained 
 unsettled, though the English Parliament insisted that its 
 decision should rest with negotiation and not with war,
 
 (IHAP. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 403 
 
 but on all other points a complete peace was made ; and 
 the young King rode back with his hands free for an at- 
 tack which he was planning on the North. 
 
 The provisions of the Treaty of Northampton for the 
 restitution of estates had never been fully carried out. Till 
 this was done the English court held that the rights of 
 feudal superiority over Scotland which it had yielded in the 
 treaty remained in force ; and at this moment an opening 
 seemed to present itself for again asserting these rights 
 with success. Fortune seemed at last to have veered to 
 the English side. The death of Robert Bruce only a year 
 after the Treaty of Northampton left the Scottish throne 
 to his son David, a child of but eight years old. The 
 death of the King was followed by the loss of Randolph 
 and Douglas ; and the internal diflSculties of the realm 
 broke out in civil strife. To the great barons on either 
 side the border the late peace involved serious losses, for 
 many of the Scotch houses held large estates in England 
 as many of the English lords held large estates in Scot- 
 land, and although the treaty had provided for their claims 
 they had in each case been practically set aside. It is this 
 discontent of the barons at the new settlement which ex- 
 plains the sudden success of Edward Balliol in a snatch 
 which he made at the Scottish throne. Balliol's design 
 was known at the English court, where he had found shel- 
 ter for some years ; and Edward, whether sincerely or no, 
 forbade his barons from joining him and posted troops on 
 the border to hinder his crossing it. But Balliol found 
 little diflficulty in making his attack by sea. He sailed 
 from England at the head of a body of nobles who claimed 
 estates in the north, landed in August, 1332, on the shores 
 of Fife, and after repulsing with immense loss an army 
 which attacked him near Perth was crowned at Scone two 
 months after his landing, while David Bruce fled helplessly 
 to France. Edward had given no open aid to this enter- 
 prise, but the crisis tempted his ambition, and he demanded 
 and obtained from Balliol an acknowledgment of the Eng-
 
 404 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 ^*"       " ' -   —     ■,..■■ ,, I I ,. - ■■■-■■■ . .- 
 
 lish suzerainty. The acknowledgment however was fata' 
 to Balliol himself. Surprised at Annan by a party of Scot 
 tish nobles, their sudden attack drove him in December 
 over the border after a reign of but five months ; and Ber- 
 wick, which he had agreed to surrender to Edward, was 
 strongly garrisoned against an English attack. The sud- 
 den breakdown of his vassal-king left Edward face to face 
 with a new Scotch war. The Parliament which he sum- 
 moned to advise on the enforcement of his claim showed 
 no wish to plunge again into the contest and met him onlj" 
 with evasions and delays. But Edward had gone too far 
 to withdraw. In March, 1333, he appeared before Berwick, 
 and besieged the town. A Scotch army under the regent, 
 Sir Archibald Douglas, brother to the famous Sir James, 
 advanced to its relief in July and attacked a covering force 
 which was encamped on the strong position of Halidon 
 Hill. The English bowmen however vindicated the fame 
 they had first won at Falkirk and were soqu to crown in 
 the victory of Cregy. The Scotch only struggled through 
 the marsh which covered the English front to be riddled 
 with a storm of arrows and to break in utter rout. The 
 battle decided the fate of Berwick. From that time the 
 town has remained English territory. It was in fact the 
 one part of Edward's conquests which was preserved in 
 the end by the English crown. But fragment as it was, 
 it was always viewed legally as representing the realm of 
 which it once formed a part. As Scotland, it had its chan- 
 cellor, chamberlain, and other officers of State: and the 
 peculiar heading of Acts of Parliament enacted for Eng- 
 land " and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed" still preserves 
 the memory of its peculiar position. But the victory 
 did more than give Berwick to England. The defeat 
 of Douglas was followed by the submission of a large 
 part of the Scotch nobles, by the flight of the boj'- 
 king David, and by the return of Balliol unopposed to 
 the throne. Edward exacted a heavy price for his aid. 
 All Scotland south of the Firth of Forth was ceded to
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 405 
 
 England, and Balliol did homage as vassal-king for the 
 rest. 
 
 It was at the moment of this submission that the young 
 King reached the climax of his success. A king at four- 
 teen, a father at seventeen, he had carried out at eighteen 
 a political revolution in the overthrow of Mortimer, and 
 restored at twenty-two the ruined work of his grandfather. 
 The northern frontier was carried to its old line under the 
 Northumbrian kings. His kingdom within was peaceful 
 and orderly; and the strife with France seemed at an end. 
 During the next three years Edward persisted in the line 
 of policy he had adopted, retaining his hold over Southern 
 Scotland, aiding his sub-king Balliol in campaign after 
 campaign against the despairing efforts of the nobles who 
 still adhered to the house of Bruce, a party who were now 
 headed by Robert the Steward of Scotland and by Earl 
 Randolph of Moray. His perseverance was all but crowned 
 with success, when Scotland was again saved by the in- 
 tervention of France. Th. successes of Edward roused 
 anew the jealousy of the French court. David Bruce 
 found a refuge with Philip ; French ships appeared off 
 the Scotch coast and brought aid to the patriot nobles ; and 
 the old legal questions about the Agenois and Aquitaine 
 were mooted afresh by the French council. For a time 
 Edward staved off the contest by repeated embassies ; but 
 his refusal to accept Philip as a mediator between England 
 and the Scots stirred France to threats of war. In 1335 
 fleets gathered on its coast, descents were made on the 
 English shores, and troops and galleys were hired in Italy 
 and the north for an invasion of England. The mere threat 
 of war saved Scotland. Edward's forces there were drawn 
 to the south to meet the looked-for attack from across the 
 Channel ; and the patriot party freed from their pressure 
 at once drew together again. The actual declaration of 
 war against France at the close of 1337 was the knell of Bal- 
 liol's greatness ; he found himself without an adherent and 
 withdrew two years later to the court of Edward, while
 
 40G HISTORY OF THE ENGLTSH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 David returned to his kingdom in 1342 and won back the 
 chief fastnesses of the Lowlands. From that moment the 
 freedom of Scotland was secured. From a war of conquest 
 and patriotic resistance the struggle died into a petty strife 
 between two angry neighbors, which became a mere epi- 
 sode in the larger contest which it had stirred between 
 England and France. 
 
 Whether in its national or in its European bearings it is 
 difficult to over-estimate the importance of the contest 
 which was now to open between these two nations. To 
 England it brought a social, a religious, and in the end a 
 political revolution. The Peasant Revolt, Lollardry, and 
 the New Monarchy were direct issues of the Hundred 
 Years' War. With it began the military renown of Eng- 
 land ; with it opened her struggle for the mastery of the 
 seas. The pride begotten by great victories and a sudden 
 revelation of warlike prowess roused the country not only 
 to a new ambition, a new resolve to assert itself as a Euro- 
 pean power, but to a repudiation of the claims of the Pa- 
 pacy and an assertion of the ecclesiastical independence 
 both of Church and Crown which paved the way for and 
 gave its ultimate form to the English Reformation. The 
 peculiar shape which English warfare assumed, the tri- 
 umph of the yeoman and archer over noble and knight, 
 gave new force to the political advance of the Commons. 
 On the other hand the misery of the war produced the first 
 great open feud between labor and capital. The glory of 
 Cregy or Poitiers was dearly bought by the upgrowth of 
 English pauperism. The warlike temper nursed on for- 
 eign fields begot at home a new turbulence and scorn of 
 law, woke a new feudal spirit in the baronage, and sowed 
 in the revolution which placed a new house on the throne 
 the seeds of that fatal strife over the succession which 
 troubled England to the days of Elizabeth. Nor was the 
 contest of less import in the history of France. If it 
 struck her for the moment from her height of pride, it raised 
 her in the end to the front rank among the states of Europe-
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 40? 
 
 It carried her boundaries to the Ehone and the Pyrenees. 
 It wrecked alike the feudal power of her noblesse and the 
 hopes of constitutional liberty" which might have sprung 
 from the emancipation of the peasant or the action of the 
 burgh§r. It founded a roj-al despotism which reached its 
 height in Richelieu and finally plunged France into the 
 gulf of the Revolution. 
 
 Of these mighty issues little could be foreseen at the 
 moment when Philip and Edward declared war. But 
 from the very first the war took European dimensions. 
 The young King saw clearly the greater strength of 
 France. The weakness of the Empire, the captivity of 
 the Papacy at Avignon, left her without a rival am.ong 
 European powers. The French chivalry was the envy of 
 the world, and its military fame had just been heightened 
 by a victory over the Flemish communes at Cassel. In 
 numbers, in wealth, the French people far surpassed their 
 neighbors over the Channel. England can hardly have 
 counted more than four millions of inhabitants, France 
 boasted of twenty. The clinging of our kings to their 
 foreign dominions is explained by the fact that their sub- 
 jects in Gascony, Aquitaine, and Poitou must have equalled 
 in number their subjects in England. There was the same 
 disproportion in the wealth of the two countries and, as 
 men held then, in their military resources. Edward could 
 bring only eight thousand men-at-arms to the field. Philip, 
 while a third of his force was busy elsewhere, could appear 
 at the head of forty thousand. Of the revolution in war- 
 fare which was to reverse this superiority, to make the 
 footman rather than the horseman the strength of an army, 
 the world and even the English King, in spite of Falkirk 
 and Halidon, as yet recked little. Edward's whole energy 
 was bent on meeting the strength of France by a coalition 
 of powers against her, and his plans were helped by the 
 dread which the great feudatories of the empire who lay 
 nearest to him, the Duke of Brabant, the Counts of Hainault 
 and Gelders, the Markgrave of Juliers, felt of French iM
 
 408 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 nexation. They listened willingly enough to his offers. 
 Sixty thousand crowns purchased the alliance of Brabant. 
 Lesser subsidies bought that of the two counts and the 
 Markgrave. The King's work was helped indeed by his 
 domestic relations. The Count of Hainault was Edward's 
 father-in-law; he was also the father-in-law of the Count 
 of Gelders. But the marriage of a third of the Count's^ 
 daughters brought the English King a more important 
 ally. She was wedded to the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria, 
 and the connection that thus existed between the English 
 and Imperial Courts facilitated the negotiations which 
 ended in a formal alliance. 
 
 But the league had a more solid ground. The Emperor, 
 like Edward, had his strife with France. His strife sprang 
 from the new position of the Papacy. The removal of the 
 Popes to Avignon which followed on the quarrel of Boni- 
 face the Eighth with Philip le Bel and the subjection to 
 the French court which resulted from it affected the whole 
 state of European politics. In the ever-recurring contest 
 between the Papacy and the Empire France had of old 
 been the lieutenant of the Roman See. But with the set- 
 tlement at Avignon the relation changed, and the Pope 
 became the lieutenant of France. Instead of the Papacy 
 using the French Kings in its war of ideas against the 
 Empire the French Kings used the Papacy as an instru- 
 ment in their political rivalry with the Emperors. But if 
 the position of the Pope drew Lewis to the side of Eng- 
 land, it had much to do with drawing Edward to the side 
 of Lewis. It was this that made the alliance, fruitless as 
 it proved in a military sense, so memorable in its religious 
 results. Hitherto England had been mainly on the side 
 of the Popes in their strife against the Emperors. Now 
 that the Pope had become a tool in the hands of a power 
 which was to be its great enemy, the country was driven 
 to close alliances with the Empire and to an ever-growing 
 alienation from the Roman See. In Scotch affairs the 
 hostility of the Popes had been steady and vexatious ever
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 409 
 
 since Edward the First's time, and from the moment that 
 this fresh struggle commenced they again showed their 
 French partisanship. When Lewis made a last appeal 
 for peace, Philip of Valois made Benedict XII. lay down 
 as a condition that the Emperor should form no alliance 
 with an enemy of France. The quarrel of both England 
 and Germany with the Papacy at once grew ripe. The 
 German Diet met to declare that the Imperial power came 
 from God alone, and that the choice of an Emperor needed 
 no Papal confirmation, while Benedict replied by a formal 
 excommunication of Lewis. England, on the other hand, 
 entered on a religious revolution when she stood hand in 
 band with an excommunicated power. It was significant 
 that though worship ceased in Flanders on the Pope's in- 
 terdict, the English priests who were brought over set the 
 interdict at naught. 
 
 The negotiation of this alliance occupied the whole of 
 1337 ; it ended in a promise of the Emperor on payment of 
 3,000 gold florins to furnish two thousand men-at-arms. 
 In the opening of 1338 an attack of Philip on the Agenois 
 forced Edward into open war. His profuse expenditure, 
 however, brought little fruit. Though Edward crossed to 
 Antwerp in the summer, the year was spent in negotia- 
 tions with the princes of the Lower Rhine and in an inter- 
 view with the Emperor at Coblentz, where Lewis appointed 
 him Vicar-Genoral of the Emperor for all territories on the 
 left bank of the Rhine. The occupation of Cambray, an 
 Imperial fief, by the French King gave a formal ground 
 for calling the princes of this district to Edward's stan- 
 dard. But already the great alliance showed signs of 
 yielding. Edward, uneasy at his connection with an Em- 
 peror under the ban of the Church and harassed by vehe- 
 ment remonstrances from the Pope, entered again into 
 negotiations with France in the winter of 1338; and Lewis, 
 alarmed in his turn, listened to fresh overtures from Bene- 
 dict, who held out vague hopes of reconciliation while he 
 threatened a renewed excommunication if Lewis persisted
 
 410 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 iu invading France. The non-arrival of the English sub- 
 sidy decided the Emperor to take no personal part in the 
 war, and the attitude of Lewis told on the temper of Ed- 
 ward's German allies. Though all joined him in the 
 summer of 1339 on his formal summons of them as Vicar- 
 General of the Empire, and his army when it appeared 
 before Cambray numbered forty thousand men, their ardor 
 cooled as the town held out. Philip approached it from 
 the south, and on Edward's announcing his resolve to 
 cross the river and attack him he was at once deserted by 
 the two border princes who had most to lose from a con- 
 test with France, the Counts of Hainault and Namur. 
 But the King was still full of hope. He pushed forward 
 to the country round St, Quentin between the head waters 
 of the Somme and the Oise with the purpose of forcing a 
 decisive engagement. But he "found Philip strongly en- 
 camped, and declaring their supplies exhausted his allies 
 at once called for a retreat. It was in vain that Edward 
 moved slowly for a week along the French border. Philip's 
 position was too strongly guarded by marshes and en- 
 trenchments to be attacked, and at last the allies would 
 stay no longer. At the news that the French King had 
 withdrawn to the south the whole army in turn fell back 
 upon Brussels. 
 
 The failure of the campaign dispelled the hopes which 
 Edward had drawn from his alliance with the Empire. 
 With the exhaustion of his subsidies the princes of the 
 Low Countries became inactive. The Duke of Brabant 
 became cooler in his friendship. The Emperor himself, 
 still looking to an accommodation with the Pope and justly 
 jealous of Edward's own intrigues at Avignon, wavered 
 and at last fell awaj". But though the alliance ended in 
 disappointment it had given a new impulse to the grudge 
 against the Papacy which began with its extortions in the 
 reign of Henry the Third. The hold of Rome on the loy- 
 alty of England was sensibly weakening. Their transfer 
 from the Eternal City to Avignon robbed the Popes of half
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 4H 
 
 the awe which they had inspired among Englishmen. 
 Not only did it bring them nearer and more into the light 
 of common day, but it dwarfed them into mere agents of 
 French policy. The old bitterness at their exactions was 
 revived by the greed to which they were driven through 
 their costly efforts to impose a French and Papal Emperor 
 on Germany as well as to secure themselves in their new 
 capital on the Rhone. The mighty building, half for- 
 tress, half palace, which still awes the traveller at Avignon 
 has played its part in our history. Its erection was to the 
 rise of Lollardry what the erection of St. Peter's was to the 
 rise of Lutheranism. Its massive walls, its stately chapel, 
 its chambers glowing with the frescoes of Simone Memmi, 
 the garden which covered its roof with a strange verdure, 
 called year by year for fresh supplies of gold ; and for this 
 as for the wider and costlier schemes of Papal policy gold 
 could be got only by pressing harder and harder on the 
 national churches the worst claims of the Papal court, by 
 demands of first-fruits and annates from rectory and bish- 
 opric, by pretensions to the right of bestowing all bene- 
 fices which were in ecclesiastical patronage and by the sale 
 of these presentations, by the direct taxation of the clergy, 
 by the intrusion of foreign priests into English livings, by 
 opening a mart for the disposal of pardons, dispensations, 
 and indulgences, and by encouraging appeals from every 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Papal court. No griev- 
 ance was more bitterly felt than this grievance of appeals. 
 Cases of the most trifling importance were called for de- 
 cision out of the realm to a tribunal whose delays were 
 proverbial and whose fees were enormous. The envoy of 
 an Oxford College which sought only a formal license to 
 turn a vicarage into a rectory had not only to bear the ex- 
 pense and toil of a journey which then occupied some 
 eighteen days, but was kept dangling at Avignon for three- 
 and-twentj' weeks. Humiliating and vexatious, however, 
 as these appeals were, they were but one among the means 
 of extortion which the Papal court multiplied as its needs
 
 412 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 grew greater. The protest of a later Parliament, exag- 
 gerated as its statements no doubt are, shows the extent 
 of the national irritation, if not of the grievances which 
 produced it. It asserted that the taxes levied by the Pope 
 amounted to five times the amount of those levied by the 
 king ; that by reservations during the life of actual holders 
 the Pope disposed of the same bishopric four or five times 
 over, receiving each time the first-fruits. "The brokers 
 of the sinful city of Rome promote for money unlearned 
 and unworthy caitiffs to benefices to the value of a thou- 
 sand marks, while the poor and learned hardly obtain one 
 of twenty. So decays sound learning. They present aliens 
 who neither see nor care to see their parishioners, despise 
 God's services, convey away the treasure of the realm, 
 and are worse than Jews or Saracens. The Pope's rev- 
 enue from England alone is larger than that of any prince 
 in Christendom. God gave his sheep to be pastured, not 
 to be shaven and shorn." At the close of this reign in- 
 deed the deaneries of Lichfield, Salisbury, and York, the 
 archdeaconry of Canterbury, which was reputed the 
 wealthiest English benefice, together with a host of pre- 
 bends and preferments, were held by Italian cardinals and 
 priests, while the Pope's collector from his office in London 
 sent twenty thousand marks a year to the Papal treasury. 
 But the greed of the Popes was no new grievance, 
 though the increase of these exactions since the removal to 
 Avignon gave it a new force. What alienated England 
 most was their connection with and dependence on France. 
 From the first outset of the troubles in the North their 
 attitude had been one of hostility to the English projects. 
 France was too useful a supporter of the Papal court to 
 find much difficulty in inducing it to aid in hampering 
 the growth of English greatness. Boniface the Eighth 
 released Balliol from his oath of fealty, and forbade Ed- 
 ward to attack Scotland on the ground that it was a fief of 
 the Roman see. His intervention was met by a solemn 
 and emphatic protest from the English Parliament; bul
 
 Chap. 3. J THE PARLIAMENT, 1307—1461. 413 
 
 it none the less formed a terrible obstacle in Edward's 
 way. The obstacle was at last removed by the quarrel of 
 Boniface with Philip the Fair ; but the end of this quarrel 
 only threw the Papacy more completely into the hands of 
 France. Though Avignon remained imperial soil, the 
 removal of the Popes to this city on the verge of their 
 dominions made them mere tools of the French Kings. 
 Much no doubt of the endless negotiation which the Papal 
 court carried on with Edward the Third in his strife with 
 Philip of Valois was an honest struggle for peace. But 
 to England it seemed the mere interference of a dependent 
 on behalf of " our enemy of France. " The people scorned 
 a "French Pope," and threatened Papal legates with ston- 
 ing when they landed on English shores. The alliance of 
 Edward with an excommunicated Emperor, the bold de 
 fiance with which English priests said mass in Flanders 
 when an interdict reduced the Flemish priests to silence, 
 were significant tokens of the new attitude which England 
 was taking up in the face of Popes who were leagued with 
 its enemy. The old quarrel over ecclesiastical wrongs was 
 renewed in a formal and decisive way. In 1343 the Com- 
 mons petitioned for the redress of the grievance of Papal 
 appointments to vacant livings in despite of the rights of 
 patrons or the Crown ; and Edward formally complained 
 to the Pope of his appointing " foreigners, most of them 
 suspicious persons, who do not reside on their benefices, 
 who do not know the faces of the flocks intrusted to them, 
 who do not understand their language, but, neglecting the 
 cure of souls, seek as hirelings only their worldly hire." 
 In yet sharper words the King rebuked the Papal greed. 
 "The successor of the Apostles was set over the Lord's 
 sheep to feed and not to shear them." The Parliament de- 
 clared "that they neither could nor would tolerate such 
 things any longer;" and the general irritation moved 
 slowly toward those statutes of Provisors and Praemunire 
 which heralded the policy of Henry the Eighth. 
 
 But for the moment the strife with the Papacy was set
 
 414 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 aside in the efforts which were needed for a new struggle 
 with France, The campaign of 1339 had not only ended 
 in failure, it had dispelled the trust of Edward in an Im- 
 perial alliance. But as this hope faded away a fresh hope 
 dawned on the King from another quarter. Flanders, 
 still bleeding from the defeat of its burghers by the French 
 knighthood, was his natural ally. England was the great 
 wool-producing country of the west, but few woollen fabrics 
 were woven in England. The number of weavers' guilds 
 shows that the trade was gradually extending, and at the 
 very outset of his reign Edward had taken steps for its 
 encouragement. He invited Flemish weavers to settle in 
 his countrj^, and took the new immigrants, who chose the 
 eastern counties for the seat of their trade, under his royal 
 protection. But English manufactures were still in their 
 infancy and nine-tenths o^ the English wool went to the 
 looms of Bruges or of Ghent. We may see the rapid 
 growth of this export trade in the fact that the King re- 
 ceived in a single year more than £30,000 from duties 
 levied on wool alone. The wool-sack which forms the 
 Chancellor's seat in the House of Lords is said to witness 
 to the importance which the government attached to this 
 new source of wealth. A stoppage of this export threw 
 half the population of the great Flemish towns out of 
 work, and the irritation caused in Flanders by the inter- 
 ruption which this trade sustained through the piracies 
 that Philip's ships were carrying on in the Channel showed 
 how effective the threat of such a stoppage would be in 
 securing their alliance. Nor was this the only ground for 
 hoping for aid from the Flemish towns. Their democratic 
 spirit jostled roughly with the feudalism of France. If 
 their counts clung to the French monarchy, the towns 
 themselves, proud of their immense population, their 
 thriving industry, their vast wealth, drew more and 
 more to independence. Jacques van Arteveldt, a great 
 brewer of Ghent, wielded the chief influence in their 
 councils, and his aim was to build up a confederacy
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 415 
 
 which might hold France in check along her northern 
 border. 
 
 His plans had as yet brought no help from the Flemish 
 towns, but at the close of 1339 they set aside their neu- 
 trality for open aid. The great plan of Federation which 
 Van Arteveldt had been devising as a check on the ag- 
 gression of France was carried out in a treaty concluded 
 between Edward, the Duke of Brabant, the cities of Brus- 
 sels, Antwerp, Louvaiu, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and seven 
 others. By this remarkable treaty it was provided that 
 war should be begun and ended only by mutual consent, 
 free commerce be encouraged between Flanders and Bra- 
 bant, and no change made in their commercial arrange- 
 ments save with the consent of the whole league. By a 
 subsequent treaty the Flemish towns owned Edward as 
 King of France, and declared war against Philip of Valois. 
 But their voice was decisive on the course of the campaign 
 which opened in 1340. As Philip held the Upper Scheldt 
 by the occupation of Cambraj^, so he held the Lower 
 Scheldt by that of Tournay, a fortress which broke the 
 line of commerce between Flanders and Brabant. It was 
 a condition of the Flemish alliance, therefore, that the war 
 should open with the capture of Tournay. It was only at 
 the cost of a fight, however, that Edward could now cross 
 the Channel to undertake the siege. France was as su- 
 perior in force at sea as on land ; and a fleet of two hun- 
 dred vessels gathered at Sluys to intercept him. But the 
 fine seamanship of the English sailors justified the courage 
 of their King in attacking this fleet with far smaller 
 forces; the French ships were utterly destroyed and 
 twenty thousand Frenchmen slain in the encounter. It 
 was with the lustre of this great victory about him that 
 Edward marched upon Tourna3^ Its siege, however, 
 proved as fruitless as that of Cambray in the preceding 
 year, and after two montlis of investment his vast army of 
 one hundred thousand men broke up without either captur- 
 ing the town or bringing Philip when he approached it to an
 
 416 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 engagement. Want of money forced Edward to a truce for a 
 year, and be returned beggared and embittered to England. 
 He bad been worsted in war as in diplomacy. One 
 naval victory alone redeemed years of failure and expense. 
 Guienne was all but lost, England was suffering from tbe 
 terrible taxation, from the ruin of commerce, from the 
 ravages of her coast. Five years of constant reverses were 
 hard blows for a King of twenty-eight who had been glori- 
 ous and successful at twenty-three. His financial diffi- 
 culties indeed were enormous. It was in vain that, avail- 
 ing himself of an Act which forbade the exportation of 
 wool "till by the King and his Council it is otherwise 
 provided," he turned for the time the wool-trade into a 
 royal monopoly and became the sole wool exporter, buying 
 at <£3 and selling at £20 the sack. The campaign of 1339 
 brought with it a crushing debt: that of 13-40 proved yet 
 more costly. Edward attributed his failure to the slack- 
 ness of his ministers in sending money and supplies, and 
 this to their silent opposition to the war. But wroth as 
 he was on his return, a short struggle between the ministers 
 and the King ended in a reconciliation, and preparations 
 for renewed hostilities went on. Abroad indeed nothing 
 could be done. The Emperor finally withdrew from Ed- 
 ward's friendship. A new Pope, Clement the Sixth, proved 
 even more French in sentiment than his predecessor. 
 Flanders alone held true of all England's foreign allies. 
 Edward was powerless to attack Philip in the realm he 
 claimed for his own ; what strength he could gather was 
 needed to prevent the utter ruin of the English cause in 
 Scotland on the return of David Bruce. Edward's soldiers 
 had been driven from the open country and confined to the 
 fortresses of the Lowlands. Even these were at last reft 
 away. Perth was taken by siege, and the King was too 
 late to prevent the surrender of Stirling. Edinburgh was 
 captured by a stratagem. Only Roxburgh and Berwick 
 were saved by a truce which Edward was driven to con- 
 elude with the Scots.
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 417 
 
 But with the diflSculties of the Crown the weight of 
 the two Houses made itself more and more sensibly felt. 
 The almost incessant warfare which had gone on since the 
 accession of Edward the Third consolidated and developed 
 the power which they had gained from the dissensions of 
 his father's reign. The need of continual grants brought 
 about an assembly of Parliament year by year, and the 
 subsidies that were accorded to the King showed the po- 
 tency of the financial engine which the Crown could now 
 bring into play. In a single year the Parliament granted 
 twenty thousand sacks, or half the wool of the realm. 
 Two years later the Commons voted an aid of thirty thou- 
 sand sacks. In 1339 the barons granted the tenth sheep 
 and fleece and Iamb. The clergy granted two-tenths in 
 one year, and a tenth for three years in the next. But 
 with each suppl}^ some step was made to greater political 
 influence. In his earlier vears Edward showed no jealousy 
 of the Parliament. His policy was to make the struggle 
 with France a national one by winning for it the sympa- 
 thy of the people at large ; and with this view he not only 
 published in the County Courts the efforts he had made 
 for peace, but appealed again and again for the sanctiou 
 and advice of Parliament in his enterprise. In 1331 he 
 asked the Estates whether they would prefer negotiation 
 or war : in 1338 he declared that his expedition to Flanders 
 was made by the assent of the Lords and at the prayer of 
 the Commons. The part of the last in public affairs grew 
 greater in spite of their own efforts to remain obscure. 
 From the opening of the reign a crowd of enactments for 
 the regulation of trade, whether wise or unwise, shows the 
 influence of the burgesses. But the final division of Par- 
 liament into two Houses, a change which was completed 
 by 1341, necessarily increased the weight of the Commons 
 The humble trader who shrank from counselling the Crowfl 
 in great matters of policy gathered courage as he found 
 himself sitting side by side with the knights of the shire. 
 It was at the moment when this great change was being 
 Voj^ I.— 27
 
 il8 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 brought about that the disasters of the war spurred the 
 Parliament to greater activity. The enormous grants of 
 1340 were bought by the King's assent to statutes which 
 provided remedies for grievances of which the Commons 
 complained. The most important of these put an end to 
 the attempts which Edward had made like his grandfather 
 to deal with the merchant class apart from the Houses. 
 No charge or aid was henceforth to be made save by the 
 common assent of the Estates assembled in Parliament. 
 The progress of the next year was yet more important. 
 The strife of the King with his ministers, the foremost of 
 whom was Archbishop Stratford, ended in the Primate's 
 refusal to make answer to the royal charges save in full 
 Parliament, and in the assent of the* King to a resolution 
 of the Lords that none of their nmnber, whether ministers 
 of the Crown or no, should be brought to trial elsewhere 
 than before his peers. The Commons demanded and ob- 
 tained the appointment of commissioners elected in Par- 
 liament to audit the grants already made. Finally it was 
 enacted that at each Parliament the ministers should hold 
 themselves accountable for all grievances; that on any 
 vacancy the King should take counsel with his lords as to 
 the choice of the new minister; and that, when chosen, 
 each minister should be sworn in Parliament. 
 
 At the moment which we have reached therefore the 
 position of the Parliament had become far more important 
 than at Edward's accession. Its form was settled. The 
 third estate had gained a fuller parliamentary power. The 
 principle of ministerial responsibility to the Houses had 
 been established by formal statute. But the jealousy of 
 Edward was at last completely roused, and from this mo- 
 ment he looked on the new power as a rival to his own. 
 The Parliament of 1341 had no sooner broken up than he 
 revoked by Letters Patent the statutes it had passed as 
 done in prejudice of his prerogative and only assented to 
 for the time to prevent worse confusion. The regular as- 
 sembly of the Estates was suddenly interrupted, and two
 
 Chap. S.J THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 419 
 
 years passed without a Parliament. It was only the con« 
 tinual presence of war which from this time drove Edward 
 to summon the Houses at all. Though the truce still held 
 good between England and France a quarrel of succession 
 to the Duchy of Brittany which broke out in 1341 and 
 called Philip to the support of one claimant, his cousin 
 Charles of Blois, and Edward to the support of a rival 
 claimant, John of Montfort, dragged on year after year. 
 In Flanders things went ill for the English cause. The 
 dissensions between the great and the smaller towns, and 
 in the greater towns themselves between the weavers and 
 fullers, dissensions which had taxed the genius of Van 
 Arteveldt through the nine years of his wonderful rule, 
 broke out in 1345 into a revolt at Ghent in which the great 
 statesman was slain. With him fell a design for the de- 
 position of the Count of Flanders and the reception of the 
 Prince of Wales in his stead which he was ardently press- 
 ing, and whose political results might have been immense. 
 Deputies were at once sent to England to excuse Van Ar- 
 teveldt's murder and to promise loyalty to Edward ; but the 
 King's difficulties had now reached their height. His 
 loans from the Florentine bankers amounted to half a 
 million. His claim on the French crown found not a sin- 
 gle adherent save among the burghers of the Flemish 
 towns. The overtures which he made for peace were con- 
 temptuously rejected, and the expiration of the truce in 
 1345 found him again face to face with France. 
 
 But it was perhaps this breakdown of all foreign hope 
 that contributed to Edward's success in the fresh outbreak 
 of war. The war opened in Guienne, and Henry of Lan- 
 caster, who was now known as the Earl of Derby, and 
 who with the Hainaulter Sir Walter Maunay took the 
 command in that quarter, at once showed the abilities of 
 a great general. The course of the Garonne was cleared 
 by his capture of La Reole and Aiguillon, that of the 
 Dordogne by the reduction of Bergerac, and a way opened 
 for the reconquest of Poitou by the capture of Angoulem©.
 
 420 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 These unexpected successes roused Philip to strenuous 
 efforts, and a hundred thousand men gathered under his 
 son, John, Duke of Normandy, for the subjugation of the 
 South. Angouleme was won back, and Aiguillon be- 
 sieged when Edward sailed to the aid of his hard-pressed 
 lieutenant. It was with an army of thirty thousand men, 
 half English, half Irish and "Welsh, that he commenced a 
 march which was to change the whole face of the war. 
 His aim was simple. Flanders was still true to Edward's 
 cause, and while Derby was pressing on in the south a 
 Flemish army besieged Bouvines and threatened France 
 from the north. The King had at first proposed to land 
 in Guienne and relieve the forces in the south ; but sud- 
 denly changing his design he disembarked at La Hogue 
 and advanced through Normand3\ By this skilful move- 
 ment Edward not only relieved Derby but threatened Paris, 
 and left himself able to co-operate with either his own 
 army in the south or the Flemings in the north. Nor- 
 mandy was totally without defence, and after the sack of 
 Caen, which was then one of the wealthiest towns in 
 France, Edward marched upon the Seine. His march 
 threatened Rouen and Paris, and its strategical value was 
 seen by the sudden panic of the French King. Philip was 
 wholly taken by surprise. He attempted to arrest Ed- 
 ward's march by an offer to restore the Duchy of Aquitaine 
 as Edward the Second had held it, but the offer was fruit- 
 less. Philip was forced to call his son to the rescue. John 
 at once raised the siege of Aiguillon, and the French army 
 moved rapidly to the north, its withdrawal enabling Derby 
 to capture Poitiers and make himself thorough master of 
 the south. But John was too distant from Paris for his 
 forces to avail Philip in his emergency, for Edward, find- 
 ing the bridges on the Lower Seine broken, pushed straight 
 on Paris, rebuilt the bridge of Poissy, and threatened the 
 capital. 
 
 At this crisis however France found an unexpected help 
 in a hodv of O^erman knights. The long strife between
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 421 
 
 Lewis of Bavaria and the Papacy had ended at last in 
 Clement's carrying out his sentence of deposition by the 
 nomination and coronation as emperor of Charles of Lux- 
 emburg, a son of King John of Bohemia, the well known 
 Charles IV. of the Golden Bull. But against this Papal 
 assumption of a right to bestow the German Crown Ger- 
 many rose as one man. Not a town opened its gates to 
 the Papal claimant, and driven to seek help and refuge 
 from Philip of Valois he found himself at this moment on 
 the eastern frontier of France •with his father and 500 
 knights. Hurrying to Paris this German force formed 
 the nucleus of an army which assembled at St. Denys; 
 and which was soon reinforced by 15,000 Genoese cross- 
 bowmen who had been hired from among the soldiers of 
 the Lord of Monaco on the sunny Riviera and arrived at 
 this hour of need. With this host rapidly gathering in 
 his front Edward abandoned his march on Paris, which 
 had already served its purpose in relieving Derby, and 
 threw himself across the Seine to carry out the second part 
 of his programme by a junction with the Flemings at 
 Gravelines and a campaign in the north. But the rivers 
 in his path were carefully guarded, and it was only by 
 surprising the ford of Blanche- Taque on the Somme that 
 the King escaped the necessity of surrendering to the vast 
 host which was now hastening in pursuit. His communi- 
 cations however were no sooner secured than he halted on 
 the twenty-sixth of August at the little village of Cregy in 
 Ponthieu and resolved to give battle. Half of his army, 
 which had been greatly reduced in strength by his rapid 
 marches, consisted of light-armed footmen from Ireland 
 and Wales; the bulk of the remainder was composed of 
 English bowmen. The King ordered his men-at-arms to 
 dismount, and drew up his forces on a low rise sloping 
 gently to the southeast, with a deep ditch covering its 
 front, and its flanks protected by woods and a little brook. 
 From a windmill on the summit of this rise Edward could 
 overlook the whole field of battle. Immediately beneath
 
 422 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 him lay his reserve, while at the base of the slope was 
 placed the main body of the army in two divisions, that 
 to the right commanded by the young Prince of Wales, 
 Edward "the Black Prince," as he was called, that to the 
 left by the Earl of Northampton. A small ditch protected 
 the English front, and behind it the bowmen were drawn 
 up " in the form of a harrow" with small bombards be- 
 tween them " which with fire threw little iron balls to 
 frighten the horses," the first instance known of the use of 
 artillery in field-warfare. 
 
 The halt of the English army took Philip by surprise, 
 and he attempted for a time to check the advance of his 
 army. But the attempt was fruitless and the disorderly 
 host rolled on to the English front. The sight of his ene- 
 mies indeed stirred Philip's own blood to fury, "for he 
 hated them." The fight began at vespers. The Genoese 
 cross-bowmen were ordered to open the attack, but the 
 men were weary with their march, a sudden storm wetted 
 and rendered useless their bowstrings, and the loud shouts 
 with which they leaped forward to the encounter were met 
 with dogged silence in the English ranks. Their first 
 arrow flight however brought a terrible reply. So rapid 
 was the English shot "that it seemed as if it snowed." 
 " Kill me these scoundrels," shouted Philip, as the Genoese 
 fell back; and his men-at-arms plunged butchering into 
 their broken ranks while the Counts of Alengon and Flan- 
 ders at the head of the French knighthood fell hotly on the 
 Prince's line. For an instant his small force seemed lost, 
 and he called his father to support him. But Edward re- 
 fused to send him aid. " Is he dead, or unhorsed, or so 
 wounded that he cannot help himself?" he asked the en- 
 voy. " No, sir," was the reply, " but he is in a hard pas- 
 sage of arms, and sorely needs your help." "Return to 
 those that sent you," said the King, "and bid them not 
 send to me again so long as my son lives ! Let the boy 
 win his spurs, for, if God so order it, I will that the day 
 may be his and that the honor may be with him and them
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 433 
 
       — -— I 1 -.1.1 I I- —a^^m^m^mt^^^^^^^aa^^i^m^^^ 
 
 to whom I have given it in charge." Edward could see 
 in fact from his higher ground that all went well. The 
 English bowmen and men-at-arms held their ground 
 stoutly while the Welshmen stabbed the French horses in 
 the melee and brought knight after knight to the ground. 
 Soon the French host was wavering in a fatal confusion. 
 "You are my vassals, my friends," cried the blind John 
 of Bohemia to the German nobles around him. " I pray 
 and beseech you to lead me so far into the fight that I may 
 strike one good blow with this sword of mine !" Linking 
 their bridles together, the little company plunged into the 
 thick of the combat to fall as their fellows were falling. 
 The battle went steadily against the French. At last 
 Philip himself hurried from the field, and the defeat be- 
 came a rout. Twelve hundred knights and thirty thousand 
 footmen — a number equal to the whole English force — lay 
 dead upon the ground. 
 
 " God has punished us for our sins," cries the chronicler 
 of St. Denys in a passion of bewildered grief as he tells 
 the rout of the great host which he had seen mustering be- 
 neath his abbey walls. But the fall of France was hardly 
 so sudden or so incomprehensible as the ruin at a single 
 blow of a system of warfare, and with it of the political 
 and social fabric which had risen out of that system. 
 Feudalism rested on the superiority of the horseman to the 
 footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted churl. 
 The real fighting power of a feudal army lay in its knight- 
 hood, in the baronage and landowners who took the field, 
 each with his group of esquires and mounted men-at-arms. 
 A host of footmen followed them, but they were ill-armed, 
 ill- disciplined, and seldom called on to play any decisive 
 part on the actual battle-field. In France, and especially 
 at the moment we have reached, the contrast between the 
 efficiency of these two elements of warfare was more strik- 
 ing than elsewhere. Nowhere was the chivalry so splen- 
 did, nowhere was the general misery and oppression of the 
 poor more terribly expressed in the wortblessness of the
 
 424: HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV 
 
 mob of footmen who were driven by their lords to the 
 camp. In England, on the other hand, the failure of feud- 
 alism to win a complete hold on the country was seen in 
 the persistence of the older national institutions which 
 based its defence on the general levy of its freemen. If 
 the foreign Kings added to this a system of warlike or- 
 ganization grounded on the service due from its military 
 tenants to the Crown, they were far from regarding this as 
 superseding the national "fyrd." The Assize of Arms, 
 the Statute of Winchester, show with what care the fyrd 
 was held in a state of efficiency. Its force indeed as an 
 engine of war was fast rising between the age of Henry 
 the Second and that of Edward the Third. The social 
 changes on which we have already dwelt, the facilities given 
 to alienation and the subdivision of lands, the transition 
 of the serf into a copyholder and of the copyholder by re- 
 demption of his services into a freeholder, the rise of a 
 new class of " farmers" as the lords ceased to till their 
 demesne by means of bailiffs and adopted the practice of 
 leasing it at a rent or " farm" to one of the customary ten- 
 ants, the general increase of wealth which was telling on 
 the social position even of those who still remained in vil- 
 leinage, undid more and more the earlier process which 
 had degraded the free ceorl of the English Conquest into 
 the villein of the IsTorman Conquest, and covered the land 
 with a population of yeomen, some freeholders, some with 
 services that every day became less weighty and already 
 left them virtually free. 
 
 Such men, proud of their right to justice and an equal 
 law, called by attendance in the county court to a share 
 in the judicial, the financial, and the political life of the 
 realm, were of a temper to make soldiers of a different sort 
 from the wretched serfs who followed the feudal lords of 
 the Continent; and they were equipped with a weapon 
 which as they wielded it was enough of itself to make a 
 revolution in the art of war. The bow, identified as it be- 
 came with English warfare, was the weapon not of Eng-
 
 C5RXV t.] THE PAELIAMENT. 1307—1461. 425 
 
 Iishn»»in but of their Norman conquerors. It was the Nor- 
 man urrow-flight that decided the day of Senlac. But in 
 the organization of the national army it had been assigned 
 as the weapon of the poorer freeholders who were liable to 
 serve at the King's summons ; and we see how closely it 
 had become associated with them in the picture of Chau- 
 cer's yeoman. " In his hand he bore a mighty bow." Its 
 might lay not only in the range of the heavy war-shaft, a 
 range we are told of four hundred yards, but in its force. 
 The English archer, taught from very childhood " how to 
 draw, how to lay his body to the bow," his skill quickened 
 by incessant practice and constant rivalrj^ with his fellows, 
 raised the bow into a terrible engine of war. Thrown out 
 along the front in a loose order that alone showed their 
 vigor and self-dependence, the bowmen faced and riddled 
 the splendid line of knighthood as it charged upon them. 
 The galled horses "reeled right rudely." Their riders 
 found even the steel of Milan a poor defence against the 
 gray-goose shaft. Gradually the bow dictated the very 
 tactics of an English battle. If the mass of cavalry still 
 plunged foi'ward, the screen of archers broke to right and 
 left and the men-at-arms who lay in reserve behind them 
 made short work of the broken and disordered horsemen, 
 while the light troops from Wales and Ireland flinging 
 themselves into the melee with their long knives and darts 
 brought steed after steed to the ground. It was this new 
 military engine that Edward the Third carried to the fields 
 of France. His armies were practically bodies of hired 
 soldiery, for the short period of feudal service was insuffi- 
 cient for foreign campaigns, and yeoman and baron were 
 alike drawn by a high rate of pay. An archer's daily 
 wages equalled some five shillings of our present money. 
 Such payment when coupled with the hope of plunder was 
 enough to draw yeomen from thorpe and farm ; and though 
 the royal treasury was drained as it had never been drained 
 before the English King saw himself after the day of Cregy 
 the master of a force without rival in the stress of war.
 
 42G HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 To England her success was the beginning of a career 
 of military glory, which fatal as it was destined to prove 
 to the higher sentiments and interests of the nation gave 
 it a warlike energy such as it had never known before. 
 Victory followed victory. A few months after Cregy a 
 Scotch army marched over the border and faced on the 
 seventeenth of October an English force at Neville's Cross. 
 But it was soon broken by the arrow-flight of the English 
 archers, and the Scotch King David Bruce was taken pris- 
 oner. The withdrawal of the French from the Garonne 
 enabled Henry of Derby to recover Poitou. Edward mean- 
 while with a decision which marks his military capacity 
 marched from the field of Cregy to form the siege of Calais. 
 No measure could have been more popular with the Eng- 
 lish merchant class, for Calais was a great pirate-haven 
 and in a single year twenty-two privateers from its port 
 had swept the Channel. But Edward was guided by 
 weightier considerations than this. In spite of his victory 
 at Sluys the superiority of France at sea had been a con- 
 stant embarrassment. From this difficulty the capture of 
 Calais would do much to deliver him, for Dover and Calais 
 together bridled the Channel. Nor was this all. Not only 
 would the possession of the town give Edward a base of 
 operations against France, but it afforded an easy means 
 of communication with the only sure allies of England, 
 the towns of Flanders. Flanders seemed at this moment 
 to be wavering. Its Count had fallen at Cregy, but his 
 son Lewis le Male, though his sympathies were as French 
 as his father's, was received in November by his subjects 
 with the invariable loyalty which they showed to their 
 rulers ; and his own efforts to detach them from England 
 were seconded by the influence of the Duke of Brabant. 
 But with Edward close at hand beneath the walls of Calais 
 the Flemish towns stood true. They prayed the young 
 Count to marry Edward's daughter, imprisoned him on 
 his refusal, and on his escape to the French Court in the 
 spring of 1347 they threw themselves heartily into the
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 42? 
 
 English cause. A hundred thousand Flemings advanced 
 to Cassel and ravaged the French frontier. 
 
 The danger of Calais roused Philip from the panic which 
 had followed his defeat, and with a vast army he advanced 
 to the north. But Edward's lines were impregnable. 
 The French King failed in another attempt to dislodge the 
 Flemings, and was at last driven to retreat without a blow. 
 Hopeless of further succor, the town after a year's siege 
 was starved into surrender in August, 1347. Mercy was 
 granted to the garrison and the people on condition that six 
 of the citizens gave themselves into the English King's 
 hands. "On them," said Edward with a burst of bitter 
 hatred, " I will do my will." At the sound of the town bell, 
 Jehan le Bel tells us, the folk of Calais gathered round the 
 bearer of these terms, " desiring to hear their good news, 
 for they were all mad with hunger. When the said knight 
 told them his news, then began they to weep and cry so 
 loudly that it was great pity. Then stood up the wealthiest 
 burgess of the town. Master Eustache de St. Pierre by 
 name, and spake thus before all: 'My masters, great grief 
 and mishap it were for all to leave such a people as this is 
 to die by famine or otherwise; and great charity and grace 
 would he win from our Lord who could defend them from 
 dying. For me, I have great hope in the Lord that if I 
 can save this people by my death I shall have pardon for 
 my faults, wherefore will I be the first of the six, and of 
 my own will put myself barefoot in my shirt and with a 
 halter round my neck in the mercy of King Edward. ' '' 
 The list of devoted men was soon made up, and the vic- 
 tims were led before the king. " All the host assembled 
 together; there was great press, and many bade hang them 
 openly, and many wept for pity. The noble King came 
 with his train of counts and barons to the place, and the 
 Queen followed him, though great with child, to see what 
 there would be. The six citizens knelt down at once be- 
 fore the King, and Master Eustache spake thus: — 'Gentle 
 King, here we be six who have been of the old bourgeoisie
 
 428 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 of Calais and great inerchants ; we bring yon the keys of 
 the town and castle of Calais, and render them to jou at 
 your pleasure. We set ourselves in such wise as you see 
 purely at your will, to save the remnant of the people that 
 has suffered much pain. So may you have pity and mercy 
 on us for your high nobleness' sake.' Certes, there was 
 then in that place neither lord nor knight that wept not 
 for pity, nor who could speak for pity ; but the King had 
 his heart so hardened by wrath that for a long while he 
 could not reply ; then he commanded to cut off their heads. 
 All the knights and lords p'-ayed him with tears, as much 
 as they could, to have pity on them, but he would not 
 hear. Then spoke the gentle knight, Master Walter de 
 Mauna}', and said, ' Ha, gentle sire ! bridle your wrath ; 
 you have the renown and good fame of all gentleness ; do 
 not a thing whereby men can speak any villany of you ! 
 If you have no pity, all men will say that you have a heart 
 full of all cruelty to put these good citizens to death that 
 of their own will are come to render themselves to you to 
 save the remnant of the people.' At this point the King 
 changed countenance with wrath, and said, ' Hold your 
 peace. Master Walter ! it shall be none otherwise. Call 
 the headsman. They of Calais have made so many of my 
 men die, that they must die themselves ! ' Then did the 
 noble Queen of England a deed of noble lowliness, seeing 
 she v;as great with child, and wept so tenderly for pity 
 that she could no longer stand upright ; therefore she cast 
 herself on her knees before her lord the King and spake 
 on this wise : ' Ah, gentle sire, from the day that I passed 
 over sea in great peril, as you know, I have asked for 
 nothing : now pray I and beseech you, with folded hands, 
 for the love of our Lady's Son to have mercy upon them.' 
 The gentle King waited a while before speaking, and looked 
 on the Queen as she knelt before him bitterly weeping. 
 Then began his lieart to soften a little, and he said, 'Lady, 
 I would rather you had been otherwliere ; you pray so ten- 
 derly that I dare not refuse you ; and though I do it against
 
 Chap. 2.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 429 
 
 my will, nevertheless take them. I give them to you.' 
 Then took he the six citizens by the halters and delivered 
 them to the Queen, and released from death all those of 
 Calais for the love of her ; and the good lady bade them 
 clothe the six bm-gesses and make them good cheer."
 
 4 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PEASANT REVOLT. 
 
 1347—1381. 
 
 Still in the vigor of manhood, for he was but thirty- 
 five, Edward the Third stood at the height of his renown. 
 He had won the greatest victory of his age. France, till 
 now the first of European States, was broken and dashed 
 from her pride of place at a single blow. The kingdom 
 seemed to he at Edward's mercy, for Guienne was recov- 
 ered, Flanders was wholly on his side, and Brittany, where 
 the capture of Charles of Blois secured the success of his 
 rival and the English party which supported him, opened 
 the road to Paris. At home his government was popular, 
 and Scotland, the one enemy he had to dread, was bridled 
 by the capture of her King. How great his renown was 
 in Europe was seen in 1347, when on the death of Lewis 
 of Bavaria the electors offered him the Imperial Crown. 
 Edward was in truth a general of a high order, and he 
 had shown himself as consummate a strategist in the cam- 
 paign as a tactician in the field. But to the world about 
 him he was even more illustrious as the foremost repre- 
 sentative of the showy chivalry of his day. He loved the 
 pomp of tournaments ; he revived the Round Table of the 
 fabled Arthur; he celebrated his victories by the creation 
 of a new order of knighthood. He had varied the sterner 
 operations of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand combat 
 with one of the bravest of the French knights. A naval 
 picture of Froissart sketches Edward for us as he sailed to 
 meet a Spanish fleet which was sweeping the narrow seas. 
 We see the King sitting on deck in his jacket of black 
 velvet, his head covered by a black beaver bat "which
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PAELIAMENT. 1307—1461. 451 
 
 became him well," and calling on Sir John Chandos to troll 
 out the songs he had brought with him from Germany, 
 till the Spanish ships heave in sight and a furious fight 
 begins which ends in a victory that leaves Edward " King 
 of the Seas." 
 
 But beneath all this glitter of chivalry lay the subtle, 
 busy diplomatist. None of our Kings was so restless a 
 negotiator. From the first hour of Edward's rule the 
 threads of his diplomacy ran over Europe in almost inex- 
 tricable confusion. And to all who dealt with him he was 
 equally false and tricky. Emperor was played off against 
 Pope and Pope against Emperor, the friendship of the 
 Flemish towns was adroitly used to put a pressure on their 
 counts, the national wrath against the exactions of the 
 Roman see was employed to bridle the French sympathies 
 of the court of Avignon, and when the statutes which it 
 produced had served their purpose they were set aside for 
 a bargain in which King and Pope shared the plunder of 
 the Church between them. His temper was as false in 
 his dealings with his people as in his dealings with the 
 European powers. Edward aired to country and parlia- 
 ment his English patriotism. " Above all other lands and 
 realms," he made his chancellor say, "the King had most 
 tenderly at heart his land of England, a land more full of 
 delight and honor and profit to him than any other." His 
 manners were popular ; he donned on occasion the livery 
 of a city guild; he dined with a London merchant. His 
 perpetual parliaments, his appeals to them and to the 
 country at large for counsel and aid, seemed to promise a 
 ruler who was absolutely one at heart with the people he 
 ruled. But when once Edward passed from sheer care- 
 lessness and gratification at the new source of wealth which 
 the Parliament opened to a sense of what its power really 
 was becoming, he showed himself as jealous of freedom as 
 any king that had gone before him. He sold his assent to 
 its demands for heavy subsidies, and when he had pocketed 
 the money coolly declared the statutes he had sanctioned
 
 432 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 null and void. The constitutional progress which was 
 made during his reign was due to his absorption in showy 
 schemes of foreign ambition, to his preference for war and 
 diplomatic intrigue over the sober business of civil ad- 
 ministration. The same shallowness of temper, the same 
 showiness and falsehood, ran through his personal charac- 
 ter. The King who was a model of chivalry in his deal- 
 ings with knight and noble showed himself a brutal savage 
 to the burgesses of Calais. Even the courtesy to his Queen 
 which throws its halo over the story of their deliverance 
 went hand in hand with a constant disloyalty to her. 
 "When once Philippa was dead his profligacy threw all 
 shame aside. He paraded a mistress as Queen of Beauty 
 through the streets of London, and set her in pomp over 
 tournaments as the Lady of the Sun. The nobles were 
 quick to follow their lord's example. "In those days," 
 writes a chronicler of the time, "arose a rumor and clamor 
 among the people that wherever there was a tournament 
 there came a great concourse of ladies, of the most costly 
 and beautiful but not of the best in the kingdom, some- 
 times forty and fifty in number, as if they were a part of 
 the tournament, ladies clad in diverse and wonderful male 
 apparel, in parti-colored tunics, with short caps and bands 
 wound cord-wise round their heads, and girdles bound 
 with gold and silver, and daggers in pouches across their 
 body. And thus they rode on choice coursers to the place 
 of tourney ; and so spent and wasted their goods and vexed 
 their bodies with scurrilous wantonness that the murmurs 
 of the people sounded everywhere. But they neither feared 
 God nor blushed at the chaste voice of the people." 
 
 The " chaste voice of the people" was soon to grow into 
 the stern moral protest of the Lollards, but for the moment 
 all murmurs were hushed by the King's success. The 
 truce which followed the capture of Calais seemed a mere 
 rest in the career of victories which opened before Edward. 
 England was drunk with her glory and with the hope of 
 plunder. The cloths of Caen had been brought after the
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 433 
 
 sack of that town to London. "There was no woman," 
 says Walsingham, "who had not got garments, furs, 
 feather-beds, and utensils from the spoils of Calais and 
 other foreign cities." The Court revelled in gorgeous 
 tournaments and luxury of dress; and the establishment 
 in 1346 of the Order of the Garter which found its home 
 in the new castle that Edward was raising at Windsor 
 marked the highest reach of the spurious " Chivalry" of 
 the day. But it was at this moment of triumph that the 
 whole color of Edward's reign suddenly changed. The 
 most terrible plague the world has ever witnessed advanced 
 from the East, and after devastating Europe from the 
 shores of the Mediterranean to the Baltic swooped at the 
 close of 1348 upon Britain. The traditions of its destruc- 
 tiveness and the panic-struck words of the statutes passed 
 after its visitation have been amply justified by modern 
 research. Of the three or four millions who then formed 
 the population of England more than one-half were swept 
 away in its repeated visitations. Its ravages were fiercest 
 in the greater towns where filthy and undrained streets 
 afforded a constant haunt to leprosy and fever. In the 
 burial ground which the piety of Sir Walter Maunay pur- 
 chased for the citizens of London, a spot whose site was 
 afterward marked by the Charter House, more than fifty 
 thousand corpses are said to have been interred. Thou- 
 sands of people perished at Norwich, while in Bristol the 
 living were hardly able to bury the dead. But the Black 
 Death fell on the villages almost as fiercely as on the towns. 
 More than one-half of the priests of Yorkshire are known 
 to have perished; in the diocese of Norwich two-thirds of 
 the parishes changed their incumbents. The whole or- 
 ganization of labor was thrown out of gear. The scarcity 
 of hands produced by the terrible mortality made it diffi- 
 cult for villeins to perform the services due for their lands, 
 and only a temporary abandonment of half the rent by the 
 landowners induced the farmers of their demesnes to re- 
 frain from the abandonment of their farms. For a time 
 Vol. I.— 28
 
 434 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 cultivation became impossible. "The sheep and cattle 
 strayed through the fields and corn, " says a contemporary, 
 "and there were none left who could drive them." Even 
 when the first burst of panic was over, the sudden rise of 
 wages consequent on the enormous diminution in the sup- 
 ply of labor, though accompanied by a corresponding rise 
 in the price of food, rudely disturbed the course of indus- 
 trial emploj^ments. Harvests rotted on the ground and 
 fields were left untilled not merely from scarcity of hands 
 but from the strife which now for the first time revealed 
 itself between capital and labor. 
 
 Nowhere was the effect of the Black Death so keenly 
 felt as in its bearing on the social revolution which had 
 been steadily going on for a century past throughout the 
 country. At the moment we have reached the lord of a 
 manor had been reduced over a large part of England to 
 the position of a modern landlord, receiving a rental in 
 money from his tenants and supplying their place in the 
 cultivation of his demesne lands by paid laborers. He 
 was driven by the progress of enfranchisement to rely for 
 the purposes of cultivation on the supply of hired labor, 
 and hitherto this supply had been abundant and cheap. 
 But with the ravages of the Black Death and the decrease 
 of population labor at once became scarce and dear. There 
 was a general rise of wages, and the farmers of the coun- 
 try as well as the wealthier craftsmen of the town saw 
 themselves threatened with ruin by what seemed to their 
 age the extravagant demands of the labor class. Mean- 
 while the country was torn with riot and disorder. An 
 outbreak of lawless self-indulgence which followed every- 
 where in the wake of the plague told especially upon the 
 "landless men," workers wandering in search of work who 
 found themselves for the first time masters of the labor 
 market; and the wandering laborer or artisan turned easily 
 into the "sturdy beggar," or the bandit of the woods. A 
 summary redress for these evils was at once provided by 
 the Crown in a royal proclamation. "Because a great
 
 Chap. 3.] THE F.iRLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 435 
 
 part of the people," ruus this ordinance, "and principally 
 of laborers and servants, is dead of the plague, some, see- 
 ing the need of their lords and the scarcity of servants, 
 are unwilling to serve unless they receive excessive wages, 
 and others are rather begging in idleness than supporting 
 themselves by labor, we have ordained that any able-bodied 
 man or woman, of whatsoever condition, free or serf, under 
 sixty years of age, not living of merchandise nor following 
 a trade nor having of his own wherewithal to live, either 
 his own land with the culture of which he could occupy 
 himself, and not serving another, shall if so required serve 
 another for such wages as was the custom in the twentieth 
 year of our reign or five or six years before." 
 
 It was the failure of this ordinance to effect its ends 
 which brought about at the close of 1349 the passing of 
 the Statute of Laborers. "Everyman or woman," runs 
 this famous provision, "of whatsoever condition, free or 
 bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, 
 . . . and not having of his own whereof he may live, 
 nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may 
 occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be 
 bound to serve the employer who shall require him to 
 do so, and shall take only the wages which were accus- 
 tomed to be taken in the neighborhood where he is bound 
 to serve" two years before the plague began. A refusal 
 to obey was punished by imprisonment. But sterner meas- 
 ures were soon found to be necessary. Not only was the 
 price of labor fixed by the Parliament of 1350 but the 
 labor class was once more tied to the soil. The laborer 
 was forbidden to quit the parish where he lived in search 
 of better paid employment; if he disobeyed he became a 
 "fugitive," and subject to imprisonment at the hands of 
 justices of the peace. To enforce such a law literally must 
 have been impossible, for corn rose to so high a price that 
 a day's labor at the old wages would not have purchased 
 wheat enough for a man's support. But the landowners 
 did not flinch rrom the attempt. The repeated re-enact-
 
 436 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 , — - -■— '-■ ' I ——— I   —■■-■< 
 
 ment of the law shows the difficulty of applying it and the 
 stubbornness of the struggle which it brought about. The 
 fines and forfeitures which were levied for infractions of 
 its provisions formed a large source of royal revenue, but 
 so ineffectual were the original penalties that the runaway 
 laborer was at last ordered to be branded with a hot iron 
 on the forehead, while the harboring of serfs in towns was 
 rigorously put down. Nor was it merely the existing class 
 of free laborers which was attacked by this reactionary 
 movement. The increase of their numbers by a commuta- 
 tion of labor services for money payments was suddenly 
 checked, and the ingenuity of the lawyers who were em- 
 ployed as stewards of each manor was exercised in striving 
 to restore to the landowners that customary labor whose 
 loss was now severely felt. Manumissions and exemp- 
 tions which had passed without question were cancelled 
 on grounds of informality, and labor services from which 
 they held themselves freed by redemption were again de- 
 manded from the villeins. The attempt was the more 
 galling that the cause had to be pleaded in the manor- 
 court itself, and to be decided by the very officer whose in- 
 terest it was to give judgment in favor of his lord. We 
 can see the growth of a fierce spirit of resistance through 
 the statutes which strove in vain to repress it. In the 
 towns, where the system of forced labor was applied with 
 even more rigor than in the country, strikes and combina- 
 tions became frequent among the lower craftsmen. In the 
 country the free laborers found allies in the villeins whose 
 freedom from manorial service was questioned. These 
 were often men of position and substance, and throughout 
 the eastern counties the gatherings of "fugitive serfs" 
 were supported by an organized resistance and by large 
 contributions of money on the part of the wealthier ten- 
 antry. 
 
 With plague, famine, and social strife in the land, it 
 was no time for reaping the fruits even of such a victory 
 as Cregy. Luckily for England the pestilence had fallen
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 437 
 
 as heavily on her foe as on herself. A common suffering 
 and exhaustion forced both countries to a truce, and though 
 desultory fighting went on along the Breton and Aquita- 
 nian borders, the peace which was thus secured lasted with 
 brief intervals of fighting for seven years. It was not till 
 1355 that the failure of a last effort to turn the truce into 
 a final peace again drove Edward into war. The cam- 
 paign opened with a brilliant prospect of success. Charles 
 the Bad, King of Navarre, held as a prince of descent 
 from the house of Valois large fiefs in Normandy; and a 
 quarrel springing suddenly up between him and John, 
 who had now succeeded his father Philip on the throne of 
 France, Charles offered to put his fortresses into Edward's 
 hands. Master of Cherbourg, Avranches, Pontaudemer, 
 Evreux and Meulan, Mantes, Mortain, Pontois, Charles 
 held in his hands the kej^s of France; and Edward grasped 
 at the opportunity of delivering a crushing blow. Three 
 armies were prepared to act in Normandy, Brittany, and 
 Guienne. But the first two, with Edward and Henry of 
 Derb}^ who had been raised to the dukedom of Lancaster, 
 at their head, were detained by contrary winds, and 
 Charles, despairing of their arrival, made peace with 
 John. Edward made his way to Calais to meet the tid- 
 ings of this desertion and to be called back to England by 
 news of a recapture of Berwick by the Scots. But his 
 hopes of Norman co-operation were revived in 1356. The 
 treachery of John, his seizure of the King of Navarre, and 
 his execution of the Count of Harcourt who was looked 
 upon as the adviser of Charles in his policy of intrigue, 
 stirred a general rising throughout Normandy. Edward 
 at once despatched troops under the Dake of Lancaster to 
 its support. But the insurgents were soon forced to fall 
 back. Conscious of the danger to which an English occu- 
 pation of Normandy would expose him, John hastened 
 with a large army to the west, drove Lancaster to Cher- 
 bourg, took Evreux, and besieged Breteuil. 
 
 Here, however, his progress was suddenly checked by
 
 438 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 » " 
 
 news from the south. The Black Prince, as the hero of 
 Cregy was called, had landed iii Guienne during the pre- 
 ceding year and won a disgraceful success. Unable to 
 pay his troops, he staved off their demands by a campai^-a 
 of sheer pillage. While plague and war and the anarchy 
 which sprang up under the weak government of John were 
 bringing ruin on the northern and central provinces of 
 jFrance, the south remained prosperous and at peace. The 
 young prince led his army of freebooters up the Garonne 
 into " what was before one of the fat countries of the world, 
 the people good and simple, who did not know what war 
 was; indeed no war had been waged against them till the 
 Prince came. The English and Gascons found the coun- 
 try full and gay, the rooms adorned with carpets and dra- 
 peries, the caskets and chests full of fair jewels. But 
 nothing was safe from these robbers. They, and espe- 
 cially the Gascons, who are very greedy, carried off every- 
 thing." Glutted by the sack of Carcassone and Norbonne 
 the plunderers fell back to Bordeaux, " their horses so laden 
 with spoil that they could hardly move." Worthier work 
 awaited the Black Prince in the following year. In the 
 plan of campaign for 1356 it had been arranged that he 
 should march upon the Loire, and there unite with a force 
 under the Duke of Lancaster which was to land in Brit- 
 tany and push rapidly into the heart of France. Delays, 
 however, hindered the Prince from starting from Bor- 
 deaux till July, and when his march brought him to the 
 Loire the plan of campaign had already broken down. 
 The outbreak in Normandy had tempted the English 
 Council to divert the force under Lancaster from Brittany 
 to that province; and the Duke was now at Cherbourg, 
 hard pressed by the French army under John. But if its 
 original purpose was foiled the march of the Black Prince 
 on the Loire served still more effectively the English 
 cause. His advance pointed straight upon Paris, and 
 again as in the Cregy campaign John was forced to leave 
 all for the protection of the capital. Hasty marches
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT 1307—1461. 439 
 
 brought the King to the Loire while Prince Edward still 
 lay at Vierzon on the Cher. Unconscious of John's de- 
 signs, he wasted some days in the capture of Romorantin, 
 while the French troops were crossing the Loire along its 
 course from Orleans to Tours and John with the advance 
 was hurrying through Loches upon Poitiers in pursuit, as 
 he supposed, of the retreating Englishmen. But the move- 
 ment of the French army, near as it was, was unknown 
 in the English camp; and when the news of it forced the 
 Black Prince to order a retreat the enemy was already far 
 ahead of him. Edward reached the fields north of Poitiers 
 to find his line of retreat cut off and a French army of 
 sixty thousand men interposed between his forces and Bor- 
 deaux. 
 
 If the Prince had shown little ability in his manage- 
 ment of the campaign, he showed tactical skill in the fight 
 which was now forced on him. On the nineteenth of Sep- 
 tember he took a strong position in the fields of Mauper- 
 tuis, where his front was covered by thick hedges and 
 approachable only by a deep and narrow lane which ran 
 between vineyards. The vineyards and hedges he lined 
 with bowmen, and drew up his small body of men-at-arms 
 at the point where the lane opened upon the higher plain 
 on which he was himself encamped. Edward's force 
 numbered only eight thousand men, and the danger was 
 great enough to force him to offer in exchange for a free 
 retreat the surrender of his prisoners and of the places he 
 had taken, with an oath not to fight against France for 
 seven years to come. His offers, however, were rejected, 
 and the battle opened with a charge of three hundred 
 French knights up the narrow lane. But the lane was 
 soon choked with men and horses, while the front ranks 
 of the advancing army fell back before a galling fire of 
 arrows from the hedgerows. In this moment of confusion 
 a body of English horsemen, posted unseen by their oppo- 
 nents on a hill to the right, charged suddenly on the 
 French flank, and the Prince watching the disorder which
 
 440 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 was caused by the ri ^ ulse and surprise fell boldly on their 
 front. The steady shot of the English archers completed 
 the panic produced by this sudden attack. The first 
 French line was driven in, and on its rout the second, a 
 force of sixteen thousand men, at once broke in wild terror 
 and fled from the field. John still held his ground with 
 the knights of the reserve, whom he had unwisely ordered 
 to dismount from their horses, till a charge of the Black 
 Prince with two thousand lances threw this last body into 
 confusion. The French King was taken, desperately fight- 
 ing; and when his army poured back at noon in utter rout 
 to the gates of Poitiers eight thousand of their number 
 had fallen on the field, three thousand in the flight, and 
 two thousand men-at-arms, with a crowd of nobles, were 
 taken prisoners. The royal captive entered London in tri- 
 umph, mounted on a big white charger, while the Prince 
 rode by his side on a little black hackney to the palace of 
 the Savoy which was chosen as John's dwelling, and a 
 truce for two years seemed to give healing-time to France. 
 With the Scots Edward the Third had less good fortune. 
 Kecalled from Calais by their seizure of Berwick, the King 
 induced Bailiol to resign into his hands his shadowy sov- 
 ereignty, and in the spring of 1356 marched upon Edin- 
 burgh with an overpowering army, harrying and burning 
 as he marched. But the Scots refused an engagement, a 
 fleet sent with provisions was beaten off by a storm, and 
 the famine-stricken army was forced to fall rapidly back 
 on the border in a disastrous retreat. The trial convinced 
 Edward that the conquest of Scotland was impossible, and 
 by a rapid change of policy which marks the man he re- 
 solved to seek the friendship of the country he had wasted 
 so long. David Bruce was released on promise of ransom, 
 a truce concluded for ten years, and the prohibition of 
 trade between the two kingdoms put an end to. But the 
 fulness of this reconciliation screened a dextrous intrigue, 
 David was childless and Edward availed himself of the 
 difficulty which the young King experienced in finding
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 441 
 
 means of providing the sum demanded for his ransom to 
 bring him over to a proposal which would have united the 
 two countries forever. The scheme, however, was care- 
 fully concealed; and it was not till 1363 that David pro- 
 posed to his Parliament to set aside on his death the claims 
 of the Steward of Scotland to his crown, and to choose 
 Edward's third son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, as his suc- 
 cessor. Though the proposal was scornfully rejected, ne- 
 gotiations were still carried on between the two Kings for 
 the realization of this project, and were probably only put 
 an end to by the calamities of Edward's later years. 
 
 In France misery and misgovernment seemed to be doing 
 Edward's work more effectively than arms. The miser- 
 able country found no rest in itself. Its routed soldiery 
 turned into free companies of bandits, while the lords cap- 
 tured at Cregy or Poitiers procured the sums needed for 
 their ransom by extortion from the peasantry. The re- 
 forms demanded by the States-General which met in this 
 agony of France were frustrated by the treachery of the 
 Regent, John's eldest son Charles, Duke of Normandy, 
 till Paris, impatient of his weakness and misrule, rose in 
 arms against the Crown. The peasants too, driven mad 
 by oppression and famine, rose in wild insurrection, butch- 
 ering their lords and firing their castles over the whole 
 face of France. Paris and the Jacquerie, as this peasant 
 rising was called, were at last crushed by treachery and 
 the sword : and, exhausted as it was, France still backed 
 the Regent in rejecting a treaty of peace by which John 
 in 1359 proposed to buy his release. By this treaty Maine, 
 Touraine and Poitou in the south, Normandy, Guisnes, 
 Ponthieu and Calais in the west were ceded to the English 
 King. On its rejection Edward in 1360 poured ravaging 
 over the wasted land. Famine, however, proved its best 
 defence. " I could not believe," said Petrarch of this time, 
 "that this was the same France which I had seen so rich" 
 and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but 
 a fearful solitude, an utter poverty, land uncultivated,
 
 412 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 houses in ruins. Even the neighborhood of Paris showed 
 everywhere marks of desolation and conflagration. The 
 streets are deserted, the roads overgrown with weeds, the 
 'vvhole is a vast solitude." The utter desolation forced 
 Edward to carry with him an immense train of provisions, 
 and thousands of baggage wagons with mills, ovens, 
 forges, and fishing- boats, formed a long train which 
 streamed for six miles behind his army. After a fruitless 
 attempt upon Rheims he forced the Duke of Burgundy to 
 conclude a treaty with him by pushing forward to Ton- 
 nerre, and then descending the Seine appeared with his 
 army before Paris. But the wasted country forbade a 
 siege, and Edward after summoning the town in vain was 
 forced to fall back for subsistence on the Loire. It was 
 during this march that the Duke of Normandy's envoys 
 overtook him with proposals of peace. The miserj'^ of the 
 land had at last bent Charles to submission, and in May a 
 treaty was concluded at Bretigny, a small place to the 
 eastward of Chartres. By this treaty the English King 
 waived his claims on the crown of France and on the 
 Duchy of Normandy. On the other hand, his Duchy of 
 Aquitaine, which included Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, 
 and Saintonge, the Limousin and the Angoumois, Peri- 
 gord and the counties of Bigorre and Rouerque, was not 
 only restored but freed from its obligations as a French 
 fief and granted in full sovereignty with Ponthieu, Ed- 
 ward's heritage from the second wife of Edward the First, 
 as well as with Guisnes and his new conquest of Calais. 
 The Peace of Bretigny set its seal upon Edward's glory. 
 But within England itself the misery of the people was 
 deepening every hour. Men believed the world to be end- 
 ing, and the judgment day to be near. A few months 
 after the Peace came a fresh swoop of the Black Death, 
 carrying off the Duke of Lancaster. The repressive meas- 
 ures of parliament and the landowners only widened the 
 social chasm which parted employer from employed. We 
 can see the growth of a fierce spirit of resistance both to
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 443 
 
 tbe reactionary efforts which were being made to bring 
 back labor services and to the enactments which again 
 bound labor to the soil in statutes which strove in vain to 
 repress the strikes and combinations which became fre- 
 quent in the towns and the more formidable gatherings of 
 villeins and "fugitive serfs" in the country at large. A 
 statute of later date throws light on the nature of the re- 
 sistance of the last. It tells us that " villeins and holders 
 of land in villeinage withdrew their customs and services 
 from their lords, having attached themselves to other per- 
 sons who maintained and abetted them, and who under 
 color of exemplifications from Domesday of the manors 
 and villages where they dwelt claimed to be quit of all 
 manner of services either of their body or of their lands, 
 and would suffer no distress or other course of justice to 
 be taken against them; the villeins aiding their main- 
 tainers by threatening the officers of their lords with peril 
 to life and limb as well by open assemblies as by confed- 
 eracies to support each other." It would seem not only as 
 if the villein was striving to resist the reactionary tendency 
 of the lords of manors to regain his labor service, but that 
 in the general overturning of social institutions the copy- 
 holder was struggling to make himself a freeholder, and 
 the farmer to be recognized as a proprietor of the demesne 
 he held on lease. 
 
 A more terrible outcome of the general suffering was 
 Been in a new revolt against the whole system of social 
 inequality which had till then passed unquestioned as the 
 divine order of the world. The Peace was hardly signed 
 when the crj^ of the poor found a terrible utterance in the 
 words of "a mad priest of Kent," as the courtly Froissart 
 isalls him, who for twenty years to come found audienop 
 for his sermons in spite of interdict and imprisonment in 
 the stout yeomen who gathered round him in the church- 
 yards of Kent. "Mad," as the landowners held him to 
 be, it was in the preaching of John Ball that England firsst 
 listened to a declaration of the natural equality and rights
 
 444 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 of man. "Good people," cried the preacher, "things will 
 never be well in England so long as goods be not in com- 
 mon, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By 
 what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than 
 we? On what grounds have they deserved it? Why do 
 they hold us in serfage? If we all came of the same 
 father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how can they say 
 or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they 
 make us gain for them b}- our toil what they spend in their 
 pride? They are clothed in velvet and warm in their furs 
 and their ermines, while we are covered with rags. They 
 have wine and spices and fair bread ; and we oat-cake and 
 straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine 
 houses ; we have pain and labor, the rain and the wind in 
 the fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these 
 men hold their state." It was the tyranny of property 
 that then as ever roused the defiance of socialism. A 
 spirit fatal to the whole system of the Middle Ages breathed 
 in the popular rhyme which condensed the levelling doc- 
 trine of John Ball : 
 
 "When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Who was then the gentleman? ' ' 
 
 More impressive, because of the very restraint and mod- 
 eration of its tone, is the poem in which William Longland 
 began at the same moment to embody with a terrible fidel- 
 ity all the darker and sterner aspects of the time, its social 
 revolt, its moral and religious awakening, the misery of 
 the poor, the selfishness and corruption of the rich. Noth- 
 ing brings more vividly home to us the social chasm which 
 in the fourteenth century severed the rich from the poor 
 than the contrast between his " Complaint of Piers the 
 Ploughman" and the "Canterbury Tales." The world of 
 wealth and ease and laughter through which the courtly 
 Chaucer moves with eyes downcast as in a pleasant dream 
 is a far off world of wrong and of ungodliness to the gaunt 
 poet of the poor. Born probably in Shropshire, where he
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 445 
 
 had been put to school and received minor orders as a 
 clerk, "Long Will," as Longland was nicknamed from 
 his tall stature, found his way at an early age to London, 
 and earned a miserable livelihood there by singing " place- 
 bos" and " diriges" in the stately funerals of his day. Men 
 took the moodj' clerk for a madman; his bitter poverty 
 quickened the defiant pride that made him loath, as he 
 tells us, to bow to the gay lords and dames who rode decked 
 in silver and minivere along the Cheap or to exchange a 
 " God save you" with the law sergeants as he passed their 
 new house in the Temple. His world is the world of the 
 poor: he dwells on the poor man's life, on his burger and 
 toil, his rough revelry and his despair, with the narrow 
 intensity of a man who has no outlook beyond it. The 
 narrowness, the misery, the monotony of the life he paints 
 reflect themselves in his verse. It is only here and there 
 that a love of nature or a grim earnestness of wrath quick- 
 ens his rhyme into poetry ; there is not a gleam of the bright 
 human sympathy of Chaucer, of his fresh delight in the 
 gaj'ety, the tenderness, the daring of the world about him, 
 of his picturesque sense of even its coarsest contrasts, of his 
 delicate irony, of his courtly wit. The cumbrous allegory, 
 the tedious platitudes, the rhymed texts from Scripture 
 which form the staple of Longland 's work, are only 
 broken here and there by phrases of a shrewd common 
 sense, by bitter outbursts, by pictures of a broad Hogarth- 
 ian humor. What chains one to the poem is its deep 
 undertone of sadness : the world is out of joint, and the 
 gaunt rhymer who stalks silently along the Strand has no 
 faith in his power to put it right. 
 
 Londoner as be is, Will's fancy flies far from the sin and 
 suffering of the great city to a May morning in the Mal- 
 vern Hills. " I was very forwandered and went me to rest 
 under a broad bank by a burn side, and as I lay and leaned 
 and looked in the water I slumbered in a sleeping, it 
 Bweyved (sounded) so merry." Just as Chaucer gathers 
 the typical figures of the world he saw into his pilgrim
 
 446 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 train, so the dreamer gathers into a wide field his army of 
 traders and chafferers, of hermits and solitaries, of min- 
 strels," japers and jinglers," bidders and beggars, plough- 
 men that " in setting and in sowing swonken (toil) full 
 hard," pilgrims "with their wenches after," weavers and 
 laborers, burgess and bondman, lawyer and scrivener, 
 court-haunting bishops, friars, and pardoners " parting the 
 silver" with the parish priest. Their pilgrimage is not to 
 Canterbury but to Truth; their guide to Truth neither 
 clerk nor priest but Peterkin the Ploughman, whom they 
 find ploughing in his field. He it is who bids the knight 
 no more wrest gifts from his tenant nor misdo with the 
 poor, " Though he be thine underling here, well may hap 
 in heaven that he be worthier set and with more bliss than 
 thou. . . . For in charnel at church churles be evil to 
 know, or a knight from a knave there." The gospel of 
 equality is backed by the gospel of labor. The aim of the 
 Ploughman is to work, and to make the world work with 
 him. He warns the laborer as he warns the knight. 
 Hunger is God's instrument in bringing the idlest to toil, 
 and Hunger waits to work her will on the idler and the 
 waster. On the eve of the great struggle between wealth 
 and labor, Longland stands alone in his fairness to both, 
 in his shrewd political and religious common sense. In 
 the face of the popular hatred which was to gather round 
 John of Gaunt, he paints the Duke in a famous apologue 
 as the cat who, greedy as she might be, at any rate keeps 
 the noble rats from utterly devouring the mice of the 
 people. Though the poet is loyal to the Church, he pro- 
 claims a righteous life to be better than a host of indul- 
 gences, and God sends His pardon to Piers when priests 
 dispute it. But he sings as a man conscious of his loneli- 
 ness and without hope. It is only in a dream that he sees 
 Corruption, " Lady Mead," brought to trial, and the world 
 repenting at the preaching of Reason. In the waking life 
 reason finds no listeners. The poet himself is looked upon 
 —he tells us bitterly — as a madman. There is a terrible
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 447 
 
 despair in the close of his later poem, where the triumph 
 of Christ is only followed by the reign of Antichrist ; where 
 Contrition slumbers amid the revel of Death and Sin; 
 and Conscience, hard beset by Pride and Sloth, rouses 
 himself with a last effort, and seizing his pilgrim staff, 
 wanders over the world to find Piers Ploughman. 
 
 The strife indeed which Longland would have averted 
 raged only the fiercer as the dark years went by. If the 
 Statutes of Laborers were powerless for their immediate 
 ends, either in reducing the actual rate of wages or in re- 
 stricting the mass of floating labor to definite areas of em- 
 ployment, they proved effective in sowing hatred between 
 employe'' and employed, between rich and poor. But this 
 social rift was not the only rift which was opening amidst 
 the distress and misery of the time. The close of William 
 Longland's poem is the prophecy of a religious revolution ; 
 and the way for such a revolution was being paved by the 
 growing bitterness of strife between England and the Pa- 
 pacy. In spite of the sharp protests from king and parlia- 
 ment the need for money at Avignon was too great to allow 
 any relaxation in the Papal claims. Almost on the eve of 
 Cregy Edward took the decisive step of forbidding the en- 
 try into England of any Papal bulls or documents inter- 
 fering with the rights of presentation belonging to private 
 patrons. But the tenacity of Rome was far from loosening 
 its grasp on this source of revenue for all Edward's pro- 
 tests. Cregy however gave a new boldness to the action 
 of the state, and a Statute of Provisors was passed by the 
 Parliament in 1351 which again asserted the rights of the 
 English Church and enacted that all who infringed them 
 by the introduction of Papal " provisors" should suffer im- 
 prisonment. But resistance to provisors only brought fresh 
 vexations. The patrons who withstood a Papal nominee in 
 the name of the law were summoned to defend themselves 
 in the Papal Court. From that moment the supremacy of 
 the Papal law over the law of the land became a great ques- 
 tion in which the lesser question of provisors merged.
 
 448 HISTORY OF fHE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 The pretension of the Court of Avignon was met in 1353 
 by a statute which forbade any questioning of judgments 
 rendered in the king's courts or any prosecution of a suit 
 in foreign courts under pain of outlawry, perpetual impris- 
 onment, or banishment from the land. It was this act of 
 Praemunire — as it came in after renewals to be called — 
 which furnished so terrible a weapon to the Tudors in their 
 later strife with Rome. But the Papacy paid little heed to 
 these warnings, and its obstinacy in still receiving suits 
 and appeals in defiance of this statute roused the pride of a 
 conquering people. England was still fresh from her glory 
 at Bretigny when Edward appealed to the Parliament of 
 1365. Complaints, he said, were constantly being made 
 by his subjects to the Pope as to matters which were cog- 
 nizable in the King's courts. The practice of provisors 
 was thus maintained in the teeth of the laws, and "the 
 laws, usages, ancient customs, and franchises of his king- 
 dom were thereby much hindered, the King's crown de- 
 graded, and his person defamed." The King's appeal was 
 hotly met. "Biting words," which it was thought wise 
 to suppress, were used in the debate which followed, and 
 the statutes against provisors and appeals were solemnly 
 confirmed. 
 
 What gave point to this challenge was the assent of 
 the prelates to the proceedings of the Parliament; and the 
 pride of Urban V. at once met it by a counter-defiance. He 
 demanded with threats the payment of the annual sum of 
 a thousand marks promised by King John in acknowledg- 
 ment of the suzerainty of the See of Rome. The insult 
 roused the temper of the realm. The King laid the de- 
 mand before Parliament, and both houses replied that 
 " neither King John nor any king could put himself, his 
 kingdom, nor his people under subjection save with their 
 accord or assent." John's submission had been made 
 " without their assent and against his coronation oath" and 
 they pledged themselves, should the Pope attempt to en- 
 force his claim, to resist him with all their power. Even
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 449 
 
 Urban shrank from imperilling the Papacy by any further 
 demands, and the claim to a Papal lordship over England 
 was never again heard of. But the struggle had brought 
 to the front a man who was destined to give a far wider 
 scope and significance to this resistance to Rome than any 
 as yet dreamed of. Nothing is more remarkable than the 
 contrast between the obscurity of John Wyclif's earlier 
 life and the fulness and vividness of our knowledge of him 
 during the twenty years which preceded its close. Born 
 in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, he had already 
 passed middle age when he was appointed to the master- 
 ship of Balliol College in the University of Oxford and 
 recognized as first among the schoolmen of his day. Of 
 all the scholastic doctors those of England had been through- 
 out the keenest and most daring in philosophical specula- 
 tion. A reckless audacitj^ and love of novelty was the 
 common note of Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, as 
 against the sober and more disciplined learning of the Pari- 
 sian schoolmen, Albert and Thomas Aquinas. The decay of 
 the University of Paris during the English wars was trans- 
 ferring her intellectual supremacy to Oxford, and in Oxford 
 Wyclif stood without a rival. From his predecessor, Brad- 
 wardine, whose work as a scholastic teacher he carried on 
 in the speculative treatises he published during this period, 
 he inherited the tendency to a predestinarian Augustinian- 
 ism which formed the groundwork of his later theological 
 revolt. His debt to Ockham revealed itself in his earliest 
 efforts at Church reform. Undismayed by the thunder 
 and excommunications of the Church, Ockham had sup- 
 ported the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria in his recent strug- 
 gle, and he had not shrunk in his enthusiasm for the Em- 
 pire from attacking the foundations of the Papal supremacy 
 or from asserting the rights of the civil power. The spare, 
 emaciated frame of Wyclif, weakened by study and as- 
 ceticism, hardly promised a reformer who would carry on 
 the stormy work of Ockham; but within this frail form 
 lay a temper quick and restless, an immense energy, an 
 Vol. I.— 29
 
 450 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 immovable conviction, an unconquerable pride. The per- 
 sonal charm which ever accompanies real greatness only 
 deepened the influence he derived from the spotless purity 
 of his life. As yet indeed even Wyclif himself can hardly 
 have suspected the immense range of his intellectual power. 
 It was only the struggle that lay before him which revealed 
 in the dry and subtle schoolman the founder of our later 
 English prose, a master of popular invective, of irony, of 
 persuasion, a dexterous politician, an audacious partisan, 
 the organizer of a religious order, the unsparing assailant 
 of abuses, the boldest and most indefatigable of controver- 
 sialists, the first Reformer who dared, when deserted and 
 alone, to question and deny the creed of the Christendom 
 around him, to break through the tradition of the past, 
 and with his last breath to assert the freedom of religious 
 thought against the dogmas of the Papacy. 
 
 At the moment of the quarrel with Pope Urban however 
 Wyclif was far from having advanced to such a position 
 as this. As the most prominent of English scholars it was 
 natural that he should come forward in defence of the in- 
 dependence and freedom of the English Church ; and he 
 published a formal refutation of the claims advanced by 
 the Papacy to deal at its will with church property in the 
 form of a report of the Parliamentary debates which we 
 have described. As yet his quarrel was not with the doc- 
 trines of Rome but with its practices; and it was on the 
 principles of Ockham that he defended the Parliament's 
 refusal of the "tribute" which was claimed by Urban. 
 But his treatise on " The Kingdom of God," " De Dominic 
 Divino," which can hardly have been written later than 
 1368, shows the breadth of the ground he was even now 
 prepared to take up. In this, the most famous of his 
 works, Wyclif bases his argument on a distinct ideal of 
 society. All authority, to use his own expression, is 
 "founded in grace." Dominion in the highest sense is in 
 God alone; it is God who as the suzerain of the universe 
 deals out His rule in fief to rulers in their various stations
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 461 
 
 on tenure of their obedience to himself. It was easy to 
 object that in such a case " dominion" could never exist, 
 since mortal sin is a breach of such a tenure and all men 
 sin. But, as Wyclif urged it, the theory is a purely ideal 
 one. In actual practice he distinguishes between dominion 
 and power, power which the wicked may have by God's 
 permission, and to which the Christian must submit from 
 motives of obedience to God. In his own scholastic phrase, 
 so strangely perverted afterward, here on earth " God must 
 obey the devil." But whether in the ideal or practical 
 riew of the matter all power and dominion was of God. 
 [t was granted by Him not to one person. His Vicar on 
 earth, as the Papacy alleged, but to all. The King waa 
 as truly God's Vicar as the Pope. The royal power was 
 as sacred as the ecclesiastical, and as complete over tem- 
 poral things, even over the temporalities of the Church, 
 as that of the Church over spiritual things. So far as the 
 question of Church and State therefore was concerned the 
 distinction between the ideal and practical view of " do- 
 minion" was of little account. Wyclif 's application of the 
 theory to the individual conscience was of far higher and 
 wider importance. Obedient as each Christian might be 
 to king or priest, he himself as a possessor of " domiHion" 
 held immediately of God. The throne of God Himself 
 was the tribunal of personal appeal. What the Reformers 
 of tne sixteenth century attempted to do by their theory of 
 Justification by Faith Wyclif attempted to do by his the- 
 ory of Dominion, a theory which in establishing a direct 
 relation between man and God swept away the whole basis 
 of a mediating priesthood, the very foundation on which 
 the mediaeval church was built. 
 
 As yet the full bearing of these doctrines was little seen. 
 But the social and religious excitement which we have de- 
 scribed was quickened by the renewal of the war, and the 
 general suffering and discontent gathered bitterness when 
 the success which had flushed England with a new and 
 warlike pride passed into a long series of disasters in which
 
 452 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 men forgot the glories of Cveqy and Poitiers. Triumph 
 as it seemed, the treaty of Bretigny was really fatal to Ed- 
 ward's cause in the south of Franco. By the cession of 
 Aquitaine to him in full sovereignty the traditional claim 
 on which his strength rested lost its force. The people of 
 the south had clung to their Duke, even though their Duke 
 was a foreign ruler. They had stubbornly resisted incor- 
 poration with Northern France. "While preserving how- 
 ever their traditional fealty to the descendants of Eleanor 
 they still clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of the 
 Kings of France. But the treaty of Bretigny not only 
 severed them from the realm of France, it subjected them 
 to the realm of England. Edward ceased to be their he- 
 reditary Duke, he became simply an English king ruling 
 Aquitaine as an English dominion. If the Southerners 
 loved the North-French little, they loved the English less, 
 and the treaty which thus changed their whole position 
 was followed by a quick revulsion of feeling from the Ga- 
 ronne to the Pyrenees. The Gascon nobles declared that 
 John had no right to transfer their fealty to another and 
 to sever them from the realm of France. The city of Ro- 
 chelle prayed the French King not to release it from its 
 fealty to him. " We will obey the English with our lips," 
 said its citizens, "but our hearts shall never be moved 
 toward them." Edward strove to meet this passion foi 
 local independence, this hatred of being ruled from Lon« 
 don, by sending the Black Prince to Bordeaux and invest- 
 ing him in 1362 with the Duchy of Aquitaine. But tho 
 new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the English King, 
 and the grievance of the Southerners was left untouched. 
 Charles V. who succeeded his father John in 1364 silently 
 prepared to reap this harvest of discontent. Patient, wary, 
 unscrupulous, he was hardly crowned before he put an end 
 to the war which had gone on without a pause in Brittany 
 by accepting homage from the claimant whom France had 
 hitherto opposed. Through Bertraud du Guesclin, a fine 
 soldier whom his sagacity had discovered, he forced tb»
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 453 
 
 King of Navarre to a peace which closed the fighting in 
 Normandy. A more formidable difficulty in the way of 
 pacification and order lay in the Free Companies, a union 
 of marauders whom the disbanding of both armies after 
 the peace had set free to harry the wasted land and whom 
 the King's military resources were insufficient to cope 
 with. It was the stroke by which Charles cleared his 
 realm of these scourges which forced on a new struggle 
 with the English in the south. 
 
 In the judgment of the English court the friendship of 
 Castille was of the first importance for the security of 
 Aquitaine. Spain was the strongest naval power of the 
 western world, and not only would the ports of Guienne 
 be closed but its communication with England would be 
 at once cut off by the appearance of a joint French and 
 Spanish fleet in the Channel. It was with satisfaction 
 therefore that Edward saw the growth of a bitter hostility 
 between Charles and the Castilian King, Pedro the Cruel, 
 through the murder of his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, the 
 French King's sister-in-law. Henry of Trastamara, a 
 bastard son of Pedro's father, Alfonso the Eleventh, had 
 lone: been a refugee at the French court, and soon after the 
 treaty of Bretigny Charles in his desire to revenge this 
 murder on Pedro gave Henry aid in an attempt on tlie 
 Castilian throne. It was impossible for England to look 
 on with indifference while a dependant of the French King 
 became master of Castille ; and in 1362 a treaty offensive 
 and defensive was concluded between Pedro and Edward 
 the Third. The time was not come for open war ; but the 
 subtle policy of Charles saw in this strife across the Pyre- 
 nees an opportunity both of detaching Castille from the 
 English cause and of ridding himself of the Free Compa- 
 nies. With characteristic caution he dextrously held him- 
 self in the background while he made use of the Pope, who 
 had been threatened by the Free Companies in his palace 
 at Avignon and was as anxious to get rid of them as him- 
 self. Pedro's cruelty, misgovernment, and alliance with
 
 454 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 the Moslem of Cordova served as grounds for a crusade 
 which was proclaimed by Pope Urban ; and Du Guesclin, 
 who was placed at the head of the expedition, found in the 
 Papal treasury and in the hope of booty from an unravaged 
 land means of gathering the marauders round his standard. 
 A.S soon as these Crusaders crossed the Ebro Pedro was de- 
 serted by his subjects, and in 1366 Henry of Trastamara 
 saw himself crowned without a struggle at Burgos as King 
 of Castillo. Pedro with his two daughters fled for shelter 
 to Bordeaux and claimed the aid promised in the treaty. 
 The lords of Aquitaine shrank from fighting for such a 
 cause, but in spite of their protests and the reluctance of 
 the English council to embark in so distant a struggle Ed- 
 ward held that he had no choice save to replace his ally, 
 for to leave Henry seated on the throne was to leave Aqui- 
 taine to be crushed between France and Castille. 
 
 The after course of the war proved that in his anticipa- 
 tions of the fatal result of a combination of the two pow- 
 ers Edward was right, but his policy jarred not only against 
 the universal craving for rest, but against the moral sense 
 of the world. The Black Prince however proceeded to 
 carry out his father's design in the teeth of the general 
 opposition. His call to arms robbed Henry of the aid of 
 those English Companies who had marched till now with 
 the rest of the crusaders, but who returned at once to the 
 standard of the Prince ; the passes of Navarre were opened 
 with gold, and in the beginning of 1367 the EngUsh army 
 crossed the Pyrenees. Advancing to the Ebro the Prince 
 offered battle at Navarete with an army already reduced 
 by famine and disease in its terrible winter march, and 
 Henry with double his numbers at once attacked him. 
 But in spite of the obstinate courage of the Castilian troops 
 the discipline and skill of the English soldiers once more 
 turned the wavering day into a victory. Du Guesclin was 
 taken, Henry fled across the Pyrenees, and Pedro was 
 again seated on his throne. The pay however which he 
 had promised was delayed j and the Prince, whose army
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 455 
 
     ' ™ ■■.■■. - .1 .I- .11 II, 1 ^ 
 
 had been thinned by disease to a fifth of its numbers and 
 whose strength never recovered from the hardships of this 
 campaign, fell back sick and beggared to Aquitaine. Ho 
 had hardly returned when his work was undone. In 1368 
 Henry re-entered Castillo ; its towns threw open their gates ; 
 a general rising chased Pedro from the throne, and a final 
 battle in the spring of 1369 saw his utter overthrow. His 
 murder by Henry's hand left the bastard undisputed mas- 
 ter of Castillo. Meanwhile the Black Prince, sick and 
 disheartened, was hampered at Bordeaux by the expenses 
 of the campaign which Pedro had left unpaid. To defray 
 his debt he was driven in 1368 to lay a hearth-tax on Aqui- 
 taine, and the tax served as a pretext for an outbreak of 
 the long-hoarded discontent. Charles was now ready for 
 open action. He had won over the most powerful among 
 the Gascon nobles, and their influence secured the rejection 
 of the tax in a Parliament of the province which met at 
 Bordeaux. The Prince, pressed by debt, persisted against 
 the counsel of his wisest advisers in exacting it; and the 
 lords of Aquitaine at once appealed to the King of France. 
 Such an appeal was a breach of the treaty of Bretigny in 
 which the French King had renounced his sovereignty over 
 the south ; but Charles had craftily delayed year after year 
 the formal execution of the renunciations stipulated in the 
 treaty, and he was still able to treat it as not binding on 
 him. The success of Henry of Trastamara decided him 
 to take immediate action, and in 1369 he summoned the 
 Black Prince as Duke of Aquitaine to meet the appeal of 
 the Gascon lords in his court. 
 
 The Prince was maddened by the summons. "I will 
 come," he replied, "but with helmet on head, and with 
 sixty thousand men at my back." War however had 
 hardly been declared when the ability with which Charles 
 had laid his plans was seen in his seizure of Ponthieu and 
 in a rising of the whole country south of the Garonne. 
 Du Guesclin returned in 1370 from Spain to throw life into 
 the French attack. Two armies entered Guienne from th?
 
 456 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 east ; and a hundred castles with La Reole and Limoges 
 threw open their irates to Da Guesclin. But the march of 
 an English army from Calais upon Paris recalled him from 
 the south to guard the capital at a moment when the Eng- 
 lish leader advanced to recover Limoges, and the Black 
 Prince borne in a litter to its walls stormed the town and 
 sullied by a merciless massacre of its inhabitants the fame 
 of his earlier exploits. Sickness however recalled him 
 home in the spring of 1371; and the war, protracted by 
 the caution of Charles who forbade his armies to engage, 
 did little but exhaust the energy and treasure of England, 
 As yet indeed the French attack had made small impres- 
 sion on the south, where the English troops stoutly held 
 their ground against Du Guesclin's inroads. But the pro- 
 tracted war drained Edward's resources, while the diplo- 
 macy of Charles was busy in rousing fresh dangers from 
 Scotland and Castille. It was in vain that Edward looked 
 for allies to the Flemish towns. The male line of the 
 Counts of Flanders ended in Count Louis le Male ; and the 
 marriage of his daughter Margaret with Philip, Duke of 
 Burgundy, a younger brother of the French King, secured 
 Charles from attack along his northern border. In Scot- 
 land the death of David Bruce put an end to Edward's 
 schemes for a reunion of the two kingdoms; and his suc- 
 cessor, Robert the Steward, renewed in 1371 the alliance 
 with France. 
 
 Castille was a yet more serious danger; and an effort 
 which Edward made to neutralize its attack only forced 
 Henry of Trastamara to fling his whole weight into the 
 struggle. The two daughters of Pedro had remained since 
 their father's flight at Bordeaux. The elder of these was 
 now wedded to John of Gaunt, Edward's fourth son, whom 
 he had created Duke of Lancaster on his previous marriage 
 with Blanche, a daughtei- of Henry of Lancaster and the 
 heiress of that house, while the younger was wedded to 
 Edward's fifth son, the Earl of Cambridge. Edward's 
 aim was that of raising again the party of King Pedro and
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 457 
 
 giving Henry of Trastamara work to do at home which 
 would hinder his interposition in the war of Guienne. It 
 was with this view that John of Gaunt on his marriage 
 took the title of King of Castille. But no adherent of 
 Pedro's cause stirred in Spain, and Henry replied to the 
 challenge by sending a Spanish fleet to the Channel. A 
 decisive victory which this fleet won over an English con- 
 voy off Rochelle proved a fatal blow to the English cause. 
 It wrested from Edward the mastery of the seas, and cut 
 off all communication between England and Guienne. 
 Charles was at once roused to new exertions. Poitou, 
 Saintonge, and the Angoumois yielded to his general 
 Du Guesclin ; and Rochelle was surrendered by its citizens 
 in 1372. The next year saw a desperate attempt to restore 
 the fortune of the English arms. A great army under 
 John of Gaunt penetrated into the heart of France. But 
 it found no foe to engage. Charles had forbidden any 
 fighting. " If a storm rages over the land," said the King 
 coolly, "it disperses of itself; and so will it be with the 
 English." Winter in fact overtook the Duke of Lancaster 
 in the mountains of Auvergne, and a mere fragment of 
 his host reached Bordeaux. The failure of this attack 
 was the signal for a general defection, and ere the summer 
 of 1374 had closed the two towns of Bordeaux and Ba^'onne 
 were all that remained of the English possessions in South- 
 ern France. Even these were only saved by the exhaus- 
 tion of the conquerors. The treasury of Charles was as 
 utterly drained as the treasury of Edward; and the Kings 
 were forced to a truce. 
 
 Only fourteen years had gone by since the Treaty of 
 Bretigny raised England to a height of glory such as it 
 had never known before. But the years had been years of 
 a shame and suffering which stung the people to mad- 
 ness. Never had England fallen so low. Her conquests 
 were lost, her shores insulted, her commerce swept from 
 the seas. Within she was drained by the taxation and 
 bloodshed of the war. Its popularity had wholly died
 
 458 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 away. When the Commons were asked in 1354 whether 
 they would assent to a treaty of perpetual peace if they 
 might have it, " the said Commons responded all, and all 
 together, 'Yes, j^es!'" The population was thinned by 
 the ravages of pestilence, for till 1369, which saw its last 
 visitation, the Black Death returned again and again. 
 The social strife too gathered bitterness with every effort 
 at repression. It was in vain that Parliament after Par- 
 liament increased the severity of its laws. The demands 
 of the Parliament of 1376 show how inoperative the previ- 
 ous Statutes of Laborers had proved. They prayed that 
 constables be directed to arrest all who infringed the Stat- 
 ute, that no laborer should be allowed to take refuge in a 
 town and become an artisan if there were need of his ser- 
 vice in the county from which he came, and that the 
 King would protect lords and employers against the threats 
 of death uttered by serfs who refused to serve. The reply 
 of the royal Council shows that statesmen at any rate were 
 beginning to feel that repression might be pushed too far. 
 The King refused to interfere by any further and harsher 
 provisions between employers and employed, and left cases 
 of breach of law to be dealt with in his ordinary courts of 
 justice. On the one side he forbade the threatening gather- 
 ings which were already common in the country, but on 
 the other he forbade the illegal exactions of the employers. 
 With such a reply, however, the proprietary class were 
 hardly likely to be content. Two years later the Parlia- 
 ment of Gloucester called for a Fugitive-slave Law, which 
 would have enabled lords to seize their serfs in whatever 
 county or town they found refuge, and in 1379 they 
 prayed that judges might be sent five times a year into 
 every shire to enforce the Statute of Laborers. 
 
 But the strife between employers and employed was not 
 the only rift which was opening in the social structure. 
 Suffering and defeat had stripped off the veil which hid 
 from the nation the shallow and selfish temper of Edward 
 the Third. His profligacy was now bringing him to a
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIA3IENT. 1307—1461. ' 45iy 
 
 premature old age. He was sinking into the tool of his 
 ministers and his mistresses. The glitter and profusion 
 of his court, his splendid tournaments, his feasts, his Table 
 Round, his new order of chivalry, the exquisite chapel of 
 St. Stephen whose frescoed walls were the glory of his 
 palace at Westminster, the vast keep which crowned the 
 hill of Windsor, had ceased to throw their glamour round 
 a King who tricked his Parliament and swindled his 
 creditors. Edward paid no debts. He had ruined the 
 wealthiest bankers of Florence by a cool act of bankruptcy. 
 The sturdier Flemish burghers only wrested payment from 
 him by holding his royal person as their security. His 
 own subjects fared no better than foreigners. The pre- 
 rogative of " purveyance" by which the King in his prog- 
 resses through the country had the right of first purchase 
 of all that he needed at fair market price became a galling 
 oppression in the hands of a bankrupt King who was al- 
 ways moving from place to place. " When men hear of 
 your coming," Archbishop Islip wrote to Edward, "every- 
 body at once for sheer fear sets about hiding or eating or 
 getting rid of their geese and chickens or other possessions 
 that they may not utterly lose them through j'our arrival. 
 The purveyors and servants of your court seize on men and 
 horses in the midst of their field work. They seize on the 
 very bullocks that are at plough or at sowing, and force 
 them to work for two or three days at a time without a 
 penny of payment. It is no wonder that men make dole 
 and murmur at your approach, for, as the truth is in God, 
 I myself, whenever I hear a rumor of it, be I at home or 
 in chapter or in church or at study, nay if I am saying 
 mass, even I in my own person tremble in every limb." 
 But these irregular exactions were little beside the steady 
 pressure of taxation. Even in the years of peace fifteenths 
 and tenths, subsidies on wool and subsidies on leather, 
 were demanded and obtained from Parliament ; and witli 
 the outbreak of war the royal demands became heavier and 
 more frequent. As failure followed failure the expenses
 
 460 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 of each campaign increased : an ineffectual attempt to re- 
 lieve Rochelle cost nearly a million; the march of John of 
 Gaunt through France utterly drained the royal treasury. 
 Nor were these legal supplies all that the King drew from 
 the nation. He had repudiated his pledge to abstain from 
 arbitrary taxation of imports and exports. He sold mo- 
 nopolies to the merchants in exchange for increased cus- 
 toms. He wrested supplies from the clergy by arrange- 
 ments with the bishops or the Pope. There were signs 
 that Edward was longing to rid himself of the control of 
 Parliament altogether. The power of the Houses seemed 
 indeed as high as ever; great statutes were passed. Those 
 of Provisors and Praemunire settled the relations of Eng- 
 land to the Roman Court. That of Treason in 1352 de- 
 fined that crime and its penalties. That of the Staples in 
 1353 regulated the conditions of foreign trade and the 
 privileges of the merchant guilds which conducted it. But 
 side by side with these exertions of influence we note a 
 series of steady encroachments by the Crown on the power 
 of the Houses. If their petitions were granted, they were 
 often altered in the royal ordinance which professed to 
 embody them. A plan of demanding supplies for three 
 years at once rendered the annual assembly of Parliameni 
 less necessary. Its very existence was threatened by the 
 convocation in 1352 and 1353 of occasional councils with 
 but a single knight from every shire and a single burgess 
 from a small number of the greater towns, which acted as 
 Parliament and granted subsidies. 
 
 What aided Edward above all in eluding or defying 
 the constitutional restrictions on arbitrary taxation, as well 
 as in these more insidious attempts to displace the Parlia- 
 ment, was the lessening of the check which the Baronage 
 and the Church had till now supplied. The same causes 
 which had long been reducing the number of the greater 
 lords who formed the upper house went steadily on. 
 Under Edward the Second little more than seventy were 
 commonly summoned to Parliament; little more than
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 461 
 
 forty were summoned under Edward the Third, and of these 
 the bulk were now bound to the Crown, partly by their 
 employment on its service, partly bj^ their interest in the 
 continuance of the war. The heads of the Baronage too 
 were members of the royal family. Edward had carried 
 out on "a far wider scale than before the policy which had 
 been more or less adhered to from the daj's of Henry the 
 Third, that of gathering up in the hands of the royal house 
 all the greater heritages of the land. The Black Prince was 
 married to Joan of Kent, the heiress of Edward the First's 
 younger son. Earl Edmund of Woodstock. His marriage 
 with the heiress of the Earl of Ulster brought to the King's 
 second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, a great part of the 
 possessions of the de Burghs. Later on the possessions of 
 the house of Bohun passed by like matches to his youngest 
 son, Thomas of Woodstock, and to his grandson Henry of 
 Lancaster. But the greatest English heritage fell to Ed- 
 ward's third living son, John of Gaunt, as he was called 
 from his birth at Ghent during his father's Flemish cam- 
 paign. Originally created Earl of Richmond, the death 
 of his father-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, and of Henry's 
 eldest daughter, raised John in his wife's right to the 
 Dukedom of Lancaster and the Earldoms of Derby, Leices- 
 ter, and Lincoln. But while the baronage were thus bound 
 to the Crown, they drifted more and more into a hostility 
 with the Church which in time disabled the clergy from 
 acting as a check on it. What rent the ruling classes in 
 twain was the growing pressure of the war. The nobles 
 and knighthood of the country, already half ruined by the 
 rise in the labor market and the attitude of the peasantry, 
 were pressed harder than ever by the repeated subsidies 
 which were called for by the continuance of the struggle. 
 In the hour of their distress they cast their eyes greedily 
 — as in the Norman and Angevin days — on the riches of 
 the Church. Never had her wealth been gi-eater. Out of 
 a population of some three millions the ecclesiastics num- 
 bered between twenty and thirty thousand. Wild tales
 
 462 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV, 
 
 of their riches floated about the country. They were said 
 to own in landed property alone more than a third of the 
 soil, while their "spiritualities" in dues and offerings 
 amounted to twice the King's revenue. Exaggerated as 
 such statements were, the wealth of the Church was really 
 great ; but even more galling to the nobles was its influence 
 in the royal councils. The feudal baronage, flushed with 
 a now pride by its victories at Cregy and Poitiers, looked 
 with envy and wrath at the throng of bishops around the 
 council-board, and attributed to their love of peace the 
 errors and sluggishness which had caused, as they held, 
 the disasters of the war. To rob the Church of wealth 
 and of power became the aim of a great baronial party. 
 
 The efforts of the baronage indeed would have been 
 fruitless had the spiritual power of the Church remained 
 as of old. But the clergy were rent by their own dissen- 
 sions. The higher prelates were busy with the cares of 
 political office, and severed from the lower priesthood by 
 the scandalous inequality between the revenues of the 
 wealthier ecclesiastics and the " poor parson" of the coun- 
 try. A bitter hatred divided the secular clergy from the 
 regular ; and this strife went fiercely on in the Universi- 
 ties. Fitz-Ralf, the Chancellor of Oxford, attributed to 
 the friars the decline which was already being felt in the 
 number of academical students, and the University checked 
 by statute their practice of admitting mere children into 
 their order. The clergy too at large shared in the discredit 
 and unpopularity of the Papacy. Though they suffered 
 more than any other class from the exactions of Avignon, 
 they were bound more and more to the Papal cause. The 
 very statutes which would have protected them were prac- 
 tically set aside by the treacherous diplomacy of the Crown. 
 At home and abroad the Roman see was too useful for the 
 King to come to any actual breach with it. However 
 much Edward might echo the bold words of his Parlia- 
 ment, he shrank from an open contest which would have 
 added the Papacy to his many foes, and which would at
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLLOIENT. 1307—1461. 4G3 
 
 the same time have robbed him of his most effective means 
 of wresting aids from the English clergy by private ar- 
 rangement with the Roman court. Rome indeed was 
 brought to waive its alleged right of appointing foreigners 
 to English livings. But a compromise was arranged be- 
 tween the Pope and the Crown in which both united in the 
 spoliation and enslavement of the Church. The voice of 
 chapters, of monks, of ecclesiastical patrons, went hence- 
 forth for nothing in the election of bishops or abbots or 
 the nomination to livings in the gift of churchmen. The 
 Crown recommended those whom it chose to the Pope, and 
 the Pope nominated them to see or cure of souls. The 
 treasuries of both King and Pope profited by the arrange- 
 ment ; but we can hardly wonder that after a betrayal such 
 as this the clergy placed little trust in statutes or royal 
 protection, and bowed humbly before the claims of Rome. 
 But what weakened the clergy most was their severance 
 from the general sj'mpathies of the nation, their selfish- 
 ness and the worldliness of their temper. Immense as 
 their wealth was, they bore as little as they could of the 
 common burdens of the realm. They were still resolute 
 to assert their exemption from the common justice of the 
 land, though the mild punishments of the bishops' courts 
 carried as little dismay as ever into the mass of disorderly 
 clerks. But privileged as they thus held themselves 
 against all interference from the lay world without them, 
 they carried on a ceaseless interference with the affairs of 
 this lay world through their control over wills, contracts, 
 and divorces. No figure was better known or more hated 
 that the summoner who enforced the jurisdiction and levied 
 the dues of their courts. By their directly religious offices 
 they penetrated into the very heart of the social life about 
 them. But powerful as they were, their moral authority 
 was fast passing away. The wealthier churchmen with 
 their curled hair and hanging sleeves aped the costume of 
 the knightly society from which they were drawn and to 
 which they still really belonged. We see the general im-
 
 464 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 pression of their worldliness in Chaucer's pictures of the 
 hunting monk and the courtly prioress with her love-motto 
 on her brooch. The older religious orders in fact had sunk 
 into mere landowners, while the enthusiasm of the friars 
 had in great part died away and left a crowd of impudent 
 mendicants behind it. Wyclif could soon with general 
 applause denounce them as sturdy beggars, and declare 
 that " the man who gives alms to a begging friar is ipso 
 facto excommunicate. " 
 
 It was this weakness of the Baronage and the Chm*ch, 
 and the consequent withdrawal of both as represented in 
 the temporal and spiritual Estates of the Upper House 
 from the active part which they had taken till now in 
 checking the Crown, that brought the Lower House to the 
 front. The Knight of the Shire was now finally joined 
 with the Burgess of the Town to form the Third Estate of 
 the realm : and this union of the trader and the country 
 gentleman gave a vigor and weight to the action of the 
 Commons which their House could never have acquired 
 had it remained as elsewhere a mere gathering of bur- 
 gesses. But it was only slowly and under the pressure of 
 one necessity after another that the Commons took a grow- 
 ing part in public affairs. Their primarj^' business waa 
 with taxation, and here they stood firm against the eva- 
 sions by which the King still managed to baffle their ex- 
 clusive right of granting supplies by voluntary agreements 
 with the merchants of the Staple. Their steady pressure 
 at last obtained in 1362 an enactment that no subsidy 
 should henceforth be set upon wool without assent of Par- 
 liament, while Purveyance was restricted by a provision 
 that payments should be made for all things taken for the 
 King's use in ready money. A hardly less important ad- 
 vance was made by the change of Ordinances into Statutes. 
 Till this time, even when a petition of the Houses waa 
 granted, the royal Council had reserved to itself the right 
 of modifying its form in the Ordinance which professed 
 to embody it. It was under color of this right that so
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PAELIAMENT 1307—1461. 465 
 
 many of the provisions made in Parliament had hitherto 
 been evaded or set aside. But the Commons now met this 
 abuse by a demand that on the royal assent being given 
 their petitions should be turned without change into Stat- 
 utes of the Realm and derive force of law from their entry 
 on the Rolls of Parliament. The same practical sense was 
 seen in their dealings with Edward's attempt to introduce 
 occasional smaller councils with parliamentary powers. 
 Such an assembly in 1353 granted a subsidy on wool. The 
 Parliament which met in the following year might have 
 challenged its proceedings as null and void, but the Com- 
 mons more wisely contented themselves with a demand 
 that the ordinances passed in the preceding assembly 
 should receive the sanction of the Three Estates. A prece- 
 dent for evil was thus turned into a precedent for good, and 
 though irregular gatherings of a like sort were for a while 
 occasionally held they were soon seen to be fruitless and 
 discontinued. But the Commons long shrank from med- 
 dling with purely administrative matters. When Edward 
 in his anxiety to shift from himself the responsibility of 
 the war referred to them in 1354 for advice on one of the 
 numerous propositions of peace, they referred him to the 
 lords of his Council. "Most dreaded lord," they replied, 
 " as to this war and the equipment needful for it we are 
 so ignorant and simple that we know not how nor have 
 the power to devise. Wherefore we pray your Grace to 
 ' excuse us in this matter, and that it please you with the 
 advice of the great and wise persons of your Council to 
 ordain what seems best for you for the honor and profit of 
 yourself and of your kingdom. And whatsoever shall be 
 thus ordained by assent and agreement on the part of you 
 and your Lords we readily assent to and will hold it firmly 
 established." 
 
 But humble as was their tone the growing power of the 
 Commons showed itself in significant changes. In 1363 
 the Chancellor opened Parliament with a speech in Eng- 
 lish, no doubt as a tongue intelligible to the members of 
 Vol. I.— 30
 
 466 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 the Lower House. From a petition in loTe that knights 
 of the shire may be chosen by common election of the 
 better folk of the shire and not merely nominated by 
 the sheriff without due election, as well as from an earlier 
 demand that the sheriffs themselves shovild be disqualified 
 from serving in Parliament during their term of oflfice, 
 we see that the Crown had already begun not only to feel 
 the pressure of the Commons but to meet it by foisting 
 royal nominees on the constituencies. Such an attempt 
 at packing the House would hardly have been resorted to 
 had it not already proved too strong for direct control. A 
 further proof of its influence was seen in a prayer of the 
 Parliament that lawyers practising in the King's courts 
 might no longer be eligible as knights of the shire. The 
 petition marks the rise of a consciousness that the House 
 was now no mere gathering of local representatives but a 
 national assembly, and that a seat in it could no longer be 
 confined to dwellers within the bounds of this county or 
 that. But it showed also a pressure for seats, a passing 
 away of the old dread of being returned as a representa- 
 tive and a new ambition to gain a place among the mem- 
 bers of the Commons. Whether they would or no indeed 
 the Commons were driven forward to a more direct inter- 
 ference with public affairs. From the memorable statute 
 of 1322 their right to take equal part in all matters brought 
 before Parliament had been incontestable, and their waiver 
 of much of this right faded away before the stress of time. 
 Their assent was needed to the great ecclesiastical statutes 
 which regulated the relation of the see of Rome to the 
 realm. They naturally took a chief part in the enactment 
 and re-enactment of the Statute of Laborers. The Statute 
 of the Staple, with the host of smaller commercial and 
 economical measures, were of their origination. But it 
 was not till an open breach took place between the baron- 
 age and the prelates that their full weight was felt. In 
 the Parliament of 1371, on the resumption of the war, a 
 noble taunted the Church as an owl protected by the
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 130T— 14G1. 467 
 
 — — - -- - - . . _ - 
 
 feathers which other birds had contributed, and which they 
 had a right to resume Vv- hen a hawk's approach threatened 
 them. The worldly goods of the Church, the metaphor 
 hinted, had been bestowed on it for the common weal, and 
 could be taken from it on the coming of a common danger. 
 The threat was followed by a prayer that the chief offices 
 of state, which had till now^ been held by the leading bish- 
 ops, might be placed in lay hands. The prayer was at 
 once granted : William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winches- 
 ter, resigned the Chancellorship, another prelate the Treas- 
 ury, to lay dependents of the great nobles ; and the panic 
 of the clerg}'' was seen in large grants which were voted 
 by both Convocations. 
 
 At the moment of their triumph the assailants of the 
 Church found a leader in John of Gaunt. The Duke of 
 Lancaster now wielded the actual power of the Crown, 
 Edward himself was sinking into dotage. Of his sons the 
 Black Prince, who had never rallied from the hardships of 
 his Spanish campaign, was fast drawing to the grave ; he 
 had lost a second son b}^ death in childhood ; the third, 
 Lionel of Clarence, had died in 1368. It was his fourth 
 son, therefore, John of Gaunt, to whom the royal power 
 mainly fell. By his marriage with the heiress of the house 
 of Lancaster the Duke had acquired lands and wealth, but 
 he had no taste for the policy of the Lancastrian house or 
 for acting as leader of the barons in any constitutional re- 
 sistance to the Crown. His pride, already quickened by 
 the second match with Constance to which he ow^ed his 
 shadowy kingship of Castille, drew him to the throne; 
 and the fortune which placed the royal power practically 
 in his hands bound him only the more firmly to its cause. 
 Men held that his ambition looked to the Crown itself, for 
 the approaching death of Edward and the Prince of Wales 
 left but a boy, Richard, the son of the Black Prince, a 
 child of but a few years old, and a girl, the daughter of 
 the Duke of Clarence, between John and the throne. But 
 the Duke's success fell short of his pride. In the cam-
 
 4C)8 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 paign of 1373 he traversed France without finding a foe 
 and brought back nothing save a ruined army to English 
 shores. The peremptory tone in which money was de- 
 manded for the cost of this fruitless march while the peti- 
 tions of the Parliament were set aside till it was granted 
 roused the temper of the Commons. They requested — it 
 is the first instance of such a practice — a conference with 
 the lords, and while granting fresh subsidies prayed that 
 the grant should be spent only on the war. The resent- 
 ment of the government at this advance toward a control 
 over the actual management of public affairs was seen in 
 the calling of no Parliament through the next two years. 
 But the years were disastrous both at home and abroad. 
 The war went steadily against the English arms. The 
 long negotiations with the Pope which went on at Bruges 
 through 1375, and in which Wyclif took part as one of the 
 royal commissioners, ended in a compromise by which 
 Rome yielded nothing. The strife over the Statute of 
 Laborers grew fiercer and fiercer, and a return of the 
 plague heightened the public distress. Edward was now 
 wholly swayed by Alice Perrers, and the Duke shared 
 his power with the royal mistress. But if we gather its 
 tenor from the complaints of the succeeding Parliament 
 his administration was as weak as it was corrupt. The 
 new lay ministers lent themselves to gigantic frauds. The 
 chamberlain, Lord Latimer, bought up the royal debts and 
 embezzled the public revenue. With Richard Lyons, a 
 merchant through whom the King negotiated with the 
 guild of the Staple, he reaped enormous profits by raising 
 the price of imports and by lending to the Crown at 
 usurious rates of interest. Whan the empty treasury 
 forced them to call a Parliament the ministers tampered 
 with the elections through the sheriffs. 
 
 But the temper of the Parliament which met in 1376, 
 and which gained from after-times the name of the Good 
 Parliament, shows that these precautions had utterly 
 failed. Even their promise to pillage the Church had
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 469 
 
 >■       I M l —11 I — — -I —■■■■■I   !■-   ■■■■1^1. .■■■■^■■■i   I ■■■,■■■ 
 
 failed to win for the Duke and his party the good will of 
 the lesser gentry or the wealthier burgesses who together 
 formed the Commons. Projects of wide constitutional 
 and social change, of the humiliation and impoverishment 
 of an estate of the realm, were profound^ distasteful to 
 men already struggling with a social revolution on their 
 own estates and in their own workshops. But it was not 
 merely its opposition to the projects of Lancaster and his 
 party among the baronage which won for this assembly the 
 name of the Good Parliament. Its action marked a new 
 period in our Parliamentary history, as it marks a new 
 stage in the character of the national position to the mis- 
 rule of the Crown. Hitherto the task of resistance had 
 developed on the baronage, and had been carried out 
 through risings of its feudal tenantry-. But the misgov- 
 emment was now that of the baronage or of a main part 
 of the baronage itself in actual conjunction with the 
 Crown. Only in the power of the Commons lay any ade- 
 quate means of peaceful redress. The old reluctance of 
 the Lower House to meddle with matters of State was 
 roughly swept away therefore by the pressure of the time. 
 The Black Prince, anxious to secure his child's succession 
 by the removal of John of Gaunt, the prelates with Wil- 
 liam of Wykeham at their head, resolute again to take 
 their place in the royal councils and to check the projects 
 of ecclesiastical spoliation put forward by their opponents, 
 alike found in it a body to oppose to the Duke's adminis- 
 tration. Backed by powers such as these the action of the 
 Commons showed none of their old timidit)^ or self-dis- 
 trust. The presentation of a hundred and sixty petitions 
 of grievances preluded a bold attack on the royal Council. 
 " Trusting in God, and standing with his followers before 
 the nobles, whereof the chief was John Duke of Lancas- 
 ter, whose doings were ever contrary," their speaker, Sir 
 Peter de la Mare, denounced the mismanagement of the 
 war, the oppressive taxation, and demanded an account of 
 the expenditure. "What do these base and ignoble
 
 470 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 kin gilts attempt?" cried John of Gaunt. "Do they think 
 tliey be kings or princes of the land?" But the movement 
 was too strong to be stayed. Even the Duke was silenced 
 bj- the charges brought against the ministers. After a 
 strict inquiry Latimer and Lyons w^ere alike thrown into 
 prison, Alice Ferrers was banished, and several of the 
 royal servants were driven from the Court. At this mo- 
 ment the death of the Black Prince shook the power of the 
 Parliament. But it only heightened its resolve to secure 
 the succession. His son, Richard of Bordeaux, as he was 
 called from the place of his birth, was now a child of but 
 ten years old ; and it was known that doubts were whis- 
 pered on the legitimacy of his birth and claim. An early 
 marriage of his mother Joan of Kent, a granddaughter of 
 Edward the First, with the Earl of Salisbury had been 
 annulled ; but the Lancastrian party used this first match 
 to throw doubts on the validity of her subsequent union 
 with the Black Prince and on the right of Richard to the 
 throne. The dread of Lancaster's ambition is the first 
 indication of the approach of what was from this time to 
 grow into the great difficulty of the realm, the question of 
 the succession to the Crown. From the death of Edward 
 the Third to the death of Charles the First no English 
 sovereign felt himself secure from rival claimants of his 
 throne. As yet, however, the dread was a baseless one ; 
 the people were heartily with the Prince and his child. 
 The Duke's proposal that the succession should be settled 
 in case of Richard's death was rejected; and the boy him- 
 self was brought into Parliament and acknowledged as 
 heir of the Crown. 
 
 To secure their work the Commons ended by obtaining 
 the addition of nine lords with William of Wykeham and 
 two other prelates among them to the royal Council. But 
 the Parliament was no sooner dismissed than the Duke at 
 once resumed his power. His anger at the blow which 
 had been dealt at his projects was no doubt quickened by 
 resentment at the sudden advance of the Lower House.
 
 Ghap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 471 
 
 From the Commons who shrank even from giving counsel 
 on matters of state to the Commons who dealt with such 
 matters as their special business, who investigated royal 
 accounts, who impeached royal ministers, who dictated 
 changes in the royal advisers, was an immense step. But 
 it was a step which the Duke believed could be retraced. 
 His haughty will flung aside all restraints of law. He 
 idismissed the new lords and prelates from the Council. 
 He called back Alice Ferrers and the disgraced ministers. 
 He declared the Good Parliament no parliament, and did 
 not suffer its petitions to be enrolled as statutes. He im- 
 prisoned Peter de la Mare, and confiscated the possessions 
 of William of Wykeham. His attack on this prelate was 
 an attack on the clergy at large, and the attack became 
 significant when the Duke gave his open patronage to the 
 denunciations of Church property which formed the fa- 
 vorite theme of John Wyclif. To Wyclif such a prelate 
 as Wykeham symbolized the evil which held down the 
 Church. His administrative ability, his political energy, 
 his wealth and the colleges at Winchester and at Oxford 
 which it enabled him to raise before his death, were all 
 equally hateful. It was this wealth, this intermeddling 
 with worldly business, which the ascetic reformer looked 
 upon as the curse that robbed prelates and churchmen of 
 that spiritual authority which could alone meet the vice 
 and suffering of the time. Whatever baser motives might 
 spur Lancaster and his party, their projects of spoliation 
 must have seemed to Wyclif projects of enfranchisement 
 for the Church. Poor and powerless in worldly matters, 
 he held that she would have the wealth and might of 
 heaven at her command. Wyclif's theory of Church and 
 State had led him long since to contend that the property 
 of the clergy might be seized and employed like other 
 property for national purposes. Such a theory might have 
 been left, as other daring theories of the schoolmen had 
 been left, to the disputation of the schools. But the clergy 
 were bitterly galled when the first among English teachers
 
 472 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 threw himself hotly on the side of the party which threat- 
 ened them with spoliation, and argued in favor of their 
 voluntary abandonment of all Church property and of a 
 return to their original poverty. They were roused to 
 action when Wyclif came forward as the theological bul- 
 wark of the Lancastrian party at a moment when the 
 clergy were freshly outraged by the overthrow of the bish- 
 ops and the plunder of Wykeham. They forced the King 
 to cancel the sentence of banishment from the precincts of 
 the Court which had been directed against the Bishop of 
 Winchester by refusing any grant of supply in Convoca- 
 tion till William of Wykeham took his seat in it. But 
 in the prosecution of Wyclif they resolved to return blow 
 for blow. In February, 1377, he was summoned before 
 Bishop Courtenay of London to answer for his heretical 
 propositions concerning the wealth of the Church. 
 
 The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as really 
 given to himself, and stood by Wyclif 's side in the Con- 
 sistory Court at St. Paul's. But no trial took place. Fierce 
 words passed between the nobles and the prelate : the Duke 
 himself was said to have threatened to drag Courtenay out 
 of the church by the hair of his head ; at last the London 
 populace, to whom John of Gaunt was hateful, burst in to 
 their Bishop's rescue, and Wyclif's life was saved with 
 difficulty by the aid of the soldiery. But his boldness only 
 grew with the danger. A Papal bull which was procured 
 by the bishops, directing the University to condemn and 
 arrest him, extorted from him a bold defiance. In a de- 
 fence circulated widely through the kingdom and laid be- 
 fore Parliament, Wyclif broadly asserted that no man 
 could be excommunicated by the Pope " unless he were first 
 excommunicated by himself." He denied the right of the 
 Church to exact or defend temporal privileges by spiritual 
 censures, declared that a Church might justly be deprived 
 by the King or lay lords of its property for defect of duty, 
 and defended the subjection of ecclesiastics to civil tribu- 
 nals. It marks the temper of the time and the growing
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 473 
 
 severance between the Church and the nation that, bold as 
 the defiance was, it won the support of the people as of the 
 Crown. When Wyclif appeared at the close of the year 
 in Lambeth Chapel to answer the Archbishop's summons 
 a message from the Court forbade the primate to proceed 
 and the Londoners broke in and dissolved the session. 
 
 Meanwhile the Duke's unscrupulous tampering with 
 elections had packed the Parliament of 1377 with his adhe- 
 rents. The work of the Good Parliament was undone, and 
 the Commons petitioned for the restoration of all who had 
 been impeached by their predecessors. The needs of the 
 treasury were met by a novel form of taxation. To the 
 earlier land-tax, to the tax on personalty which dated from 
 the Saladin Tithe, to the customs duties which had grown 
 into importance in the last two reigns, was now added a 
 tax which reached every person in the realm, a poll-tax of 
 a groat a head. In this tax were sown the seeds of future 
 trouble, but when the Parliament broke up in March the 
 Duke's power seemed completely secured. Hardly three 
 months later it was wholly undone. In June Edward the 
 Third died in a dishonored old age, robbed on his death- 
 bed even of his rings by the mistress to whom he clung, 
 and the accession of his grandson, Richard the Second, 
 changed the whole face of affairs. The Duke withdrew 
 from court, and sought a reconciliation with the party op- 
 posed to him. The men of the Good Parliament surrounded 
 the new King, and a Parliament which assembled in Octo- 
 ber took vigorously up its work. Peter de la Mare was 
 released from prison and replaced in the chair of the House 
 of Commons. The action of the Lower House indeed was 
 as trenchant and comprehensive as that of the Good Parlia- 
 ment itself. In petition after petition the Commons de- 
 manded the confirmation of older rights and the removal 
 of modern abuses. They complained of administrative 
 wrongs such as the practice of purveyance, of abuses of 
 justice, of the oppressions of officers of the exchequer and 
 of the forest, of the ill state of the prisons, of the custom
 
 474 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 of " maintenance" by which lords extended their livery to 
 shoals of disorderly persons and overawed the courts by 
 means of them. Amid ecclesiastical abuses they noted the 
 state of the Church courts, and the neglect of the laws of 
 Provisors. They demanded that the annual assembly of 
 Parliament, which had now become customary, should be 
 defined by law, and that bills once sanctioned by the Crown 
 should be forthwith turned into statutes without further 
 amendment or change on the part of the royal Council. 
 With even greater boldness they laid hands on the admin- 
 istration itself. They not only demanded that the evil 
 counsellors of the last reign should be removed, and that 
 the treasurer of the subsidy on wool should account for its 
 expenditure to the lords, but that the royal Council should 
 be named in Parliament, and chosen from members of 
 either estate of the realm. Though a similar request for 
 the nomination of the officers of the royal household was 
 refused, their main demand was granted. It was agreed 
 that the great officers of state, the chancellor, treasurer, 
 and barons of exchequer should be named by the lords in 
 Parliament, and removed from their offices during the 
 king's " tender years" only on the advice of the lords. The 
 pressure of the war, which rendered the existing taxes in- 
 sufficient, gave the House a fresh hold on the Crown. 
 While granting a new subsidy in the form of a land and 
 property tax, the Commons restricted its proceeds to the 
 war, and assigned two of their members, William Wal- 
 worth and John Philpot, as a standing committee to regu- 
 late its expenditure. The successor of this Parliament in 
 the following year demanded and obtained an account of 
 the way in which the subsidy had been spent. 
 
 The minority of the King, who was but eleven years old 
 at his accession, the weakness of the royal council amid 
 the strife of the baronial factions, above all the disasters of 
 the war without and the growing anarchy within the realm 
 itself, alone made possible this startling assumption of the 
 executive power by the Houses. The shame of defeat
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 475 
 
 abroad was being added to the misery and discomfort at 
 home. The French war ran its disastrous course. One 
 English fleot was beaten by the Spaniards, a second sunk 
 by a storm; and a campaign in the heart of France ended, 
 like its predecessors, in disappointment and ruin. Mean- 
 while the strife between employers and employed was 
 kindling into civil war. The Parliament, drawn as it was 
 wholly from the proprietary classes, struggled as fiercely 
 for the mastery of the laborers as it struggled for the mas- 
 tery of the Crown. The Good Parliament had been as 
 strenuous in demanding che enforcement of the Statute of 
 Laborers as any of its predecessors. In spite of statutes, 
 however, the market remained in the laborers' hands. The 
 comfort of the worker rose with his wages. Men who had 
 "no land to live on but their hands disdained to live on 
 penny ale or bacon, and called for fresh flesh or fish, fried 
 or bake, and that hot and hotter for chilling of their maw." 
 But there were dark shades in this general prosperity of 
 the labor class. There were seasons of the year during 
 which employment for the floating mass of labor was hard 
 to find. In the long interval between harvest- tide and har- 
 vest-tide work and food were alike scarce in every home- 
 stead of the time. Some lines of William Longland give 
 us the picture of a farm of the day. " I have no penny 
 pullets for to buy, nor neither geese nor pigs, but two green 
 cheeses, a few curds and cream, and an oaten cake, and 
 two loaves of beans and bran baken for my children. I 
 have no salt bacon nor no cooked meat collops for to make, 
 but I have parsley and leeks and many cabbage plants, 
 and eke a cow and a calf, and a cart-mare to draw a-fiold 
 my dung while the drought lasteth, and by this livelihood 
 we must all live till Lammas-tide [August], and by that 
 I hope to have harvest in my croft." But it was not till 
 Lammas-tide that high wages and the new corn bade 
 "Hunger go to sleep," and during the long spring and 
 summer the free laborer and the " waster that will not work 
 but wander about, that will eat no bread but the finest
 
 476 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE [Rook IV. 
 
 wheat, nor drink but of the best and brownest ale," was a 
 source of social and political danger, " He grieveth him 
 against God and grudgeth against Reason, and then curs- 
 eth he the King and all his council after such law to allow 
 laborers to grieve." Such a smouldering mass of discon- 
 tent as this needed but a spark to burst into flame ; and 
 the spark was found in the imposition of fresh taxation. 
 
 If John of Gaunt was fallen from his old power he was 
 still the leading noble in the realm, and it is possible that 
 dread of the encroachments of the last Parliament on the 
 executive power drew after a time even the new advisers 
 of the Crown closer to him. Whatever was the cause, he 
 again came to the front. But the supplies voted in the 
 past year were wasted in his hands. A fresh expedition 
 against France under the Duke himself ended in failure 
 before the walls of St. Malo, while at home his brutal 
 household was outraging public order by the murder of a 
 knight who had incurred John's anger in the precincts of 
 Westminster. So great was the resentment of the Lon- 
 doners at this act that it became needful to summon Par- 
 liament elsewhere than to the capital; and in 1378 the 
 Houses met at Gloucester. The Duke succeeded in bring- 
 ing the lords to refuse those conferences with the Com- 
 mons which had given unity to the action of the late Par- 
 liament, but he was foiled in an attack on the clerical 
 privilege of sanctuary and in the threats which his party 
 still directed against Church propertj^, while the Commons 
 forced the royal Council to lay before them the accounts of 
 the last subsidy and to appoint a commission to examine 
 into the revenue of the Crown. Unhappily the financial 
 policy of the preceding year was persisted in. The check 
 before St. Malo had been somewhat redeemed by treaties 
 with Charles of Evreaux and the Duke of Brittany which 
 secured to England the right of holding Cherbourg and 
 Brest; but the cost of these treaties only swelled the ex- 
 penses of the war. The fresh supplies voted at Gloucester 
 proved insufficient for their purpose, and a Parliament in
 
 Chap. 8.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 477 
 
 the spring of 1379 renewed the Poll-tax in a graduated 
 form. But the proceeds of tha tax proved miserably in- 
 adequate, and when fresh debts beset the Crown in 1380 a 
 return was again made to the old system of subsidies. 
 But these failed in their turn ; and at the close of the year 
 the Parliament again fell back on a severer Poll-tax. One 
 of the attractions of the new mode of taxation seems to 
 have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, 
 paid in this way a larger share of the burdens of the 
 state ; but the chief ground for its adoption lay, no doubt, 
 in its bringing within the net of the tax-gatherer a class 
 which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free la- 
 borer, the village smith, the village tiler. But few courses 
 could have been more dangerous. The poll-tax not only 
 brought the pressure of the war home to every household ; 
 it goaded into action precisely the class which was already 
 seething with discontent. The strife between labor and 
 capital was going on as fiercely as ever in country and in 
 town. The landlords were claiming new services, or forc- 
 ing men who looked on themselves as free to prove they 
 were no villeins by law. The free laborer was struggling 
 against the attempt to exact work from him at low wages. 
 The wandering workman was being seized and branded as 
 a vagrant. The abbey towns were struggling for free- 
 dom against the abbeys. The craftsmen within boroughs 
 were carrying on the same strife against employer and 
 craft-guild. And all this mass of discontent was being 
 heightened and organized by agencies with which the gov- 
 eimment could not cope. The poorer villeins and the free 
 laborers had long since banded together in secret conspira- 
 cies which the wealthier villeins supported with money. 
 The return of soldiers from the war threw over the land a 
 host of broken men, skilled in arras, and ready to take 
 part in any rising. The begging friars, wandering and 
 gossiping from village to village and street to street, shared 
 the passions of the class from which they sprang. Priests 
 like Ball openly preached the doctrines of communism
 
 478 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 And to these had been recently added a fresh agency 
 which could hardly fail to stir a new excitement. With 
 the practical ability which marked his character Wyclif 
 set on foot about this time a body of poor preachers to sup- 
 ply, as he held, the place of those wealthier clergy who 
 had lost their hold on the land. The coarse sermons, bare 
 feet, and russet dress of these "Simple Priests" moved the 
 laughter of rector and canon, but they proved a rapid and 
 effective means of diffusing Wyclif 's protests against the 
 wealth and sluggishness of the clergy, and we can hardly 
 doubt that in the general turmoil their denunciation of 
 ecclesiastical wealth passed often into more general de- 
 nunciations of the proprietary classes. 
 
 As the spring went bj^ quaint rhymes passed through the 
 country, and served as a summons to revolt. " John Ball, " 
 ran one, " greeteth you all, and doth for to understand ho 
 hath rung j'our bell. ISTow right and might, will and skill, 
 God speed every dele." "Help truth," ran another, "and 
 truth shall help you! Now reigneth pride in price, and 
 covetise is counted wise, and lechery withouten shame, 
 and gluttony withouten blame. Envy reigneth with trea- 
 son, and sloth is take in great season. God do bote, for 
 now is tyme !" We recognize Ball's hand in the yet more 
 stirring missives of " Jack the Miller" and " Jack the Car- 
 ter." "Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill aright. 
 He hath grounden small, small : the King's Son of Heaven 
 he shall pay for all. Look thy mill go aright with the four 
 sailes, and the post stand with steadfastness. With right 
 and with might, with skill and with will; let might help 
 right, and skill go before will, and right before might, so 
 goeth our mill aright." "Jack Carter," ran the compan- 
 ion missive, " prays you all that ye make a good end of 
 that ye have begun, and do well, and aye better and bet- 
 ter: for at the even men heareth the day." "Falseness 
 and guile," sang Jack Trewman, "have reigned too long, 
 and truth hath been set under a lock, and falseness and 
 guile reigneth in every stock. No man may come truth
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 479 
 
 to, but if he sing 'si dedero.' True love is away that was 
 so good, and clerks for wealth work them woe. God do 
 bote, for now is time." In the rude jingle of these lines 
 began for England the literature of political controversy : 
 they are the first predecessors of the pamphlets of Milton 
 and of Burke. Rough as they are, they express clearly 
 enough the mingled passions which met in the revolt of 
 the peasants : their longing for a right rule, for plain and 
 simple justice; their scorn of the immorality of the nobles 
 and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the per- 
 version of the law to the cause of oppression. 
 
 From the eastern and midland counties the restlessness 
 spread to all England south of the Thames. But the 
 grounds of discontent varied with every district. The 
 actual outbreak began on the 5th of June at Dartford, where 
 a tiler killed one of the collectors of the poll-tax in venge- 
 ance for a brutal outrage on his daughter. The county 
 at once rose in arms. Canterbur}'^, where " the whole town 
 was of their mind," threw open its gates to the insurgents 
 who plundered the Archbishop's palace and dragged John 
 Ball from his prison. A hundred thousand Kentishmen 
 gathered round Walter Tyler of Essex and John Hales of 
 Mailing to march upon London. Their grievance was 
 mainly a political one. Villeinage was unknown in Kent. 
 As the peasants poured toward Blackheath indeed every 
 lawyer who fell into their hands was put to death ; " not 
 till all these were killed would the land enjoy its old free- 
 dom again," the Kentishmen shouted as they fired the 
 houses of the stewards and flung the rolls of the manor- 
 courts into the flames. But this action can hardly have 
 been due to anything more than sympathy with the rest 
 of the realm, the sympathy which induced the same men 
 when pilgrims from the north brought news that John of 
 Gaunt was setting free his bondmen to send to the Duke 
 an offer to make him Lord jind King of England. Nor 
 was their grievance a religious one. Lollardry can have 
 made little way among men. whose grudge against th*»
 
 480 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury sprang from his discouragement 
 of pilgrimages. Their discontent was simply political; 
 they demanded the svippression of the poll-tax and better 
 government ; their aim was to slay the nobles and wealth- 
 ier clergy, to take the King into their own hands, and pass 
 laws which should seem good to the Commons of the realm. 
 The whole population joined the Kentishmen as they 
 marched along, while the nobles were paralyzed with fear. 
 The young King — he was but a boy of sixteen — addressed 
 them from a boat on the river ; but the refusal of his Coun- 
 cil under the guidance of Archbishop Sudbury to allow 
 him to land kindled the peasants to fury, and with cries 
 of " Treason" the great mass rushed on London. On the 
 loth of June its gates were flung open by the. poorer arti- 
 sans within the city, and the stately palace of John of 
 Gaunt at the Savoy, the new inn of the lawyers at the 
 Temple, the houses of the foreign merchants, were soon in 
 a blaze. But the insurgents, as they proudly boasted, 
 were "seekers of truth and justice, not thieves or robbers," 
 and a plunderer found carrying off a silver vessel from the 
 sack of the Savoy was flung with his spoil into the flames. 
 Another body of insurgents encamped at the same time to 
 the east of the city. In Essex and the eastern counties 
 the popular discontent was more social than political. 
 The demands of the peasants were that bondage should be 
 abolished, that tolls and imposts on trade should be done 
 away with, that " no acre of land which is held in bondage 
 or villeinage be held at higher rate than fourpence a year," 
 in other words for a money commutation of all villein 
 services. Their rising had been even earlier than that of 
 the Kentishmen. Before Whitsuntide an attempt to levy 
 the poll-tax gathered crowds of peasants together, armed 
 with clubs, rusty swords, and bows. The royal commis- 
 sioners who were sent to repress the tumult were driven 
 from the field, and the Essex men marched upon London 
 on one side of the river as the Kentishmen marched on the 
 other. The evening of the thirteenth, the day on which
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 4U1 
 
 Tyler entered the city, saw them encamped without its 
 walls at Mile-end. At the same moment Highbury and 
 the northern heights were occupied by the men of Hert- 
 fordshire and the villeins of St. Albans, where a strife be 
 tween abbot and town had been going on since the days oi 
 Edward the Second. 
 
 The royal Council with the young King had taken ref- 
 uge in the Tower, and their aim seems to have been to di- 
 vide the forces of the insurgents. On the morning of the 
 fourteenth therefore Richard rode from the Tower to Mile- 
 end to meet the Essex men. " I am your King and Lord, 
 good people," the boy began with a fearlessness which 
 marked his bearing throughout the crisis, " what will j'ou?" 
 " We will that you free us forever," shouted the peasants, 
 " us and our lands ; and that we be never named nor held 
 for serfs !" " I grant it, " replied Richard ; and he bade 
 them go home, pledging himself at once to issue charters 
 of freedom and amnesty. A shout of joy welcomed the 
 promise. Throughout the day more than thirty clerks 
 were busied writing letters of pardon and emancipation, 
 and with these the mass of the Essex men and the men of 
 Hertfordshire withdrew quietly to their homes. But while 
 the King was successful at Mile-end a terrible doom had 
 fallen on the councillors he left behind him. Richard had 
 hardl}^ quitted the Tower when the Kentishmen who had 
 spent the night within the city appeared at its gates. The 
 general terror was shown ludicrously enough when they 
 burst in and taking the panic-stricken knights of the royal 
 household in rough horse-play by the beard promised to be 
 their equals and good comrades in the days to come. But 
 the horse-play changed into dreadful earnest when they 
 found that Richard had escaped their grasp, and the dis- 
 covery of Archbishop Sudbury and other ministers in the 
 chapel changed their fury into a cry for blood. The Pri- 
 mate was dragged from his sanctuary and beheaded. The 
 same vengeance was wreaked on the Treasurer and the 
 Chief Commissioner for the levy of the hated poll-tax, 
 Vol. I.— 31
 
 482 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 the merchant Richard Lyons who had been impeached by 
 the Good Parliament. Richard meanwhile had ridden 
 round the northern wall of the city to the Wardrobe near 
 Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he opened his nego- 
 tiations with the Kentish insurgents. Many of these dis- 
 persed at the news of the King's pledge to the men of 
 Essex, but a bod)'- of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat 
 Tyler when Richard on the morning of the fifteenth en- 
 countered that leader by a mere chance at Smithfield. 
 Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chief- 
 tain who advanced to confer with the King, and a threat 
 from Tyler brought on a brief struggle in which the Mayor 
 of London, William Walworth, struck him with his dag- 
 ger to the ground. " Kill ! kill !" shouted the crowd, " they 
 have slain our captain !" But Richard faced the Kentish- 
 men with the same cool courage with which he faced the 
 men of Essex. " What need ye, my masters !" cried the 
 boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen, 
 "lam your Captain and your King! Follow me!" The 
 hopes of the peasants centred in the young sovereign ; one 
 aim of their rising had been to free him from the evil 
 counsellors who, as they believed, abused his youth ; and 
 at his word they folloAved him with a touching loyalty and 
 trust till he entered the Tower. His mother welcomed 
 him within its walls with tears of joy. "Rejoice and 
 praise God," Richard answered, "for I have recovered to- 
 day my heritage which was lost and the realm of Eng- 
 land !" But he was compelled to give the same pledge of 
 freedom to the Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only 
 after receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation that 
 the yeomen dispersed to their homes. 
 
 The revolt indeed was far from being at an end. As the 
 news of the rising ran through the country the discontent 
 almost everj'where broke into tlame. There were outbreaks 
 in every shire south of the Thames as far westward as Dev- 
 onshire. In the north tumults broke out at Beverley and 
 Scarborough, and Yorkshire and Lancashire made read/
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 483 
 
 to rise. The eastern counties were in one wild turmoil of 
 revolt. At Cambridge the townsmen burned the charters 
 of the University and attacked the colleges. A body of 
 peasants occupied St. Alban's. In Norfolk a Norwich 
 artisan, called John the Litster or Dyer, took the title of 
 King of the Commons, and marching through the country 
 at the head of a mass of peasants compelled the nobles 
 whom he captured to act as his meat-tasters and to serve 
 him on their knees during his repast. The story of St. 
 Edmundsbury shows us what was going on in Suffolk. 
 Ever since the accession of Edward the Third the towns- 
 men and the villeins of their lands around had been at war 
 with the abbot and his monks. The old and more oppres- 
 sive servitude had long passed away, but the later abbots 
 had set themselves against the policy of concession and 
 conciliation which had brought about this advance toward 
 freedom. The gates of the town were still in the abbot's 
 hands. He had succeeded in enforcing his claim to the 
 wardship of all orphans born within his domain. From 
 claims such as these the town could never feel itself safe 
 so long as mysterious charters from Pope or King, inter- 
 preted cunningly by the wit of the new lawj-er class, lay 
 stored in the abbe}^ archives. But the archives contained 
 other and hardl}^ less formidable documents than these. 
 Untroubled by the waste of war, the religious houses 
 profited more than any other landowners by the general 
 growth of wealth. They had become great proprietors, 
 money-lenders to their tenants, extortionate as the Jew 
 whom thev had banished from their land. There were 
 few townsmen of St. Edmund's who had not some bonds 
 laid up in the abbey registry. In 1 327 one band of debtors 
 had a covenant lying there for the payment of five hundred 
 marks and fifty casks of wine. Another company of the 
 wealthier burgesses were joint debtors on a bond for ten 
 thousand pounds. The new spirit of commercial activity 
 joined with the troubles of the time to throw the whole 
 community into the abbot's hands.
 
 484 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 We can hardly wonder that riots, lawsuits, and royal 
 commissions marked the relation of the town and abbey 
 under the first two Edwards. Under the third came an 
 open conflict. In 1337 the townsmen burst into the great 
 house, drove the monks into the choir, and dragged them 
 thence to the town prison. The abbey itself was sacked ; 
 chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar frontals, the 
 books of the library, the very vats and dishes of the kitchen, 
 all disappeared. The monks estimated their losses at ten 
 thousand pounds. But the townsmen aimed at higher 
 booty than this. The monks were brought back from 
 prison to their own chapter-house, and the spoil of their 
 registry, papal bulls and royal charters, deeds and bonds 
 and mortgages, were laid before them. Amidst the wild 
 threats of the mob they were forced to execute a grant of 
 perfect freedom and of a guild to the town as well as of free 
 release to their debtors. Then they were left masters of 
 the ruined house. But all control over town or land was 
 gone. Through spring and summer no rent or fine was 
 paid. The bailiffs and other officers of the abbey did not 
 dare to show their faces in the streets. News came at 
 last that the abbot was in London, appealing for redress 
 to the court, and the whole county was at once on fire. A 
 crowd of rustics, maddened at the thought of revived claims 
 of serfage, of interminable suits of law, poured into the 
 streets of the town. From thirty -two of the neighboring 
 villages the priests marched at the head of their flocks as 
 on a new crusade. The wild mass of men, women, and 
 children, twenty thousand in all, as men guessed, rushed 
 again on the abbey, and for four November days the work 
 of destruction went on unhindered. When gate, stables, 
 granaries, kitchen, infirmary, hostelry had gone up in 
 flames, the multitude swept away to the granges and barns 
 of the abbey farms. Their plunder shows what vast agri- 
 cultural proprietors the monks had become. A thousand 
 horses, a hundred and twenty plough-oxen, two hundred 
 cows, three hundred bullocks, three hundred hogs, ten
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 485 
 
 thousand sheep were driven ojff, and granges and barns 
 burned to the ground. It was judged afterward that sixty 
 thousand pounds would hardly cover the loss. 
 
 Weak as was the government of Mortimer and Isabella, 
 the appeal of the abbot against this outrage was promptly 
 heeded. A royal force quelled the riot, thirty carts full of 
 prisoners were dispatched to Norwich; twenty-four of the 
 chief townsmen with thirty-two of the village priests were 
 convicted as aiders and abettors of the attack on the abbey,' 
 and twenty were summarily hanged. Nearly two hun- 
 dred persons remained under sentence of outla^v^y, and for 
 five weary years their case dragged on in the King's courts. 
 At last matters ended in a ludicrous outrage. Irritated 
 by repeated breaches of promise on the abbot's part, the 
 outlawed burgesses seized him as he lay in his manor of 
 Chevington, robbed and bound him, and carried him off 
 to London. There he was hurried from street to street lest 
 his hiding-place should be detected till opportunity offered 
 for shipping him off to Brabant. The Primate and the 
 Pope levelled their excommunications against the abbot's 
 captors in vain, and though he was at last discovered and 
 brought home it was probably with some pledge of the ar- 
 rangement which followed in 1332. The enormous dam- 
 ages assessed by the royal justices were remitted, the out- 
 lawry of the townsmen was reversed, the prisoners were 
 released. On the other hand the deeds which had been 
 stolen were again replaced in the archives of the abbey, 
 and the charters which had been extorted from the monks 
 were formally cancelled. 
 
 The spirit of townsmen and villeins remained crushed 
 by their failure, and throughout the reign of Edward the 
 Third the oppression against which they had risen went 
 on without a check. It was no longer the rough blow of 
 sheer force; it was the more delicate but more pitiless tyr- 
 anny of the law. At Richard's accession Prior John of 
 Cambridge in the vacancy of the abbot was in charge of 
 the house. The prior was a man skilled in all the arts of
 
 48G HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 his day. In sweetness of voice, in knowledge of sacred 
 song, his eulogists pronounced him superior to Orpheus, 
 to Nero, and to one yet more illustrious in the Bury clois- 
 ter tiiough ohscure to us, the Breton Belgabred. John 
 was ''industrious and subtle," and subtlety and industry 
 found their scope in suit after suit with the burgesses and 
 farmers around him. "Faithfully he strove," says the 
 monastic chronicler, " with the villeins of Bury for ths 
 rights of his house." The townsmen he owned specially 
 as his "adversaries," but it was the rustics who were to 
 show what a hate he had won. On the fifteenth of June, 
 the day of Wat Tyler's fall, the howl of a great multitude 
 round his manor house at Mildenhall broke roughly on the 
 chantings of Prior John. He strove to fly, but he was 
 betrayed by his own servants, judged in rude mockery of 
 the law by villein and bondsman, condemned and killed. 
 The corpse lay naked in the open field while the mob poured 
 unresisted into Bury. Bearing the prior's head on a lance 
 before them through the streets, the frenzied throng at last 
 reached the gallows where the head of one of the royal 
 judges, Sir John Cavendish, was alread}^ impaled; and 
 pressing the cold lips together in mockery of their friend- 
 ship set them side by side. Another head soon joined 
 them. The abbey gates were burst open, and the cloister 
 filled with a maddened crowd, howling for a new victim, 
 John Lackenheath, the warder of the barony. Few knew 
 him as he stood among the group of trembling monks, but 
 he courted death with a contemptuous courage. " I am 
 the man you seek," he said, stepping forward; and in a 
 minute, with a mighty roar of "Devil's son! Monk! 
 Traitor !" he was swept to the gallows, and his head hacked 
 from his shoulders. Then the crowd rolled back again to 
 the abbey gate, and summoned the monks before them. 
 They told them that now for a long time they had op- 
 pressed their fellows, the burgesses of Bury; wherefore 
 they willed that in the sight of the Commons they should 
 forthwith surrender their bonds and charters. The monks
 
 Chap. 3.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 487 
 
 brought the parchments to the market-place ; many which 
 were demanded they swore they could not find. A com- 
 promise was at last patched up ; and it was agreed that 
 the charters should be surrendered till tiie future abbot 
 should confirm the liberties of the town. Then, unable to 
 do more, the crowd ebbed away. 
 
 A scene less violent, but even more picturesque, went en 
 the same day at St. Alban's. William Grindecobbe, the 
 leader of its townsmen, returned with one of the charters 
 of emancipation which Richard had granted after his in- 
 terview at Mile-end to the men of Essex and Hertfordshire, 
 and breaking into the abbey precincts as the head of the 
 burghers, forced the abbot to deliver up the charters which 
 bound the town in bondage to his house. But a more 
 striking proof of servitude than any charters could give 
 remained in the mill-stones which after a long suit at law- 
 had been adjudged to the abbey and placed within its clois- 
 ter as a triumphant witness that no townsman might grind 
 corn within the domain of the abbey save at the abbot's 
 mill. Bursting into the cloister, the burghers now tore 
 the mill-stones from the floor, and broke them into small 
 pieces, "like blessed bread in church," which each might 
 carry off to show something of the day when their freedom 
 was won again. But it was hardly won when it was lost 
 anew. The quiet withdrawal and dispersion of the peas- 
 ant armies with their charters of emancipation gave cour- 
 age to the nobles. Their panic passed away. The war- 
 like Bishop of Norwich fell lance in hand on Litster's 
 camp, and scattered the peasants of Norfolk at the first 
 shock. Richard with an army of forty thousand men 
 marched in triumph through Kent and Essex, and spread 
 terror by the ruthlessness of his executions. At Waltham 
 he was met by the display of his own recent charters and 
 a protest from the Essex men that "they were so far as 
 freedom went the peers of their lords." But they were to 
 learn the worth of a king's word. "Villeins you were," 
 answered Richard, " and villeins you are. In bondage you
 
 ^88 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 shall abide, and that not your old bondage, but a worse !** 
 The stubborn resistance which he met showed that the 
 temper of the people was not easily broken. The villagers 
 of Billericay threw themselves into the woods and fought 
 two hard fights before they were reduced to submission. 
 It was only by threats of death that verdicts of guilty could 
 be wrung from Essex jurors when the leaders of the revolt 
 were brought before them. Grindecobbe was offered his 
 life if he would persuade his followers at St. Alban's to 
 restore the charters they had wrung from the monks. He 
 turned bravely to his fellow-townsmen and bade them take 
 no thought for his trouble. " If I die," he said, " I shall 
 die for the cause of the freedom we have won, counting 
 myself happy to end my life by such a martyrdom. Do 
 then to-day as you would have done had I been killed yes- 
 terday." But repression went pitilessly on, and through 
 the summer and the autumn seven thousand men are said 
 to have perished on the gallows or the field.
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 RICHARD THE SECOND. 
 1381—1400. 
 
 Terrible as were the measures of repression which fo5- 
 lowed the Peasant Revolt, and violent as was the passion 
 of reaction which raged among the proprietary classes at 
 its close, the end of the rising was in fact secured. The 
 words of Grindecobbe ere his death were a prophecy which 
 time fulfilled. Cancel charters of manumission as thg 
 council might, serfage was henceforth a doomed and per- 
 ishing thing. The dread of another outbreak hung round 
 the employer. The attempt to bring back obsolete ser- 
 vices quietly died away. The old process of enfranchise- 
 ment went quietly on. During the century and a half which 
 followed the Peasant Revolt villeinage died out so rapidly 
 that it became a rare and antiquated thing. The class of 
 small freeholders sprang fast out of the wreck of it into num- 
 bers and importance. In twenty years more they were in 
 fact recognized as the basis of our electoral system in every 
 English county. The Labor Statutes proved as ineffect- 
 ive as of old in enchaining labor or reducing its price. A 
 hundred years after the Black Death the wages of an Eng- 
 lish laborer was sufficient to purchase twice the amount of 
 the necessaries of life which could have been obtained for 
 the wages paid under Edward the Third. The incidental 
 descriptions of the life of the working classes which we 
 find in Piers Ploughman show that this increase of social 
 comfort had been going on even during the troubled period 
 which preceded the outbreak of the peasants, and it went 
 on faster after the revolt was over. But inevitable as such 
 a progress was, every step of it was taken in the teeth of
 
 490 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 the wealthier classes. Their temper indeed at the close of 
 the rising was that of men frenzied by panic and the taste 
 of blood. They scouted all notion of concession. The 
 stubborn will of the conquered was met by as stubborn a 
 will in their conquerors. The royal Council showed its 
 sense of the danger of a mere policy of resistance by sub- 
 mitting the question of enfranchisement to the Parliament 
 which assembled in November, 1381 , with words which sug- 
 gested a compromise. " If you desire to enfranchise and 
 set at liberty the said serfs," ran the royal message, "by 
 your common assent, as the King has been informed that 
 some of you desire, he will consent to your prayer. " But 
 no thoughts of compromise influenced the landowners in 
 their reply. The King's grant and letters, the Parliament 
 answered with perfe<"t truth, were legally null and void : 
 their serfs were their goods, and the King could not take 
 their goods from them but by their own consent. " And 
 this consent," they ended, "we have never given and never 
 will give, were we all to die in one day." Their temper 
 indeed expressed itself in legislation which was a fit sequel 
 to the Statutes of Laborers. They forbade the child of any 
 tiller of the soil to be apprenticed in a town. They prayed 
 the King to ordain " that no bondman nor bondwoman shall 
 place their children at school, as has been done, so as to 
 advance their children in the world by their going into the 
 church." The new colleges which were being founded at 
 the Universities at this moment closed their gates ujjon 
 villeins. 
 
 The panic which produced this frenzied reaction against 
 all projects of social reform produced inevitably as frenzied 
 a panic of reaction against all plans for religious reform. 
 Wyclif had been supported by the Lancastrian party till 
 the very eve of the Peasant Revolt. But with the rising 
 his whole work seemed suddenly undone. The quarrel be- 
 tween the baronage and the Church on which his political 
 action had as yet been grounded was hushed in the pres- 
 ence of a common danger. His "poor preachers" were
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461 491 
 
 looked upon as missionaries of socialism. The friars 
 charged Wyclif with being a "sower of strife who by his 
 serpentlike instigation had set the serf against his lord," 
 and though he tossed back the charge with disdain he had 
 to bear a suspicion which was justified by the conduct of 
 seme of his followers. John Ball, who had figured in the 
 front rank of the revolt, was falsely named as one of his 
 adherents, and was alleged to have denounced in his last 
 hour the conspiracy of the "Wyclifites." Wyclif 's most 
 prominent scholar, Nicholas Herford, was said to have 
 openly approved the brutal murder of Archbishop Sud- 
 bury. Whatever belief such charges might gain, it is 
 certain that from this moment all plans for the reorgani- 
 zation of the Church were confounded in the general odium 
 which attached to the projects of the peasant leaders, and 
 that any hope of ecclesiastical reform at the hands of the 
 baronage and the Parliament was at an end. But even it 
 the Peasant Revolt had not deprived Wyclif of the support 
 of the aristocratic party with whom he had hitherto co- 
 operated, their alliance must have been dissolved by the 
 new theological position which he had already taken up. 
 Some months before the outbreak of the insurrection he 
 had by one memorable step passed from the position of a 
 reformer of the discipline and political relations of the 
 Church to that of a protester against its cardinal beliefs. 
 If there was one doctrine upon which the supremacy of the 
 Mediaeval Cliurch rested, it was the doctrine of Transub- 
 stantiation. It was by his exclusive right to the perform- 
 ance of the miracle which was wrought in the mass that 
 the lowliest priest was raised high above princes. With 
 the formal denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation 
 which Wyclif issued in the spring of 1381 began that great 
 movement of religious revolt which ended more than a 
 century after in the establishment of religious freedom by 
 severing the mass of the Teutonic peoples from the gen- 
 eral body of the Catholic Church. The act was the bolder 
 that he stood utterly alone= The University of Oxford,
 
 492 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 in which his influence had been hitherto all-powerful, at 
 once condemned him. John of Gaunt enjoined him to be 
 silent. Wyclif was presiding as Doctor of Divinity over 
 some disputations in the schools of the Augustinian Canons 
 when his academical condemnation was publicly read, but 
 though startled for the moment he at once challenged 
 Chancellor or doctor to disprove the conclusions at which 
 he had arrived. The prohibition of the Duke of Lancaster 
 he met by an open avowal of his teaching, a confession 
 which closes proudly with the quiet words, " I believe that 
 in the end the truth will conquer." 
 
 For the moment his courage dispelled the panic around 
 him. The University responded to his appeal, and by 
 displacing his opponents from office tacitly adopted his 
 cause. But Wyclif no longer looked for support to the 
 learned or wealthier classes on whom he had hitherto re- 
 lied. He appealed, and the appeal is memorable as the 
 first of such a kind in our history, to England at large. 
 With an amazing industry he issued tract after tract in 
 the tongue of the people itself. The dry, syllogistic Latin, 
 the abstruse and involved argument which the great doc- 
 tor had addressed to his academic hearers, were suddenly 
 flung aside, and by a transition which marks the wonder- 
 ful genius of the man the schoolman was transformed into 
 the pamphleteer. If Chaucer is the father of our later 
 English poetry, Wyclif is the father of our later English 
 prose. The rough, clear, homely English of his tracts, the 
 speech of the ploughman and the trader of the day though 
 colored with the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is 
 in its literary use as distinctly a creation of his own as the 
 style in which he embodied it, the terse vehement sentences, 
 the stinging sarcasms, the hard antitheses which roused 
 the dullest mind like a whip. Once fairly freed from the 
 trammels of unquestioning belief, Wyclif's mind worked 
 fast in its career of scepticism. Pardons, indulgences, 
 absolutions, pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints, wor- 
 ship of their images, worship of the saints themselves,
 
 Chap. 4 J THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 493 
 
 were successively denied. A formal appeal to the Bible 
 as the one ground of faith, coupled with an assertion of 
 the right of every instructed man to examine the Bible for 
 himself, threatened the very groundwork of the older dog- 
 matism with ruin. Nor were these daring denials con- 
 fined to the small circle of scholars who still clung to him. 
 The " Simple Priests" were active in the diffusion of their 
 master's doctrines, and how rapid their progress must 
 have been we may see from the panic-struck exaggerations 
 of their opponents. A few years later they complained 
 that the followers of Wyclif abounded everywhere and in 
 all classes, among the baronage, in the cities, among the 
 peasantry of the countrj^-side, even in the monastic cell 
 Itself. "'Every second man one meets is a Lollard." 
 
 " Lollard," a word which probably means " idle babbler," 
 was the nickname of scorn with which the orthodox Church 
 men chose to insult their assailants. But this rapid in- 
 crease changed their scorn into vigorous action. In 1382 
 Courtenay, who had now become Archbishop, summoned 
 a council at Blackfriars and formally submitted twenty- 
 four propositions drawn from Wyclif 's works. An earth- 
 quake in the midst of the proceedings terrified every prel- 
 ate but the resolute Primate ; the expulsion of ill humors 
 from the earth, he said, was of good omen for the expul- 
 sion of ill humors from the Church ; and the condemnation 
 was pronounced. Then the Archbishop turned fiercely 
 upon Oxford as the fount and centre of the new heresies. 
 In an English sermon at St. Frideswide's Nicholas Her- 
 ford had asserted the truth of Wyclif's doctrines, and 
 Courtenay ordered the Chancellor to silence him and his 
 adherents on pain of being himself treated as a heretic. 
 The Chancellor fell back on the liberties of the University, 
 and appointed as preacher another Wyclifite, Rep3Tigdon, 
 who did not hesitate to style the Lollards "holy priests," 
 and to affirm that they were protected by John of Gaunt. 
 Party spirit meanwhile ran high among the students. 
 The bulk of them sided with the Lollard leaders, and a
 
 494 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 Carmelite, Peter Stokes, who had procured the Archbishop's 
 letters, cowered panic-stricken in his chamber while the 
 Chancellor, protected by an escort of a hundred townsmen, 
 listened approvingly to Repyngdon's defiance. " I dare 
 go no further," wrote the poor Friar to the Archbishop, 
 " for fear of death ;" but he mustered courage at last to 
 descend into the schools where Repjmgdonwas now main- 
 taining that the clerical order was " better when it was but 
 nine years old than now that it has grown to a thousand 
 years and more." The appearance however of scholars in 
 arms again drove Stokes to fly in despair to Lambeth, 
 while a new heretic in open Congregation maintained 
 Wyclif 's denial of Transubstantiation. " There is no idol- 
 atry," cried William James, "save in the Sacrament of 
 the Altar." "You speak like a wise man," replied the 
 Chancellor, Robert Rygge. Courtenay however was not 
 the man to bear defiance tamely, and his summons to Lam- 
 beth wrested a submission from Rygge which was only 
 accepted on his pledge to suppress the Lollardism of the 
 University. " I dare not publish them, on fear of death," 
 exclaimed the Chancellor when Courtenay handed him his 
 letters of condemnation. "Then is your University an 
 open fautor of heretics," retorted the Primate, " if it suffers 
 not the Catholic truth to be proclaimed within its bounds." 
 The royal Council supported the Archbishop's injunction, 
 but the publication of the decrees at once set Oxford on 
 fire. The scholars threatened death against the friars, 
 "crying that they wished to destroy the University." 
 The masters suspended Henry Crump from teaching as a 
 troubler of the public peace for calling the Lollards " here- 
 tics." The Crown, however, at last stepped in to Courte- 
 nay's aid, and a royal writ ordered the instant banishment 
 of all favorers of Wyclif with the seizure and destruction 
 of all Lollard books on pain of forfeiture of the Universi- 
 ty's privileges. The threat produced its effect. Herford 
 and Repyngdon appealed in vain to John of Caunt for 
 protection ; the Duke himself denounced them as heretics
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 495 
 
 against the Sacrament of the Altar, and after much evasion 
 they were forced to make a formal submission. Within 
 Oxford itself the suppression of Lollardism was complete, 
 but with the death of religious freedom all trace of intel- 
 lectual life suddeuly disappears. The century which fol- 
 lowed the triumph of Courtenay is the most barren in its 
 annals, nor was the sleep of the University broken till the 
 advent of the New Learning restored to it some of the life 
 and liberty which the Primate had so roughly trodden out. 
 Nothing marks more strongly the grandeur of Wycllf 's 
 position as the last of the great schoolmen than the reluc- 
 tance of so bold a man as Courtenay even after his triumph 
 over Oxford to take extreme measures against the head of 
 Lollardry. Wyclif, though summoned, had made no ap- 
 pearance before the " Council of the Earthquake." " Pon- 
 tius Pilate and Herod are made friends to-day," was his 
 bitter comment on the new union which proved to have 
 sprung up between the prelates and the monastic orders 
 who had so long been at variance with each other ; " since 
 they have made a heretic of Christ, it is an easy inference 
 for them to count simple Christians heretics." He seems 
 indeed to have been sick at the moment, but the announce- 
 ment of the final sentence roused him to life again. He 
 petitioned the King and Parliament that he might be al- 
 lowed freely to prove the doctrines he had put forth, and 
 turning with characteristic energy to the attack of his as- 
 sailants, he asked that all religious vows might be sup- 
 pressed, that tithes might be diverted to the maintenance of 
 the poor and the clergy maintained by the free alms of their 
 flocks, that the Statutes of Provisors and Prjemunire might 
 be enforced against the Papacy, that Churchmen might 
 be declared incapable of secular offices, and imprisonment 
 for excommunication cease. Finally in the teeth of the 
 council's condemnation he demanded that the doctrine of 
 the Eucharist which he advocated might bo freely taught. 
 If he appeared in the following year before the convoca- 
 tion at Oxford it was to perplex his opponents by a display
 
 496 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 of scholastic logic which permitted him to retire without 
 any retractation of his sacramental heresy. For the time 
 his opponents seemed satisfied with his expulsion from the 
 University, but in his retirement at Lutterworth he was 
 forging during these troubled years the great weapon 
 which, wielded by other hands than his own, was to pro- 
 duce so terrible an effect on the triumphant hierarchy. 
 An earlier translation of the Scriptures, in part of which 
 he was aided by his scholar Herford, was being revised 
 and brought to the second form which is better known as 
 '' Wyclif 's Bible" when death drew near. The appeal of 
 the prelates to Rome was answered at last by a Brief or- 
 dering him to appear at the Papal Court. His failing 
 strength exhausted itself in a sarcastic reply which ex- 
 plained that his refusal to comply with the summons sim- 
 ply sprang from broken health. " I am always glad," ran 
 the ironical answer, " to explain my faith to any one, and 
 above all to the Bishop of Rome ; for I take it for granted 
 that if it be orthodox he will confirm it, if it be erroneous 
 he will correct it. I assume too that as chief Vicar of 
 Christ upon earth the Bishop of Rome is of all mortal men 
 most bound to the law of Christ's Gospel, for among the 
 disciples of Christ a majority is not reckoned by simply 
 counting heads in the fashion of this world, but according 
 to the imitation of Christ on either side. Now Christ dur- 
 ing His life upon earth was of all men the poorest, casting 
 from Him all worldly authority. I deduce from these 
 premises as a simple counsel of my own that the Pope 
 should surrender all temporal authority to the civil power 
 and advise his clergy to do the same. " The boldness of 
 his words sprang perhaps from a knowledge that his end 
 was near. The terrible strain on energies enfeebled by 
 age and study had at last brought its inevitable result, and 
 a stroke of paralysis while Wyclif was hearing mass in 
 his parish church of Lutterworth was followed on the next 
 day by his death. 
 
 The persecution of Courtenay deprived the religious re-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 497 
 
 form ol its more learned adherents and of the support of 
 the Universities. Wyclif 's death robbed it of its head at 
 a moment when little had been done save a work of de- 
 struction. From that moment Lollardism ceased to be in 
 any sense an organized movement and crumbled into a 
 general spirit of revolt. All the religious and social dis- 
 content of the times floated instinctively to this new cen- 
 tre. The socialist dreams of the peasantry, the new and 
 keener spirit of personal morality, the hatred of the friars, 
 the jealousy of the great lords toward the prelacy, the 
 fanaticism of the reforming zealot were blended together 
 in a common hostility to the Church and a common resolve 
 to substitute personal religion for its dogmatic and ecclesi- 
 astical system. But it was this want of organization, this 
 looseness and fluidity of the new movement, that made it 
 penetrate through every class of society. Women as well 
 as men became the preachers of the new sect. Lollardry 
 had its own schools, its own books; its pamphlets were 
 passed everywhere from hand to hand ; scurrilous ballads 
 which revived the old attacks of " Golias" in the Angevin 
 times upon the wealth and luxury of the clergy were sung 
 at every corner. Nobles like the Earl of Salisbury and at 
 a later time Sir John Oldcastle placed themselves openly 
 at the head of the cause and threw open their gates as a 
 refuge for its missionaries. London in its hatred of the 
 clergy became fiercely Lollard, and defended a Lollard 
 preacher who ventured to advocate the new doctrines from 
 the pulpit of St. Paul's. One of its mayors, John of North- 
 ampton, showed the influence of the new morality by the 
 Puritan spirit in which he dealt with the morals of the 
 city. Compelled to act, as he said, by the remissness of 
 the clergy who connived for money at every kind of de- 
 bauchery, he arrested the loose women, cut off their hair, 
 and carted them through the streets as objects of public 
 scorn. But the moral spirit of the new movement, though 
 infinitely its grander side, was less dangerous to the Church 
 than its open repudiation of the older doctrines and systems 
 Vol. I.— 32
 
 408 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book I"^. 
 
 of Christendom. Out of the floating mass of opinion 
 which bore the name of Lollardry one faith gradually 
 evolved itself, a faith in the sole authority of the Bible as 
 a source of religious truth. The translation of Wyclif did 
 its work. Scripture, complains a canon of Leicester, " be- 
 came a vulgar thing, and more open to lay folk and women 
 that knew bow to read than it is wont to be to clerks them- 
 selves." Consequences which Wyclif had perhaps shrunk 
 from drawing were boldly drawn by his disciples. The 
 Church was declared to have become apostate, its priest- 
 hood was denounced as no priesthood, its sacraments as 
 idolatry. 
 
 It was in vain that the clergy attempted to stifle the 
 new movement by their old weapon of persecution. The 
 jealousy entertained by the baronage and gentry of every 
 pretension of the Church to secular power foiled its efforts 
 to make persecution effective. At the moment of the 
 Peasant Revolt Courtenay procured the enactment of a 
 statute which commissioned the sheriffs to seize all persons 
 convicted before the bishops of preaching heresy. But the 
 statute was repealed in the next session, and the Commons 
 added to the bitterness of the blow by their protest that 
 they considered it " in nowise their interest to be more un- 
 der the jurisdiction of the prelates or more bound by them 
 than their ancestors had been in times past." Heresy in- 
 deed was still a felony by the common law, and if as yet 
 we meet with no instances of the punishment of heretics 
 by the fire it was because the threat of such a death was com- 
 monly followed by the recantation of the Lollard. But the 
 restriction of each bishop's jurisdiction within the limits 
 of his own diocese made it impossible to arrest the wan- 
 dering preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil punish- 
 ment — even if it had been sanctioned by public opinion- 
 seems to have long fallen into desuetude. Experience 
 proved to the prelates that few sheriffs would arrest on the 
 mere warrant of an ecclesiastical officer, and that no royal 
 court would issue the writ " for the burning of a heretic'*
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 499 
 
 on a bishop's requisition. But powerless as the efforts of 
 the Church were for purposes of repression, they were 
 effective in rousing the temper of the Lollards into a bitter 
 fanaticism. The heretics delighted in outraging the relig- 
 ious sense of their day. One Lollard gentleman took 
 home the sacramental wafer and lunched on it with wine 
 and oysters. Another flung some images of the saints 
 into his cellar. The Lollard preachers stirred up riots by 
 the virulence of their preaching against the friars. But 
 they directed even fiercer invectives against the wealth and 
 secularit}^ of the great Churchmen. In a formal petition 
 which was laid before Parliament in 1395 they mingled 
 denunciations of the riches of the clergy with an open pro- 
 fession of disbelief in transubstantiation, priesthood, pil- 
 grimages, and image worship, and a demand, which illus- 
 trates the strange medley of opinions which jostled together 
 in the new movement, that war might be declared unchris- 
 tian and that trades such as those of the goldsmith or the 
 armorer, which were contrary to apostolical poverty, 
 might be banished from the realm. They contended (and 
 it is remarkable that a Parliament of the next reign adopted 
 the statement) that from the superfluous revenues of the 
 Church, if once they were applied to purposes of general 
 utility, the King might maintain fifteen earls, fifteen hun- 
 dred knights, and six thousand squires, besides endowing 
 a hundred hospitals for the relief of the poor. 
 
 The distress of the landowners, the general disorganiza- 
 tion of the countr}^, in every part of which bands of marau- 
 ders were openly defying the law, the panic of the Church 
 and of society at large as the projects of the Lollards shaped 
 themselves into more daring and revolutionary forms, 
 added a fresh keenness to the national discontent at the 
 languid and inefficient prosecution of the war. The junc- 
 tion <)f the French and Spanish fleets had made them mas- 
 ters of the seas, and what fragments were left of Guienne 
 lay at their mercy. The royal Covmcil strove to detach 
 the House of Luxemburg from the French alliance by
 
 500 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 winning for Richard the hand of Anne, a daughter of the 
 late Emperor Charles the Fourth who had lied at Cregy, 
 and sister of King Wenzel of Bohemia who was now King 
 of the Romans. But the marriage remained without polit- 
 ical result, save that the Lollard books which were sent 
 into their native country by the Bohemian servants of the 
 new queen stirred the preaching of John Huss and the 
 Hussite wars. Nor was English policy more successful in 
 Flanders. Under Philip van Arteveldt, the son of the 
 leader of 1345, the Flemish towns again sought the friend- 
 ship of England against France, but at the close of 1382 the 
 towns were defeated and their leader slain in the great 
 French victorj^ of Rosbecque. An expedition to Flanders 
 in the following year under the warlike Bishop of Norwich 
 turned out a mere plunder-raid and ended in utter failure. 
 A short truce only gave France the leisure to prepare a 
 counter-blow by the despatch of a small but well-equipped 
 force under John de Vienne to Scotland in 1385. Thirty 
 thousand Scots joined in the advance of this force over the 
 border ; and though northern England rose with a desper- 
 ate effort and an English army penetrated as far as Edin- 
 burgh in the hope of bringing the foe to battle it was forced 
 to fall back without an encounter. Meanwhile France 
 dealt a more terrible blow in the reduction of Ghent. The 
 one remaining market for English commerce was thus 
 closed up, while the forces which should have been em- 
 ployed in saving Ghent and in the protection of the Eng- 
 lish shores against the threat of invasion were squandered 
 by John of Gaunt in a war which he was carrying on along 
 the Spanish frontier in pursuit of the visionary crown 
 which he claimed in his wife's right. The enterprise 
 showed that the Duke had now abandoned the hope of di- 
 recting affairs at home and was seeking a new sphere of 
 activity abroad. To drive him from the realm had been 
 from the close of the Peasant Revolt the steady purpose of 
 the councillors who now surrounded the young King, of 
 his favorite Robert de Vere and his Chancellor Michael
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 501 
 
 de la Pole, who was raised in 1385 to the Earldom of Suf- 
 folk. The Duke's friends were expelled from office ; John 
 of Northampton, the head of his adherents among the 
 Commons, was thrown into prison ; the Duke himself was 
 charged with treason and threatened with arrest. In 1386 
 John of Gaunt abandoned the struggle and sailed for Spain. 
 Richard himself took part in these measures against the 
 Duke. He was now twent}', handsome and golden-haired, 
 with a temper capable of great actions and sudden bursts 
 of energy but indolent and unequal. The conception of 
 kingship in which he had been reared made him regard 
 the constitutional advance which had gone on during the 
 war as an invasion of the rights of his Crown. He looked 
 on the nomination of the royal Council and the great offi- 
 cers of state by the two Houses or the supervision of the 
 royal expenditure by the Commons as infringements on 
 the prerogative which only the pressure of the war and 
 the weakness of a minority had forced the Crown to bow 
 to. The judgment of his councillors was one with that of 
 the King. Vere was no mere royal favorite; he was a 
 great noble and of ancient lineage. Michael de la Pole 
 was a man of large fortune and an old servant of the Crown ; 
 he had taken part in the war for thirty years, and had 
 been admiral and captain of Calais. But neither were 
 men to counsel the young King wisely in his effort to ob- 
 tain independence at once of Parliament and of the great 
 nobles. His first aim had been to break the pressure of 
 the royal house itself, and in his encounter with John of 
 Gaunt he had proved successful. But the departure of the 
 Duke of Lancaster only called to the front his brother and 
 his son. Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, 
 had inherited much of the lands and the influence of the 
 old house of Bohun. Round Henry, Earl of Derby, the 
 son of John of Gaunt by Blanche of Lancaster, the old 
 Lancastrian party of constitutional opposition was once 
 more forming itself. The favor shown to the followers of 
 Wyclif at the Court threw on the side of this new oppo-
 
 602 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK IV. 
 
 sition the bulk of the bishops and Churchmen. Richard 
 himself showed no sj'-mpathy with the Lollards, but the 
 action of her Bohemian servants shows the tendencies of 
 his Queen. Three members of the royal Council were pa- 
 trons of the Lollards, and the Earl of Salisbury, a favorite 
 with the King, was their avowed head. The Commons 
 displayed no hostility to the Lollards nor any zeal for the 
 Church; but the lukewarm prosecution of the war, the 
 profuse expenditure of the Court, and above all the mani- 
 fest will of the King to free himself from Parliamentary 
 control, estranged the Lower House. Richard's haughty 
 words told their own tale. When the Parliament of 1385 
 called for an inquiry every year into the royal household, 
 the King replied he would inquire when he pleased. When 
 it prayed to know the names of the officers of state, he 
 answered that he would change them at his will. 
 
 The burden of such answers and of the policy they re- 
 vealed fell on the royal councillors, and the departure of 
 John of Gaunt forced the new opposition into vigorous 
 action. The Parliament of 1386 called for the removal of 
 Suffolk. Richard replied that he would not for such a 
 prayer dismiss a turnspit of his kitchen. The Duke of 
 Gloucester and Bishop Arundel of Ely were sent by the 
 Houses as their envoys, and warned the King that should 
 a ruler refuse to govern with the advice of his lords and by 
 mad counsels work out his private purposes it was lawful 
 to depose him. The threat secured Suffolk's removal; he 
 was impeached for corruption and maladministration, and 
 condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment. It was only 
 by submitting to the nomination of a Continual Council, 
 with the Duke of Gloucester at its head, that Richard 
 could obtain a grant of subsidies. But the Houses were 
 no sooner broken up than Suffolk was released, and in 
 1387 the young King rode through the country calling on 
 the sheriffs to raise men against the barons, and bidding 
 them suffer no knight of the shire to be returned for the 
 next Parliament " save one whom the King and his Coun
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 503 
 
 cil chose." The general ill-will foiled both his efforts: 
 and he was forced to take refuge in an opinion of five of 
 the judges that the Continual Council w^as unlawful, the 
 sentence on Suffolk erroneous, and that the Lords and 
 Commons had no power to remove a King's servant. 
 Gloucestet answered the challenge by taking up arms, and 
 a general refusal to fight for the King forced Richard once 
 more to yield. A terrible vengeance was taken on his 
 supporters in the recent schemes. In the Parliament of 
 1388 Gloucester, with the four Earls of Derby, Arundel, 
 Warwick, and Nottingham, appealed on a charge of high 
 treason Suffolk and De Vere, the Archbishop of York, the 
 Chief Justice Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Bramber. The 
 first two fled, Suffolk to France, de Vere after a skirmish 
 at Radcot Bridge to Ireland ; but the Archbishop was de- 
 prived of his see, Bramber beheaded, and Tresilian hanged. 
 The five judges were banished, and Sir Simon Burley with 
 three other members of the royal household sent to the 
 block. 
 
 At the prayer of the " Wonderful Parliament," as some 
 called this assembly, or as others with more justice " The 
 Merciless Parliament," it was provided that all officers of 
 state should henceforth be named in Parliament or by the 
 Continual Council. Gloucester remained at the head of 
 the latter body, but his power lasted hardly a year. In 
 May, 1389, Richard found himself strong enough to break 
 down the government by a word. Entering the Council 
 he suddenly asked his uncle how old he was. "Your 
 highness," answered Gloucester, " is in your twenty-second 
 year !" " Then I am old enough to manage my own af- 
 fairs," said Richard coolly; "I have been longer under 
 guardianship than any ward in my realm. I thank you 
 for your past services, my lords, but I need them no more." 
 The resolution was welcomed by the whole country ; and 
 Richard justified the country's hopes by wielding his new 
 power with singular wisdom and success. He refused to 
 recall de Vere or the five judges. The intercession of John
 
 501 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 of Gaunt on his return from Spain brought about a full 
 reconciliation with the Lords Appellant. A truce was 
 concluded with France, and its renewal year after year 
 enabled the King to lighten the burden of taxation. 
 Richard announced his purpose to govern by advice of 
 Parliament; he soon restored the Lords Appellant to his 
 Council, and committed the chief offices of state to great 
 Churchmen like Wykeham and Arundel. A series of stat- 
 utes showed the activity of the Houses. A Statute of 
 Provisors which re-enacted those of Edward the Third 
 was passed in 1390; the Statute of Preemunire, which 
 punished the obtaining of bulls or other instruments from 
 Rome with forfeiture, in 1393. The lords- were bridled 
 anew by a Statute of Maintenance, which forbade their 
 violently supporting other men's causes in courts of justice 
 or giving "livery" to a host of retainers. The Statute of 
 Uses in 1391, which rendered illegal the devices which 
 had been invented to frustrate that of Mortmain, showed 
 the same resolve to deal firmly with the Church. A re- 
 form of the staple and other mercantile enactments proved 
 the King's care for trade. Throughout the legislation of 
 these eight years we see the same tone of coolness and 
 moderation. Eager as he was to win the good-will of the 
 Parliament and the Church, Richard refused to bow to the 
 panic of the landowners or to second the persecution of 
 the priesthood. The demands of the Parliament that edu- 
 cation should be denied to the sons of villeins was refused. 
 LoUardry as a social danger was held firmly at bay, and 
 in 1 387 the King ordered Lollard books to be seized and 
 brought before the Council. But the royal officers showed 
 little zeal in aiding the bishops to seize or punish the 
 heretical teachers. 
 
 It was in the period of peace which was won for the 
 country by the wisdom and decision of its young King 
 that England listened to the voice of her first great singer. 
 The work of Chaucer marks the final settlement of the 
 Bkiglish tongue. The close of the great movement
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 505 
 
 toward national unity which had been going on ever since 
 the Conquest was shown in the middle of the fourteenth 
 century by the disuse, even among the nobler classes, of 
 the French tongue. In spite of the efforts of the grammar 
 schools and of the strength of fashion English won its 
 way throughout the reign of Edward the Third to its final 
 triumph in that of his grandson. It was ordered to be 
 used in courts of law in 1362 " because the French tongue 
 is much unknown," and in the following year it was em- 
 ployed by the Chancellor in opening Parliament. Bishops 
 began to preach in English, and the English tracts of 
 Wyclif made it once more a literary tongue. We see the 
 general advance in two passages from writers of Edward's 
 and Richard's reigus. " Children in school," says Higden, 
 a writer of the first period, " against the usage and man- 
 ner of all other nations be compelled for to leave their own 
 language and for to construe their lessons and their things 
 in French, and so they have since the Normans first came 
 into England. Also gentlemen children be taught for to 
 speak French from the time that they be rocked in their 
 cradle, and know how to speak and play with a child's 
 toy ; and uplandish (or country) men will liken themselves 
 to gentlemen, and thrive with great busyness to speak 
 French for to be more told of." "This manner," adds 
 John of Trevisa, Higden 's translator in Richard's time, 
 " was much used before the first murrain (the Black Death 
 of 1349), and is since somewhat changed. For John Corn- 
 wal, a master of grammar, changed the lore in grammar 
 school and construing of French into English ; and Richard 
 Pencrj^ch learned this manner of teaching of him, as other 
 men did of Pencrych. So that now, the year of our Lord 
 1385 and of the second King Richard after the Conquest 
 nine, in all the grammar schools of England children leav- 
 eth French, and construeth and learneth in English. Also 
 gentlemen have now much left for to teach their children 
 French." 
 
 This drift toward a general use of the national tongue
 
 506 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 told powerfully on literature. The influence of the French 
 romances everywhere tended to make French the one liter- 
 ary language at the opening of the fourteenth century, 
 and in England this influence had been backed by the 
 French tone of the court of Henry the Third and the three 
 Edwards. But at the close of the reign of Edward the 
 Third the long French romances needed to be translated 
 even for knightly hearers. "Let clerks indite in Latin," 
 says the author of the "Testament of Love," "and let 
 Frenchmen in their French also indite their quaint terms, 
 for it is kindly to their mouths; and let us show our fan- 
 tasies in such wordes as we learned of our mother's tongue." 
 But the new national life afforded nobler materials than 
 "fantasies" now for English literature. With the com- 
 pletion of the work of national unity had come the comple- 
 tion of the work of national freedom. The vigor of Eng- 
 lish life showed itself in the wide extension of commerce, 
 in the progress of the towns, and the upgrowth of a free 
 yeomanry. It gave even nobler signs of its activity in 
 the spirit of national independence and moral earnestness 
 which awoke at the call of Wyclif . New forces of thought 
 and feeling which were destined to tell on every age of 
 our later history broke their way through the crust of feu- 
 dalism in the socialist revolt of the Lollards, and a sudden 
 burst of military gloiy threw its glamour over the age of 
 Cregy and Poitiers. It is this new gladness of a great 
 people which utters itself in the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 Chaucer was born about 1340, the son of a London vintner 
 who lived in Thames Street ; and it was in London that 
 the bulk of his life was spent. His family, though not 
 noble, seems to have been of some importance, for from 
 the opening of his career we find Chaucer in close con- 
 nection with the Court. At sixteen he was made page to 
 the wife of Lionel of Clarence; at nineteen he first bore 
 arms in the campaign of 1359. But he was luckless 
 enough to be made prisoner ; and from the time of his re- 
 lease after the treaty of Bretigny he took no further share
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 507 
 
 in the military enterprises of his time. He seems again 
 to have returned to service about the Court, and it was 
 now that his first poems made their appearance, the 
 " Compleynte to' Pity" in 1368, and in 1369 the "Death 
 of Blanch the Duchesse," the wife of John of Gaunt, who 
 from this time at least may be looked upon as his patron^ 
 It may have been to John's influence that he owed hie 
 employment in seven diplomatic missions which were prob- 
 ably connected with the financial straits of the Crown, 
 Three of these, in 1373, 1374, and 1378, carried him to 
 ItalJ^ He visited Genoa and the brilliant court of the 
 Visconti at Milan; at Florence, where the memory of 
 Dante, the "great master" whom he commemorates so 
 reverently in his verse, was still living, he may have met 
 Boccaccio; at Padua, like his own clerk of Oxenford, he 
 possibly caught the story of Griseldis from the lips of 
 Petrarca. 
 
 It was these visits to Italy which gave us the Chaucer 
 whom we know. From that hour his work stands out in 
 vivid contrast with the poetic literature from the heart of 
 which it sprang. The long French romances were the 
 product of an age of wealth and ease, of indolent curiosity, 
 of a fanciful and self-indulgent sentiment. Of the great 
 passions which gave life to the Middle Ages, that of relig- 
 ious enthusiasm had degenerated into the conceits of 
 Mariolatr}', that of war into the extravagances of Chiv- 
 alry. Love indeed remained; it was the one theme of 
 troubadour and trouveur; but it was a love of refinement, 
 of romantic follies, of scholastic discussions, of sensuous 
 enjoyment — a plaything rather than a passion. Nature 
 had to reflect the pleasant indolence of man ; the song of 
 the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; the 
 grass was ever green ; the music of the lark and the night- 
 ingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay 
 avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in 
 man's life : life was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, 
 too sentimental, too full of interest and gayety and chat.
 
 508 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 It was an age of talk: "mirth is none," says Chaucer's 
 host, "to ride on by the way dumb as a stone;" and the 
 Trouveur aimed simply at being the most agreeable talker 
 of his day. His romances, his rhymes of Sir Tristram, his 
 Romance of the Rose, are full of color and fantasy, endless 
 in detail, but with a sort of gorgeous idleness about their 
 very length, the minuteness of their description of outer 
 things, the vagueness of their touch when it passes to the 
 subtler inner world. 
 
 It was with this literature that Chaucer had till now 
 been familiar, and it was this which he followed in his 
 earlier work. But from the time of his visits to Milan 
 and Genoa his sympathies drew him not to the dying verse 
 of France but to the new and mighty upgrowth of poetry 
 in Italy. Dante's eagle looks at him from the sun. 
 "Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete," is to him one 
 "whose rethorique sweete enluj^mned al Itail of poetrie." 
 The " Troilus" which he produced about 1382 is an enlarged 
 English version of Boccaccio's " Filostrato ;" the Knight's 
 Tale, whose first draft is of the same period, bears slight 
 traces of his Teseide. It was indeed the "Decameron" 
 which suggested the very form of the " Canterbury Tales," 
 the earliest of which, such as those of the Doctor, the Man 
 of Law, the Clerk, the Prioress, the Franklin, and the 
 Squire, may probably be referred like the Parliament of 
 Foules and the House of Fame to this time of Chaucer's 
 life. But even while changing, as it were, the front of 
 English poetry Chaucer preserves his own distinct per- 
 sonality. If he quizzes in the rhyme of Sir Thopaz the 
 wearisome idleness of the French romance he retains all 
 that was worth retaining of the French temper, its rapid- 
 ity and agility of movement, its lightness and brilliancy of 
 touch, its airy mockery, its gayety and good humor, its 
 critical coolness and self-control. The French wit quick- 
 ens in him more than in any English writer the sturdy 
 sense and shrewdness of our national disposition, ccr»'«cts 
 its extravagance, and relieves its somewhat ponderoiato
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 509 
 
 morality. If on the other hand he echoes the joyous care- 
 lessness of the Italian tale, he tempers it with the English 
 seriousness. As he follows Boccaccio all his changes are 
 on the side of purity ; and when the Troilus of the Floren- 
 tine ends with the old sneer at the changeableness of wo- 
 man Chaucer bids us "look God ward," and dwells on the 
 unchangeableness of Heaven. 
 
 The genius of Chaucer, however, was neither French 
 nor Italian, whatever element it might borrow from eithei 
 literature, but English to the core; and from the year 1384 
 aU trace of foreign influence dies away. Chaucer had now 
 reached the climax of his poetic power. He was a busy, 
 practical worker, Comptroller of the Customs in 1374, of 
 the Petty Customs in 1382, a member of the Commons in 
 the Parliament of 1386. The fall of the Duke of Lancas- 
 ter from power may have deprived him of employment for 
 a time, but from 1389 to 1391 he was Clerk of the Royal 
 Works, busy with repairs and building at Westminster, 
 Windsor, and the Tower. His air indeed was that of a 
 student rather than of a man of the world. A single por- 
 trait has preserved for us his forked beard, his dark-colored 
 dress, the knife and pen-case at his girdle, and we may 
 supplement this portrait by a few vivid touches of his 
 own. The sly, elvish face, the quick walk, the plump 
 figure and portly waist were those of a genial and humor- 
 ous man ; but men jested at his silence, his abstraction, 
 his love of study. " Thou lookest as thou wouldest find 
 an hare," laughs the host, "and ever on the ground I see 
 thee stare." He heard little of his neighbors' talk when 
 cflSce work in Thames Street was over. " Thou goest home 
 to thy own house anon, and also dumb as a stone thou 
 sittest at another book till fully dazed is thy look, and 
 livest thus as an heremite, although," he adds slyly, "thy 
 abstinence is lite," or little. But of this seeming abstrac- 
 tion from the world about him there is not a trace in 
 Chaucer's verse. We see there how keen his observation 
 was, how vivid and intense his sympathy with nature and
 
 510 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 the men among whom he moved. "Farewell, my book," 
 he cried as spring came after winter and the lark's song 
 roused him at dawn to spend hours gazing alone on the 
 daisy whose beauty he sang. But field and stream and 
 flower and bird, much as he loved them, were less to him 
 than man. No poetry was ever more human than Chau- 
 cer's, none ever came more frankly and genially home to 
 men than his "Canterbury Tales." 
 
 It was the continuation and revision of this work which 
 mainly occupied him during the years from 1384 to 1390. 
 Its best stories, those of the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, 
 the Wife of Batl^, the Merchant, the Friar, the Nun, the 
 Priest, and the Pardoner, are ascribed to this period, as 
 well as the Prologue. The framework which Chaucer 
 chose — that of a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury 
 — not only enabled him to string these tales together, but 
 lent itself admirably to the peculiar characteristics of his 
 poetic temper, his dramatic versatility and the universality 
 of his sympathy. His tales cover the whole field of mediae- 
 val poetry ; the legend of the priest, the knightly romance, 
 the wonder-tale of the traveller, the broad humor of th(» 
 fabliau, allegory and apologue, all are there. He finds a 
 yet wider scope for his genius in the persons who tell these 
 stories, the thirty pilgrims who start in the May morning 
 from the Tabard in Southwark — thirty distinct figures, 
 representatives of every class of English society from the 
 noble to the ploughman. We see the "verray perfight 
 gentil knight" in cassock and coat of mail, with his curly- 
 headed squire beside him, fresh as the May morning, and 
 behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and hood 
 of green with a mighty bow in his hand. A group of 
 ecclesiastics light up for us the mediaeval church — the 
 brawny hunt-loving monk, whose bridle jingles as loud 
 and clear as the chapel bell ; — the wanton friar, first among 
 the beggars and harpers of the courtly side — the poor par- 
 son, threadbare, learned, and devout (" Christ's lore and 
 his apostles twelve he taught, and first hue followed it him-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 611 
 
 self") — the summoner with his fiery face — the pardoner 
 with his wallet " bret full of pardons, come from Rome all 
 hot" — the lively, prioress with her courtly French lisp, 
 her soft little red mouth, and " Amor vincit omnia" graven 
 on her brooch. Learning is there in the portly person of 
 the doctor of physics, rich with the profits of the pestilence 
 —the busy sergeant-of-law, " that ever seemed busier than 
 he was" — the hollow-cheeked clerk of Oxford with his love 
 of books and short sharp sentences that disguise a latent 
 tenderness which breaks out at last in the story of Griseldis. 
 Around them crowd tj^pss of English industry ; the mer- 
 chant ; the franklin in whose house " it snowed of meat 
 and drink ;" the sailor fresh from frays in the Channel ; 
 the buxom wife of Bath ; the broad-shouldered miller ; the 
 haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, each 
 in the livery of his craft; and last the honest ploughman 
 who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It 
 is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face 
 to face not with characters or allegories or reminiscences 
 of the past, but with living and breathing men, men dis- 
 tinct in temper and sentiment as in face or costume or 
 mode of speech ; and with this distinctness of each main- 
 tained throughout the story by a thousand shades of ex- 
 pression and action. It is the first time, too, that we meet 
 with the dramatic power which not only creates each 
 character but combines it with its fellows, which not only 
 adjusts each tale or jest to the temper of the person who 
 utters it but fuses all into a poetic unity. It is life in its 
 largeness, its variety, its complexity, which surrounds us 
 in the " Canterbury Tales." In some of the stories indeed, 
 which were composed no doubt at an earlier time, there 
 is the tedium of the old romance or the pedantry of the 
 schoolman; but taken as a whole the poem is the work not 
 of a man of letters but of a man of action. Chaucer has 
 received his training from war, courts, business, travel— 
 a training not of books but of life. And it is life that he 
 loves— the delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its
 
 512 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV, 
 
 farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of its Gri- 
 seldis or the Smollett-like adventures of the miller and the 
 clerks. It is this largeness of heart, this wide tolerance, 
 which enables him to reflect man for us as none but Shaks- 
 pere has ever reflected him, and to do this with a pathos, 
 a shrewd sense and kindly humor, a freshness and joyous- 
 ness of feeling, that even Shakspere has not surpassed. 
 
 The last ten years of Chaucer's life saw a few more tales 
 added to the Pilgrimage and a few poems to his work; 
 but his power was lessening, and in 1400 he rested from 
 his labors in his last home, a house in the garden of St. 
 Mary's Chapel at Westminster. His body rests within the 
 Abbey church. It was strange that such a voice should 
 have awakened no echo in the singers that follow, but the 
 first burst of English song died as suddenly in Chaucer as 
 the hope and glory of his age. He died indeed at the 
 moment of a revolution which was the prelude to years of 
 national discord and national suffering. Whatever may 
 have been the grounds of his action, the rule of Richard 
 the Second after his assumption of power had shown his 
 capacity for self-restraint. Parted by his own will from 
 the counsellors of his youth, calling to his service the 
 Lords Appellant, reconciled alike with the baronage and 
 the Parliament, the young King promised to be among the 
 noblest and wisest rulers that England had seen. But the 
 violent and haughty temper which underlay this self-com- 
 mand showed itself from time to time. The Earl of 
 Arundel and his brother the bishop stood in the front rank 
 of the party which had coerced Richard in his early days; 
 their influence was great in the new government. But a 
 strife between the Earl and John of Gaunt revived the 
 King's resentment at the past action of his house; and at 
 the funeral of Anne of Bohemia in 1394 a fancied slight 
 roused Richard to a burst of passion. He struck the Earl 
 so violently that the blow drew blood. But the quarrel 
 was patched up, and the reconciliation was followed by 
 the elevation of Bishop Arundel to the vacant Primacy in
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 
 
 1396. In the preceding year Richard had crossed to Ire- 
 land and in a short autumn campaign reduced its native 
 chiefs again to submission. Fears of Lollard disturbances 
 soon recalled him, but these died at the King's presence, 
 and Richard was able to devote himself to the negotiation 
 of a mart-iage which was to be the turning-point of his 
 reign. His policy throughout the recent years had been a 
 policy of peace. It was war which rendered the Crown 
 helpless before the Parliament, and peace was needful if 
 the work of constant progress was not to be undone. But 
 the short truces, renewed from time to time, which he had 
 as yet secured were insufficient for this purpose, for so long 
 as war might break out in the coming year the King's 
 hands were tied. The impossibility of renouncing the 
 claim to the French crown indeed made a formal peace 
 impossible, but its ends might be secured by a lengthened 
 truce, and it was with a view to this that Richard in 1396 
 wedded Isabella, the daughter of Charles the Sixth of 
 France. The bride was a mere child, but she brought 
 with her a renewal of the truce for eight-and-twenty years. 
 The match was hardl}' concluded when the veil under 
 which Richard had shrouded his real temper began to be 
 dropped. His craving for absolute power, such as he wit- 
 nessed in the Court of France, was probably intensified 
 from this moment by a mental disturbance which gathered 
 strength as the months went on. As if to preclude any 
 revival of the war Richard had surrendered Cherbourg to 
 the King of Navarre and now gave back Brest to the Duke 
 of Brittany, He was said to have pledged himself at liis 
 wedding to restore Calais to the King of France. But 
 once freed from all danger of such a struggle the whole 
 character of his rule seemed to change. His court became 
 as crowded and profuse as his grandfather's. Money was 
 recklessly borrowed and as recklessly squandered. The 
 King's pride became insane, and it was fed with dreams 
 of winning the Imperial crown through the deposition of 
 Wenzel of Bohemia, Th*^ councillors with whom he had 
 Vol, 1,-33
 
 514 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 acted since his resumption of authority saw themselves 
 powerless. John of Gaunt indeed still retained influence 
 over the King. It was the support of the Duke of Lan- 
 caster after his return from his Spanish campaign which 
 had enabled Richard to hold in check the Duke of Gloucester 
 and the party that he led ; and the anxiety of the young 
 King to retain this support was seen in his grant of Aqui- 
 taine to his uncle, and in the legitimation of the Beauforts, 
 John's children by a mistress, Catharine Swinford, whom 
 he married after the death of his second wife. The friend- 
 ship of the Duke brought with it the adhesion of one even 
 more important, his son Henry the Earl of Derby. As 
 heir through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, to the 
 estates and influence of the Lancastrian house, Henry was 
 the natural head of a constitutional opposition, and his 
 weight was increased by a marriage with the heiress of 
 the house of Bohun. He had taken a prominent part in 
 the overthrow of Suffolk and De Vere, and on the King's 
 resumption of power he had prudently withdrawn from 
 the realm on a vow of Crusade, had touched at Barbary, 
 visited the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1390 sailed fo^' Dantzig 
 and taken part in a campaign against the heathen Prus- 
 sians with the Teutonic Knights. Since his return he had 
 silently followed in his father's track. But the counsels 
 of John of Gaunt were hardly wiser than of old ; Arundel 
 had already denounced his influence as a hurtful one ; and 
 in the events which were now to hurry quickly on he seems 
 to have gone hand in hand with the King. 
 
 A. new uneasiness was seen in the Parliament of 1 397, 
 and the Commons prayed for a redress of the profusion of 
 the Court. Richard at once seized on the opportunity for 
 a struggle. He declared himself grieved that his subjects 
 should " take on themselves any ordinance or governance 
 of the person of the King or his hostel or of any persons of 
 estate whom he might be pleased to have in his company." 
 The Commons were at once overawed ; they owned that 
 the cognizance of such matters belonged wholly to the
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 515 
 
 King, and gave up to the Duke of Lancaster the name of 
 the member, Sir,Thomas Haxey, who had brought forward 
 this article of their prayer. The lords pronounced him a 
 traitor, and his life was only saved by the fact that he was 
 a clergyman and by the interposition of A^-ohbishop 
 Arundel. The Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Gloucester 
 at once withdrew from Court. They stood almost alone, 
 for of the royal house the Dukes of Lancaster and York 
 with their sons the Earls of Derby and Rutland were now 
 with the King, and the old coadjutor of Gloucester, the Earl 
 of Nottingham, was in high favor with him. The Earl 
 of Warwick alone joined them, and he was included in a 
 charge of conspiracy which was followed by the arrest of 
 the three. A fresh Parliament in September was packed 
 with royal partisans, and Richard moved boldly to his end. 
 The pardons of the Lords Appellant were revoked. Arch- 
 bishop Arundel was impeached and banished from the 
 realm, he was transferred by the Pope to the See of St. 
 Andrew's, and the Primacy given to Roger Walden. The 
 Earl of Arundel, accused before the Peers under John of 
 Gaunt as High Steward, was condemned and executed in 
 a single day. Warwick, who owned the truth of the 
 charge, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The 
 Duke of Gloucester was saved from a trial by a sudden 
 death in his prison at Calais. A new Parliament at Shrews- 
 bury in the opening of 1398 completed the King's work. 
 In three days it declared null the proceedings of the Par- 
 liament of 1388, granted to the King a subsidy on wool 
 and leather for his life, and delegated its authority to a 
 standing committee of eighteen members from both Houses 
 with power to continue their sittings even after the disso- 
 lution of the Parliament and to " examine and determine 
 all matters and subjects which had been moved in the 
 presence of the King with all the dependencies thereof." 
 
 In a single year the whole color of Richard's govern- 
 ment had changed. He had revenged himself on the men 
 who had once held him down, and his revenge was hardly
 
 516 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 taken before he disclosed a plan of absolute government. 
 He had used the Parliament to strike down the Primate 
 as well as the greatest nobles of the realm, and to give him 
 a revenue for life which enabled him to get rid of Parlia- 
 ment itself, for the Permanent Committee which it named 
 were men devoted, as Richard held, to his cause. John of 
 Gaunt was at its head, and the rest of its lords were those 
 who had backed the King in his blow at Gloucester and 
 the Arundels. Two however were excluded. In the gen- 
 eral distribution of rewards which followed Gloucester's 
 overthrow the Earl of Derby had been made Duke of Here- 
 ford, the Earl of Nottingham Duke of Norfolk, But at 
 the close of 1397 the two Dukes charged each other with 
 treasonable talk as they rode between Brentford and Lon- 
 don, and the Permanent Committee ordered the matter to 
 be settled by a single combat. In September 1398 the 
 Dukes entered the lists; but Richard forbade the duel, 
 sentenced the Duke of Norfolk to banishment for life, and 
 Henry of Lancaster to exile for six years. As Henry left 
 London the streets were crowded with people weeping for 
 his fate ; some followed him even to the coast. But his 
 withdrawal removed the last check on Richard's despotism. 
 He forced from every tenant of the Crown an oath to rec- 
 ognize the acts of his Committee as valid, and to oppose 
 any attempts to alter or revoke them. Forced loans, the 
 sale of charters of pardon to Gloucester's adherents, the 
 outlawry of seven counties at once on the plea that they 
 had supported his enemies and must purchase pardon, a 
 reckless interference with the course of justice, roused into 
 new life the old discontent. Even this might have been 
 defied had not Richard set an able and unscrupulous leader 
 at its head. Leave had been given to Henry of Lancaster 
 to receive his father's inheritance on the death of John of 
 Gaunt, in February 1399. But an ordinance of the Con- 
 tinual Committee annulled this permission and Richard 
 seized the Lancastrian estates. Archbishop Arundel at 
 once saw the chance of dealing blow for blow. He. has-
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 517 
 
 tened to Paris and pressed the Duke to return to England, 
 telling him how all men there looked for it, " especially the 
 Londoners, wko loved him a hundred times more than they 
 did the King." For a while Henry remained buried in 
 thought, "leaning on a window overlooking a garden;" 
 but Arundel's pressure at last prevailed, he made his way 
 secretly to Brittany, and with fifteen knights set sail from 
 Vannes. 
 
 What had really decided him was the opportunity offered 
 by Richard's absence from the realm. From the opening 
 of his reign the King's attention had been constantly 
 drawn to his dependent lordship of Ireland. More than 
 two hundred years had passed away since the troubles 
 which followed the murder of Archbishop Thomas forced 
 Henry the Second to leave his work of conquest unfinished, 
 and the opportunity for a complete reduction of the island 
 which had been lost then had never returned. When 
 Henry quitted Ireland indeed Leinster was wholly in Eng- 
 lish hands, Connaught bowed to a nominal acknowledg- 
 ment of the English overlordship, and for a while the work 
 of conquest seemed to go steadily on. John de Courcy 
 penetrated into Ulster and established himself at Down- 
 Patrick; and Henry planned the establishment of his 
 youngest son, John, as Lord of Ireland. But the levity 
 of the young prince, who mocked the rude dresses of the 
 native chieftains and plucked them in insult by the beard, 
 soon forced his father to recall him; and in the continent- 
 al struggle which soon opened on the Angevin kings, as in 
 the constitutional struggle within England itself which 
 followed it, all serious purpose of completing the conquest 
 of Ireland was forgotten. Nothing indeed but the feuds and 
 weakness of the Irish tribes enabled the adventurers to hold 
 the districts of Drogheda, Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, 
 and Cork, which formed what was thenceforth known as 
 " the English Pale." In all the history of Ireland no event 
 has proved more disastrous than this half-finished con- 
 quest. Had the Irish driven their invaders into the sea,
 
 518 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 or the English succeeded in the complete reduction of the 
 island, the misery of its after-ages might have been avoided. 
 A struggle such as that in which Scotland drove out itn 
 concjuerors might have produced a spirit of patriotism and 
 national union which would have formed a people out of 
 the mass of warring clans. A conquest such as that in 
 which the Normans made England their own would have 
 spread at any rate the law, the order, the civilization of the 
 conquering country over the length and breadth of the cou' 
 quered. Unhappily Ireland, while powerless to effect its 
 entire deliverance, was strong enough to hold its assailants 
 partially at ba3% The country was broken into two halves 
 whose conflict has never ceased. So far from either giv- 
 ing elements of civilization or good government to the 
 other, conqueror and conquered reaped only degradation 
 from the ceaseless conflict. The native tribes lost what- 
 ever tendency to union or social progress had survived the 
 invasion of the Danes. Their barbarism was intensified 
 by their hatred of the more civilized intruders. But these 
 intruders themselves, penned within the narrow limits of 
 the Pale, brutalized by a merciless conflict, cut off from 
 contact with the refining influences of a larger world, sank 
 rapidly to the level of the barbarism about them : and the 
 lawlessness, the ferocity, the narrowness of feudalism 
 broke out unchecked in this horde of adventurers who held 
 the land by their sword. 
 
 From the first the story of the English Pale was a story 
 of degradation and anarchy. It needed the stern ven- 
 geance of John, whose army stormed its strongholds and 
 drove its leading barons into exile, to preserve even their 
 fealty to the English Crown. John divided the Pale into 
 counties and ordered the observance of the English law; 
 but the departure of his army was the signal for a return 
 of the disorder he had trampled under foot. Between Eng- 
 lishmen and Irishmen went on a ceaseless and pitiless war. 
 Every Irishman without the Pale was counted by the Eng- 
 lish settlers an enemy and a robber whose murder found
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 519 
 
 no cognizance or punishment at the hands of the law. 
 Half the subsistence of the English barons was drawn 
 from forays across the border, and these forays were 
 avenged by incursions of native marauders which carried 
 havoc at times to the very walls of Dublin. Within the 
 Pale itself the misery was hardly less. The English set- 
 tlers were harried and oppressed by their own baronage as 
 much as by the Irish marauders, while the feuds of the 
 English lords wasted their strength and prevented any 
 effective combination either for common conquest or com- 
 mon defence. So utter seemed their weakness that Rob- 
 ert Bruce saw in it an opportunity for a counter-blow at 
 his English assailants, and his victory at Bannockburn 
 was followed up by the dispatch of a Scotch force to Ire- 
 land with his brother Edward at its head. A general ris- 
 ing of the Irish welcomed this deliverer ; but the danger 
 drove the barons of the Pale to a momentary union, and 
 in 1316 their valor was proved on the bloodj" field of Athen- 
 ree by the -slaughter of eleven thousand of their foes and 
 the almost complete annihilation of the sept of the O'Con- 
 nors. But with victory returned the old anarchy and deg- 
 radation. The barons of the Pale sank more and more 
 into Irish chieftains. The Fitz-Maurices, who became 
 Earls of Desmond and whose vast territory in Munster 
 was erected into a County Palatine, adopted the dress and 
 manners of the natives around them. The rapid growth 
 of this evil was seen in the ruthless provisions by which 
 Edward the Third strove to check it in his Statute of Kil- 
 kenny. The Statute forbade the adoption of the Irish lan- 
 guage or name or dress by any man of English blood : it 
 enforced within the Pale the exclusive use of English law, 
 and made the use of the native or Brehon law, which was 
 gaining ground, an act of treason; it made treasonable 
 any marriage of the Englishry with persons of Irish race, 
 or any adoption of English children by Irish foster-fathers. 
 But stern as they were these provisions proved fniitless 
 tv' check the fusion of the two races, while the growing
 
 520 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK IV. 
 
 independence of the Lords of the Pale threw off all but the 
 semblance of obedience to the English government. It 
 was this which stirred Richard to a serious effort for the 
 conquest and organization of the island. In 1386 he 
 granted the " entire dominion" of Ireland with the title of 
 its Duke to Robert de Vere on condition of his carrj'ing 
 out its utter reduction. But the troubles of the reign soon 
 recalled De Vere, and it was not till the truce with France 
 had freed his hands that the King again took up his pro- 
 jects of conquest. In x394 he landed with an army at 
 Waterford, and received the general submission of the 
 native chieftains. But the Lords of the Pale held sullenly 
 aloof ; and Richard had no sooner quitted the island than 
 the Irish in turn refused to carrj^ out their promise of quit- 
 ting Leinster, and engaged in a fresh contest with the 
 Earl of March, whom the King had proclaimed as his heir 
 and left behind him as his lieutenant in Ireland. In the 
 summer of 1398 March was beaten and slain in battle: and 
 Richard resolved to avenge his cousin's death and complete 
 the work he had begun by a fresh invasion. He felt no 
 apprehension of danger. At home his triumph seemed 
 complete. The death of Norfolk, the exile of Henry of 
 Lancaster, left the baronage without heads for any rising. 
 He insured, as he believed, the loyalty of the great houses 
 by the hostages of their blood whom he carried with him, 
 at whose head was Henry of Lancaster's son, the future 
 Henry the Fifth. The refusal of the Percies, the Earl of 
 Northumberland and his son Henry Percy or Hotspur, to 
 obe}^ his summons might have warned him that danger 
 was brewing in the north. Richard, however, took little 
 heed. He banished the Percies, who withdrew into Scot- 
 land ; and sailed for Ireland at the end of May, leaving 
 his uncle the Duke of York regent in his stead. 
 
 The opening of his campaign was indecisive, and it was 
 not till fresh reinforcements arrived at Dublin that the 
 King could prepare for a march into the heart of the island. 
 But while he planned the conquest of Ireland the news
 
 Chap. 4.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461 521 
 
 came that England was lost. Little more than a month 
 had passed af ter^ his departure when Henry of Lancaster 
 entered the Humber and landed at Ravenspur. He came, 
 he said, to claim his heritage; and three of his Yorkshire 
 castles at once threw open their gates. The two great 
 houses of the north joined him at once. Ralph Neville, 
 the Earl of Westmoreland, had married his half-sister; 
 the Percies came from their exile over the Scottish border. 
 As he pushed quickly to the south all resistance broke 
 down. The army which the Regent gathered refused to 
 do hurt to the Duke ; London called him to her gates ; and 
 the royal Council could only march hastily on Bristol in 
 the hope of securing that port for the King's return. But 
 the town at once yielded to Henry's summons, the Regent 
 submitted to him, and with an army which grew at every 
 step the Duke marched upon Cheshire, where Richard's 
 adherents were gathering in arms to meet the King. 
 Contrary winds had for a while kept Richard ignorant of 
 his cousin's progress, and even when the news reached 
 him he was in a web of treachery. The Duke of Albe- 
 marle, the son of the Regent Duke of York, was beside 
 him, and at his persuasion the King abandoned his first 
 purpose of returning at once, and sent the Earl of Salis- 
 bury to Conway while he himself waited to gather his 
 army and fleet. The six days he proposed to gather them 
 in became sixteen, and the delay proved fatal to his cause. 
 As no news came of Richard the Welshmen who flocked 
 to Salisbury's camp dispersed on Henry's advance to Cbes- 
 ier. Henry was in fact master of the realm at the open- 
 ing of August when Richard at last sailed from Waterford 
 and landed at Milford Haven. 
 
 Every road was blocked, and the news that all was lost 
 told on the thirty thousand men he brought with him. In 
 a single day but six thousand remained, and even these 
 dispersed when it was found that the King had ridden off 
 disguised as a friar to join the force which he believed to 
 be awaiting him in North Wales with Salisbury at its
 
 522 HIST0II\ OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book FV. 
 
 head. He reached Caernarvon only to find this force 
 already disbanded, and throwing himself into the castle 
 dispatched his kinsmen, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, 
 to Chester to negotiate with Henry of Lancaster. But 
 they were detained there while the Earl of Northumber- 
 land pushed forward with a picked body of men, and 
 securing the castles of the coast at last sought an inter- 
 view with Richard at Conway. The King's confidence 
 was still unbroken. He threatened to raise a force of 
 Welshmen and to put Lancaster to death. Deserted as he 
 was indeed, a King was in himself a power, and only the 
 treacherous pledges of the Earl induced him to set aside 
 his plans for a reconciliation to be brought about in Par- 
 liament and to move from Conway on the promise of a 
 conference with Henry at Flint. But he had no sooner 
 reached the town than he found himself surrounded by 
 Lancaster's forces. "I am betrayed," he cried, as the 
 view of his enemies burst on him from the hill ; " there 
 are pennons and banners in the valley." But it was too 
 late for retreat. Richard was seized and brought before 
 his cousin. " I am come before my time," said Lancaster, 
 "but I will show you the reason. Your people, my lord, 
 complain that for the space of twenty years you have 
 ruled them harshly : however if it please God, I will help 
 you to rule them better." "Fair cousin," replied the 
 King, "since it pleases you, it pleases me well." Then, 
 breaking in private into passionate regrets that he had 
 ever spared his cousin's life, he suffered himself to be 
 carried a prisoner along the road to London.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER. 
 
 1399—1423, 
 
 Once safe in the Tower, it was easy to wrest from Rich- 
 ard a resignation of his crown ; and this resignation was 
 solemnly accepted by the Parliament which met at the 
 close of September, 1399. But the resignation was con- 
 firmed by a solemn Act of Deposition. The coronation 
 oath was read, and a long impeachment which stated the 
 breach of the promises made in it was followed by a sol- 
 emn vote of both Houses which removed Richard from the 
 state and authority of King. According to the strict rules 
 of hereditary descent as construed by the feudal law5'ers 
 by an assumed analogy with the rules which governed de- 
 scent of ordinary estates the crown would now have passed 
 to a house which had at an earlier period played a leading 
 part in the revolutions of the Edwards. The great-grand- 
 son of the Mortimer who brought about the deposition of 
 Edward the Second had married the daughter and heiress 
 of Lionel of Clarence, the third son of Edward the Third. 
 The childlessness of Richard and the death of Edward's 
 second son without issue placed Edmund Mortimer, the 
 son of the Earl who had fallen in Ireland, first among the 
 claimants of the crown ; but he was now a child of six 
 years old, the strict rule of hereditary descent had never 
 received any formal recognition in the case of the Crown, 
 and precedent suggested a right of Parliament to choose 
 in such a case a successor among any other members of^ 
 the Royal House. Only one such successor was in fact 
 possible. Rising from his seat and crossing himself, 
 Henry of Lancaster solemnly challenged the crown, " as
 
 624 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV- 
 
 that I am descended by right line of blood coming from 
 the good lord King Henry the Third, and through that 
 right that 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 by default of governance and un- 
 doing of good laws." Whatever defects such a claim 
 might present were more than covered by the solemn rec- 
 ognition of Parliament. The two Archbishops, taking 
 the new sovereign by the hand, seated him upon the 
 throne, and Henry in emphatic words ratified the compact 
 between himself and his people. "Sirs," he said to the 
 prelates, lords, knights, and burgesses gathered round him, 
 " I thank God and you, spiritual and temporal, and all 
 estates of the land ; and do you to wit it is not my will 
 that any man think that by way of conquest I would dis- 
 inherit any of his heritage, franchises, or other rights that 
 he ought to have, nor put him out of the good that he has 
 and has had by the good laws and customs of the realm, 
 except those persons that have been against the good pur^ 
 pose and the common profit of the realm." 
 
 The deposition of a king, the setting aside of one claim^ 
 ant and the elevation of another to the throne, marked the 
 triumph of the English Parliament over the monarchy. 
 The struggle of the Edwards against its gradual advance 
 had culminated in the bold effort of Richard the Second 
 to supersede it by a commission dependent on the Crown. 
 But the House of Lancaster was precluded by its very 
 position from any renewal of the struggle. It was not 
 merely that the exhaustion of the treasury by the war and 
 revolt which followed Henry's accession left him even 
 more than the kings who had gone before in the hands of 
 the Estates; it was that his very right to the Crown lay 
 in an acknowledgment of their highest pretensions. He 
 had been raised to the throne by a Parliamentary revolu- 
 tion. His claim to obedience had throughout to rest on a 
 Parliamentary title. During no period of our early his- 
 tory therefore were the powers of the two Houses so
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 525 
 
 frankly recognized. The tone of Henry the Fourth till 
 the very close of tis reign is that of humble compliance in 
 all but ecclesiastical matters with the prayers of the Par- 
 liament, and even his imperious successor shrank almost 
 with timidity from any conflict with it. But the Crown 
 had been bought by pledges less noble than this. Arundel 
 was not only the representative of constitutional rule; he 
 was also the representative of religious persecution. No 
 prelate had been so bitter a foe of the Lollards, and the 
 support which the Church had given to the recent revolu- 
 tion had no doubt sprung from its belief that a sovereign 
 whom Arundel placed on the throne would deal pitilessly 
 with the growing heresy. The expectations of the clergy 
 were soon realized. In the first Convocation of his reign 
 Henry declared himself the protector of the Church and 
 ordered the prelates to take measures for the suppression 
 of heresy and of the wandering preachers. His declara- 
 tion was but a prelude to the Statute of Heresy which was 
 passed at the opening of 1401. By the provisions of this 
 infamous Act the hindrances which had till now neutral- 
 ized the efforts of the bishops to enforce the common law 
 were utterly taken away. Not only were they permitted 
 to arrest all preachers of heresy, all schoolmasters infected 
 with heretical teaching, all owners and writers of heretical 
 books, and to imprison them even if they recanted at the 
 King's pleasure, but a refusal to abjure or a relapse after 
 abjuration enabled them to hand over the heretic to the 
 civil officers, and by these — so ran the first legal enact- 
 ment of religious bloodshed which defiled our Statute-book 
 — he was to be burned on a high place before the people. 
 The statute was hardly passed when William Sautre be- 
 came its first victim. Sautre, while a parish priest at 
 Lynn, had been cited before the Bishop of Norwich two 
 years before for heresy and forced to recant. But he still 
 continued to preach against the worship of images, against 
 pilgrimages, and against transubstantiation till the Statute 
 of Heresy strengthened Arundel's hands. In February,
 
 626 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 1401, Sautre was brought before the Primate as a relapsed 
 heretic, and on refusing to recant a second time was de- 
 graded from his orders. He was handed to the secular 
 power, and on the issue of a royal writ publicly burned. 
 
 The support of the nobles had been partly won by a hope 
 hardly less fatal to the peace of the realm, the hope of a 
 renewal of the strife with France. The peace of Richard's 
 later years had sprung not merely from the policy of the 
 English King, but from the madness of Charles the Sixth 
 of France. France fell into the hands of its king's uncle, 
 the Duke of Burgundy, and as the Duke was ruler of 
 Flanders and peace with England was a necessity for 
 Flemish industry, his policy went hand in hand with that 
 of Richard. His rival, the King's brother, Lewis, Duke 
 of Orleans, was the head of the French war-party ; and 
 it was with the view of bringing about war that he sup- 
 ported Henry of Lancaster in his exile at the French court. 
 Burgundy on the other hand listened to Richard's denun- 
 ciation of Henry as a traitor, and strove to prevent his 
 departure. But his efforts were in vain, and he had to 
 witness a revolution which hurled Richard from the throne, 
 deprived Isabella of her crown, and restored to power the 
 baronial party of which Gloucester, the advocate of war, 
 had long been the head. The dread of war was increased 
 by a pledge which Henry was said to have given at his 
 coronation that he would not only head an army in its 
 march into France, but that he would march further into 
 France than ever his grandfather had done. The French 
 Court retorted by refusing to acknowledge Henry as King, 
 while the truce concluded with Richard came at his death 
 legally to an end. In spite of this defiance, however. Bur- 
 gundy remained true to the interests of Flanders, and 
 Henry clung to a truce which gave him time to establish 
 his throne. But the influence of the baronial party in 
 England made peace hard to keep ; the Duke of Orleans 
 urged on France to war ; and the hatred of the two peoples 
 broke through the policy of the two governments. Count
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 537 
 
 Waleran of St. Pol, who had married Richard's half- 
 sister, put out to sea with a fleet which swept the east 
 coast and entered the Channel. Pirates from Brittany 
 and Navarre soon swarmed in the narrow seas, and their 
 ravages were paid back by those of pirates from the 
 Cinque Ports. A more formidable trouble broke out in 
 the north. The enmity of France roused as of old the 
 enmity of Scotland; the Scotch King Robert the Third 
 retused to acknowledge Henry, and Scotch freebooters 
 cruised along the northern coast. 
 
 Attack from without woke attack from within the realm. 
 Henry had shown little taste for bloodshed in his conduct 
 of the revolution. Save those of the royal councillors 
 whom he found at Bristol no one had been put to death. 
 Though a deputation of lords with Archbishop Arundel at 
 its head pressed him to take Richard's life, he steadily 
 refused, and kept him a prisoner at Pomfret. The judg- 
 ments against Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel were 
 reversed, but the lords who had appealed the Dake were 
 only punished by the loss of the dignities which they had 
 received as their reward. Richard's brother and nephew 
 by the half-blood, the Dukes of Surrey and Exeter, became 
 again Earls of Kent and Huntingdon. York's son, the 
 Duke of Albemarle, sank once more into Earl of Rutland. 
 Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, lost his new Marquisate of 
 Dorset ; Spenser lost his Earldom of (jloucester. But in 
 spite of a stormy scene among the lords in Parliament 
 Henry refused to exact further punishment; and his real 
 temper was seen in a statute which forbade all such ap- 
 peals and left treason to be dealt with by ordinary process 
 of law. But the times were too rough for mercy such as 
 this. Clouds no sooner gathered round the new King than 
 the degraded lords leagued with the Earl of Salisbury and 
 the deposed Bishop of Carlisle to release Richard and to 
 murder Henry. Betrayed by Rutland in the spring of 
 1401, and threatened by the King's march from London, 
 they fled to Cirencester; but the town was against them,
 
 528 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BoOK IV. 
 
 its burghers killed Kent and Salisbury, and drove out the 
 rest. A terrible retribution followed. Lord Spenser and 
 the Earl of Huntingdon were taken and summaril}^ be- 
 headed; thirty more conspirators fell into the King's 
 hands to meet the same fate. They drew with them in 
 their doom the wretched prisoner in whose name they had 
 risen. A great council held after the suppression of the 
 revolt prayed "that if Richard, the late King, be alive, 
 as some suppose he is, it be ordained that he be well and 
 securely guarded for the safety of the states of the King 
 and kingdom ; but if he be dead, then that he be openly 
 showed to the people that they may have knowledge 
 thereof." The ominous words were soon followed by news 
 of Richard's death in prison. His body was brought to 
 St. Paul's, Henry himself with the princes of the blood 
 royal bearing the pall : and the face was left uncovered to 
 meet rumors that the prisoner had been assassinated by 
 his keeper, Sir Piers Exton. 
 
 In June Henry marched northward to end the trouble 
 from the Scots. With their usual policy the Scottish 
 army under the Duke of Albany withdrew as the English 
 crossed the border, and looked coolly on while Henry in- 
 vested the castle of Edinburgh. The wants of his army 
 forced him in fact to raise the siege; but even success 
 would have been fruitless, for he was recalled by trouble 
 nearer home. Wales was in full revolt. The country 
 had been devoted to Richard ; and so notorious was its dis- 
 affection to the new line that when Henry's son knelt at 
 his father's feet to receive a grant of the Principalit}^ a 
 shrewd bystander murmured, " He must conquer it if he 
 will have it." The death of the fallen King only added 
 to the Welsh disquiet, for in spite of the public exhibition 
 of his body he was believed to be still alive. Some held 
 that he had escaped to Scotland, and an impostor who took 
 his name was long maintained at the Scottish Court. In 
 Wales it was believed that he was still a prisoner in Ches- 
 ter Castle. But the trouble would have died away had it
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 529 
 
 not been raised into revolt by the energy of OwenGlyndwr 
 or Glendower. Owen was a descendant of one of the last 
 native Princes, Llewelyn-ap-Jorwerth, and the lord of 
 considerable estates in Merioneth. He had been squire of 
 the body to Richard the Second, and had clung to him till 
 he was seized at Flint. It was probably his known aver- 
 sion from the revolution which had deposed his master 
 that brought on him the hostility of Lord Grey of Ruthin, 
 the stay of the Lancastrian cause in North Wales; and 
 the same political ground may have existed for the refusal 
 of the Parliament to listen to his prayer for redress and 
 for the restoration of the lands which Grey had seized. 
 But the refusal was embittered by words of insult; when 
 the Bishop of St. Asaph warned them of Owen's power 
 the lords retorted that " they cared not for barefoot knaves." 
 They were soon to be made to care. At the close of 1400 
 Owen rose in revolt, burned the town of Ruthin, and took 
 the title of Prince of Wales. 
 
 His action at once changed the disaffection into a na- 
 tional revolt. His raids on the Marches and his capture 
 of Radnor marked its importance, and Henry marched 
 against him in the summer of 1401. But Glyndwr's post 
 at Corwen defied attack, and the pressure in the north 
 forced the King to march away into Scotland. Henry 
 Percy, who held the castles of North Wales as Constable, 
 was left to suppress the rebellion, but Owen met Percy's 
 arrival by the capture of Conway and the King was forced 
 to hurry fresh forces under his son Henry to the west. 
 The boy was too young as yet to show the military and 
 political ability which was to find its first field in these 
 Welsh campaigns, and his presence did little to stay the 
 growth of revolt. While Owen's lands were being har- 
 ried Owen was stirring the people of Caermarthen into re- 
 bellion and pressing the siege of Abergavenny; nor could 
 the presence of English troops save Shropshire from pillage. 
 Everywhere the Welshmen rose for their "Prince;" the 
 Bards declared his victories to have been foretold by Mer- 
 VOL. I.— 34
 
 630 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 lin ; even the Welsh scholars at Oxford left the University 
 in a body and joined his standard. The castles of Ruthin, 
 Hawarden, and Flint fell into his hands, and with his 
 capture of Conway gave him command of North Wales. 
 The arrival of help from Scotland and the hope of help 
 from France gave fresh vigor to Owen's action, and thougk 
 Percy held his ground stubbornly on the coast and even 
 recovered Conway he at last threw up his command in 
 disgust. A fresh inroad of Henry on his return from 
 Scotland again failed to bring Owen to battle, and the 
 negotiations which he carried on during the following 
 winter were a mere blind to cover preparations for a new 
 attack. So strong had Glyndwr become in 1402 that in 
 June he was able to face an English army in the open field 
 at Brjmglas and to defeat it with a loss of a thousand men. 
 The King again marched to the border to revenge this 
 blow. But the storms which met him as he entered the 
 hills, storms which his archers ascribed to the magic pow- 
 ers of Owen, ruined his army, and he was forced to with' 
 draw as of old. A raid over the northern border distracted 
 the English forces. A Scottish army entered England 
 with the impostor who bore Richard's name, and though 
 it was utterly defeated b}^ Henry Percy in September at 
 Homildon Hill the respite had served Owen well. He sal- 
 lied out from the inaccessible fastnesses in which he had 
 held Henry at bay to win victories which were followed 
 by the adhesion of all North Wales and of great part of 
 South Wales to his cause. 
 
 What gave life to these attacks and conspiracies was 
 the hostility of France. The influence of the Duke of 
 Burgundy was still strong enough to prevent any formal 
 hostilities, but the war party was gaining more and more 
 the ascendant. Its head, the Duke of Orleans, had fanned 
 the growing flame by sending a formal defiance to Henry 
 the Fourth as the murderer of Richard. French knights 
 were among the prisoners whom the Percies took at Homil- 
 don Hill J and it may have been through their intervention
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 531 
 
 that th^Percies themselves were now brought into corre- 
 spondence with the court of France. No house had played 
 a greater part in the overthrow of Richard, or had been 
 more richly rewarded by the new King. But old grudges 
 existed between the house of Percy and the house of Lan- 
 caster. " The Earl of Northumberland had been at bitter 
 variance with John of Gaunt ; and though a common dread 
 of Richard's enmity had thrown the Percies and Henry 
 together the new King and his powerful subjects were soon 
 parted again. Henry had ground indeed for distrust. 
 The death of Richard left the young Mortimer, Earl of 
 March, next claimant in blood of the crown, and the King 
 had shown his sense of this danger by imprisoning the 
 earl and his sisters in the Tower. But this imprisonment 
 made their uncle. Sir Edmund Mortimer, the representa- 
 tive of their house ; and Edfnund withdrew to the Welsh 
 Marches, refusing to own Henry for king. The danger 
 was averted by the luck which threw Sir Edmund as a 
 captive into the hands of Owen Glyndwr in the battle of 
 Brynglas. It was natural that Henry should refuse to 
 allow Mortimer's kinsmen to ransom so formidable an 
 enemy; but among these kinsmen Henry Percy ranked 
 himself through his marriage with Sir Edmund's sister, 
 and the refusal served as a pretext for a final breach with 
 the King. 
 
 Percy had withdrawn from the Welsh war in wrath at 
 the inadequate support which Henry gave him ; and his 
 anger had been increased by a delay in repayment of the 
 sums spent by his house in the contest with Scotland, as 
 well as by the King's demand that he should surrender 
 the Earl of Douglas whom he had taken prisoner at Hom- 
 ildon Hill. He now became the centre of a great conspir- 
 acy to place the Earl of March upon the throne. His 
 father, the Earl of Northumberland, his uncle, Thomas 
 Percy, the Earl of Worcester, joined in the plot. Sir Ed- 
 mund Mortimer negotiated for aid from Owen Glyndwr; 
 the Earl of Douglas threw in his fortunes with the confed-
 
 533 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 erates; and Henry Percy himself crossed to France and 
 obtained promises of support. The war party had now 
 gained the upper hand at the French court; in 1403 prepa- 
 rations were made to attack Calais, and a Breton fleet put 
 to sea. At the news of its presence in the Channel Henry 
 Percy and the Earl of Worcester at once rose in the north 
 and struck across England to join Owen Glyndwr in Wales, 
 while the Earl of Northumberland gathered a second army 
 and advanced more slowly to their support. But Glyndwr 
 was still busy with the siege of Caermarthen, and the King 
 by a hasty march flung himself across the road of the Per- 
 cies as they reached Shrewsbury. On the twenty-third 
 of July a fierce fight ended in the defeat of the rebel force. 
 Henry Percy was 'slain in battle, the Earl of Worcester 
 taken and beheaded ; while Northumberland, who had been 
 delayed by an army under bis rival in the north, Neville, 
 Earl of Westmoreland, was thrown into prison, and only 
 pardoned on his protestations of innocence. The quick, 
 hard blow did its work. The young Earl of March be- 
 trayed the plans of his partisans to purchase pardon. The 
 Breton fleet, which had defeated an English fleet in the 
 Channel and made a descent upon Plymouth, withdrew to 
 its harbors ; and though the Duke of Burgundy was on the 
 point of commencing the siege of Calais the plans of an 
 attack on that town were no more heard of. 
 
 But the difficulty of Wales remained as great as ever. 
 The discouragement of Owen at the failure of the conspir- 
 acy of the Percies was removed by the open aid of the 
 French Court. In July, 1404, the French King in a formal 
 treaty owned Glyndwr as Prince of Wales, and his prom- 
 ises of aid gave fresh heart to the insurgents. What ham- 
 pered Henry's efforts most in meeting this danger was the 
 want of money. At the opening of 1404 the Parliament 
 grudgingly gave a subsidy of a twentieth, but the treas- 
 ury called for fresh supplies in October, and the wearied 
 Commons fell back on their old proposal of a confiscation 
 of Church property. Under the influence of Archbishop
 
 Chap. 5. ] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 533 
 
 _ . 
 
 Arundel the Lords succeeded in quashing the project, and 
 a new subsidy was voted ; but the treasury was soon as 
 empty as before. Treason was still rife; the Duke of 
 York, who had played so conspicuous a part in Richard's 
 day as Earl of Rutland, was sent for a while to the Tower 
 on suspicion of complicity in an attempt of his sister to 
 release the Earl of March ; and Glyndwr remained uncon- 
 querable. 
 
 But fortune was now beginning to turn. The danger 
 from Scotland was suddenly removed. King Robert re- 
 solved to send his son James for training to the court of 
 France, but the boy was driven to the English coast by a 
 storm and Henry refused to release him. Had the Scots 
 been friends, the King jested, they would have sent James 
 to him for education, as he knew the French tongue quite 
 as well as King Charles. Robert died of grief at the news ; 
 and Scotland fell into the hands of his brother, the Duke 
 of Albany, whose one aim was that his nephew should re- 
 main a prisoner. James grew up at the English Court ; 
 and prisoner though he was, the excellence of his training 
 was seen in the poetry and intelligence of his later life. 
 But with its King as a hostage Scotland was no longer to 
 be dreaded as a foe. France too was weakened at this 
 moment; for in 1405 the long smouldering jealousy be- 
 tween the Dukes of Orleans and of Burgundy broke out at 
 last into open strife. The break did little indeed to check 
 the desultory hostilities which were going on. A Breton 
 fleet made descents on Portland and Dartmouth. The 
 Count of Armagnac, the strongest supporter of Orleans and 
 the war part}^, led troops against the frontier of Guienne, 
 But the weakness of France and the exhaustion of its treas- 
 ury prevented any formal denunciation of the truce or dec- 
 laration of war. Though Henry could spare not a soldier 
 for Guienne Armagnac did little hurt. An English fleet 
 repaid the ravages of the Bretons by harrying the coast of 
 Brittany; and the turn of French politics soon gave 
 Frenchmen too much work at home to spare men for work
 
 634 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 abroad. At the close of 1407 the murder of the Duke of 
 Orleans by the order of the Duke of Burgvmdy changed 
 the weak and fitful strife which had been going on into a 
 struggle of the bitterest hate. The Count of Armagnac 
 placed himself at the head of the murdered duke's parti- 
 sans ; and in their furious antagonism Armagnac and Bur- 
 gundian alike sought aid from the English King. 
 
 But the fortune which favored Henry elsewhere was 
 still slow to turn in the West. In the opening of 1405 the 
 King's son, Henry Prince of Wales, had taken the field 
 against Glyndwr. Young as he was, Henry was already 
 a tried soldier. As a boy of thirteen he had headed an 
 incursion into Scotland in the year of his father's accession 
 to the throne. At fifteen he fought in the front of the 
 royal army in the desperate fight at Shrewsbury. Slight 
 and tall in stature as he seemed, he had outgrown the 
 weakness of his earlier years and was vigorous and swift 
 of foot ; his manners were courteous, his air grave and re- 
 served ; and though wild tales ran of revels and riots among 
 his friends, the poets whom he favored and Lydgate whom 
 he set to translate " the drery piteous tale of him of Troy" 
 saw in him a youth " both manful and virtuous." There 
 was little time indeed for mere riot in a life so busy as 
 Henry's, nor were many opportunities for self-indulgence 
 to be found in campaigns against Glyndwr. What fitted 
 the young general of seventeen for the thankless work in 
 Wales was his stern, immovable will. But fortune as 
 yet had few smiles for the King in this quarter, and his 
 constant ill-success continued to wake fresh troubles within 
 England itself. The repulse of the young prince in a 
 spring campaign in 1405 was at once followed by a re- 
 volt in the north. The pardon of Northumberland had 
 left him still a foe; the Earl of Nottingham was son of 
 Henry's opponent, the banished Duke of Norfolk; Scrope, 
 Archbishop of York, was brother of Richard's counsellor, 
 the Earl of W iltshire, who had been beheaded on the sur- 
 render of Bristol. Their rising in May might have proved
 
 CHAP. 5.] THE PARLIAIklENT. 1307—1461. 535 
 
 a serious danger had not the treachery of Ralph Neville, 
 the Earl of Westmoreland, who still remained steady to 
 the Lancastrian cause, secured the arrest of some of its 
 leaders. Scrope and Lord Nottingham were beheaded, 
 while Northumberland and his partisan Lord Bardolf fled 
 into Scotland and from thence to Wales. Succors from 
 France stirred the King to a renewed attack on Glyndwr 
 in November ; but with the same ill-success. Storms and 
 w^ant of food wrecked the English army and forced it to 
 retreat; a year of rest raised Glyndwr to new strength; 
 and when the long promised body of eight thousand French- 
 men joined him in 1407 he ventured even to cross the bor- 
 der and to threaten Worcester. The threat was a vain 
 one and the Welsh army soon withdrew ; but the insult 
 gave fresh heart to' Henry's foes, and in 1408 Northum- 
 berland and Bardolf again appeared in the north. Their 
 overthrow at Bramham Moor put an end to the danger 
 from the Percies; for Northumberland and Bardolf alike 
 fell on the field. But Wales remained as defiant as ever. 
 In 1409 a body of Welshmen poured ravaging into Shrop- 
 shire ; many of the English towns had fallen into Glyn- 
 dwr's hands ; and some of the marcher-lords made private 
 truces with him. 
 
 The weakness which was produced by this ill-success in 
 the West as well as these constant battlings with disaffec- 
 tion within the realm was seen in the attitude of the Lol- 
 lards. Lollardry was far from having been crushed by 
 the Statute of Heresy. The death of the Earl of Salisbury 
 in the first of the revolts against Henry's throne, though 
 his gory head was welcomed into London by a procession 
 of abbots and bishops who went out singing psalms of 
 thanksgiving to meet it, only transferred the leadership of 
 the party to one of the foremost warriors of the time, Sir 
 John Oldcastle. If we believe his opponents, and we have 
 no information about him save from hostile sources, he 
 was of lowly origin, and his rise must have been due to 
 his own capacity and services to the Crown. In his youth
 
 536 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK IV. 
 
 he had listened to the preaching of Wj^clif, and his Lol- 
 lardry — if we may judge from its tone in later years — was 
 a violent fanaticism. But this formed no obstacle to his 
 rise in Richard's reign; his marriage with the heiress of 
 that house made him Lord Cobham ; and the accession of 
 Henry of Lancaster, to whose cause he seems to have clung 
 in these younger days, brought him fairly to the front. 
 His skill in arms found recognition in his appointment as 
 sheriff of Herefordshire and as castellan of Brecknock ; and 
 he was among the leaders who were chosen in later years 
 for service in France. His warlike renown endeared him 
 to the King, and Prince Henry counted him among the 
 most illustrious of his servants. The favor of the royal 
 house was the more notable that Oldcastle was known as 
 " leader and captain" of the Lollards. His Kentish castle 
 of Cowling served as the headquarters of the sect, and 
 their preachers were openly entertained at his houses in 
 London or on the Welsh border. The Convocation of 1413 
 charged him with being " the principal receiver, favorer, 
 protector, and defender of them; and that, especially in 
 the dioceses of London, Rochester, and Hereford, he hath 
 sent out the said Lollards to preach . . . and hath been 
 present at their wicked sermons, grievously punishing with 
 threatenings, terror, and the power of the secular sword 
 such as did withstand them, alleging and affirming among 
 other matters that we, the bishops, had no power to make 
 any such Constitutions" as the Provincial Constitutions in 
 which they had forbidden the preaching of unlicensed 
 preachers. The bold stand of Lord Cobham drew fresh 
 influence from the sanctity of his life. Though the clergy 
 charged him with the foulest heresy, they owned that he 
 shrouded it "under a veil of holiness." What chiefly 
 moved their wrath was that he " armed the hands of lay- 
 men for the spoil of the Church." The phrase seems to 
 hint that Oldcastle was the mover in the repeated attempts 
 of the Commons to supply the needs of the state by a con- 
 fiscation of Church property. In 1404 they prayed that
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 537 
 
 the needs of the kingdom might be defrayed by a confisca- 
 tion of Church lands, aud though this prayer was fiercely 
 met by Archbishop Arundel it was renewed in 1410. The 
 Commons declared as before that bj^ devoting the revenues 
 of the prelates to the service of the state maintenance could 
 be made for fifteen earls, fifteen hundred knights, and six 
 thousand squires, while a hundred hospitals might be es- 
 tablished for the sick and infirm. Such proposals had been 
 commonly made by the baronial party with which the 
 house of Lancaster had in former days been connected, 
 and hostile as they were to the Church as an establishment 
 they had no necessary connection with any hostility to its 
 doctrines. But a direct sympathy with Lollardism was 
 seen in the further proposals of the Commons. They 
 prayed for the abolition of episcopal jurisdiction over the 
 clergy and for a mitigation of the Statute of Heresy. 
 
 But formidable as the movement seemed it found a for- 
 midable opponent. The steady fighting of Prince Henry 
 had at last met the danger from Wales, and Glyndwr, 
 though still unconquered, saw district after district sub- 
 mit again to English rule. From Wales the Prince re- 
 turned to bring his will to bear on England itself. It was 
 through his strenuous opposition that the proposals of the 
 Commons in 1410 were rejected by the Lords. He gave 
 at the same moment a more terrible proof of his loyalty to 
 the Church in personally assisting at the burning of a 
 laj'man, Thomas Badby, for a denial of transubstantiation. 
 The prayers of the sufferer were taken for a recantation, 
 and the Prince ordered the fire to be plucked away. But 
 when the offer of life and a pension failed to break the 
 spirit of the Lollard Henry pitilessly bade him be hurled 
 back to his doom. The Prince was now the virtual ruler 
 of the realm. His father's earlier popularity had disap- 
 peared amid the troubles and heavy taxation of his reign. 
 He was already a victim to the attack of epilepsy which 
 brought him to the grave; and in the opening of 1410 the 
 Parliament called for the appointment of a Continual Coun-
 
 538 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 cil. The Council was appointed, and the Prince placed at 
 its head. His energy was soon seen in a more active in- 
 terposition in the affairs of France. So bitter had the 
 hatred grown between the Burgundian and Armagnac 
 parties that both in turn appealed again to England for 
 lielp. Tlie Burgundian alliance found favor with the 
 Council. In August, 1411, the Duke of Burgundy offered 
 his daughter in marriage to the Prince as the price of 
 English aid, and four thousand men with Lord Cobham 
 among their leaders were sent to join his forces at Paris, 
 Their help enabled Duke John to bring his opponents to 
 battle at St. Cloud, and to win a decisive victor}^ in No- 
 vember. But already the King was showing himself im- 
 patient of the Council's control ; and the Parliament sig- 
 nificantly prayed that " as there had been a great murmur 
 among your people that you have had in your heart a heavy 
 load against some of your lieges come to this present Par- 
 liament," they might be formally declared to be "faithful 
 lieges and servants." The prayer was granted, but in 
 spite of the support which the Houses gave to the Prince, 
 Henry the Fourth was resolute to assert his power. At 
 the close of 1411 he declared his will to stand in as great 
 freedom, prerogative, and franchise as an}'^ of his prede- 
 cessors had done, and annulled on that ground the appoint- 
 ment of the Continual Council. 
 
 The King's blow had been dealt at the instigation of his 
 Queen, and it seems to have been prompted as much by a 
 resolve to change the outer policy which the Prince had 
 adopted as to free himself from the Council. The dismissal 
 of the English troops by John of Burgundy after his victory 
 at St. Cloud had irritated the English Court ; and the Duke 
 of Orleans took advantage of this turn of feeling to offer 
 Catharine, the French King's daughter, in marriage to 
 the Prince, and to promise the restoration of all that Eng- 
 land claimed in Guienne and Poitou. In spite of the efforts 
 of the Prince and the Duke of Burgundy a treaty of alli- 
 ance with Orleans was signed on these terms in May, 1412,
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 539 
 
 • % . 
 
 and a force under the King's second son, the Duke of Clar- 
 ence, disembarked at La Hogue. But the very profusion 
 of the Orleanist offers threw doubt on their sincerity. The 
 Duke was only using the English aid to put a pressure on 
 his antagonist, and its landing in August at once brought 
 John of burgundy to a seeming submission. While Clar- 
 ence penetrated by Normandy and Maine into the Orlean 
 nois and a second English force sailed for Calais, both the 
 French parties joined in pledging their services to King 
 Charles "against his adversary of England." Before this 
 union Clarence was forced in November to accept promise 
 of payment for his men from the Duke of Orleans and to 
 fall back on Bordeaux. The failure no doubt gave fresh 
 strength to Prince Henry. In the opening of 1412 he had 
 been discharged from the Council and Clarence set in his 
 place at its head ; he had been defeated in his attempts to 
 renew the Burgundian alliance, and had striven in vain 
 to hinder Clarence from sailing. The break grew into an 
 open quarrel. Letters were sent into various counties re- 
 futing the charges of the Prince's detractors, and in Sep- 
 tember Henry himself appeared before his father with a 
 crowd of his friends and supporters demanding the punish- 
 ment of those who accused him. The charges made against 
 him were that he sought to bring about the King's re- 
 moval from the throne ; and " the great recourse of people 
 unto him, of which his court was at all times more abundant 
 than his father's," gave color to the accusation. Henry 
 the Fourth owned his belief in these charges, but promised 
 to call a Parliament for his son's vindication; and the 
 Parliament met in the Februarj of 1413. But a new at- 
 tack of epilepsy had weakened the King's strength ; and 
 though galleys were gathered for a Crusade which he had 
 vowed he was too weak to meet the Houses on their as- 
 sembly. If we may trust a charge which was afterward 
 denied, the King's half-brother, Bishop Henry of Win- 
 chester, one of the Beaufort children of John of Gaunt, 
 acting in secret co-operation with the Prince, now brought
 
 540 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV, 
 
 the peers to pray Henry to suffer his son to be crowned in 
 his stead. The King's refusal was the last act of a dying 
 man. Before the end of March he breathed his last in the 
 " Jerusalem Chamber" within the Abbot's house at West- 
 minster ; and the Prince obtained the crown which he had 
 sought. 
 
 The removal of Archbishop Arundel from the Chancel- 
 lorship, which was given to Henry Beaufort of Winches- 
 ter, was among the first acts of Henry the Fifth ; and it is 
 probable that this blow at the great foe of the Lollards gave 
 encouragement to the hopes of Oldcastle. He seized the 
 opportunity of the coronation in April to press his opinions 
 on the young King, though probably rather with a view 
 to the plunder of the Church than to any directly religious 
 end. From the words of the clerical chroniclers it is plain 
 that Henry had no mind as yet for any open strife with 
 either party, and that he quietly put the matter aside. He 
 was in fact busy with foreign affairs. The Duke of Clar- 
 ence was recalled from Bordeaux, and a new truce con- 
 cluded with France. The policy of Henry was clearly to 
 look on for a while at the shifting politics of the distracted 
 kingdom. Soon after his accession another revolution in 
 Paris gave the charge of the mad King Charles, and with 
 it the nominal government of the realm, to the Duke of 
 Orleans; and his cause derived fresh strength from the 
 support of the young Dauphin, who was afterward to play 
 so great a part in the history of France as Charles the 
 Seventh. John of Burgundy withdrew to Flanders, and 
 both parties again sought Henry's aid. But his hands 
 were tied as yet by trouble at home. Oldcastle was far 
 from having abandoned his projects, discouraged as they 
 had been by his master; while the suspicions of Henry's 
 favor to the Lollard cause which could hardly fail to be 
 roused by his favor to the Lollard leader only spurred the 
 bold spirit of Arundel to energetic action. A council of 
 bishops gathered in the summer to denounce Lollardry and 
 at once called on Henry to suffer Oldcastle to be brought
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 541 
 
 « . . 
 
 to justice. The King pleaded for delay in the case of one 
 who was so close a friend, and strove personally to con- 
 vince Lord Cobham of his errors. All however was in 
 vain, and Oldcastle withdrew to his castle of Cowling, 
 while Arundel summoned him before his court and con- 
 victed hiin as a heretic. His open defiance at last forced 
 the King to act. In September a body of royal troops ar- 
 rested Lord Cobham and carried him to the Tower; but 
 his life was still spared, and after a month's confinement 
 his imprisonment was relaxed on his promise of recanta- 
 tion. Cobham however had now resolved on open resist- 
 ance. He broke from the Tower in November, and from 
 his hiding-place organized a vast revolt. At the opening 
 of 1414 a secret order summoned the Lollards to assemble 
 in St. Giles' Fields, outside London. We gather, if not 
 the real aims of the rising, at least the terror it caused, 
 from Henry's statement that its purpose was " to destroy 
 himself, his brothers, and several of the spiritual and tem- 
 poral lords ;" from Cobham's later declarations it is prob- 
 able that the pretext of the rising was to release Richard, 
 whom he asserted to be still alive, and to set him again on 
 the throne. But the vigilance of the young King pre- 
 vented the junction of the Lollards within the city with 
 their confederates without, and these as they appeared at 
 the place of meeting were dispersed by the royal troops. 
 
 The failure of the rising onl}^ increased the rigor of the 
 law. Magistrates were directed to arrest all heretics and 
 hand them over to the bishops; a conviction of heresy was 
 made to entail forfeiture of blood and estate; and the exe- 
 cution of thirty-nine prominent Lollards as traitors gave 
 terrible earnest of the King's resolve to suppress their sect. 
 Oldcastle escaped, and for four years longer strove to rouse 
 revolt after revolt. He was at last captured on the Welsh 
 border and burned as a heretic; but from the moment 
 when his attempt at revolt was crushed in St. Giles' 
 Fields the dread of Lollardry was broken and Henry was 
 free to take a more energetic course of policy on the other
 
 643 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 side the sea. He had already been silently preparing for 
 action by conciliatory measures, by restoring Henry Percy's 
 son to the Earldom of Northumberland, by the release of 
 the Earl of March, and by the solemn burial of Richard 
 the Second at Westminster. The suppression of the Lol- 
 lard revolt was followed by a demand for the restoration 
 of the English possessions in France, and by alliances and 
 preparations for war. Burgundy stood aloof in a sullen 
 neutrality, and the Duke of Orleans, who was now vir- 
 tually ruler of the French kingdom, in vain proposed con- 
 cession after concession. All negotiation indeed broke 
 down when Henry formally put forward his claim on the 
 crown of France. No claim could have been more utterly 
 baseless, for the Parliamentary title by which the House 
 of Lancaster held England could give it no right over 
 France, and the strict law of hereditary succession which 
 Edward asserted could be pleaded, if pleaded at all, only 
 by the House of Mortimer. Not only the claim in- 
 deed, but the very nature of the war itself was wholly 
 different from that of Edward the Third. Edward had 
 been forced into the struggle against his will by the cease- 
 less attacks of France, and his claim of the crown was 
 little but an afterthought to secure the alliance of Flan- 
 ders. The war of Henry on the other hand, though in 
 form a mere renewal of the earlier struggle on the close 
 of the truce made by Richard the Second, was in fact an 
 aggression on the part of a nation tempted by the helpless- 
 ness of its opponent and galled by the memory of former 
 defeat. Its one excuse lay in the attacks which France 
 for the past fifteen years had directed against the Lan- 
 castrian throne, its encouragement of every enemy without 
 and of every traitor within. Henry may fairly have re- 
 garded such a ceaseless hostility, continued even through 
 j^ears of weakness, as forcing him in sheer self-defence to 
 secure his realm against the weightier attack which might 
 be looked for should France recover her strength. 
 
 in the summer of 1415 the King prepared to sail from
 
 CHAf>. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 543 
 
 Southampton, when a plot reminded him of the insecurity 
 of his throne. The Earl of March was faithful : but he 
 was childless, and his claim would pass at his death 
 through a sister who had wedded the Earl of Cambridge, 
 a son of the Duke of York, to her child Richard, the Duke 
 who was to play so great a part in the War of the Roses. 
 It was to secure his boy's claims that the Earl of Cam- 
 bridge seized on the King's departure to conspire with 
 Lord Scrope and Sir Thomas Grey to proclaim the Earl of 
 March King. The plot, however, was discovered and the 
 plotters beheaded before the King sailed in August for the 
 Norman coast. His first exploit was the capture of Har- 
 fleur. Dysentery made havoc in his ranks during the 
 siege, and it was with a mere handful of men that he re- 
 solved to insult the enemy by a daring march like that of 
 Edward upon Calais. The discord, however, on which he 
 probably reckoned for security vanished before the actual 
 appearance of the invaders in the heart of France; and 
 when his weary and half-starved force succeeded in cross- 
 ing the Somme it found sixty thousand Frenchmen en- 
 camped on the field of Agincourt right across its line of 
 march. Their position, flanked on either side by woods, 
 but with a front so narrow that the dense masses were 
 drawn up thirty men deep, though strong for purposes of 
 defence was ill suited for attack ; and the French leaders, 
 warned by the experience of Cregy and Poitiers, resolved 
 to await the English advance. Henry on the other hand 
 had no choice between attack and unconditional surrender. 
 His troops were starving, and the way to Calais la}'- across 
 the French army. But the King's courage rose with the 
 peril. A knight in his train wished that the thousands of 
 stout warriors lying idle that night in England had been 
 standing in his ranks. Henry answered with a burst of 
 scorn. " I would not have a single man more," he replied. 
 " If God give us the victory, it will be plain we owe it to 
 His grace. If not, the fewer we are, the less loss for Eng- 
 land." Starving and sick as they were, the handful of
 
 544 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 men whom he led shared the spirit of their king. As the 
 chill rainy night passed away he drew up his army on the 
 twenty-fifth of October and boldlj^ gave battle. The Eng- 
 lish archers bared their arms and breasts to give fair play 
 to "the crooked stick and the gray goose wing," but for 
 which — as the rhyme ran — " England were but a fling," and 
 with a great shout sprang forward to the attack. The 
 sight of their advance roused the fiery pride of the French ; 
 the wise resolve of their leaders was forgotten, and the 
 dense mass of men-at-arms plunged heavily forward 
 through miry ground on the English front. But at the 
 first sign of movement Henry had halted his line, and fix- 
 ing in the ground the sharpened stakes with which each 
 man was furnished his archers poured their fatal arrow 
 flights into the hostile ranks. The carnage was terrible, 
 for though the desperate charges of the French knighthood 
 at last drove the English archers to the neighboring woods, 
 from the skirt of these woods they were still able to pour 
 their shot into the enemy's flanks, while Henry with the 
 men-at-arms around him flung himself on the French line. 
 In the terrible struggle which followed the King bore off 
 the palm of bravery : he was felled once by a blow from a 
 French mace and the crown of his helmet was cleft by the 
 sword of the Duke of Alengon ; but the enemy was at last 
 broken, and the defeat of the main body of the French 
 was followed by the rout of their reserve. The triumph 
 was more complete, as the odds were even greater, than 
 at Cregy. Eleven thousand Frenchmen lay dead on the 
 field, and more than a hundred princes and great lords 
 were among the fallen. 
 
 The immediate result of the battle of Agincourt was 
 small, for the English army was too exhausted for pursuit, 
 and it made its way to Calais only to return to England. 
 Through 1416 the war was limited to a contest for the 
 command of the Channel, till the increasing bitterness of the 
 strife between the Burgundians and Armagnacs and the 
 consent of John of Burgundy to conclude an alliance en-
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1S07— 1461. 545 
 
 couraged Henry to resume his attempt to recover Nor- 
 mandy. Whatever may have been his aim in this enter- 
 prise — whether it were, as has been suggested, to provide 
 a refuge for his house, should its power be broken in Eng- 
 land, or simply to acquire a command of the seas — the 
 patience and skill with which his object was accomplished 
 raise him high in the rank of military leaders. Disem- 
 barking in July, 1417, with an army of forty thousand 
 men near the mouth of the Touque, he stormed Caen, re- 
 ceived the surrender of Bayeux, reduced Alengon and 
 Falaise, and detaching his brother the Duke of Gloucester 
 in the spring of 1418 to occupy the Cotentin made himself 
 master of Avranches and Domfront. With Lower Nor- 
 mandy wholly in his hands, he advanced upon Evreux, 
 captured Louviers, and seizing Pont de I'Arche, threw his 
 troops across the Seine. The end of these masterly move- 
 ments was now revealed. Rouen was at this time the 
 largest and wealthiest of the towns of France ; its walls 
 were defended by a powerful artillery ; Alan Blanch ard, 
 a brave and resolute patriot, infused the fire of his own 
 temper into the vast population ; and the garrison, already 
 strong, was backed by fifteen thousand citizens in arms. 
 But the genius of Henry was more than equal to the diflS- 
 culties with which he had to deal. He had secured him- 
 self from an attack on his rear by the reduction of Lower 
 Normandy, his earlier occupation of Harfleur severed the 
 town from the sea, and his conquest of Pont de I'Arche 
 cut it off from relief on the side of Paris. Slowly but 
 steadily the King drew his lines of investment round the 
 doomed city ; a flotilla was brought up from Harfleur, a 
 bridge of boats thrown over the Seine above the town, the 
 deep trenches of the besiegers protected by posts, and the 
 desperate sallies of the garrison stubbornly beaten back. 
 For six months Rouen held resolutel3''out, but famine told 
 fast on the vast throng of country folk who had taken 
 refuge within its walls. Twelve thousand rf these were 
 at last thrust out of the city gates, but the c:-)ld policy of 
 Vol, I.-35.
 
 5iG HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 the conqueror refused them passage, and they perished 
 between the trenches and the walls. In the hour of their 
 agony women gave birth to infants, but even the new-born 
 babes which were drawn up in baskets to receive baptism 
 were lowered again to die on their mothers' breasts. It 
 was little better within the town itself. As winter drew 
 on one-half of the population wasted away. " War," said 
 the terrible King, "has three handmaidens ever waiting 
 on her, Fire, Blood, and Famine, and I have chosen the 
 meekest maid of the three." But his demand of uncondi- 
 tional surrender nerved the citizens to a resolve of despair ; 
 they determined to lire the city and fling themselves in a 
 mass on the English lines; and Henry, fearful lest his 
 prize should escape him at the last, was driven to offer 
 terms. Those who rejected a foreign yoke were suffered 
 to leave the city, but his vengeance reserved its victim in 
 Alan Blanchard, and the brave patriot was at Henry's 
 orders put to death in cold blood. 
 
 A few sieges completed the reduction of Normandy. 
 The King's designs were still limited to the acquisition of 
 that province ; and pausing in his career of conquest, he 
 strove to win its loyalty by a remission of taxation and a 
 redress of grievances, and to seal its possession by a for- 
 mal peace with the French Crown. The conferences, 
 however, which were held for this purpose at Pontoise in 
 1419 failed through the temjDorary reconciliation of the 
 French factions, while the length and expense of the war 
 began to rouse remonstrance and discontent at home. The 
 King's difficulties were at their height when the assassina- 
 tion of John of Burgundy at Montereau in the very pres- 
 ence of the Dauphin with whom he had come to hold 
 conference rekindled the fires of civil strife. The whole 
 Burgundian party with the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip 
 the Good, at its head flung itself in a wild thirst for re- 
 venge into Henry's hands. The mad King, Charles the 
 Sixth, with his Queen and daughters were in Philip's 
 power J and in his resolve to exclude the Dauphin from
 
 Chap. 5.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 547 
 
 the throne the Duke stooped to buy English aid bj^ giving 
 Catharine, the eldest of the French princesses, in marriage 
 to Henry, by conferring on him the Regency during the 
 life of Charles, and recognizing his succession to the crown 
 at that sovereign's death. A treaty which embodied these 
 terms was solemnly ratified by Charles himself in a con- 
 ference at Troyes in May, 1420; and Henry, who in his 
 new capacity of Regent undertook to conquer in the name 
 of his father-in-law the territory held by the Dauphin, re- 
 duced the towns of the Upper Seine and at Christmas en- 
 tered Paris in triumph side by side with the King. The 
 States-General of the realm were solemnly convened to the 
 capital; and strange as the provisions of the Treaty of 
 Troj'es must have seemed they were confirmed without a 
 murmur. Henry was formally recognized as the future 
 sovereign of France. A defeat of his brother Clarence at 
 Bauge in Anjou in the spring of 1421 called him back to 
 the war. His reappearance in the field was marked by 
 the capture of Dreux, and a repulse before Orleans was 
 redeemed in the summer of 1422 by his success in the long 
 and obstinate siege of Meaux. At no time had the for- 
 tunes of Henry reached a higher pitch than at the moment 
 wnen he felt the touch of death. In the month which fol- 
 lowed the surrender of Meaux he fell ill at Corbeuil; the 
 rapidity of his disease baJGfled the skill of the physicians; 
 and at the close of August, with a strangely characteristic 
 regret that he had not lived to achieve the conquest of 
 Jerusalem, the great Conqueror passed away.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 
 1422—1461. 
 
 At the moment when death so suddenly stayed his course 
 the greatness of Henry the Fifth had reached its highest 
 point. In England his victories had hushed the last mur- 
 murs of disaffection. The death of the Earl of Cambridge, 
 the childhood of his son, removed all danger from the 
 claims of the house of York. The ruin of Lord Cobham, 
 the formal condemnation of Wyclif's doctrines in the 
 Council of Constance, broke the political and the religious 
 strength of Lollardry. Henry had won the Church by his 
 orthodoxy, the nobles by his warlike prowess, the whole 
 people by his revival of the glories of Cregy and Poitiers. 
 In France his cool policy had transformed him from a 
 foreign conqueror into a legal heir to the crown. The 
 King was in his hands, the Queen devoted to his cause, 
 the Duke of Burgundy was his ally, his title of Regent 
 and of successor to the throne rested on the formal recog- 
 nition of the estates of the realm. Although southern 
 France still clung to the Dauphin, the progress of Henry 
 to the very moment of his death promised a speedy mas- 
 tery of the whole country. His European position was a 
 commanding one. Lord of the two great western king- 
 doms, he was linked by close ties of blood with the royal 
 lines of Portugal and Castille; and his restless activity 
 showed itself in his efforts to procure the adoption of his 
 brother John as her successor by the Queen of Naples and 
 in the marriage of a younger brother, Humphrey, with Jac- 
 queline, the Countess of Holland and Hainault. Dreams 
 of a vaster enterprise filled the soul of the great conqueror
 
 Chap. 6.5 THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 549 
 
 himself ; he loved to read the story of Godfrey of Bouillon 
 and cherished the hope of a crusade which should beat 
 back the Ottoman and again rescue the Holy Land from 
 heathen hands. Such a crusade might still have saved 
 Constantinople, and averted from Europe the danger which 
 threatened it through the century that followed the fall of 
 the imperial city. Nor was the enterprise a dream in the 
 hands of the cool, practical warrior and ruler of whom a 
 contemporary could say " he transacts all his affairs him- 
 self, he considers well before he undertakes them, he never 
 does anything fruitlessly." 
 
 But the hopes of far-off conquests found a sudden close 
 in Henry's death. Jlis son, Henry the Sixth of England, 
 was a child of but nine months old : and though he was 
 peacefully recognized as King in his English realm and as 
 heir to the throne in the realm of France his position was 
 a very different one from his father's. The death of King 
 Charles indeed, two months after that of his son-in-law, 
 did little to weaken it ; and at first nothing seemed lost. 
 The Dauphin at once proclaimed himself Charles the Sev- 
 enth of France : but Henry was owned as Sovereign over 
 the whole of the territory which Charles had actually ruled ; 
 and the incursions which the partisans of Charles, now 
 reinforced by Lombard soldiers from the Milanese and by 
 four thousand Scots under the Earl of Douglas, made with 
 fresh vigor across the Loire were easily repulsed by Duke 
 John of Bedford, the late King's brother, who had been 
 named in his will Regent of France. In genius for war 
 as in political capacity John was hardly inferior to Henry 
 himself. Drawing closer his alliance with the Duke of 
 Burgundy by marriage with that prince's sister, and hold- 
 ing that of Brittany by a patient diplomacy, he completed 
 the conquest of Northern France, secured his communica- 
 tions with Normandy by the capture of Meulan, and made 
 himself master of the line of the Yonne by a victory near 
 Auxerre. In 1424 the Constable of Buchan pushed from 
 the Loire to the very borders of Normandy to arrest his
 
 ^^0 UlSTi^lJY OK TUK KXOI.Ii^n rKOri.R IIUvik iv. 
 
 jM\>g»\v:is, and nttiU'ktHl tho Kiij^lish ;vnu\ .it N'onunul. Init 
 e» rt^jnilso hjvrtilv Uvss di^nstroxis than that of Ai;inoo\nt Kt t 
 a t.hir\\ of Xho Frtxnoh ku\i;hthiH>il on tho tioM : and [\\o 
 lu>i;vnt \va?4 p\v]vvnni>: to ol^^AS tho l.oiiv for a t\nal st.nig- 
 glo with " tho Kiuj;- of Houri;vs" as tho Kt\i;h:<h in nuvkory 
 oalUni OharhNs tho Sovonth w hon his oaiivr of viotovv was 
 Uiwkon hv tJ\n)hU\s at hinno. 
 
 In Rnj?lanil tho l^«\noastrian tlnxuio was still too nowly 
 «KstaWishiHi to rtMnain nnshakoix bv tl\o suiH.vssii\u of a ohiUl 
 of nii\o n\oi\ths olil. Ki>r was tho yoinigt^r brv^thor of Honry 
 tlio Fifth, I'^uko llmnphrtw of (.^loiuvstor. whom tho lato 
 King's will luunoil as Kogtxnt of tho ivahn. a nuvii of tho 
 sainoi i\o\\lo tomjvr as tho Puko of l^oilfoM. Intollootually 
 the> iS^irt> ccf IhnnjUiivy is tvnie* of ojitrtuiu^ intoivst. for he 
 ia thd first I2i^glislunai\ in whom wo oan trao© tho faint 
 int^noni\> of that rtwivjU ivf knowUn^gt^ which was to bring 
 alx>nt tiu> iwminjj rt>^\asoojuH> of tho wtNstorn world . \ \ tnn- 
 j^hivy was i\ot nu>rt>ly a jvU.rwn of jwts aiul nion of lot tors, 
 of Lyiigat*:> and William of Worooistt^y and AbKn \Vhot« 
 Iiamst»><lt> of St, AUv»i*s, as his bn>thoT and othor j^riuotvj 
 erf the* day h^ld l[>e«t\u, hut his p)tr\\nagt> seems to h i\o 
 gjarnng f i\>m a gvmnno intorost in hxtrnini^ itseJf. Ho w.'js 
 a BOiilons eolltvtor of Kx>ks and was ablo to bot^noath io 
 tho VniYorsitv i>f Oxfortl a library of a hnndrxxl auvl tliirtr 
 Yolnmos. A gift of Kv^ks indiHxi w.as a passjx^rt to his 
 favcwr, and Ivforo the title of each volmno ho jH\ssi>sstHl tho 
 l^nko wrvMo wonla whioh cvsj^rossotl his love i>f thoni. 
 **mo\m bita^ mi^ndain," "my worldly gvx^dsT lAdgatd 
 tells ns how "noiwitbsti\nding his sfato and digi\>to his 
 coragt> noYordoth ap^vvllo to studio in Kv>ks of antiquitio.*' 
 His studios di\>w lnn\ to tho rt^vival «.xf classic learning 
 which was l>oooming ev j>i»ssit\u aci\\ss tho Alj«. Ouo 
 wandering selu>ljvr fiom Forli, who tvx^k tho ixxm^xnis 
 name of Titus Livins and who wrote at his i>x]\it\st the 
 biogm|>l\v of Honry tho Fifth. Hnn\phrt\v made his ivurt 
 poot and on^tor. The Dnko pn^KUxly aidtxl Poggio l^^ac- 
 eioliui in his Si\'vrch for olassical inniuiscripts when btik
 
 CilAI'. «.] 'IJJK J'AHIJAMK.'.T. i:{07 -HOI. 651 
 
 viHitocJ KjiglufifJ in l4'/iO. lj<:<){r.u(\<) An-.l'mu. <,ik: <A i\\<i 
 HcA\<)\nVH who ^?ii,h(;nj<J alioul CoHffj'* '1'^ Mfi'lioi, <\<:<\\<:iiUul 
 to liif/i ;i trariHlatio/i of Ux; I'oUUc:'. <>\ Ari;;t/jt.l<:, ;in'l wli<-.n 
 unolJjf;/- Italiufi Hoholur KOfjl, \i\ui a J'j;i;.^;n<ijf. of ;i \.r,ut\\\;i- 
 tion ol' J'I;i.1o'h HcpuUlic tlio Ouk*; wrolo 1.o h'^;.^ \\\n\ f,o ;',(:nrj 
 tJio njHt. Jiiii wiUi J1,H lovo of loan/if)^ ilnfnfjlin;/ ';ofn- 
 binwl tJjo ntHfJc'HHnoHri, fJjo ironjoralily, Uj<; hcIII Jj, I>ou;j'1- 
 
 1<;HH ;ifnf>if.ir;;j wtlif:}j l'M',\.V\Xi'AAitV/AiA tli<: ;i;^'; r^f Ui<; Ji'-.f),) ■;- 
 
 <<r)'' Mirt lif(; waH Hulljod by HO/iHij;ii <;/';'•.•,;•:'■.•, In . ;'i<;'.'l 
 of |>owor nJiook }iiH n<;j<})<;w'H Uuonr;. ;>. ijU.<;jJy w;j, ■. }i') 
 alr<;;i.']y <JiMiruHf,<;fJ Ui;i.f U)(; );it,(; Kifjj^'i-; jj';;;im;i.f,iofj of l/j/n 
 an lv<;j<<;nf, w;i,h H';f, ;i.'-;)'i<: \)-j Uj<; roy;),l (Jou/i'-il ;)/)'! Ijo vv;!.;', 
 HufT"*;/'';'! orjiy f,o (>r<;,-:i'i<; ;i,1, ili; 'i':Ii lj(;r;),f,iorj:'; wi'Ij U)<-, n'lun 
 nal f.it.l'; of J'rol<-';f or 'luri/j;,; li'-'ifofi ';•: ;jJ/,' ti' > Tli'-, /f:;).! 
 dirof.'tion of ;i,ff;).ir!i f'Jl into fjii; Ij.i./j'i-, of )jj-, ujj':!';. if(;ijry 
 Boaufort, ffio fiJHhop of VVifjol)<5T>t/<5r, a l<;j.^jfifna.t/;<j ;-.';ij of 
 Jolirj of (^iauiit hy liin rnirif,n;HH fJatfiarifjo Swynfor'] 
 
 'J'wo yoarn of ij-;<-l<--:-;of)po;-if,iofi 'Ji-;f^ij:-;f';'J Oi<; I)(ik<; v/it.h 
 thi.H nouiifjaJ l'r'>f,';'tof -fjlj;, ;i.fj'J i// 11/.) Ii<; I'ft, f.)i<; /•<;;));/i 
 to pUKh hJH fortunnH in tho .V^thm'lawlw. .ifv/juoli//'?, tfj<» 
 r3auf^})t/;r ;iii'i }j<iJr«HH of WiJJJ-'ifn, '"'ounl of JfoJI.ir.'l ;in'l 
 Ifairjault, ha<i oni^ltinlly wc/itU-.'l .I'Ani. l)nU<: of iir.if/.-i/jt ; 
 Ijijf. ;iff.':;- a fow y<;arH of Hlrifo -Ijo Ij.i'1 j^rocur*;'] a fjivor';*) 
 froin ooo of t.}j«} i.\i!f-<: cl-.unr.niy- v/Ijo nov/ rjinpiif/jfj U/o 
 Papacy, find ;i.t, f.h'; 'lo -o of H'nry tjjt; j-'iffii'K r<;jj^n f-;}io 
 ha^l HOW^rJii ;Jj';lt':r jrj ]'irif.W;i.fi'J. At, })):•; f^rolf/'tr'H d'v'it.h 
 t}iO Ouk'; of f/lou''': J^-f ;i,voy/<;'J }ji'. in.i! ; i:>y<: v/jth h(:/ .-m'i 
 adopt/;'] }jf;r fj-'tir/j:-; ;!■, }ji-, ov/n. To - uj>[/0.' t, tljt-ni irj ;)rr/i:-) 
 howov*;/-, ■//.I •. to -'it •..),»/; i'}/jJip of j^jr^fijfj'ly, who v/fj;'. -'il- 
 T<:w]y ]</jkiir^ i'ii.'/h.i(i to tij<; iij}j<:nf,an'><; of hi'- rid Id I'-,:-.:', 
 n(;p}iow, tijo i>>'jko of lU-ixl/Ujii; and aH ifc; alJianc'; v/jt.h 
 }>ijrj^undy waH IIjo rn;jin Btr<;nj<f,}i of thf; Knglinh <-nu¥/". in 
 Vviiuc/',, n<;it,h<;r i><;dford, who h;<d h}iowji hJH h<-.:j' ", of it.H 
 vahj'j hy a rnarriaj^o with thf; hnka^H HiHUfr^ nor yix: Erii^- 
 liwh council wcrf; likely t/> Kup[>'>rt TWHiHnrttH v/}jif;fi would 
 irnj-Kiril or wcakf;n if.. Sucli c/junidc-ridiOJir^., hov/o'vcr, h;vl 
 littlo w«;ight witij if iirnjJjn;y ; ;ifjd in '';ct/>«l^;r, \iVA^\it', H<;t
 
 552 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Boob. IV. 
 
 sail for Calais without their knowledge with a body of five 
 thousand men. In a few months he succeeded in restor- 
 ing Hainault to Jacqueline, and Philip at once grew luke- 
 warm in his adherence to the English cause. Though 
 Bedford's efforts prevented any final break, the Duke with- 
 drew his forces from France to aid John of Brabant in the 
 recovery of Hainault and Holland. Gloucester challenged 
 Philip to decide their claims by single combat. But the 
 enterprise was abandoned as hastily as it had been begun. 
 The Duke of Gloucester was already disgusted with Jac- 
 queline and enamored of a lady in her suite, Eleanor, the 
 daughter of Lord Cobham ; and in the summer of 1425 he 
 suddenly returned with her to England and left his wife 
 to defend herself as she might. 
 
 What really called him back was more than his passion 
 for Eleanor Cobham or the natural versatility of his tem- 
 per; it was the advance of a rival in England to further 
 power over the realm. This was his uncle, Henry Beau- 
 fort, Bishop of Winchester. The bishop had already played 
 a leading political part. He was charged with having 
 spurred Henry the Fifth to the ambitious demands of 
 power which he made during his father's lifetime ; he be- 
 came chancellor on his accession; and at his death the 
 king left him guardian of the person of his boy. He 
 looked on Gloucester's ambition as a danger to his charge, 
 withstood his recognition as Regent, and remained at the 
 head of the Council that reduced his office of Protector to 
 a name. The Duke's absence in Hainault gave fresh 
 strength to his opponent : and the nomination of the Bishop 
 to the chancellorship marked him out as the virtual ruler 
 of the realm. On the news of this appointment Gloucester 
 hurried back to accept what he looked on as a challenge to 
 open strife. The Londoners rose in his name to attack 
 Beaufort's palace in Southwark, and at the close of 1425 
 Bedford had to quit his work in France to appease the 
 strife. In the following year Gloucester laid a formal Dill 
 of accusation against the Bishop before the Parliament,
 
 €hap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 553 
 
 hut its rejection forced him to a show of reconciliation, 
 and Bedford was able to return to France. Hardly was 
 he gone, however, when the quarrel began anew. Hum- 
 phrey found a fresh weapon against Beaufort in his accept- 
 ance of the dignity of a Cardinal and of a Papal Legate in 
 England; and the jealousy which this step aroused drove 
 the Bishop to withdraw for a while from the Council and 
 to give place to his unscrupulous opponent. 
 
 Beaufort possessed an administrative abilit}'', the loss of 
 which was a heavy blow to the struggling Regent over 
 sea, where Humphrey's restless ambition had already par- 
 alyzed Bedford's efforts. Much of his strength rested on 
 his Burgundian ally, and the force of Burgundy was drawn 
 to other quarters. Though Hainault had been easily won 
 back on Gloucester's retreat and Jacqueline taken prisoner, 
 her escape from prison enabled her to hold Holland for 
 three years against the forces of the Duke of Brabant and 
 after his death against those of the Duke of Burgund}' to 
 whom he bequeathed his dominions. The political strife 
 in England itself was still more fatal in diverting the sup- 
 plies of men and money which were needful for a vigorous 
 prosecution of the war. To maintain even the handful of 
 forces left to him Bedford was driven to have recourse to 
 mere forays which did little but increase the general mis- 
 er}'. The north of France indeed was being fast reduced 
 to a desert by the bands of marauders which traversed it. 
 The husbandmen fled for refuge to the towns till these in 
 fear of famine shut their gates against them. Then in 
 their despair they threw themselves into the woods and 
 became brigands in their turn. So terrible was the devas- 
 tation that two hostile bodies of troops failed at one time 
 even to find one another in the desolate Beauce. Misery 
 and disease killed a hundred thousand people in Paris 
 alone. At last the cessation of the war in Holland and the 
 temporary lull of strife in England enabled the Regent to 
 take up again his long interrupted advance upon the South. 
 Orleans was the key to the Loire ; and its reduction would
 
 654 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 throw open Bourges where Charles held liis court. Bed- 
 ford's resources indeed were still inadequate for such a 
 siege ; and though the arrival of reinforcements from Eng- 
 land under the Earl of Salisbury enabled him to invest it 
 in October, 1428, with ten thousand men, the fact that so 
 small a force could undertake the siege of such a town as 
 Orleans shows at once the exhaustion of England and the 
 terror which still hung over France. As the siege went 
 on, however, even these numbers were reduced. A new fit 
 of jealousy on the part of the Duke of Burgundy brought 
 about a recall of his soldiers from the siege, and after their 
 withdrawal only three thousand Englishmen remained in 
 the trenches. But the long series of English victories had 
 so demoralized the French soldiery that in February, 1429, 
 a mere detachment of archers under Sir John Fastolfe re- 
 pulsed a whole army in what was called the " Battle of the 
 Herrings" from the convoy of provisions which the vic- 
 tors brought in triumph into the camp before Orleans. 
 Though the town swarmed with men-at-arms not a single 
 sally was ventured on through the six months' siege, and 
 Charles the Seventh did nothing for its aid but shut him- 
 self up in Chinon and weep helplessly. 
 
 But the success of this handful of besiegers rested wholly 
 on the spell of terror which had been cast over France, 
 and at this moment the appearance of a peasant maiden 
 broke the spell. Jeanne Dare was the child of a laborer 
 of Domremy, a little village in the neighborhood of Vau- 
 couleurs on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just 
 without the cottage where she was born began the great 
 woods of the Vosges where the children of Domremy drank 
 in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, 
 hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees, and sang 
 songs to the " good people" who might not drink of the 
 fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; 
 its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish 
 call. But at home men saw nothing in her but " a good 
 girl, simple and pleasant in her ways," spinning and sew-
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 555 
 
 mg by her mother's side while the other girls went to the 
 fields, tender to the poor and sick, fond of church, and 
 listening to the church-bell with a dreamy passion of de- 
 light which never left her. This quiet life was broken by 
 the storm of war as it at last came home to Domremy. As 
 the outcasts and wounded passed by the little village the 
 3'oung peasant girl gave them her bed and nursed them in 
 their sickness. Her whole nature summed itself up in one 
 absorbing passion: she "had pitj^," to use the phrase for- 
 ever on her lip, "on the fair realm of France." As her 
 passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from 
 the Lorraine border should save the land ; she saw visions ; 
 St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, 
 and bade her go to the help of the King and restore to him 
 his realm. " Messire, " answered the girl, "I am but a 
 poor maiden ; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to 
 lead men-at-arms." The archangel returned to give her 
 courage, and to tell her of " the pity" that there was in 
 heaven for the fair reahn of France. The girl wept and 
 longed that the angels who appeared to her would carry 
 her away, but her mission was clear. It was in vain that 
 her father when he heard her purpose swore to drown her 
 ere she should go to the field with men-at-arms. It was 
 in vain that the priest, the wise people of the village, the 
 captain of Vaucouleurs, doubted and refused to aid her. 
 '' I must go to the King," persisted the peasant girl, " even 
 if I wear my limbs to the very knees." " I had far rather 
 rest and spin by mj^ mother's side," she pleaded with a 
 touching pathos, " for this is no work of my choosing, but 
 I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it." "And who," 
 they asked, "is your Lord?" "He is God." Words such 
 as these touched the rough captain at last : he took Jeanne 
 by the hand and swore to lead her to the King. She 
 reached Chinon in the opening of March, but here too she 
 found hesitation and doubt. The theologians proved from 
 their books that thoy ought not to believe her. " There is 
 more in God's book than in yours," Jeanne answered sim-
 
 656 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 ply. At last Charles himself received her in the midst of 
 a throng of nobles and soldiers. "Gentle Dauphin," said 
 the girl, " my name is Jeanne the Maid. The Heavenly 
 King sends me to tell you that you shall be anointed and 
 crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieuten- 
 ant of the Heavenly King who is the King of France." 
 
 Orleans had already been driven by famine to offers of 
 surrender when Jeanne appeared in the French court, and 
 a force was gathering under the Count of Dunois at Blois 
 for a final effort at its relief. It was at the head of this 
 force that Jeanne placed herself. The girl was in her 
 eighteenth year, tall, finely formed, with all the vigor and 
 activity of her peasant rearing, able to stay from dawn to 
 nightfall on horseback without meat or drink. As she 
 mounted her charger, clad in white armor from head to 
 foot, with a great white banner studded with fleur-de-lys 
 waving over her head, she seemed " a thing wholly divine, 
 whether to see or hear." The ten thousand men-at-arms 
 who followed her from Blois, rough plunderers whose only 
 prayer was that of La Hire, " Sire Dieu, I pray you to do 
 for La Hire what La Hire would do for you, were you cap- 
 tain-at-arms and he God," left off their oaths and foul liv- 
 ing at her word and gathered round the altars on their 
 march. Her shrewd peasant humor helped her to manage 
 the wild soldiery, and her followers laughed over their 
 camp-fires at an old warrior who had been so puzzled by 
 her prohibition of oaths that she suffered him still to swear 
 by his baton. For in the midst of her enthusiasm her 
 good sense never left her. The people crowded round her 
 as she rode along, praying her to work miracles, and bring- 
 ing crosses and chaplets to be blest by her touch. " Touch 
 them yourself," she said to an old Dame Margaret; "your 
 touch will be just as good as mine." But her faith in her 
 mission remained as firm as ever. " The Maid prays and 
 requires you," she wrote to Bedford, "to work no more 
 distraction in France but to come in her company to rescue 
 \he Holy Sepulchre from the Turk." "I bring you," she
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 557 
 
 told Dunois when he sallied out of Orleans to meet her 
 after her two days' march from Blois, " I bring you the 
 best aid ever sent to any one, the aid of the King of 
 Heaven. " The besiegers looked on overawed as she en- 
 tered Orleans, and riding round the walls, bade the people 
 shake off their fear of the forts which surrounded them. 
 Her enthusiasm drove the hesitating generals to engage 
 the handful of besiegers, and the enormous disproportion 
 of forces at once made itself felt. Fort after fort was taken 
 till only the strongest remained, and then the council of 
 war resolved to adjourn the attack. "You have taken 
 your counsel," replied Jeanne, "and I take mine." Plac- 
 ing herself at the head of the men-at-arms, she ordered the 
 gates to be thrown open, and led them against the fort. 
 Few as they were, the English fought desperately, and the 
 Maid, who had fallen wounded while endeavoring to scale 
 its walls, was borne into a vineyard, while Dunois sounded 
 the retreat. " Wait a while !" the girl imperiously pleaded, 
 " eat and drink ! so soon as my standard touches the wall 
 you shall enter the fort." It touched, and the assailants 
 burst in. On the next day the siege was abandoned, and 
 on the eighth of May the force which had conducted it 
 withdrew in good order to the north. 
 
 In the midst of her triumph Jeanne still remained the 
 pure, tender-hearted peasant girl of the Vosges. Her first 
 visit as she entered Orleans was to the great church, and 
 there, as she knelt at mass, she wept in such a passion of 
 devotion that " all the people wept with her. " Her tears 
 burst forth afresh at her first sight of bloodshed and of the 
 corpses strewn over the battle-field. She grew frightened 
 at her first wound, and only threw off the touch of womanly 
 fear when she heard the signal for retreat. Yet more 
 womanly was the purity with which she passed through 
 the brutal warriors of a mediaeval camp. It was her care 
 for her honor that led her to clothe herself in a soldier's 
 dress. She wept hot tears when told of the foul taunts of 
 the English, and called passionately on God to witness her
 
 558 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book TV. 
 
 chastity. "Yield thee, yield thee, Glasdale," she cried to 
 the English warrior whose insults had been foulest as he 
 fell wounded at her feet, " you called me harlot ! I have 
 great pit}^ on your soul." But all thought of herself was 
 lost in the thought of her mission. It was in vain that 
 the French generals strove to remain on the Loire. Jeanne 
 was resolute to complete her task, and while the English 
 remained panic-stricken around Paris she brought Charles 
 to march upon Rheims, the old crowning-place of the 
 Kings of France. Troyes and Chalons submitted as she 
 reached them, Rheims drove out the English garrison and 
 threw open her gates to the king. 
 
 With his coronation the Maid felt her errand to be over, 
 "O gentle King, the pleasure of God is done," she cried, 
 as she flung herself at the feet of Charles and asked leave 
 to go home. " Would it were His good will," she pleaded 
 with the Archbishop as he forced her to remain, " that I 
 might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and 
 my brothers : they would be so glad to see me again !" But 
 the policy of the French Court detained her while the 
 cities of the North of France opened their gates to the 
 newly-consecrated King. Bedford however, who had been 
 left without money or men, had now received reinforce- 
 ments. Excluded as Cardinal Beaufort had been from the 
 Council by Gloucester's intrigues, he poured his wealth 
 without stint into the exhausted treasury till his loans to 
 the Crown reached the sum of half-a-million ; and at this 
 crisis he unscrupulously diverted an army which he had 
 levied at his own cost for a crusade against the Hussites 
 in Bohemia to his nephew's aid. The tide of success 
 turned again. Charles, after a repulse before the walls 
 of Paris, fell back behind the Loire ; while the towns on 
 the Oise submitted anew to the Duke of Burgundy, whose 
 more active aid Bedford had bought by the cession of 
 Champagne. In the struggle against Duke Philip Jeanne 
 fought with her usual bravery but with the fatal conscious- 
 ness that her mission was at an end, and during the de-
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 559 
 
 fence of Compiegne in the May of 1430 she fell into the 
 power of the Bastard of Vendome, to be sold by her captor 
 into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy and by the Duke 
 into the hands of the English. To the English her tri- 
 umphs were victories of sorcery, and after a year's im- 
 prisonment she was brought to trial on a charge of heresy 
 before an ecclesiastical court with the Bishop of Beauvais 
 at its head. 
 
 Throughout the long process which followed every art 
 was used to entangle her in her talk. But the simple 
 shrewdness of the peasant girl foiled the efforts of her 
 judges. " Do you believe," they asked, " that you are in a 
 state of grace?" ''If I am not," she replied, " God will 
 put me in it. If I am, God will keep me in it." Her 
 capture, they argued, showed that God had forsaken her, 
 " Since it has pleased God that I should be taken," she an- 
 swered meekly, "it is for the best." "Will you submit," 
 they demanded at last, " to the judgment of the Church 
 Militant?" " I have come to the King of France," Jeanne 
 replied, " by commission from God and from the Church 
 Triumphant above : to that Church I submit." " I had far 
 rather die," she ended passionately, "than renounce what 
 I have done by my Lord's command." They deprived her 
 of mass. " Our Lord can make me hear it without your 
 aid," she said, weeping. "Do your voices," asked the 
 judges, " forbid you to submit to the Church and the Pope'?" 
 "Ah, no! our Lord first served." Sick, and deprived of 
 all religious aid, it was no wonder that as the long trial 
 dragged on and question followed question Jeanne's firm- 
 ness wavered. On the charge of sorcery and diabolical 
 possession she still appealed firmly to God. " I hold to 
 my Judge," she said, as her earthly judges gave sentence 
 against her, " to the King of Heaven and Earth. God has 
 always been my Lord in all that I have done. The devil 
 has never had power over me." It was only with a view 
 to be delivered from the military prison and transferred 
 to the prisons of the Church that she consented to a formal
 
 560 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH" PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 abjuration of heresy. She feared in fact among the sol- 
 diery those outrages to her honor, to guard against which 
 she had from the first assumed the dress of a man. In 
 the eyes of the Church her dress was a crime and she aban- 
 doned it ; but a renewed affront forced her to resume the 
 one safeguard left her, and the return to it was treated as 
 a relapse into heresy which doomed her to death. At the 
 close of May, 1431, a great pile was raised in the market- 
 place of Rouen where her statue stands now. Even the 
 brutal soldiers who snatched the hated " witch" from the 
 hands of the clergy and hurried her to her doom were 
 hushed as she reached the stake. One indeed passed to 
 her a rough cross he had made from a stick he held, and 
 she clasped it to her bosom. As her eyes ranged over the 
 city from the lofty scaffold she was heard to murmur, 
 " O Rouen, Rouen, I have great fear lest you suffer for 
 my death. " " Yes ! my voices were of God !" she suddenly 
 cried as the last moment came ; " they have never deceived 
 me !" Soon the flames reached her, the girl's head sank 
 on her breast, there was one cry of " Jesus !" — " We are 
 lost," an English soldier muttered as the crowd broke up; 
 "we have burned a Saint." 
 
 The English cause was indeed irretrievably lost. In 
 spite of a pompous coronation of the boy-king Henry at 
 Paris at the close of 1431, Bedford with the cool wisdom 
 of his temper seems to have abandoned from this time all 
 hope of permanently retaining France and to have fallen 
 back on his brother's original plan of securing Normandy. 
 Henry's Court was established for a year at Rouen, a uni- 
 Tersity founded at Caen, and whatever rapine and disor- 
 der might be permitted elsewhere, justice, good govern- 
 ment, and security for trade were steadily maintained 
 through the favored provinces. At home Bedford was 
 resolutely backed by Cardinal Beaufort, whose services to 
 the state as well as his real powers had at last succeeded 
 in outweighing Duke Humphrey's opposition and in re- 
 Btoring him to the head of the royal Council. Beaufort's
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 561 
 
 diplomatic ability was seen in the truces he wrung from 
 Scotland, and in his personal efforts to prevent the impend- 
 ing reconciliation of the Duke of Burgundy with the 
 French King. But the death of the duke's sister, who 
 was the wife of Bedford, severed the last link which bound 
 Philip to the English cause. He pressed for peace : and 
 conferences for this purpose were held at Arras in 1435. 
 Their failure only served him as a pretext for concluding 
 a formal treaty with Charles ; and his desertion was fol- 
 lowed by a yet more fatal blow to the English cause in the 
 death of Bedford. The loss of the Regent was the signal 
 for the loss of Paris. In the spring of 1436 the city rose 
 suddenly against its English garrison and declared for 
 King Charles. Henry's dominion shrank at once to Nor- 
 mandy and the outlying fortresses of Picardy and Maine. 
 But reduced as they were to a mere handful, and fronted 
 by a whole nation in arms, the English soldiers struggled 
 on with as desperate a bravery as in their days of triumph. 
 Lord Talbot, the most daring of their leaders, forded the 
 Somme with the water up to his chin to relieve Crotoy, 
 and threw his men across the Oise in the face of a French 
 army to relieve Pontoise. 
 
 Bedford found for the moment an able and vigorous suc- 
 cessor in the Duke of York. Richard of York was the son 
 of the Earl of Cambridge who had been beheaded by Henry 
 the Fifth ; his mother was Anne, the heiress of the Morti- 
 mers and of their claim to the English crown as represen- 
 tatives of the third son of Edward the Third, Lionel of 
 Clarence. It was to assert this claim on his son's behalf 
 that the Earl embarked in the fatal plot which cost him 
 his head. But his death left Richard a mere boy in the 
 wardship of the Crown, and for years to come all danger 
 from his pretensions were at an end. Nor did the young 
 Duke give any sign of a desire to assert them as he grew 
 to manhood. He appeared content with a lineage and 
 wealth which placed him at the head of the English baron- 
 age ; for he had inherited from his uncle the Dukedom of
 
 562 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK IV. 
 
 York, his wide possessions embraced the estates of the 
 families which united in him, the houses of York, of Clar- 
 ence, and of Mortimer, and his double descent from Ed- 
 ward the Third, if it did no more, set him near to the 
 Crown. The nobles looked up to him as the head of their 
 order, and his political position recalled that of the Lan- 
 castrian Earls at an earlier time. But the position of 
 Richard was as yet that of a faithful servant of the Crown ; 
 and as Regent of France he displayed tne abilities both of 
 a statesman and of a general. During the brief space of 
 his regency the tide of ill fortune was stemmed ; and towns 
 and castles were recovered along the border. 
 
 His recall after a twelvemonth's success is the first in- 
 dication of the jealousy which the ruling house felt of 
 triumphs gained by one who might some day assert his 
 claim to the throne. Two years later, in 1440, the Duke 
 was restored to his post, but it was now too late to do more 
 than stand on the defensive, and all York's ability was 
 required to preserve Normandy and Maine. Men and 
 money alike came scantily from England — where the Duke 
 of Gloucester, freed from the check which Bedford had 
 laid on him while he lived, was again stirring -;*gainst 
 Beaufort and the Council. But his influence had been 
 weakened by a marriage with his mistress, Eleanor Cob- 
 ham, and in 1441 it was all but destroyed by an incident 
 which paints the temper of the time. The restless love of 
 knowledge which was the one redeeming feature in Duke 
 Humphrey's character drew to him not only scholars bvit 
 a horde of the astrologers and claimants of magical powers 
 who were the natural product of an age in which the faith 
 of the Middle Ages was dying out before the double attack 
 of scepticism and heresy. Among these was a priest 
 named Roger Bolinbroke. Bolinbroke was seized on a 
 charge of compassing the King's death by sorcery; and 
 the sudden flight of Eleanor Cobham to the sanctuary at 
 Westminster was soon explained by a like accusation. 
 Her judges found that she had made a waxen image of the
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 563 
 
 King anu slowly melted it at a fire, a process which was 
 held to account for Henry's growing weakness both of 
 body and mind. The Duchess was doomed to penance for 
 her crime; she was led bareheaded and barefooted in a 
 white penance-sheet through the streets of London, and 
 then thrown into prison for life. Humphrey never rallied 
 from the blow. But his retirement from public affairs 
 was soon followed by that of his rival. Cardinal Beaufort. 
 Age forced Beaufort to withdraw to Winchester ; and the 
 Council was from that time swayed mainly by the Earl of 
 Suffolk, William de la Pole, a grandson of the minister of 
 Richard the Second. 
 
 Few houses had served the Crown more faithfully than 
 that of De la Pole. His father fell at the siege of Har- 
 fleur ; his brother had been slain at Agincourt ; William 
 himself had served and been taken prisoner in the war 
 with France. But as a statesman he was powerless in the 
 hands of the Beauforts, and from this moment the polic}^ 
 of the Beauforts drew England nearer and nearer to the 
 chaos of civil war. John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, 
 and his brother, Edmund, Earl of Dorset, were now the 
 representatives of this house. They were grandsons of 
 John of Gaunt by his mistress, Catharine Swynford. In 
 later days Catharine became John's wife, and his uncle's 
 influence over Richard at the close of that King's reign 
 was shown in a royal ordinance which legitimated those 
 of his children by her who had been borne before marriage. 
 The ordinance was confirmed by an Act of Parliament, 
 which as it passed the Houses was expressed in the widest 
 and most general terms ; but before issuing this as a stat- 
 ute Henry the Fourth inserted provisions which left the 
 Beauforts illegitimate in blood so far as regarded the in- 
 heritance of the crown. Such royal alterations of statutes, 
 however, had been illegal since the time of Edward the 
 Third; and the Beauforts never recognized the force of 
 this provision. But whether they stood in the line of suc- 
 cession or no, the favor v/hich was shown them alike by
 
 564 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 Henry the Fifth and his son drew them close to the throne, 
 and the weakness of Henry the Sixth left them at this mo- 
 ment the mainstay of the House of Lancaster. Edmund 
 Beaufort had taken an active part in the French wars, 
 and had distinguished himself by the capture of Harfleur 
 and the relief of Calais. But he was hated for his pride 
 and avarice, and the popular hate grew as he showed his 
 jealousy of the Duke of York. Loyal indeed as Richard 
 had proved himself as yet, the pretensions of his house 
 were the most formidable danger which fronted the throne ; 
 and with a weak aiid imbecile King we can hardly won- 
 der that the Beauforts deemed it madness to leave in the 
 Duke's hands the wide power of a Regent in France and 
 the command of the armies across the sea. In 1444 York 
 was recalled, and his post was taken by Edmund Beaufort 
 himself. 
 
 But the claim which York drew from the house of Mor- 
 timer was not his onl}' claim to the crown ; as the descend- 
 ant of Edward the Third's fifth son the crown would nat- 
 urally devolve upon him on the extinction of the House of 
 Lancaster, and of the direct line of that house Henry the 
 Sixth was the one survivor. It was to check these hopes 
 by continuing the Lancastrian succession that Suffolk in 
 1445 brought about the marriage of the young King with 
 Margaret, the daughter of Duke Rene of Anjou. But the 
 marriage had another end. The English Ministers were 
 anxious for the close of the war ; and in the kinship betAveen 
 Margaret and King Charles of France they saw a chance of 
 bringing it about. A truce was concluded as a prelude to 
 a future peace, and the marriage treaty paved the way for 
 it by ceding not only Anjou, of which England possessed 
 nothing, but Maine, the bulwark of Normandy, to Duke 
 Rene. For his part in this negotiation Suffolk was raised 
 to the rank of marquis ; but the terms of the treaty and 
 the delays which still averted a final peace gave new 
 strength to the war-party with Gloucester at its head, and 
 troubles were looked for in the Parliament which met at
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 565 
 
 the opening of 1447. The danger was roughly met. Glou- 
 cester was arrested as he rode to Parliament on a charge 
 of secret conspiracy ; and a few days later he was found 
 dead in his lodging. Suspicions of murder were added to 
 the hatred against Suffolk; and his voluntary submission 
 to an inquiry by the Council into his conduct in the mar- 
 riage treaty, which was followed by his acquittal of all 
 blame, did little to counteract this. What was yet more 
 fatal to Suffolk was the renewal of the war. In the face 
 of the agitation against it the English ministers had never 
 dared to execute the provisions of the marriage-treaty ; and 
 in 1448 Charles the Seventh sent an army to enforce the 
 cession of Le Mans. Its surrender averted the struggle 
 for a moment. But in the spring of 1449 a body of Eng- 
 lish soldiers from Normandy, mutinous at their want of 
 pay, crossed the border and sacked the rich town of Fou- 
 geres in Brittany. Edmund Beaufort, who had now suc- 
 ceeded to the dukedom of Somerset, protested his innocence 
 of this breach of truce, but he either could not or would 
 not make restitution, and the war was renewed. From 
 this moment it was a mere series of French successes. In 
 two months half Normandy was in the hands of Dunois; 
 Rouen rose against her feeble garrison and threw open her 
 gates to Charles ; and the defeat at Fourmigny of an Eng- 
 lish force which was sent to Somerset's aid was a signal 
 for revolt throughout the rest of the provinces. The sur- 
 render of Cherbourg in August, 1450, left Henry not a 
 foot of Norman ground. 
 
 The loss of Normandy was generally laid to the charge 
 of Somerset. He was charged with a miserly hoarding of 
 supplies as well as planning in conjunction with Suffolk 
 the fatal sack of Fougeres. His incapacity as a general 
 added to the resentment at his recall of the Duke of York, 
 a recall which had been marked as a disgrace by the dis- 
 patch of Richard into an honorable banishment as lieu-^ 
 tenant of Ireland. But it was this very recall which proved 
 most helpful to York. Had he remained in France he
 
 566 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 could hardly have averted the loss of Normandy, though 
 he might have delayed it. As it was the shame of its loss 
 fell upon Somerset, while the general hatred of the Beau- 
 forts and the growing contempt of the King whom they 
 ruled expressed itself in a sudden rush of popular favor 
 toward the man whom his disgrace had marked out as the 
 object of their ill-will. From this moment the hopes of 
 a better and a stronger government centred themselves in 
 the Duke of York. The news of the French successes was 
 at once followed by an outbreak of national wrath. Polit- 
 ical ballads denounced Suffolk as the ape with his clog 
 that had tied Talbot, the good " dog" who was longing to 
 grip the Frenchmen. When the Bishop of Chichester, 
 who had been sent to pay the sailors at Portsmouth, strove 
 to put off the men with less than their due, they fell on 
 him and slew him. Suffolk was impeached, and only 
 saved from condemnation by submitting himself to the 
 King's mercy. He was sent into exile, but as he crossed 
 the sea he was intercepted by a ship of Kentishmen, be- 
 headed, and his body thrown on the sands at Dover. 
 
 Kent was the centre of the national resentment. It was 
 the great manufacturing district of the day, seething with 
 a busy population, and especially concerned with the 
 French contest through the piracy of the Cinque Ports. 
 Every house along its coast showed some spoil from the 
 wars. Here more than anywhere the loss of the great 
 province whose cliffs could be seen from its shores was felt 
 as a crowning disgrace, and as we shall see from the after- 
 complaints of its insurgents political wrongs added their 
 fire to the national shame. Justice was ill administered ; 
 taxation was unequal and extortionate. Redress for such 
 evils would now naturally have been sought from Parlia- 
 ment; but the weakness of the Crown gave the great nobles 
 power to rob the freeholders of their franchise and return 
 the knights of the shire. Nor could redress be looked for 
 from the Court. The murder of Suffolk was the act of 
 Kentishmen, and Suffolk's friends still held control over
 
 Ch\p. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 5G7 
 
 the royal councils. The one hope of reform lay in arms; 
 and in the summer of 1450, while the last of the Norman 
 fortresses were throwing open their gates, the discontent 
 broke into open revolt. The rising spread from Kent over 
 Surrey and Sussex. Everywhere it was general and or- 
 ganized — a military levy of the yeomen of the three shires. 
 The parishes sent their due contingent of armed men ; we 
 know that in many hundreds the constables formally sum- 
 moned their legal force to war. The insurgents were 
 joined by more than a hundred esquires and gentlemen ; 
 and two great landholders of Sussex, the Abbot of Battle 
 and the Prior of Lewes, openly favored their cause. John 
 Cade, a soldier of some experience in the French wars, 
 took at this crisis the significant name of Mortimer and 
 placed himself at their head. The army, now twenty 
 thousand men strong, marched in the beginning of June on 
 Blackheath. On the advance of the King with an equal 
 force, however, they determined to lay their complaint be- 
 fore the royal Council and withdraAv to their homes. The 
 "Complaint of the Commons of Kent," is of high value in 
 the light which it throws on the condition of the people. 
 Not one of the demands touches on religious reform. The 
 question of villeinage and serfage finds no place in it. In 
 the seventy years which had intervened since the last peas- 
 ant rising, villeinage had died naturally away before the 
 progress of social change. The Statutes of Apparel, which 
 from this time encumber the Statute-book, show in their 
 anxiety to curtail the dress of the laborer and the farmer 
 the progress of these classes in comfort and wealth ; and 
 from the language of the statutes themselves it is plain 
 that as wages rose both farmer and laborer went on cloth- 
 ing themselves better in spite of sumptuary provisions. 
 "With the exception of a demand for the repeal of the Stat- 
 ute of Laborers, the programme of the Commons was not 
 social but political. The " Complaint" calls for adminis- 
 trative and economical reforms ; it denounces the exclusion 
 of the Duke of York and other nobles from the royal coun-
 
 568 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [BOOK IV. 
 
 cils; it calls for a change of ministry, a more careful ex- 
 penditure of the royal revenue, and for the restoration of 
 freedom of election which had been broken in upon by 
 the interference both of the Crown and the great land- 
 owners. 
 
 The Council refused to receive the "Complaint," and a 
 body of troops under Sir Humphrey Stafford fell on the 
 Kentishmen as they reached Sevenoaks. This attack, how- 
 ever, was roughly beaten off, and Cade's host turned back 
 to encounter the royal army. But the royal army itself 
 was already calling for justice on the traitors who misled 
 the King ; and at the approach of the Kentishmen it broke 
 up in disorder. Its dispersion was followed by Henry's 
 flight to Kenilworth and the entry of the Kentishmen into 
 London, where the execution of Lord Say, the most un- 
 popular of the royal ministers, broke the obstinacy of his 
 colleagues. For three days the peasants entered the city 
 freely, retiring at nightfall to their camp across the river : 
 but on the fifth of July the men of London, goaded by the 
 outrages of the rabble whom their presence roused to plun- 
 der, closed the bridge against them, and beat back an at- 
 tack with great slaughter. The Kentishmen still, however, 
 lay unbroken in Southwark, while Bishop Waynflete con- 
 ferred with Cade on behalf of the Council. Their " Com- 
 plaint" was received, pardons were granted to all who had 
 joined in the rising, and the insurgents dispersed quietly 
 to their homes. Cade had striven in vain to retain them 
 in arms; on their dispersion he formed a new force by 
 throwing open the jails, and carried off the booty he had 
 Won to Rochester. Here, however, his men quarrelled over 
 the plunder; his force broke up, and Cade himself was 
 slain by Iden, the Sheriff of Kent, as he fled into Sussex. 
 
 Kent remained restless through the year, and a rising 
 in Wiltshire showed the growing and widespread trouble 
 of the time. The " Complaint" indeed had only been re- 
 ceived to be laid aside. No attempt was made to redress 
 the grievances which it stated or to reform the govern-
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 569 
 
 ment. On the contrar}'- the main object of popular hate, 
 the Duke of Somerset, was at once recalled from Nor- 
 mandy to take his place at the head of the royal Council. 
 York on the other hand, whose recall had been pressed in 
 the "Complaint," was looked upon as an open foe. 
 "Strange language" indeed had long before the Kentish 
 rising been uttered about the Duke. Men had threatened 
 that he "should be fetched with many thousands," and 
 the expectation of his coming to reform the government 
 became so general that orders were given to close the 
 western ports against his landing. If we believe the Duke 
 himself, he was forced to move at last by efforts to indict 
 him as a traitor in Ireland itself. Crossing at Michael- 
 mas to Wales in spite of the efforts to arrest him, he gath- 
 ered four thousand men on his estates and marched upon 
 London. No serious effort was made to prevent his ap- 
 proach to the King ; and Henry found himself helpless to 
 resist his demand of a Parliament and of the admission of 
 new councillors to the royal council-board. Parliament 
 met in November, and a bitter strife between York and 
 Somerset ended in the arrest of the latter. A demand 
 which at once followed shows the importance of his fall. 
 Henry the Sixth still remained childless ; and Young, a 
 member for Bristol, proposed in the Commons that the 
 Duke of York should be declared heir to the throne. But 
 the blow was averted by repeated prorogations, and 
 Henry's sympathies were shown by the committal of 
 Young to the Tower, by the release of Somerset, and by 
 his promotion to the captaincy of Calais, the most impor- 
 tant military post under the Crown. The Commons in- 
 deed still remained resolute. When they again met in 
 the summer of 1451 they called for the removal of Somer- 
 set and his creatures from the King's presence. But 
 Henry evaded the demand; and the dissolution of the 
 Houses announced the royal resolve to govern in defiance 
 of the national will. 
 
 The contest between the Houses and the Crown had
 
 570 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 cost England her last possessions across the Channel. As 
 York marched upon London Charles closed on the frag- 
 ment of the duchy of Guienne which still remained to the 
 descendants of Eleanor. In a few months all was won. 
 Bourg and Blaye surrendered in the spring of 1451, Bor- 
 deaux in the summer; two months later the loss of 
 Bciyonne ended the war in the south. Of all the English 
 possessions in France only Calais remained; and in 1453 
 Calais was threatened with attack. The news of this 
 crowning danger again called York to the front. On the 
 declaration of Henry's will to resist all change in the 
 government the Duke had retired to his castle of Ludlow, 
 arresting the whispers of his enemies with a solemn pro- 
 test that he was true liegeman to the King. But after- 
 events show that he was planning a more decisive course 
 of action than that which had broken down with the dis- 
 solution of the Parliament, and the news of the approach- 
 ing siege gave ground for taking such a course at once. 
 Somerset had been appointed Captain of Calais, and as his 
 incapacity had lost England Normanrly, it would cost her 
 — so England believed — her last fortress in France. It 
 was said indeed that the Duke was negotiating with Bur- 
 gundy for its surrender. In the spring of 1452 therefore 
 York again marched on London, but this time with a 
 large body of ordnance and an army which the arrival of 
 reinforcements under Lord Cobham and the Earl of Devon- 
 shire raised to over twenty thousand men. Eluding the 
 host which gathered round the King and Somerset he 
 passed by the capital, whose gates had been closed by 
 Henry's orders, and entering Kent took post at Dartford. 
 His army was soon fronted by the superior force of the 
 King, but the interposition of the more moderate lords of 
 the Council averted open conflict. Henry promised that 
 Somerset should be pvit on his trial on the charges ad- 
 vanced by the Duke, and York on this pledge disbanded 
 his men. But the pledge was at once broken. Somerset 
 remained in power. York found himself practically a
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 130:— 1461. 571 
 
 prisoner, and only won his release by an oath to refrain 
 from further " routs" or assemblies. 
 
 Two such decisive failures seem for the time to have 
 utterly broken Richard's power. Weakened as the crown 
 had been by losses abroad, it was clearl}- strong enough 
 as yet to hold its own against the chief of the baronage 
 A general amnesty indeed sheltered York's adherents and 
 enabled the Duke himself to retire safely to Ludlow, but 
 for more than a year his rival Somerset wielded without 
 opposition the power Richard had striven to wrest from 
 him. A favorable turn in the progress of the war gave 
 fresh vigor to the Government. The French forces were 
 abruptly called from tlieir march against Calais to the 
 recovery of the south. The towns of Guienne had opened 
 their gates to Charles on his pledge to respect their fran- 
 chises, but the need of the French treasury was too great 
 to respect the royal word, and heavy taxation turned the 
 hopes of Gascony to its old masters. On the landing of 
 an English force under Talbot, Earl of Shrewsburj^ a 
 general revolt restored to the English their possessions on 
 the Garonne. Somerset used this break of better fortune 
 to obtain heavy subsidies from Parliament in 1453 ; but 
 ere the twenty thousand men whose levy was voted could 
 cross the Channel a terrible blow had again ruined the 
 English cause. In a march to relieve Castillon on the 
 Dordogne Shrewsbury suddenly found himself face to face 
 with the whole French army. His men were mown down 
 by its guns, and the Earl himself left dead on the field. 
 His fall was the signal for a general submission. Town 
 after town again threw open its gates to Charles, and 
 Bordeaux capitulated in October. 
 
 The final loss of Gascony fell upon England at a mo- 
 ment when two events at home changed the whole face of 
 affairs. After eight years of childlessness the King be- 
 came in October the father of a son. With the birth of 
 this boy the rivalry of York and the Beauforts for the 
 right of succession ceased to be the mainspring of English
 
 573 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 politics ; and the crown seemed again to rise out of the 
 turmoil of warring factions. But with the birth of the 
 son came the madness of the father. Henry the Sixth 
 sank into a state of idiocy which made his rule impossi- 
 ble, and his ministers were forced to call a great Council 
 of peers to devise means for the government of the realm. 
 (York took his seat at this council, and the mood of the 
 nobles was seen in the charges of misgovernment which 
 were at once made against Somerset, and in his commit- 
 tal to the Tower. But Somerset was no longer at the head 
 of the royal party. With the birth of her son the Queen, 
 Margaret of Anjou, came to the front. Her restless des- 
 potic temper was quickened to action by the dangers 
 which she saw threatening her boy's heritage of the 
 crown ; and the demand to be invested with the full royal 
 power which she made, after a vain effort to rouse her 
 husband from his lethargy, aimed directly at the exclusion 
 of the Duke of York. The demand however was roughly 
 set aside ; the Lords gave permission to York to summon 
 a Parliament as the King's lieutenant; and on the assem- 
 bly of the Houses in the spring of 1454, as the mental 
 alienation of the King continued, the Lords chose Richard 
 Protector of the Realm. With Somerset in prison little 
 opposition could be made to the Protectorate, and that lit- 
 tle was soon put down. But the nation had hardly time 
 to feel the guidance of Richard's steady hand when it 
 was removed. At the opening of 1455 the King recovered 
 his senses, and York's Protectorate came at once to an end. 
 Henry had no sooner grasped power again than he fell 
 back on his old policy. The Queen became his chief ad- 
 viser. The Duke of Somerset was released from the Tower 
 and owned by Henry in formal court as his true and 
 faithful liegeman. York on the other hand was deprived 
 of the government of Calais, and summoned with his 
 friends to a council at Leicester, whose object was to pro- 
 vide for the surety of the King's person. Prominent 
 among these friends were two Earls of the house of
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 573 
 
 Neville. We have seen how great a part the Nevilles 
 played after the accession of the house of Lancaster; it 
 was mainly to their efforts that Henry the Fourth owed 
 the overthrow of the Percies, their rivals in the mastery 
 of the north; and from that moment their wealth and 
 power had been steadily growing. Richard Neville, Earl 
 of Salisbury, was one of the mightiest barons of the realm ; 
 but his power was all but equalled by that of his son, a 
 second Richard, who had won the Earldom of Warwick 
 by his marriage with the heiress of the Beauchamps. The 
 marriage of York to Salisbury's sister, Cecily Neville, had 
 bound both the earls to his cause, and under his Protec- 
 torate Salisbury had been created Chancellor. But he was 
 stripped of this office on the Duke's fall ; and their sum- 
 mons to the council of Leicester was held by the Nevilles 
 to threaten ruin to themselves as to York. The three 
 nobles at once took arms to secure, as they alleged, safe 
 access to the King's person. Henry at the news of their 
 approach mustered two thousand men, and with Somerset, 
 the Earl of Northumberland, and other nobles in his train, 
 advanced to St. Albans. 
 
 On the 23d of May York and the two Earls encamped 
 without the town, and called on Henry " to deliver such 
 as we will accuse, and they to have like as they have de- 
 served and done." The King's reply was as bold as the 
 demand. "Rather than they shall have any lord here 
 with me at this time," he replied, "I shall this day for 
 their sake and in this quarrel myself live and die. " A 
 summons to disperse as traitors left York and his fellow 
 nobles no help but in an attack. At eventide three as- 
 saults were made on the town. Warwick was the first to 
 break in, and the sound of his trumpets in the streets 
 turned the fight into a rout. Death had answered the 
 prayer which Henry rejected, for the Duke of Somerset 
 with Lord Clifford and the Earl of Northumberland were 
 among the fallen. The King himself fell into the victors' 
 hands. The three lords kneeling before him prayed him
 
 574 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 to take them for his true liegemen, and then rode by his 
 side in triumph into London, where a parliament was at 
 once summoned which confirmed the acts of the Duke; 
 and on a return of the King's malady again nominated 
 York as Protector. But in the spring of 1456 Henry's 
 recovery again ended the Duke's rule; and for two years 
 the warring parties sullenly watched one another. A tem- 
 porary reconciliation between them was brought about by 
 the misery of the realm, but an attempt of the Queen to 
 arrest the Nevilles in 1458 caused a fresh outbreak of war. 
 Salisbury defeated Lord Audley in a fight at Bloreheath 
 in Stajffordshire, and York with the two Earls raised his 
 standard at Ludlow. But the crown was still stronger 
 than any force of the baronage. The King marched rap- 
 idly on the insurgents, and a decisive battle was only 
 averted by the desertion of a part of the Yorkist army and 
 the disbanding of the rest. The Duke himself fled to 
 Ireland, the Earls to Calais, while the Queen, summoning 
 a Parliament at Coventry in November, pressed on their 
 attainder. But the check, whatever its cause, had been 
 merely a temporary one. York and Warwick planned a 
 fresh attempt from their secure retreats in Ireland and 
 Calais ; and in the midsummer of 1460 the Earls of Salis- 
 bury and Warwick, with Richard's son Edward, the 
 young Earl of March, again landed in Kent. Backed by 
 a general rising of the county they entered London amid 
 the acclamations of its citizens. The royal army was de- 
 feated in a hard-fought action at Northampton in July. 
 Margaret fled to Scotland, and Henry was left a prisoner 
 in the hands of the Duke of York. 
 
 The position of York as heir presumptive to the crown 
 by his descent from Edmund of Langley had ceased with 
 the birth of a son to Henry the Sixth : but the victory of 
 Northampton no sooner raised him to the supreme control 
 of affairs than he ventured to assert the far more danger- 
 ous claims which he had secretly cherished as the repre- 
 sentative of Lionel of Clarer^ce, and to their consciousness
 
 Chap. €.] THE PARLIAI^IENT. 1307—1461. 575 
 
 of which was owing the hostility of Henry and his Queen. 
 Such a claim was in direct opposition to that power of the 
 two Houses whose growth had been the work of the past 
 hundred years. There was no constitutional ground for 
 any limitation of the right of Parliament to set aside an 
 elder branch in favor of a younger, and in the Parlia- 
 mentary Act which placed the House of Lancaster on the 
 throne the claim of the House of Mortimer had been de- 
 liberately set aside. Possession, too, told against the 
 Yorkist pretensions. To modern minds the best reply to 
 Richard's claim lay in the words used at a later time by 
 Henry himself. "My father was King; his father also 
 was King ; I myself have worn the crown forty years from 
 my cradle : you have all sworn fealty to me as your sover- 
 eign, and your fathers have done the like to mine. How 
 then can my right be disputed?" Long and undisturbed 
 possession as well as a distinctly legal title by free vote of 
 Parliament was in favor of the House of Lancaster. But 
 the persecution of the Lollards, the interference with elec- 
 tions, the odium of the war, the shame of the long mis- 
 government, told fatally against the weak and imbecile 
 King whose reign had been a long battle of contending 
 factions. That the misrule had been serious was shown 
 by the attitude of the commercial class. It was the rising 
 of Kent, the great manufacturing district of the realm, 
 which brought about the victory of Northampton. 
 Throughout the struggle which followed London and the 
 great merchant towns were steady for the House of York. 
 Zeal for the Lancastrian cause was found only in Wales, 
 in northern Eiighuul, and in the southwestern shires, it, 
 is absurd to suppose that the shrewd traders of Cheapside 
 were moved by an abstract question of hereditary right, 
 or that the wild Welshmen believed themselves to be sup- 
 porting the rightof Parliament to regulate the succession. 
 But it marks the ])ower which Parliament had gained 
 that, directly as his claims ran in the teeth of a succession 
 established by it, the Duke of York felt himself compelled
 
 676 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 to convene the two Houses in October and to lay his claim 
 before the Lords as a petition of right. Neither oaths 
 nor the numerous Acts which had settled and confirmed 
 the right to the crown in the House of Lancaster could 
 destroy, he pleaded, his hereditary claim. The bulk of 
 the Lords refrained from attendance, and those who were 
 present received the petition with hardly concealed reluc- 
 tance. They solved the question, as they hoped, by a 
 compromise. They refused to dethrone the King, but they 
 had sworn no fealty to his child, and at Henry's death 
 thej' agreed to receive the Duke as successor to the crown. 
 But the open display of York's pretensions at once 
 united the partisans of the royal House in a vigorous re- 
 sistance; and the deadly struggle which received the 
 name of the Wars of the Roses from the white rose which 
 formed the badge of the House of York and the red rose 
 which was the cognizance of the House of Lancaster began 
 in a gathering of the North round Lord Clifford and of 
 the West round Henry, Duke of Somerset, the son of the 
 Duke who had fallen at St. Albans. York, who hurried 
 in December to meet the first with a far inferior force, 
 was defeated and slain at Wakefield. The passion of 
 civil war broke fiercely out on the field. The Earl of Sal- 
 isbury who had been taken prisoner was hurried to the 
 block. The head of Duke Richard, crowned in mockery 
 with a diadem of paper,' is said to have been impaled on 
 the walls of York. His second son. Lord Rutland, fell 
 crj'ing for mercy on his knees before Clifford. But Clif- 
 ford's father had been the first to fall in the battle of St. 
 Albans which opened the struggle. "As your father 
 killed mine," cried the savage Baron, while he plunged 
 his dagger in the young noble's breast, " I will kill j^ou !" 
 The brutal deed was soon to be avenged. Richard's eldest 
 son, Edward, the Earl of March, was busy gathering a 
 force on the Welsh border in support of his father at the 
 moment when the Duke was defeated and slain. Young 
 as he was Edward showed in this hour of apparent ruin
 
 Chap. 6.] THE PARLIAMENT. 1307—1461. 577 
 
 the quickness and vigor of his temper, and routing on his 
 march a body of Lancastrians at Mortimer's Cross struck 
 boldly upon London. It was on London that the Lancas- 
 trian army had moved after its victory at Wakefield. A 
 desperate struggle took place at St. Albans, where a force 
 of Kentish men with the Earl of Warwick strove to bar 
 its march on the capital, but Warwick's force broke under 
 cover of night and an immediate advance of the con- 
 querors might have decided the contest. Margaret, how- 
 ever, paused to sully her victory by a series of bloody exe- 
 cutions, and the rough northerners who formed the bulk 
 of her army scattered to pillage while Edward, hurrying 
 from the west, appeared before the capital. The citizens 
 rallied at his call, and cries of " Long live King Edward" 
 rang round the handsome young leader as he rode through 
 the streets. A council of Yorkist lords, hastily summoned, 
 resolved that the compromise agreed on in Parliament was 
 at an end and that Henry of Lancaster had forfeited the 
 throne. The final issue, however, now lay not with Par- 
 liament, but with the sword. Disappointed of London, the 
 Lancastrian army fell rapidly back on the North, and Ed- 
 ward hurried as rapidly in pursuit. On the 29th of March, 
 1461, the two armies encountered one another at Towton 
 Field, near Tadcaster. in the numoers engaged, as well 
 as in the terrible obstinacy of the struggle, no such battle 
 had been seen in England since the fight of Senlac. The 
 two armies together numbered nearly 120,000 men. The 
 day had just broken when the Yorkists advanced through 
 a thick snowfall, and for six hours the battle raged with 
 desperate bravery on either side. At one critical moment 
 Warwick saw his men falter, and stabbing his horse be- 
 fore them, swore on the cross of his sword to win or die 
 on the field. The battle was turned at last by the arrival 
 of the Duke of Norfolk with a fresh force from the Eastern 
 Counties, and at noon the Lancastrians gave way. A 
 river in their rear turned the retreat into a rout, and the 
 flight and carnage, for no quarter was given on either 
 Vol. I.— 37
 
 578 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. [Book IV. 
 
 side, went on through the night and the morrow, Ed- 
 Avurd's herald counted more than 20,000 Lancastrian 
 corpses on the field. The losses of the conquerors were 
 hardly less heavy than those of the conquered. But their 
 triumph was complete. The Earl of Northumberland 
 Avas slain ; the Earls of Devonshire and Wiltshire were 
 taken and beheaded ; the Duke of Somerset fled into exile. 
 Henry himself with his Queen was forced to fly over the 
 border and to find a refuge in Scotland. The cause of the 
 House of Lancaster was lost; and with the victory of 
 Towton the crown of England passed to Edward of York. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482
 
 
 
 4>/ ;V.,w.;.>/ 
 
 \