VIEW 
 
 OF THE 
 
 STATE OF EUROPE 
 
 
 
 DURING 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 BY HENRY HALLAM. 
 
 EK Xaeoj <5' Ep&5c re 
 NVKTOS 5' a&r' At0'p re xai V 
 
 | iyevovro' 
 ivovro. 
 HZIOAOS. 
 
 FROM THE ^IXTH LONDON EDITION. 
 
 COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUM 
 
 N E W-Y R K : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 
 NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET. 
 
 1837. 
 
\ 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 IT is the object of the present work to exhibit, in a series of historical 
 dissertations, a comprehensive survey of the chief circumstances that can 
 interest a philosophical inquirer during the period usually denominated the 
 Middle Ages. Such an undertaking must necessarily fall under the class of 
 historical abridgments : ye.t there will perhaps be found enough to distinguish 
 it from such as have already appeared. Many considerable portions of time, 
 especially before the twelfth century, may justly be deemed so barren of 
 events worthy of remembrance, that a single sentence or paragraph is often 
 sufficient to give the character of entire generations, and of long dynasties 
 of obscure kings. 
 
 " Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa." 
 
 And even in the more pleasing and instructive parts of this middle period, it 
 has been my object to avoid the dry composition of annals, and aiming, with 
 what spirit and freedom I could, at a just outline rather than a miniature, to 
 suppress all events that did not appear essentially concatenated with others, 
 or illustrative of important conclusions. But as the modes of government 
 and constitutional laws which prevailed in various countries of Europe, and 
 especially in England, seemed to have been less fully dwelt upon in former 
 works of this description than military or civil transactions, while they were 
 deserving of far mofe attention, I have taken pains to give a true representa- 
 tion of them, and in every^nstance to point out the sources from which the 
 reader may derive more complete and original information. 
 
 Nothing can be farther from my wishes than that the following pages 
 should be judged according to the critical laws of historical composition. 
 Tried in such a balance, they would be eminently defective. The limited 
 
 t*.nt of this work, compared with the subjects it embraces, as well as its 
 partaking more of the character of political dissertation than of narrative, 
 must necessarily preclude that circumstantial delineation of events and of 
 .characters upon which the beauty as well as usefulness of a regular history 
 N^or can I venture to assert that it will be found alto- 
 gether perspicuous to those who are destitute of any previous acquaintance 
 k it relates ; though I have only presupposed, strictly 
 wdedge of the common facts of English history, and have 
 endeavoured to avoid, in treating of other countries, those allusive references, 
 which imply more information in the reader than the author designs to com- 
 municate. But the arrangement which I have adopted has sometimes ren- 
 dered it necessary to anticipate both names and facts, which are to find a 
 more definite place in a subsequent part of the work. 
 
 This arrangement is probably diiferent from*that of any former historical 
 retrospect. Every chapter of the following volumes completes its particular 
 subject, and may be considered in some degree as independent of the rest. 
 The order, consequently, in which they are read, will not be very material, 
 though of course I should rather prefer that in which they are at present dis- 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 posed. A solicitude to avoid continual transitions, and to give free scope to 
 the natural association of connected facts, has dictated this arrangement, to 
 which I confess myself partial. And I have found its inconveniences so trifling 
 in composition, that I cannot believe they will occasion much trouble to the 
 reader. 
 
 The first chapter comprises the history of France from the invasion of 
 Clovis to the expedition, exclusively, of Charles VIII. against Naples. It 
 is not possible to fix accurate limits to the Middle Ages : but though the ten 
 centuries from the fifth to the fifteenth seem, in a general point of view, to 
 constitute that period, a less arbitrary division was necessary to render the 
 commencement and conclusion of an historical narrative satisfactory. The 
 continuous chain of transactions on the stage of human society is ill divided 
 by mere lines of chronological demarcation. But as the subversion of the 
 western empire is manifestly the natural termination of ancient history, so 
 the establishment of the Franks in Gaul appears the most convenient epoch 
 for the commencement of a new period. Less difficulty occurred in finding 
 the other limit. The invasion of Naples by Charles VIII. was the event 
 that first engaged the principal states of Europe in relations of alliance or 
 hostility which may be deduced to the present day, and is the point at which 
 every man who traces backward its political history will be obliged to pause. 
 It furnishes a determinate epoch in the annals of Italy and France, and nearly 
 coincides with events which naturally terminate the history of the Middle 
 Ages in other countries. 
 
 The feudal system is treated in the second chapter, which I have subjoined 
 to the history of France, with which it has a near connexion. Inquiries into 
 the antiquities of that jurisprudence occupied more attention in the last age 
 than at present, and their dryness may prove repulsive to many readers. 
 But there is no royal road to the knowledge of law ; nor*can any man render 
 an obscure and intricate disquisition either perspicuous or entertaining. 
 That the feudal system is an important branch of historical knowledge will 
 not be disputed, when we consider not only its influence upon our own con- 
 stitution, but that one of the parties which at present divide a neighbouring 
 kingdom professes to appeal to the original principles of its monarchy, as 
 they subsisted before the subversion of that polity. 
 
 The four succeeding chapters contain a sketch, more or less rapid arid 
 general, of the histories of Italy, of Spain, of Germany, and of the Greek 
 and Saracenic empires. In the seventh I have endeavoured to develop the 
 progress of ecclesiastical power, a subject eminently distinguishing the Mid- 
 dle Ages, and of which a concise and impartial delineation has long been 
 desirable. 
 
 The English constitution furnishes materials for the eighth chapter. I 
 cannot hope to have done sufficient justice to this theme, which has cost me 
 considerable labour ; but it is worthy of remark, that since the treatise of 
 Nathaniel Bacon, itself open to much exception, there has been no historical 
 development of our constitution, founded upon extensive researches, or calcu- 
 lated to give a just notion of its character. For those parts of Henry's his- 
 tory which profess to trace trie progress of government are still more jejune 
 than the rest of his volumes ; and the work of Professor Millar, of Glasgow, 
 however pleasing from its liberal spirit, displays a fault too common among 
 the philosophers of his country, that of theorizing upon an imperfect induc- 
 tion, and very often upon a total misapprehension of particular facts. 
 
PREFACE. Xi 
 
 The ninth and last chapter relates to the general state of society in Europe 
 during the Middle Ages, and comprehends the history of commerce, of man- 
 ners, and of literature. None however of these are treated in detail, and the 
 whole chapter is chiefly designed as supplemental to the rest, in order to vary 
 the relations under which events may be viewed, and to give a more adequate 
 sense of the spirit and character of the Middle Ages. 
 
 In the execution of a plan far more comprehensive than what, with a due 
 consideration either of my abilities or opportunities, I ought to have under- 
 taken, it would be strangely presumptuous to hope that I can have rendered 
 myself invulnerable to criticism. Even if flagrant errors should not be fre- 
 quently detected, yet I am aware that a desire of conciseness has prevented 
 the sense of some ^passages from appearing sufficiently distinct ; and though 
 I cannot hold myself generally responsible for omissions, in a work which 
 could only be brought within a reasonable compass by the severe retrench- 
 ment of superfluous matter, it is highly probable that defective information, 
 forgetfulness, or too great a regard for brevity, has caused me to pass over 
 many things which would have materially illustrated the various subjects of 
 these inquiries. 
 
 I dare not, therefore, appeal with confidence to the tribunal of those supe- 
 rior judges, who, having bestowed a more undivided attention on the particu- 
 lar objects that have interested them, may justly deem such general sketches 
 imperfect and superficial ; but my labours will not have proved fruitless, if 
 they shall conduce to stimulate the reflection, to guide the researches, to cor- 
 rect the prejudices, or to animate the liberal and virtuous sentiments of in- 
 quisitive youth : 
 
 " Mi satis ampla 
 
 Merces, et mihi grande decus, sira ignotus in aevum 
 Turn licet, externo penitusque inglorius orbi." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF FRANCE, FROM ITS 
 CONQUEST BY CLOVIS TO THE INVA- 
 SION OF NAPLES BY CHARLES VIII. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. Invasion of Clovis 
 First race of French Kings. Accession of Pe- 
 pin State of Italy. Charlemagne. His Reign 
 and Character. Louis the Debonair. His Suc- 
 cessors. Calamitous state of the Empire in the 
 ninth and tenth Centuries. Accession of Hugh 
 Capet. His first Successors. Louis VII. 
 Philip Augustus. Conquest of Normandy. 
 War in Languedoc. Louis IX. His Charac- 
 ter. Digression upon the Crusades. Philip III. 
 Philip IV. Aggrandizement of French Mon- 
 archy under his Reign. Reigns of his Children. 
 Question of Salique-Law. Claim of Edward 
 III. -------- Page 17 
 
 PART II. 
 
 War of Edward III. in France. Causes of his 
 Success. Civil Disturbances of France. Peace 
 of Bretigni its Interpretation considered. 
 Charles V. Renewal of the War. Charles VI. 
 his Minority and Insanity. Civil Dissensions 
 of the Parties of Orleans and Burgundy. Assas- 
 sination of both these Princes. Intrigues of 
 their Parties with England under Henry IV. 
 Henry V. invades France. Treaty of Troyes. 
 State of France in the first Years of Charles VII. 
 Progress and subsequent Decline of the Eng- 
 lish Arms their Expulsion from France. 
 Change in the Political Constitution. Louis XI. 
 his Character. Leagues formed against him. 
 Charles, Duke of Burgundy his" Prosperity 
 and Fall. Louis obtains Possession of Burgun- 
 dyhis Death. Charles VIII. Acquisition of 
 Britany 39 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, ESPECIAL- 
 LY IN FRANCE. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 State of Ancient Germany. Effects of the Con- 
 quest of Gaul by the Franks. Tenures of Land. 
 Distinction of Laws. Constitution of the an- 
 cient Frank Monarchy. Gradual Establishment 
 of Feudal Tenures. Principles of a Feudal Re- 
 lation. Ceremonies of Homage and Investiture. 
 Military Service. Feudal Incidents of Relief, 
 Aid, Wardship, &c. Different Species of Fiefs. 
 Feudal Law-books 64 
 
 PART II. . 
 
 Analysis of the Feudal System. Its local extent. 
 View of the different Orders of Society during 
 the Feudal Ages. Nobility their Ranks and 
 Privileges. Clergy. Freemen. Serfs or Vil- 
 leins. Comparative State of France and Ger- 
 many. Privileges enjoyed by the French Vas- 
 sals. Right of coining Money and of private 
 War. Immunity from Taxation. = Historical 
 View of the Royal Revenue in France. Meth- 
 ods adopted to augment it by depreciation of the 
 Coin, &c. Legislative Power its state under 
 the Merovingian Kings and Charlemagne. 
 His Councils. Suspension of any general Legis- 
 lative Authority during the prevalence of Feudal 
 Principles. The King's Council. Means adopt- 
 ed to supply the Want of a National Assembly. 
 Gradual Progress of the King's Legislative 
 Power. Philip IV. assembles the States Gen- 
 eral. Their Powers limited to Taxation. 
 States under the Sons of Philip IV. States of 
 1355 and 1356. They nearly effect an entire 
 Revolution. The Crown recovers its Vigour. 
 States of 1380, under Charles VII Subsequent 
 Assemblies under Charles VI. and Charles VII. 
 The Crown becomes more and more absolute. 
 Louis XI. States of Tours in 1484. Histori- 
 cal View of Jurisdiction in France. Its earli- 
 est stage under the first Race of Kings, and 
 Charlemagne. Territorial Jurisdiction. Feu- 
 dal Courts of Justice. Trial by Combat. Code 
 of St. Louis. The Territorial Jurisdictions give 
 way. Progress of the Judicial Power of the 
 Crown. Parliament of. Paris. Peers of 
 France. Increased Authority of the Parliament. 
 Registration of Edicts. Causes of the Decline 
 of Feudal System. Acquisitions of Domain by 
 the Crown. Charters of Incorporation granted 
 to Towns. Their previous Condition. First 
 Charters in the twelfth Century. Privileges 
 contained in them. Military Service of Feudal 
 Tenants commuted for Money. Hired Troops. 
 Change in the Military System of Europe. 
 General View of the Advantages and Disadvan- 
 tages attending the Feudal System - - 83 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ITALY, FROM THE 
 EXTINCTION OF THE CARLOVINGIAN 
 EMPERORS TO THE INVASION OF NA- 
 PLES BY CHARLES VIII. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 State of Italy after the death of Charles the Fat- 
 Coronation of Otho the Great. State of Rome. 
 Confld II. Union of the Kingdom of Italy 
 
XIV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 with the Empire. Establishment of the Nor- 
 mans in Naples and Sicily. Roger Guiscard. 
 Rise of the Lombard Cities. They gradually 
 become more independent of the Empire. Their 
 Internal Wars. Frederick Barbarossa. De- 
 struction of Milan. Lombard League. Battle 
 of Legnano. Peace of Constance. Temporal 
 Principality of the Popes. Guelf and Ghibelm 
 Factions. Otho IV". Frederick II. Arrange- 
 ment of the Italian Republics. Second Lombard 
 War. Extinction of the House of Swabia. 
 Causes of the Success of Lombard Republics. 
 Their prosperity and Forms of Government. 
 Contentions between the Nobility and People. 
 Civil Wars. Story of Giovanni di Vicenza 
 
 Page 125 
 
 PART II. 
 
 State of Italy after the Extinction of the House of 
 Swabia. Conquest of Naples by Charles of 
 Anjou. The Lombard Republics become sever- 
 ally subject to Princes or Usurpers. The Vis- 
 conti of Milan their Aggrandizement. Decline 
 of the Imperial Authority over Italy. Internal 
 State of Rome. Rienzi. Florence her forms 
 of Government historically traced to the end of 
 the fourteenth Century. Conquest of Pisa. 
 Pisa its Commerce, Naval Wars with Genoa, 
 and Decay. Genoa her Contentions with Ven- 
 ice. War of Chioggia. Government of Genoa. 
 Venice her Origin and Prosperity. Vene- 
 tian Government its Vices. Territorial Con- 
 quests of Venice. Military System of Italy 
 Companies of Adventure. 1. foreign; Guarni- 
 eri, Hawkwood and 2. native ; Braccio, Sforza. 
 Improvements in Military Service. Arms, offen- 
 sive and defensive. Invention of Gunpowder. 
 Naples. First Line of Anjou. Joanna I. La- 
 dislaus. Joanna II. Francis Sforza becomes 
 Duke of Milan. Alfonso, king of Naples. 
 State of Italy during the fifteenth Century. 
 Florence. Rise of the Medici, and Ruin of their 
 Adversaries. Pretensions of Charles VIII. to 
 Naples - 148 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SPAIN TO THE CON 
 QUEST OF GRANADA. 
 
 Kingdom of the Visigoths. Conquest of Spain by 
 the Moors. Gradual Revival of the Spanish 
 Nation. Kingdoms of Leon, Aragon, Navarre 
 
 . and Castile, successively formed. Charterec 
 Towns of Castile. Military Orders. Conques 
 of Ferdinand III. and James of Aragon. Causer 
 of the delay in expelling the Moors. History o 
 Castile continued. Character of the government 
 Peter the Cruel. House of Trastamare. 
 John II. Henry IV. Constitution of Castile. 
 National Assemblies or Cortes. Their constitu 
 ent parts. Right of Taxation. Legislation. 
 Privy Council of Castile. Laws for the protec 
 tion of Liberty. Imperfections of the Constitu 
 tion. Aragon. Its history in the fourteenth an 
 fifteenth centuries. Disputed succession. Con 
 stitution of Aragon. Free spirit of its Aristoc 
 racy. Privilege of Union. Powers of the Jus 
 tiza. Legal Securities. Illustrations. Othe 
 Constitutional Laws. Valencia and Catalonif 
 Union of two Crowns by the Marriage of Fe: 
 dinand and Isabella, Conquest of Granada 10 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ISTORY OF GERMANY TO THE DIET 
 OF WORMS IN 1495. 
 
 ketch of German History under the Emperors of 
 the House of Saxony. House of Franconia. 
 Henry IV. House of Swabia. Frederick Bar- 
 barossa. Fall of Henry the Lion. Frederick II. 
 Extinction of House of Swabia. Changes in 
 the Germanic Constitution. Electors. Terri- O^ 
 torial Sovereignty of the Princes. Rodolph of 
 Hapsburg. State of the Empire after his Time. 
 Causes of Decline of Imperial Power. House 
 of Luxemburg. Charles IV. Golden Bull. 
 House of Austria. Frederick III. Imperial 
 Cities. Provincial States. Maximilian. Diet 
 of Worms. Abolition of private Wars. Im- 
 perial Chamber. Aulic Council. Bohemia. 
 Hungary. Switzerland - - - Page 227 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS AND SARA- 
 CENS. 
 
 lise of Mahometanism. Causes of its Success. 
 Progress of Saracen Arms. Greek Empire. 
 Decline of the Khalifs. The Greeks recover 
 part of their Losses. The Turks. The Cru- 
 sades. Capture of Constantinople by the Lat- 
 ins. Its Recovery by the Greeks. The Mo- 
 guls. The Ottomans. Danger at Constantino- 
 ple. Timur. Capture of Constantinople by Ma- 
 homet II. Alarm of Europe - - - 249 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HISTORY OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWER 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Wealth of the Clergy its Sources. Encroach- 
 ments on Ecclesiastical Property their Juris- 
 diction arbitrative coercive their Political 
 Power. Supremacy of the Crown. Charle- 
 magne. Change after his Death, and Encroach- 
 ments of the Church in the ninth Century. Pri- 
 macy of the See of Rome its early Stage. 
 Gregory I. Council of Frankfort false Decre- 
 tals. Progress of Papal Authority. Effects of 
 Excommunication. Lothaire. State of the 
 Church in the tenth Century. Marriage of 
 Priests. Simony. Episcopal Elections. Im- 
 perial Authority over the Popes. Disputes con- 
 cerning Investitures. Gregory VII. and Henry 
 IV. Concordat of Calixtus. Election by Chap- 
 tersgeneral System of Gregory VII. Progress 
 of Papal usurpations in the twelfth Century. 
 Innocent III. his Character and Schemes con- 
 tinual Progress of the Papacy. Canon Law. 
 Mendicant Orders dispensing Power. Taxa- 
 tion of the Clergy by the Popes. Encroachments 
 on Rights of Patronage. Mandats, Reserves, 
 &c. General Disaffection towards the See of 
 Rome in the thirteenth century. Progress of 
 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction. Immunity of the 
 Clergy in Criminal Cases. Restraints imposed 
 upon their Jurisdiction upon their Acquisition 
 of Property. Boniface VIII. his Quarrel with 
 Philip the Fair its Termination. Gradual De- 
 cline of Papal Authority. Louie of Bavaria. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XV 
 
 Secession to Avignon and Return to Rome. 
 Conduct of Avignon Popes contested Election 
 of Urban and Clement produces the great Schism. 
 Council of Pisa Constance Basle. Meth- 
 ods adopted to restrain the Papal usurpations in 
 England, Germany, and France. Liberties of 
 the Gallican Church. Decline of the Papal In- 
 fluence in Italy .... Page 261 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon Constitution. Sketch of An- 
 glo-Saxon History. Succession to the Crown. 
 Orders of Men. Thanes and Ceorls. Wit- 
 tenagemot. Judicial System. Division into 
 Hundreds. County-Court. Trial by Jury its 
 Antiquity investigated. Law of Frank-pledge 
 its several Stages. Question of Feudal Ten- 
 ures before the Conquest - - - - 318 
 
 PART II. 
 THE ANGLO-NORMAN CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The Anglo-Norman Constitution. Causes of the 
 Conquest. Policy and character of William 
 his Tyranny. Introduction of Feudal Services. 
 Difference between the Feudal Governments 
 of France and England. Causes of the great 
 Power of the first Norman Kings. Arbitrary 
 Character of their Government. Great Council. 
 Resistance of the" Barons to John. Magna 
 Charta its principal Articles. Reign of Henry 
 III. The Constitution acquires a more liberal 
 Character. Judicial System of the Anglo-Nor- 
 mans. Curia Regis, Exchequer, &c. Estab- 
 lishment of the Common Law its effect in fix- 
 ing the Constitution. Remarks on the Limita- 
 tion of Aristocratical Privileges in England 332 
 
 PART III. 
 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 Reign of Edward I. Confirmatio Chartarum. 
 Constitution of Parliament the Prelates the 
 Temporal Peers. Tenure by Barony its 
 Changes. Difficulty of the Subject. Origin of 
 Representation of the Commons. Knights of 
 Shires their Existence doubtfully traced 
 through the Reign of Henry III. Question 
 whether Representation was confined to Ten- 
 ants in capite discussed. State of English 
 Towns at the Conquest and afterward their 
 Progress. Representatives from them summon- 
 ed to Parliament by Earl of Leicester. Im- 
 probability of an earlier Origin. Cases of St. Al- 
 ban's and Barnstaple considered. Parliaments 
 under Edward I. Separation of Knights and 
 Burgesses from the Peers. Edward II. grad- 
 ual progress of the Authority of Parliament 
 traced through the Reigns of Edward III. and 
 his successors down to Henry V T I. Privilege of 
 
 Parliament the early instances of it noticed. 
 Nature of Borough Representation. Rights of 
 Election other particulars relative to Elec- 
 tions. House of Lords. Baronies by Tenure 
 by Writ. Nature of the latter discussed. 
 Creation of Peers by Act of Parliament and by 
 Patent. Summons of Clergy to Parliament. 
 King's Ordinary Council its Judicial and other 
 Power. Character of the Plantagenet Govern- 
 ment. Prerogative its Excesses erroneous 
 Views corrected. Testimony of Sir John For- 
 tescue to the Freedom of the Constitution. 
 Causes of the superior Liberty of England con- 
 sidered. State of Society in England. Want 
 of Police. Villanage its gradual extinction 
 latter years of Henry VI. Regencies. Instan- 
 ces of them enumerated. Pretensions of the 
 House of York, and War of the Roses. Ed- 
 ward IV. Conclusion - - - Page 353 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN EU- 
 ROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Introduction. Decline of Literature in the latter 
 period of the Roman Empire. Its Causes. 
 Corruption of the Latin Language. Means by 
 which it was effected. Formation of new Lan- 
 guages. General Ignorance of the Dark Ages. 
 Scarcity of Books. Causes that prevented the 
 total Extinction of Learning. Prevalence of 
 Superstition and Fanaticism. General Corrup- 
 tion of Religion. Monasteries their Effects. 
 Pilgrimages. Love of Field Sports. State of 
 Agriculture of Internal and Foreign Trade 
 down to the End of the Eleventh Century. Im- 
 provement of Europe dated from that Age 450 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Progress of Commercial Improvement in Germany, 
 Flanders, and England. In the North of Europe. 
 In the Countries upon the Mediterranean Sea. 
 Maritime Laws. Usury. Banking Compa- 
 nies. Progress of Refinement inj^lanngs^ 
 Domestic Architecture. EcclesiasticSTArchi- 
 tecture. State of Agriculture in England. 
 Value of Money. Improvement of the Moral 
 Character of Society its Causes. Police. 
 Changes in Religious Opinion. Various Sects. 
 Chivalry its Progress, Character, and Influ- 
 ence. Causes of the Intellectual Improvement 
 of European Society. 1. The Study of Civil 
 Law. 2. Institution of Universities their Cele- 
 brity. Scholastic Philosophy. 3. Cultivation 
 of Modern Languages. Provengal Poets. 
 Norman Poets. French Prose Writers. Italian 
 early Poets in that Language. Dante. 
 Petrarch. English Language its Progress. 
 Chaucer. 4. Revival of Classical Learning. 
 Latin writers of the Twelfth Century. Litera- 
 ture of the Fourteenth Century. Greek Litera- 
 ture its Restoration in Italy. Invention of 
 Printing .... . 474 
 
VIEW 
 
 OP 
 
 THE STATE OF EUROPE 
 
 DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF FRANCE, FROM ITS CONQUEST BY CLOVIS TO THE 
 INVASION OF NAPLES BY CHARLES VIII. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. Invasion of Clovis. 
 First race of French Kings, Accession of Pe- 
 pin. State of Italy. Charlemagne. His Reign 
 and Character. Louis the Debonair. His Suc- 
 cessors. Calamitous state of the Empire in the 
 ninth and tenth Centuries. Accession of Hugh 
 Capet. His first Successors. Louis VII. 
 Philip Augustus. Conquest of Normandy. 
 War in Languedoc. Louis IX. His Charac- 
 ter. Digression upon the Crusades. Philip III. 
 Philip IV. Aggrandizement of French Mon- 
 archy under his Reign. Reigns of his Children. 
 Question of Salique-Law. Claim of Edward 
 III. 
 
 BEFORE the conclusion of the fifth cen- 
 tury, the mighty fabric of empire, which 
 valour and policy had founded upon the 
 subversion of seven hills of Rome, was final- 
 the Roman ly overthrown, in all the west 
 
 of Europe, by the barbarous 
 nations from the north, whose martial 
 energy and whose numbers were irre- 
 sistible. A race of men, formerly un- 
 known or despised, had not only dismem- 
 New settle- hered that proud sovereignty, 
 ments of the but permanently settled them- 
 barbarousna- se lves in its fairest provinces, 
 
 and imposed their yoke upon 
 the ancient possessors. The Vandals 
 were masters of Africa ; the Suevi held 
 part of Spain ; the Visigoths possessed 
 the remainder, with a large portion of 
 Gaul ; the Burgundians occupied the 
 provinces watered by the Rhone and Sa- 
 one ; the Ostrogoths almost all Italy. 
 The northwest of Gaul, between the 
 Seine and the Loire, some writers have 
 filled with an Armorican republic ;* while 
 
 * It is impossible not to speak skeptically as to 
 tiua republic, or rather confederation of independ- 
 B 
 
 the remainder was still nominally subject 
 to the Roman empire, and governed by 
 a certain Syagrius, rather with an inde- 
 pendent than a deputed authority. 
 
 [A. D. 486.] At this time, Clovis, king 
 of the Salian Franks, a tribe of invasion of 
 Germans long connected with Clovis - 
 Rome, and originally settled upon the 
 right bank of the Rhine, but who had lat- 
 terly penetrated as far as Tournay and 
 Cambray,* invaded Gaul, and defeated Sy- 
 agrius at Soissons. The result of this vic- 
 tory was the subjugation of those prov- 
 inces which had previously been consid- 
 ered as Roman. But as their allegiance 
 had not been very strict, so their loss was 
 not very severely felt ; since the empe- 
 rors of Constantinople were not too proud 
 to confer upon Clovis the titles of consul 
 and patrician, which he was too prudent 
 to refuse.f 
 
 ent cities under the rule of their respective bish- 
 ops, which Du Bos has with great ingenuity raised 
 upon very slight historical evidence, and in defiance 
 of the silence of Gregory, whose see of Tours bor- 
 dered upon their supposed territory. But his hy- 
 pothesis is not to be absolutely rejected, because it 
 is by no means deficient in internal probability, and 
 the early part of Gregory's history is brief and neg- 
 ligent. Du Bos, Hist. Critique de PEtablissement 
 des Franqais dans les Gaules, t. i.,p. 253. Gibbon, 
 c. 38, after following Du Bos in his text, whispers, 
 as usual, his suspicions in a note. 
 
 * The system of Pere Daniel, who denies any 
 permanent settlement of the Franks on the left 
 bank of the Rhine before Clovis, seems incapable 
 of being supported. It is difficult to resist the pre- 
 sumption that arises from the discovery of the 
 tomb and skeleton of Childeric, father of Clovis, at 
 Tournay, in 1653. See Montfaucon, Monumens 
 de la Monarchic Fran<?aise, tome i., p. 10. 
 
 t The theory of Du Bos, who considers Clovis 
 as a sort of lieutenant of the emperors, and as gov- 
 
18 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 Some years after this, Clovis defeated 
 the Alemanni, or Swabians, in a great bat- 
 tle at Zulpich, near Cologne. In conse- 
 quence of a vow, as it is said, made du- 
 ring this engagement,* and at the insti- 
 gation of his wife Clotilda, a princess of 
 Burgundy, he became a convert to Chris- 
 tianity. [A. D. 496.] It would be a fruit- 
 less inquiry whether he was sincere in 
 this change; but it is certain, at least, 
 that no policy could have been more suc- 
 cessful. The Arian sect, which had been 
 early introduced among the barbarous na- 
 tions, was predominant, though apparent- 
 ly without intolerance,! in the Burgundi- 
 an and Visigoth courts ; but the clergy of 
 Gaul were strenuously attached to the 
 Catholic side, and even before his con- 
 version had favoured the arms of Clovis. 
 They now became his most zealous sup- 
 porters ; and were rewarded by him with 
 
 erning the Roman part of his subjects by no other 
 title, has justly seemed extravagant to later critical 
 inquirers into the history of France. But it may 
 nevertheless be true, that the connexion between 
 him and the empire, and the emblems of Roman 
 magistracy which he bore, reconciled the conquer- 
 ed to their new masters. This is judiciously sta- 
 ted by the Duke de Nivernois. Mem. de 1'Acad. 
 des Inscript, tome xx., p. 174. In the sixth century. 
 however, the Greeks appear to have been nearly 
 ignorant of Clovis's countrymen. Nothing can be 
 made out of a passage in Procopius, where he 
 seems to mention the Armoricans under the name 
 A-pSopv^oi ; and Agathias gives a strangely romantic 
 account of the Franks, whom he extols for their con- 
 formity to Roman laws, TroXtra? w$ ra TroXXa ^?wv- 
 Tdi 'Pop.aiKr], icai vofioig TOI$ avrois, K. r. X. He goes 
 on to commend their mutual union, and observes 
 particularly that, in partitions of the kingdom, 
 which had frequently been made, they had never 
 taken up arms against each other, nor polluted the 
 land with civil bloodshed. One would almost be- 
 lieve him ironical. 
 
 * Gregory of Tours makes a very rhetorical story 
 of this famous vow, which, though we cannot 
 disprove, it may be permitted to suspect. L. ii., 
 c. 30. 
 
 f Hist, de Languedoc, par Vich et Vaissette, 
 tome i., p. 238. Gibbon, c. 37. A specious objec- 
 tion might be drawn from the history of the Gothic 
 monarchies in Italy, as well as Gaul and Spain, 
 to the great principles of religious toleration. 
 These Arian sovereigns treated their Catholic sub- 
 jects, it may be said, with tenderness, leaving them 
 in possession of every civil privilege, and were re- 
 warded for it by their defection or sedition. But, 
 in answer to this, it may be observed : 1. That the 
 system of persecution adopted by the Vandals in 
 Africa succeeded no better ; the Catholics of that 
 province having risen against them upon the land- 
 ing of Belisarius : 2. That we do not know what 
 insults and discouragements the Catholics of Gaul 
 and Italy may have endured, especially from the 
 Arian bishops, in that age of bigotry ; although the 
 administrations of Alaric and Theodoric were liber- 
 al and tolerant : 3. That the distinction of Arian 
 and Catholic was intimately connected with that 
 of Goth and Roman, of conqueror and conquered ; 
 so that it is difficult to separate the effects of na- 
 tional, from those of sectarian, animosity. 
 
 artful gratitude, and by his descendants 
 with lavish munificence. [A. D. 507.] 
 Upon the pretence of religion, he attack- 
 ed Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and, by 
 one great victory near Poitiers overthrow- 
 ing their empire in Gaul, reduced them 
 to the maritime province of Septimania, 
 a narrow strip of coast between the Rhone 
 and the Pyrenees. The exploits of Clovis 
 were the reduction of certain independ- 
 ent chiefs of his own tribe and family, 
 who were settled in the neighbourhood 
 of the Rhine.* All these he put to death 
 by force or treachery ; for he was cast in 
 the true mould of conquerors, and may 
 justly be ranked among the first of his 
 class, both for the splendour and the 
 guiltiness of his ambition, f 
 
 [A. D. 511.] Clovis left four sons ; one 
 illegitimate, born before his His descend- 
 conversion ; and three by his ants, 
 queen Clotilda. These four made, it is 
 said, an equal partition of his dominions ; 
 which comprehended not only France, but 
 the western and central parts of Germa- 
 ny, besides Bavaria, and perhaps Swabia, 
 which were governed by their own de- 
 pendant, but hereditary, chiefs. Thierry, 
 the eldest, had what was called Austra- 
 sia, the eastern or German division, and 
 fixed his capital at Metz ; Clodomir, at 
 Orleans ; Childebert, at Paris ; and Clo- 
 taire, at Soissons. ;{: During their reigns 
 the monarchy was aggrandized by the 
 conquest of Burgundy. [A. D. 558.] Clo- 
 
 * Modern historians, in enumerating these reg- 
 uli, call one of them King of Mans. But it is dif- 
 ficult to understand how a chieftain, independent 
 of Clovis, could have been settled in that part of 
 France. In fact, Gregory of Tours, our only au- 
 thority, does not say that this prince, Regnomeris, 
 was King of Mans, but that he was put to death in 
 that city : apud Cenomannis civitatem jussu Chlo- 
 dovechi interfectus est. 
 
 f The reader will be gratified with an admirable 
 memoir, by the Duke de Nivernois, on the policy 
 of Clovis, in the twentieth volume of the Academy 
 of Inscriptions. 
 
 J Quatuor filii regnum accipiunt, et inter se 
 sequ4 lance dividunt. Greg. Tur., 1. iii., c. 1. It 
 would rather perplex a geographer to make an 
 equal division of Clovis's empire into portions, of 
 which Paris, Orleans, Metz, and Soissons should 
 be the respective capitals. I apprehend, in fact, 
 that Gregory's expression is not very precise. The 
 kingdom of Soissons seems to have been the least 
 of the four, and that of Austrasia the greatest. 
 But the partitions made by these princes were ex- 
 ceedingly complex ; insulated fragments of terri- 
 tory, and even undivided shares of cities, being al- 
 lotted to the worse provided brothers, by way of 
 compensation, out of the larger kingdoms. It 
 would be very difficult to ascertain the limits of 
 these minor monarchies. But the French empire 
 was always considered as one, whatever might be 
 the number of its inheritors ; and from accidental 
 circumstances it was so frequently reunited as fully 
 to keep up this notion. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 19 
 
 taire, the youngest brother, ultimately re- 
 united all the kingdoms : but upon his 
 death they were again divided among his 
 four sons, and brought together a second 
 time by another Clotaire [A. D. 613], the 
 grandson to the first. It is a weary and 
 unprofitable task to follow these changes 
 in detail, through scenes of tumult and 
 bloodshed, in which the eye meets with 
 no sunshine, nor can rest upon any inter- 
 esting spot. It would be difficult, as 
 Gibbon has justly observed, to find any- 
 where more vice or less virtue. The 
 names of two queens are distinguished 
 even at that age for the magnitude of 
 their crimes : Fredegonde, the wife of 
 Chilperic, of whose atrocities none have 
 doubted ; and Brunehaut, queen of Aus- 
 trasia, who has met with advocates in 
 modern times, less, perhaps, from any 
 fair presumptions of her innocence, than 
 from compassion for the cruel death 
 which she underwent.* 
 
 [A. D. 628-638.] But after Dagobert, 
 son of Clotaire II., the kings of France 
 Their degen- dwindled into personal insig- 
 eracy. nificance, and are generally- 
 
 treated by later historians as insensati, 
 or idiots. f The whole power of the king- 
 Mayors of the dom devolved upon the may- 
 paiace. ors of the palace, originally 
 
 officers of the household, through whom 
 petitions or representations were laid be- 
 fore the king. The weakness of sover- 
 eigns rendered this office important, and 
 still greater weakness suffered it to be- 
 come elective ; men of energetic talents 
 and ambition united it with military com- 
 mand; and the history of France, for 
 half a century, presents no names more 
 conspicuous than those of Ebroin and 
 
 * Every history will give a sufficient epitome of 
 the Merovingian dynasty. The facts of these times 
 are of little other importance than as they impress 
 on the mind a thorough notion of the extreme 
 wickedness of almost every person concerned in 
 them, and consequently of the state to which soci- 
 ety was reduced. But there is no advantage in 
 crowding the memory with barbarian wars and as- 
 sassinations. For the question about Brunehaut's 
 character, who has had partisans almost as enthu- 
 siastic as those of Mary of Scotland, the reader 
 may consult Pasquier, Recherches de la France, 1. 
 viii.,orVelly, Hist, de France, tome i., on one side, 
 and a dissertation by Gaillard, in the Memoirs of 
 the Academy of Inscriptions, tome xxx., on the 
 other. The last is unfavourable to Brunehaut, 
 and perfectly satisfactory to my judgment. 
 
 t An ingenious attempt is made by the Abbe" 
 Vertot, Mem. de PAcademie, tome vi., to rescue 
 these monarchs from this long-established imputa- 
 tion. But the leading fact is irresistible, that all the 
 royal authority was lost during their reigns. How- 
 ever, the best apology seems to be, that, after the 
 victories of Pepin Heristal, the Merovingian kings 
 were, in effect, conquered, and their inefficiency 
 was a matter of necessary submission to a master. 
 B2 
 
 Grimoald, mayors of Neustria and Aus- 
 trasia, the western and eastern divisions 
 of the French monarchy.* These, how- 
 ever, met with violent ends ; but a more 
 successful usurper of the royal authority 
 was Pepin Heristal, first mayor, and af- 
 terward duke, of Austrasia ; who united, 
 with almost an avowed sovereignty over 
 that division, a paramount command over 
 the French or Neustrian provinces, where 
 nominal kings of the Merovingian family 
 were still permitted to exist. This au- 
 thority he transmitted to a more renown- 
 ed hero, his son, Charles Martel, who, 
 after some less important exploits, was 
 called upon to encounter a new and ter- 
 rible enemy. The Saracens, after sub- 
 jugating Spain, had penetrated into the 
 very heart of France. Charles Martel 
 gained a complete victory over them be- 
 tween Tours and Poitiersf [A. D. 732], 
 in which 300,000 Mahometans are hyper- 
 bolically asserted to have fallen. The 
 reward of this victory was the province 
 of Septimania, which the Saracens had 
 conquered from the Visigoths.! 
 
 Such powerful subjects were not like- 
 ly to remain long contented change in the 
 without the crown; but the royal family. 
 
 * The original kingdoms of Soissons, Paris, and 
 Orleans, were consolidated into that denominated 
 Neustria, to which Burgundy was generally appen- 
 dant, though distinctly governed by a mayor of its 
 own election. But Aquitaine, the exact bounds of 
 which I do not know, was, from the time of Dago- 
 bert I., separated from the rest of the monarchy, 
 under a ducal dynasty, sprung from Aribert, brother 
 of that monarch. 
 
 f Tours is above seventy miles distant from Poi- 
 tiers ; but I do not find that any French antiquary 
 has been able to ascertain the place of this great 
 battle with more precision ; which is remarkable, 
 since, after so immense a slaughter, we should ex- 
 pect the testimony of " grandia effossis ossa se- 
 pulcris." 
 
 The victory of Charles Martel has immortalized 
 his name, and may justly be reckoned among those 
 few battles of which a contrary event would have 
 essentially varied the drama of the world in all 
 its subsequent scenes ; with Marathon, Arbela, 
 the Metaurus, Chalons, and Leipsic. Yet do we 
 not judge a little too much by the event, and fol- 
 low, as usual, in the wake of fortune ? Has not 
 more frequent experience condemned those who 
 set the fate of empires upon a single cast, and risk 
 a general battle with invaders, whose greater peril 
 is in delay ? Was not this the fatal error by which 
 Roderic had lost his kingdom ? Was it possible 
 that the Saracens could have retained any perma- 
 nent possession of France, except by means of a 
 victory ? And did not the contest upon the broad 
 campaign of Poitou afford them a considerable 
 prospect of success, which a more cautious policy 
 would have withheld ? 
 
 J This conquest was completed by Pepin in 759. 
 The inhabitants preserved their liberties by treaty ; 
 and Vaissette deduces from this solemn assurance 
 the privileges of Languedoc. Hist, de Lang., tome 
 i., p. 412. 
 
20 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. 
 
 Accession of circumstances under which 
 Pepin. j t was transferred from the 
 
 race of Clovis are connected with one 
 of the most important revolutions in 
 the history of Europe. [A. D. 752.] 
 The mayor Pepin, inheriting his father 
 Charles Martel's talents and ambition, 
 made, in the name and with the con- 
 sent of the nation, a solemn reference 
 to the pope, Zacharias, as to the dep- 
 osition of Childeric III., under whose 
 nominal authority he himself was reign- 
 ing. The decision was favourable ; that 
 he who possessed the power, should also 
 bear the title of king. The unfortunate 
 Merovingian was dismissed into a con- 
 vent, and the Franks, with one consent, 
 raised Pepin to the throne, the founder 
 of a more illustrious dynasty. In order 
 to judge of the importance of this revo- 
 lution to the see of Rome, as well as to 
 France, we must turn our eyes upon the 
 affairs of Italy. 
 
 The dominion of the Ostrogoths was 
 
 annihilated by the arms of Belisarius 
 
 . , and Narses in the sixth cen- 
 
 The Lombards. 
 
 ward, the Lombards, a people for some 
 time settled in Pannonia, not only sub- 
 dued that northern part of Italy which 
 has retained their name, but, extending 
 themselves southward, formed the pow- 
 erful dutchies of Spoleto and Benevento. 
 The residence of their kings was in Pa- 
 via ; but the hereditary vassals, who held 
 those two dutchies, might be deemed al- 
 most independent sovereigns.* The rest 
 of Italy was governed by exarchs, depu- 
 ted by the Greek emperors, and fixed at 
 Ravenna. In Rome itself, neither the 
 people, nor the bishops, who had already 
 conceived in part their schemes of am- 
 bition, were much inclined to endure the 
 superiority of Constantinople ; yet their 
 disaffection was counterbalanced by the 
 inveterate hatred, as well as jealousy, 
 with which they regarded the Lombards. 
 But an impolitic and intemperate perse- 
 cution, carried on by two or three Greek 
 emperors against a favourite superstition, 
 the worship of images, excited commo- 
 tions throughout Italy, of which the 
 Lombards took advantage, and easily 
 They reduce wrested the exarchate of Ra- 
 the exarchate venna from the eastern em- 
 
 of Ravenna, pire [A D ?52 j It wag 
 
 far from the design of the popes to 
 see their nearest enemies so much ag- 
 
 * The history, character, and policy of the Lom- 
 bards are well treated by Gibbon, c. 45. See, too, 
 the fourth and fifth books of Giannone, and some 
 papers by Gaillard in the Memoirs of the Academy 
 of Inscriptions, tomes xxxii., xxxv., xlv. 
 
 grandized; and any effectual assistance 
 from the Emperor Constantine Coprony- 
 mus would have kept Rome still faithful. 
 But having no hope from his arms, and 
 provoked by his obstinate intolerance, 
 the pontiffs had recourse to France;* 
 and the service they had rendered to Pe- 
 pin led to reciprocal obligations of the 
 greatest magnitude. At the wnichPepin 
 
 request Of Stephen II., the reconquers, and 
 
 new king of France descend- bestows on the 
 ed from the Alps, drove the p( 
 Lombards from their recent conquests, 
 and conferred them upon the pope. This 
 memorable donation nearly comprised the 
 modern provinces of Romagna and the 
 March of Ancona.f 
 
 [A. D. 768.] The state of Italy, which 
 had undergone no change for CharlemaKne 
 nearly two centuries, was 
 now rapidly verging to a great revolu- 
 tion. Under the shadow of a mighty 
 name, the Greek empire had concealed 
 the extent of its decline. That charm 
 was now broken : and the Lombard 
 kingdom, which had hitherto appeared 
 the only competitor in the lists, proved 
 to have lost its own energy in awaiting 
 the occasion for its display. France 
 was far more than a match for the pow- 
 er of Italy, even if she had not been 
 guided by the towering ambition and 
 restless activity of the son of Pepin. 
 It was almost the first exploit of Charle- 
 magne, after the death of his brother 
 Carloman had reunited the Frankish em- 
 pire under his dominion^ [A. D. 772], 
 
 tO Subjugate the kingdom Of He conquers 
 
 Lombardy. [A. D. 774.] Nei- Lombardy; 
 ther Pavia nor Verona, its most con- 
 siderable cities, interposed any mate- 
 rial delay to his arms ; and the chief re- 
 sistance he encountered was from the 
 dukes of Friuli and Benevento, the latter 
 of whom could never be brought into 
 thorough subjection to the conqueror. 
 Italy, however, be the cause what it 
 might, seems to have tempted Charle- 
 magne far less than the dark forests of 
 
 * There had been some previous overtures to 
 Charles Martel, as well as to Pepin himself ; the 
 habitual sagacity of the court of Rome perceiving 
 the growth of a new western monarchy, which 
 would be, in faith and arms, their surest ally. 
 Muratori, Ann. d'ltal., A. D. 741. 
 
 t Giannone, 1. v., c. 2. 
 
 j Carloman, younger brother of Charles, took 
 the Austrasian or German provinces of the em- 
 pire. The custom of partition was so fully estab- 
 lished, that those wise and ambitious princes, 
 Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne himself, 
 did not venture to thwart the public opinion by 
 introducing primogeniture. Carloman would not 
 long have stood against his brother ; who, after 
 his death, usurped the inheritance of his two in- 
 fant children. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 21 
 
 Germany. For neither the southern 
 provinces, nor Sicily, could have with- 
 stood his power, if it had been steadily 
 directed against them. Even 
 
 f Spain; ^ [n hardly drew SQ much 
 
 of his attention, as the splendour of the 
 prize might naturally have excited. He 
 gained, however, a very important ac- 
 cession to his empire, by conquering 
 from the Saracens the territory contain- 
 ed between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. 
 This was formed into the Spanish March, 
 governed by the Count of Barcelona, part 
 of which, at least, must be considered as 
 appertaining to France till the twelfth 
 century.* 
 
 But the most tedious and difficult 
 and saxony, achievement of Charlemagne 
 was the reduction of the Sax- 
 ons. The wars with this nation, who 
 occupied nearly the modern circles of 
 Westphalia and Lower Saxony, lasted for 
 thirty years. Whenever the conqueror 
 withdrew his armies, or even his person, 
 the Saxons broke into fresh rebellion; 
 which his unparalleled rapidity of move- 
 ment seldom failed to crush without de- 
 lay. From such perseverance on either 
 side, destruction of the weaker could 
 alone result. A large colony of Saxons 
 were finally transplanted into Flanders 
 and Brabant, countries hitherto ill-peo- 
 pled, in which their descendants pre- 
 served the same unconquerable spirit of 
 resistance to oppression. Many fled to 
 the kingdoms of Scandinavia, and, min- 
 gling with the Northmen, who were just 
 preparing to run their memorable career, 
 revenged upon the children and subjects 
 of Charlemagne the devastation of Sax- 
 ony. The remnant embraced Christi- 
 anity, their aversion to which had been 
 the chief cause of their rebellions, and 
 acknowledged the sovereignty of Char- 
 lemagne ; a submission, which even Witi- 
 kind, the second Arminius of ^Germany, 
 after such irresistible conviction of her 
 destiny, did not disdain to make. But 
 they retained, in the main, their own 
 laws ; they were governed by a duke of 
 their own nation, if not of their own 
 election ; and for many ages they were 
 
 The counts of Barcelona always acknowl- 
 edged the feudal superiority of the kings of France, 
 till some time after their own title had been mer- 
 ged in that of kings of Aragon. In 1180, legal in- 
 struments executed in Catalonia ceased to be da- 
 ted by the year of the King of France ; and as 
 there certainly remained no other mark of depend- 
 ance, the separation of the principality may be 
 referred to that year. But the rights of the French 
 crown over it were finally ceded by Louis IX., in 
 1258. De Marca, Marca Hispanica, p, 514. Art 
 de verifier les Dates, t. ii., p. 291. 
 
 distinguished by their original character 
 among the nations of Germany. 
 
 The successes of Charlemagne on the 
 eastern frontier of his empire against the 
 Sclavonians of Bohemia, and Huns or 
 Avars of Pannonia, though obtained with 
 less cost, were hardly less eminent. In 
 all his wars, the newly-conquered na- 
 tions, or those whom fear had made de- 
 pendant allies, were employed to subju- 
 gate their neighbours ; and the incessant 
 waste of fatigue and the sword was sup- 
 plied by a fresh population 
 that swelled the expanding 
 circle of dominion. I do not 
 know that the limits of the new western 
 empire are very exactly defined by con- 
 temporary writers, nor would it be easy 
 to appreciate the degree of subjection in 
 which the Sclavonian tribes were held. 
 As an organized mass of provinces, regu- 
 larly governed by imperial officers, it 
 seems to have been nearly bounded, in 
 Germany, by the Elbe, the Saale, the Bo- 
 hemian mountains, and a line drawn from 
 thence crossing the Danube above Vien- 
 na, and prolonged to the Gulf of Istria. 
 Part of Dalmatia was comprised in the 
 dutchy of Friuli. In Italy, the empire 
 extended not much beyond the modern 
 frontier of Naples, if we exclude, as was 
 the fact, the dutchy of Benevento from 
 any thing more than a titular subjection. 
 The Spanish boundary, as has been said 
 already, was the Ebro.* 
 
 [A. D. 800.] A seal was put to the glo- 
 ry of Charlemagne, when Leo His Corona . 
 III., in the name of the Ro- tionasempe- 
 man people, placed upon his ror - 
 head the imperial crown. His father, 
 Pepin, had borne the title of patrician, 
 and he had himself exercised, with that 
 title, a regular sovereignty over Rome.f 
 
 * I follow in this the map of Koch, in his Ta- 
 bleau des Revolutions de 1'Europe, tome i. That 
 of Vaugondy, Paris, 1752, includes the dependant 
 Sclavonic tribes, and carries the limit of the em- 
 pire to the Oder and frontiers of Poland. The au- 
 thors of L'Art de verifier les Dates extend it to the 
 Raab. It would require a long examination to give 
 a precise statement. 
 
 t The patricians of the lower empire were gov- 
 ernors sent from Constantinople to the provinces. 
 Rome had long been accustomed to their name 
 and power. The subjection of the Romans, both 
 clergy and laity, to Charlemagne, as well before as 
 after he bore the imperial name, seems to be estab- 
 lished. See Dissertation Historique, par Le Blanc, 
 subjoined to his Traite des Monnoyes de France, 
 p. 18, and St. Marc, AbregS Chronologique de 
 1'Histoire de 1'Italie, t. i. The first of these wri- 
 ters does not allow that Pepin exercised any author- 
 ity at Rome. A good deal of obscurity rests over its 
 internal government for near fifty years ; but there 
 is some reason to believe that the nominal sover- 
 eignty of the Greek emperors was not entirely ab- 
 rogated. Muratori, Annali d'ltalia, ad ann. 772. 
 
22 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 Money was coined in his name, and an 
 oath of fidelity was taken by the clergy 
 and people. But the appellation of em- 
 peror seemed to place his authority over 
 all his subjects on a new footing. It was 
 full of high and indefinite pretension, 
 tending to overshadow the free election 
 of the Franks by a fictitious descent from 
 Augustus. A fresh oath of fidelity to him 
 as emperor was demanded from his sub- 
 jects. His own discretion, however, pre- 
 vented him from affecting those more 
 despotic prerogatives, which the imperial 
 name might still be supposed to convey. 
 In analyzing the characters of he- 
 roes, it is hardly possible to separate 
 
 altogether the share of for- 
 ms character. tim( f from their Qwn> The 
 
 epoch made by Charlemagne in the his- 
 tory of the world, the illustrious families 
 which prided themselves in him as their 
 progenitor, the very legions of romance, 
 which are full of his fabulous exploits, 
 have cast a lustre around his head, and 
 testify the greatness that has imbodied 
 itself in his name. None indeed of Char- 
 lemagne's wars can be compared with 
 the Saracenic victory of Charles Martel ; 
 but that was a contest for freedom, his 
 for conquest ; and fame is more partial 
 to successful aggression than to patriotic 
 resistance. As a scholar, his acquisitions 
 were probably little superior to those of 
 his uninspected son ; and in several points 
 of view the glory of Charlemagne might 
 be extenuated by an analytical dissec- 
 tion.* But, rejecting a mode of judging 
 equally uncandid and fallacious, we shall 
 find that he possessed in every thing 
 that grandeur of conception which dis* 
 tinguishes extraordinary minds. Like 
 Alexander, he seemed born for universal 
 innovation: in a life restlessly active, 
 we see him reforming the coinage, and 
 establishing the legal divisions of money ; 
 
 St. Marc, t. i., p. 356, 372. A mosaic, still extant 
 in the Lateran palace, represents our Saviour giv- 
 ing the keys to St. Peter with one hand, and with 
 the other a standard to a crowned prince, bearing 
 the inscription, Constantino V. But Constantine 
 V. did not begin to reign till 780 ; and if this piece 
 of workmanship was made under Leo III., as the 
 authors of L'Art de verifier les Dates imagine, it 
 could not be earlier than 795. T. i., p. 262. Mura- 
 tori, ad ann. 798. However this may be, there can 
 be no question that a considerable share of juris- 
 diction and authority was practically exercised by 
 the popes during this period. Vid. Murat., ad ann. 
 789. 
 
 * Eginhard attests his ready eloquence, his per- 
 fect mastery of Latin, his knowledge of Greek, so 
 far as to read it, his acquisitions in logic, grammar, 
 rhetoric, and astronomy. But the anonymous au- 
 thor of the life of Louis the Debonair attributes 
 most of these accomplishments to that unfortu- 
 nate prince 
 
 gathering about him the learned of every 
 country ; founding schools, and collect- 
 ing libraries ; interfering, but with the 
 tone of a king, in religious controversies ; 
 aiming, though prematurely, at the for- 
 mation of a naval force ; attempting, for 
 the sake of commerce, the magnificent 
 enterprise of uniting the Rhine and Dan- 
 ube;* and meditating to mould the dis- 
 cordant codes of Roman and barbarian 
 laws into a uniform system. 
 
 The great qualities of Charlemagne 
 were indeed alloyed by the vices of a 
 barbarian and a conqueror. Nine wives, 
 whom he divorced with very little cere- 
 mony, attest the license of his private 
 life, which his temperance and frugality 
 can hardly be said to redeem. f Unspa- 
 ring of blood, though not constitution- 
 ally cruel, and wholly indifferent to the 
 means which his ambition prescribed, he 
 beheaded in one day four thousand Sax- 
 ons ; an act of atrocious butchery, after 
 which his persecuting edicts, pronoun- 
 cing the pain of death against those who 
 refused baptism, or even who ate flesh 
 during Lent, seem scarcely worthy of 
 notice. This union of barbarous ferocity 
 with elevated views of national improve- 
 ment, might suggest the parallel of Peter 
 the Great. But the degrading habits and 
 brute violence of the Muscovite place 
 him at an immense distance from the re- 
 storer of the empire. 
 
 A strong sympathy for intellectual ex- 
 cellence was the leading characteristic of 
 Charlemagne, and this undoubtedly bias- 
 ed him in the chief political error of his 
 conduct, that of encouraging the power 
 and pretensions of the hierarchy. But, 
 perhaps, his greatest eulogy is written in 
 the disgraces of succeeding times, and 
 the miseries of Europe. He stands alone 
 like a beacon upon a waste, or a rock in 
 the broad ocean. His sceptre was as 
 the bow of Ulysses, which could not be 
 drawn by any weaker hand. In the dark 
 ages of European history, the reign of 
 Charlemagne affords a solitary resting- 
 place between two long periods of turbu- 
 lence and ignominy, deriving the advan- 
 
 * See an essay upon this project in the Memoirs 
 of the Academy of Inscriptions, tome xviii. The 
 rivers which were designed to form the links of 
 this junction were the Altmuhl, the Regnitz, and 
 the Maine ; but their want of depth, and the spon- 
 giness of the soil, appear to present insuperable 
 impediments to its completion. 
 
 t I apprehend that there is no foundation for the 
 charge of an incestuous passion for his daughters, 
 which Voltaire calls une foiblesse. The error 
 seems to have originated in a misinterpreted pas- 
 sage of Eginhard. These ladies, indeed, were far 
 from being models of virtue, and their lives brought 
 scandal upon the royal palace. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 ^ ^. 
 
 23 
 
 tages of contrast both from that of the 
 preceding dynasty, and of a posterity for 
 whom he had formed an empire which 
 they were unworthy and unequal to main- 
 tain.* 
 
 [A. D. 814.] Pepin, the eldest son of 
 Louis the Charlemagne, died before him, 
 Debonair, leaving a natural son, named 
 Bernard.f Even if he had been legit- 
 imate, the right of representation was 
 not at all established during these ages ; 
 indeed, the general prejudice seems to 
 have inclined against it. Bernard, there- 
 fore, kept only the kingdom of Italy, 
 which had been transferred to his father ; 
 while Louis, the younger son of Charle- 
 magne, inherited the empire. [A. D. 
 817.] But, in a short time, Bernard, hav- 
 ing attempted a rebellion against his un- 
 cle, was sentenced to lose his eyes, which 
 occasioned his death; a cruelty more 
 agreeable to the prevailing tone of man- 
 ners, than to the character of Louis, who 
 bitterly reproached himself for the sever- 
 ity he had been persuaded to use. 
 
 Under this prince, called by the Italians 
 the Pious, and by the French the Debonair, 
 or Good-natured,! the mighty structure 
 of his father's power began rapidly to de- 
 cay. I do not know that Louis deserves 
 so much contempt as he has undergone ; 
 but historians have in general more in- 
 dulgence for splendid crimes, than for 
 the weaknesses of virtue. There was no 
 defect in Louis's understanding or cour- 
 age ; he was accomplished in martial ex- 
 ercises, and in all the learning which an 
 education, excellent for that age, could 
 supply. No one was ever more anxious 
 to reform the abuses of administration; 
 and whoever compares his capitularies 
 with those of Charlemagne, will perceive 
 that, as a legislator, he was even superior 
 to his father. The fault lay entirely in 
 his heart ; and this fault was nothing but 
 a temper too soft, and a conscience too 
 strict. $ It is not wonderful that the em- 
 
 * The life of Charlemagne, by Gaillard, without 
 being made perhaps so interesting as it ought to 
 have been, presents an adequate view both of his 
 actions and character. Schmidt, Hist, des Alle- 
 mands, tome ii., appears to me a superior writer. 
 
 f A contemporary author, Thegan, ap. Muratori, 
 A. D. 810, asserts that Bernard was born of a con- 
 cubine. I do not know why modem historians 
 represent it otherwise. 
 
 t These names, as a French writer observes, 
 meant the same thing. Pius had, even in good 
 Latin, the sense of mitts, meek, forbearing, or what 
 the French call debonair. Synonymes de Rouband, 
 tome i., p. 257. Our English word debonair is 
 hardly used in the same sense, if indeed it can be 
 called an English word; but I have not altered 
 Louis's appellation, by which he is so well known. 
 
 $ Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, tome ii., has 
 done more justice than other historians to Louis's 
 
 pire should have been speedily dissolved ; 
 a succession of such men as Charles Mar- 
 tel, Pepin, and Charlemagne, could alone 
 have preserved its integrity ; but the mis- 
 fortunes of Louis and his people were 
 immediately owing to the following er- 
 rors of his conduct. 
 
 [A. D. 817.] Soon after his acces- 
 sion, Louis thought fit to asso- H J S m i 8for . 
 ciate his eldest son Lothaire to tunes and 
 the empire, and to confer the erro - rs> 
 provinces of Bavaria and Aquitaine, as 
 subordinate kingdoms, upon the two 
 younger, Louis and Pepin. The step 
 was, in appearance, conformableto his 
 father's policy, who had acted fowards 
 himself in a similar manner. But such 
 measures are not subject to general rules, 
 and exact a careful regard to characters 
 and circumstances. The principle, how- 
 ever, which regulated this division, was 
 learned from Charlemagne,* and could 
 alone, if strictly pursued, have given uni- 
 ty and permanence to the empire. The 
 elder brother was to preserve his superi- 
 ority over the others, so that they should 
 neither make peace nor war, nor even 
 give answer to ambassadors, without his 
 consent. Upon the death of either, no 
 further partition was to be made; but 
 whichever of his children might become 
 the popular choice, was to inherit the 
 whole kingdom, under the same superior- 
 ity of the head of the family. f This com- 
 pact was, from the beginning, disliked by 
 the younger brothers ; and an event, upon 
 which Louis does not seem to have cal- 
 culated, soon disgusted his colleague Lo- 
 thaire. Judith of Bavaria, the emperor's 
 second wife, an ambitious woman, bore 
 him a son, by name Charles, whom both 
 parents were naturally anxious to place 
 on an equal footing with his brothers. 
 But this could only be done at the ex- 
 pense of Lothaire, who was ill-disposed 
 to see his empire still further dismember- 
 ed for this child of a second bed. Louis 
 passed his life in a straggle with three 
 undutiful sons, who abused his paternal 
 kindness by constant rebellions. 
 
 These were rendered more formidable 
 by the concurrence of a different class of 
 
 character. Vaissette attests the goodness of his 
 government m Aquitaine, which he held as a sub- 
 ordinate kingdom during his father's life. It ex- 
 tended from the Loire to the Ebro, so that the trust 
 was not contemptible. Hist, de Languedoc, tome 
 i., p. 476. 
 
 * Charlemagne had made a prospective arrange- 
 ment in 806, the conditions of which are nearly the 
 same as those of Louis ; but the death of his two 
 elder sons, Charles and Pepin, prevented its taking 
 effect. Baluz. Capitularia, p. 44] . 
 
 t Baluzii Capitularia, tome i., p. 575. 
 
24 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 enemies, whom it had been another error 
 of the emperor to provoke. Charlemagne 
 had assumed a thorough control and su- 
 premacy over the clergy; and his son 
 was perhaps still more vigilant in chasti- 
 sing their irregularities, and reforming 
 their rules of discipline. But to this, 
 which they had been compelled to bear 
 at the hands of the first, it was not equal- 
 ly easy for the second to obtain their sub- 
 mission. Louis, therefore, drew on him- 
 self the inveterate enmity of men, who 
 united with the turbulence of martial 
 nobles, a skill in managing those engines 
 of offence which were peculiar to their 
 order, and to which the implicit devotion 
 of his character laid him very open. Yet, 
 after many vicissitudes of fortune, and 
 many days of ignominy, his wishes were 
 eventually accomplished. [A. D. 840.] 
 Charles, his youngest son, sur- 
 fhe r emjL named the Bald, obtained, up- 
 amonghis on his death, most part of 
 f "?' . France, while Germany fell to 
 
 Lothaire, , , / T j *u 
 
 Lou is, and the share of Louis, and the 
 Charles the re st of the imperial dominions, 
 with the title, to the eldest, 
 Lothaire. [A. D. 847.] This partition 
 was the result of a sanguinary, though 
 short, contest ; and it gave a fatal blow 
 to the empire of the Franks. For the 
 treaty of Mersen, in 847, abrogated the 
 sovereignty that had been attached to 
 the eldest brother and to the imperial 
 name in former partitions ; each held his 
 respective kingdom as an independent 
 right.* 
 
 The subsequent partitions made among 
 the children of these brothers 
 the cariovin- are of too rapid succession to 
 gian family, be here related. In about 
 FaTeXe?or forty years, the empire was 
 881. King of nearly reunited under Charles 
 France 885 the Fat, son of Louis of Ger- 
 ' many ; but his short and in- 
 glorious reign ended in his deposition. 
 From this time the possession of Italy 
 was contested among her native prin- 
 ces ; Germany fell at first to an illegit- 
 imate descendant of Charlemagne, and 
 
 Dismember- in a shor . t time was entirel y 
 ment of the lost by his family ; tWO king- 
 empire, doms, afterward united,! were 
 
 formed by usurpers, out of what was 
 then called Burgundy, and comprised the 
 provinces between the Rhone and the 
 Alps, with Tranche Comte, and great part 
 of Switzerland. In France, 
 the Carlovingian kings con- France f 
 tinued for another century; Eudes887. 
 but their line was interrupted gjj^ggg 8 
 two or three times by the Robert? 922. 
 election or usurpation of a Ralph 933. 
 powerful family, the counts of gS Lothaire 
 Paris and Orleans, who end- 954. Louis v. 
 ed, like the old mayors of 9 ^p^ nia 
 the palace, in dispersing the 
 phantoms of royalty they had profess- 
 ed to serve.* Hugh Capet, the rep- 
 resentative of this house, upon the 
 death of Louis V. placed himself upon the 
 throne ; thus founding the third and most 
 permanent race of French sovereigns. 
 Before this happened, the descendants of 
 Charlemagne had sunk into insignifi- 
 cance, and retained little more of France 
 than the city of Laon. The rest of the 
 tingdom had been seized by the powerful 
 lobles, who, with the nominal fidelity of 
 the feudal system, maintained its practi- 
 cal independence and rebellious spirit. 
 
 These were times of great misery to 
 he people, and the worst, per- 
 laps, that Europe has ever s ^ te le of the 
 mown. Even under Charle- 
 magne, we have abundant proofs of the 
 calamities which the people suffered. 
 The light which shone around him was 
 that of a consuming fire. The free pro- 
 prietors, who had once considered them- 
 selves as only called upon to resist for- 
 eign invasion, were harassed with end- 
 less expeditions, and dragged away to the 
 Baltic Sea or the banks of the Drave. 
 Many of them, as we learn from his ca- 
 pitularies, became ecclesiastics to avoid 
 military conscription. f But far worse 
 
 * Baluzii Capitularia, tome ii., p. 42. Velly, 
 tome ii., p. 75. The expressions of this treaty are 
 perhaps equivocal ; but the subsequent conduct of 
 the brothers and their family justifies the construc- 
 tion of Velly, which I have followed. 
 
 t These kingdoms were denominated Provence 
 and Transjurane Burgundy. The latter was very 
 small, comprising only part of Switzerland ; but its 
 second sovereign, Rodolph II., acquired by treaty 
 almost the whole of the former; and the two uni 
 ted were called the kingdom of Aries. This lastec 
 
 from 933 to 1032, when Rodolph III. bequeathed 
 his dominions to the Emperor Conrad II. Art de 
 verifier les Dates, tome ii., p. 427-432. 
 
 * The family of Capet is generally admitted to 
 possess the most ancient pedigree of any sovereign 
 line in Europe. Its succession through males is 
 unequivocally deduced from Robert the Brave, 
 made governor of Anjou in 864, and father of Eu- 
 des, king of France, and of Robert, who was cho- 
 sen by a party in 922, though, as Charles the Sim- 
 ple was still acknowledged in some provinces, it is 
 uncertain whether he ought to be counted in the 
 royal list. It is, moreover, highly probable that 
 Robert the Brave was descended, equally through 
 males, from St. Arnoul, who died in 640, and con- 
 sequently nearly allied to the Carlovingian family, 
 who derive their pedigree from the same head. 
 See Preuves de la Genealogie de Hughes Capet, hi 
 1'Art de verifier les Dates, tome i., p. 566. 
 
 t Capitularia, A. D. 805. Whoever possessed 
 three mansi of allodial property, was called upon 
 for personal service, or at least to furnish a substi- 
 tute. Nigellus, author of a poetical Life of Louis 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 must have been their state under the lax 
 government of succeeding times, when 
 the dukes and counts, no longer checked 
 by the vigorous administration of Char- 
 lemagne, were at liberty to play the ty- 
 rants in their several territories, of which 
 they now became almost the sovereigns. 
 The poorer landholders accordingly were 
 forced to bow their necks to the yoke ; 
 and either by compulsion, or through 
 hope of being better protected, submitted 
 their independent patrimonies to the feu- 
 dal tenure. 
 
 But evils still more terrible than these 
 political abuses were the lot of those na- 
 tions who had been subject to Charle- 
 magne. They, indeed, may appear to 
 us little better than ferocious barbari- 
 ans : but they were exposed to the as- 
 saults of tribes, in comparison of whom 
 they must be deemed humane and pol- 
 ished. Each frontier of the empire had 
 to dread the attack of an enemy. The 
 coasts of Italy were continu- 
 ' ally alarmed by the Saracens 
 of Africa, who possessed themselves of 
 Sicily and Sardinia, and became masters 
 of the Mediterranean Sea.* [A. D. 846 
 -849.] Though the Greek dominions in 
 the south of Italy were chiefly exposed 
 to them, they twice insulted and ravaged 
 the territory" of Rome ; nor was there any 
 security even in the neighbourhood of the 
 maritime Alps, where, early in the tenth 
 century, they settled a piratical colony. f 
 -*''' Much more formidable were the foes 
 The Hun- by whom Germany was assail- 
 garians. e d. The Sclavonians, a widely- 
 extended people, whose language is still 
 spoken upon half the surface of Europe, 
 had occupied the countries of Bohemia, 
 Poland, and Pannonia,J ,on the eastern 
 
 I., seems to implicate Charlemagne himself in some 
 of the oppressions of his reign. It was the first 
 care of the former to redress those who had been 
 injured in his father's time. Recueil des Histo- 
 riens, tome vi. N. B. I quote by this title the 
 great collection of French historians, charters, and 
 other documents illustrative of the middle ages, 
 more commonly known by the name of its first 
 editor, the Benedictine Bouquet. But as several 
 learned men of that order were successively con- 
 cerned in this work, not one half of which has yet 
 been published, it seemed better to follow its own 
 title-page. 
 
 * These African Saracens belonged to the Agla- 
 bites, a dynasty that reigned at Tunis for the whole 
 of the ninth century, after throwing off the yoke 
 of the Abbassite Khalifs. They were overthrown 
 themselves in the next age by the Fatimites. Si- 
 cily was first invaded in 827 ; but the city of Syra- 
 cuse was only reduced in 878. 
 
 t Muratori, Annali d'ltalia, ad ann. 906, et alibi. 
 These Saracens of Frassineto, supposed to be be- 
 tween Nice and Monaco, were extirpated by a 
 Count of Provence in 972. 
 
 % I am sensible of the awkward effect of intro- 
 
 confines of the empire, and from the 
 time of Charlemagne acknowledged its 
 superiority. But at the end of the ninth 
 century, a Tartarian tribe, the Hunga- 
 rians, overspreading that country which 
 since has borne their name, and moving 
 forward like a vast wave, brought a 
 dreadful reverse upon Germany. Their 
 numbers were great, their ferocity un- 
 tamed. They fought with light cavalry 
 and light armour, trusting to their show- 
 ers of arrows, against which the swords 
 and lances of the European armies could 
 not avail. The memory of Attila was 
 renewed in the devastations of these 
 savages, who, if they were not his com- 
 patriots, resembled them both in their 
 countenances and customs. [A. D. 934- 
 954.] All Italy, all Germany, and the 
 south of France, felt this scourge ;* till 
 Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great 
 drove them back by successive victo- 
 ries within their own limits, where, in a 
 short time, they learned peaceful arts, 
 adopted the religion, and followed the 
 policy, of Christendom. 
 
 If any enemies could be more de- 
 structive than these Hungarians, The Nor- 
 they were the pirates of the man ". 
 north, known commonly by the name 
 of Normans. The love of a predatory 
 life seems to have attracted adventu- 
 rers of different nations to the Scandi- 
 navian seas, from whence they infested, 
 not only by maritime piracy, but contin- 
 ual invasions, the northern coasts both 
 of France and Germany. The causes of 
 their sudden appearance are inexplicable, 
 or at least could only be sought in the 
 ancient traditions of Scandinavia. For, 
 undoubtedly, the coasts of France and 
 England were as little protected from dep- 
 redations under the Merovingian kings, 
 and those of the Heptarchy, as in subse- 
 quent times. Yet only one instance of 
 an attack from this side is recorded, and 
 that before the middle of the sixth" cen- 
 
 ducing this name from a more ancient geography, 
 but it saves a circumlocution still more awkward. 
 Austria would convey an imperfect idea, and the 
 Austrian dominions could not be named without a 
 tremendous anachronism. 
 
 * In 924 they overran Languedoc. Raymond- 
 Pons, count of Toulouse, cut their army to pieces ; 
 but they had previously committed such ravages, 
 that the bishops of that province, writing soon af- 
 terward to Pope John X., assert that scarcely any 
 eminent ecclesiastics, out of a great number, were 
 left alive. Hist, de Languedoc, tome ii., p. 60. 
 They penetrated into Guienne as late as 951. 
 Flodoardi Chronicon, in Recueil des Historiens, 
 tome viii. In Italy they inspired such terror, that 
 a mass was composed expressly deprecating this 
 calamity : Ab Ungarorum nos defendas jaculis ! 
 In 937 they ravaged the country as far as Bene- 
 vento and Capua. Muratori, Ann. d'ltalia. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 tury,* till the age of Charlemagne. In 
 787, the Danes, as we call those northern 
 plunderers, began to infest England, 
 which lay most immediately open to 
 their incursions. Soon afterward they 
 ravaged the coasts of France. Charle- 
 magne repulsed them by means of his 
 fleets; yet they pillaged a few places 
 during his reign. It is said that, perceiv- 
 ing one day, from a port in the Mediter- 
 ranean, some Norman vessels which had 
 penetrated into that sea, he shed tears, 
 in anticipation of the miseries which 
 awaited his empire. f In Louis's reign 
 their depredations upon the coasts were 
 more incessant,! but they did not pene- 
 trate into the inland country till that of 
 Charles the Bald. The wars between 
 that prince and his family, which exhaust- 
 ed France of her noblest blood, the in- 
 subordination of the provincial govern- 
 ors, even the instigation of some of 
 Charles's enemies, laid all open to their 
 inroads. They adopted a uniform plan 
 of warfare both in France and England ; 
 sailing up navigable rivers in their vessels 
 of small burden, and fortifying the islands 
 which they occasionally found, they made 
 these intrenchments at once an asylum 
 for their women and children, a reposito- 
 ry for their plunder, and a place of retreat 
 from superior force. After pillaging a 
 town, they retired to these strongholds 
 or to their ships ; and it was not till 872 
 that they ventured to keep possession 
 of Angers, which, however, they were 
 compelled to evacuate. Sixteen years 
 afterward they laid siege to Paris, and 
 committed the most ruinous devastations 
 on the neighbouring country. As these 
 Normans were unchecked by religious 
 awe, the rich monasteries, which had 
 stood harmless amid the havoc of Chris- 
 tian war, were overwhelmed in the storm. 
 Perhaps they may have endured some ir- 
 recoverable losses of ancient learning; 
 but their complaints are of monuments 
 disfigured, bones of saints and kings dis- 
 persed, treasures carried away. St. 
 
 * Greg. Turon, 1. iii., c. 3. 
 
 t In the ninth century the Norman pirates not 
 only ravaged the Balearic isles, and nearer coasts 
 of the Mediterranean, but even Greece. DeMarca ; 
 Marca Hispanica, p. 327. 
 
 J Nigellus, the poetical biographer of Louis, 
 gives the following description of the Normans : 
 Nort quoque Francisco dicuntur nomine manni. 
 Veloces, agiles, armigerique nimis ; 
 Ipse quidem populus late pemotus habetur, 
 Lintre dapes quaerit, incoh'tatque mare. 
 Pulcher ad est facie, vultuque statuque deco- 
 rus. 1. iv. 
 
 He goes on to tell us that they worshipped Nep 
 tune. Was it a similarity of name, or of attributes 
 that deceived him ? 
 
 Denis redeemed its abbot from captivity 
 with six hundred and eighty-five pounds 
 f gold. All the chief abbeys were strip- 
 Ded about the same time, either by the 
 nemy, or for contributions to the public 
 necessity. So empoverished was the 
 dngdom, that in 860 Charles the Bald 
 lad great difficulty in collecting three 
 housand pounds of silver, to subsidize a 
 body of Normans against their country- 
 Tien. The kings of France, too feeble 
 ,o prevent or repel these invaders, had 
 ecourse to the palliative of buying peace 
 at their hands, or rather precarious armis- 
 ices, to which reviving thirst of plunder 
 soon put an end. At length Charles the 
 Simple, in 918, ceded a great province, 
 which they had already partly occupied, 
 partly rendered desolate, and which has 
 lerived from them the name of Normandy, 
 [gnominious as this appears, it proved no 
 mpolitic step. Rollo, the Norman chief, 
 with all his subjects, became Christians 
 and Frenchmen; and the kingdom was 
 at once relieved from a terrible enemy, 
 and strengthened by a race of hardy col- 
 onists.* 
 
 The accession of Hugh Capet had not 
 the immediate effect of resto- Accession of 
 ring the royal authority over HughCapet. 
 France. His own very extensive fief 
 was now indeed united to the crown; 
 but a few great vassals occupied the re- 
 mainder of the kingdom. [A. D. 987.] 
 Six of these obtained, at a sub- state of 
 sequent time, the exclusive ap- France at 
 pellation of peers of France ; the that time> 
 Count of Flanders, whose fief stretched 
 from the Scheldt to the Somme; the 
 Count of Champagne ; the Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, to whom Britany did homage ; 
 the Duke of Burgundy, on whom the 
 Count of Nivernois seems to have de- 
 pended; the Duke of Aquitaine, whose 
 territory, though less than the ancient 
 kingdom of that name, comprehended 
 Poitou, Limousin, and most of Guienne, 
 with the feudal superiority over the An- 
 goumois, and some other central dis- 
 tricts ; and, lastly, the Count of Toulouse, 
 who possessed Languedoc, with the small 
 countries of Quercy and Rouergue, and 
 the superiority over Auvergne. f Besides 
 
 * An exceedingly good sketch of these Norman 
 incursions, and of the political situation of France 
 during that period, may be found in two Memoirs 
 by M. Bonamy, Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscrip., tomes 
 xv. and xvii. These I have chiefly followed in the 
 text. 
 
 f Auvergne changed its feudal superior twice. 
 It had been subject, to the Duke of Aquitaine till 
 about the middle of the tenth century. The counts 
 of Toulouse then got possession of it ; but early in 
 the twelfth century the counts of Auvergne again 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 27 
 
 these six, the Duke of Gascony, not long 
 afterward united with Aquitaine, the 
 counts of Anjou, Ponthieu, and Verman- 
 dois, the Viscount of Bourges, the lords 
 of Bourbon and Coucy, with one or two 
 other vassals, held immediately of the last 
 Carlovingian kings.* This was the aris- 
 tocracy of which Hugh Capet usurped the 
 direction ; for the suffrage of no general 
 assembly gave a sanction to his title. On 
 the death of Louis V. he took advantage 
 of the absence of Charles, duke of Lor- 
 raine, who, as the deceased king's uncle, 
 was nearest heir, and procured his own 
 consecration at Rheims. At first he was 
 by no means acknowledged in the king- 
 dom; but his contest with Charles pro- 
 ving successful, the chief vassals ulti- 
 mately gave at least a tacit consent to 
 the usurpation, and permitted the royal 
 name to descend undisputed upon his 
 posterity. f But this was almost the sole 
 attribute of sovereignty which the first 
 kings of the third dynasty enjoyed. For 
 a long period before and after the acces- 
 sion of that family, France has, properly 
 speaking, no national history. The char- 
 acter or fortune of those who were called 
 its kings, was little more important to 
 the majority of the nation than that of 
 foreign princes. Undoubtedly, the de- 
 gree of influence which they exercised 
 
 Robert 996 W ^^ res P ect to tne vassals of 
 
 the crown varied according to 
 their power and their proximity. Over 
 Guienne and Toulouse, the four first Ca- 
 pets had very little authority; nor do 
 they seem to have ever received assist- 
 Henryi ance from them either in civil 
 losi. or national wars.J With provin- 
 
 did homage to Guienne. It is very difficult to fol- 
 low the history of these fiefs. 
 
 * The immediacy of vassals, in times so ancient, 
 is open to much controversy. I have followed the 
 authority of those industrious Benedictines, the 
 editors of 1'Art de verifier les Dates. 
 
 t The south of France not only took no part in 
 Hugh's elevation, but long refused to pay him any 
 obedience, or rather to acknowledge his title, for 
 obedience was wholly out of the question. The 
 style of charters ran, instead of the king's name, 
 Deo regnante. rege expectante, or absente rege terreno. 
 He forced Guienne to submit about 990. But in 
 Limousin they continued to acknowledge the sons 
 of Charles of Lorraine till 1009. Vaissette, Hist, 
 de Lang., t. ii., p. 120, 150- Before this, Toulouse 
 had refused to recognise Eudes and Raoul, two 
 kings of France, who were not of the Carlovingian 
 family, and even hesitated about Louis IV. and 
 Lothaire, who had an hereditary right. Idem. 
 
 These proofs of Hugh Capet's usurpation seem 
 not to be materially invalidated by a dissertation in 
 the 50th volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, 
 p. 553. It is not, of course, to be denied, that the 
 northern parts of France acquiesced in his assump- 
 tion of the royal title, if they did not give an express 
 consent to it. 
 
 t I have not found any authority for supposing 
 
 ces nearer to their own domains, 
 such as Normandy and Flanders, 106 - 
 they were frequently engaged in alliance 
 or hostility ;. but each seemed rather to 
 proceed from the policy of independent 
 states, than from the relation of a sover- 
 eign towards his subjects. 
 
 It should be remembered that when 
 the fiefs of Paris and Orleans are said to 
 have been reunited by Hugh Capet to 
 the crown, little more is understood than 
 the feudal superiority over the vassals of 
 these provinces. As the kingdom of 
 Charlemagne's posterity was split into a 
 number of great fiefs, so each of these 
 contained many barons, possessing ex- 
 clusive immunities within their own ter- 
 ritories, waging war at their pleasure, 
 administering justice to their military 
 tenants and other subjects, and free from 
 all control beyond the conditions of the 
 feudal compact.* At the acces- . 
 sion of Louis VI., in 1108, the 
 cities of Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, 
 with the immediately adjacent districts, 
 formed the most considerable portion of 
 the royal domain. A number of petty 
 barons, with their fortified castles, in- 
 tercepted the communication between 
 these, and waged war against the king 
 almost under the walls of his capital. 
 It cost Louis a great deal of trouble to 
 reduce the lords of Montlehery, and 
 other places within a few miles of Paris. 
 Under this prince, however, who had 
 more activity than his predecessors, the 
 royal authority considerably revived. 
 From his reign we may date the syste- 
 
 that the provinces south of the Loire contributed 
 their assistance to the king in war, unless the 
 following passage of Gulielmus Pictaviensis be 
 considered as matter of fact, and not rather as a 
 rhetorical flourish. He tells us that a vast army 
 was collected by Henry I. against the Duke of 
 Normandy: Burgundiam, Arverniam, atque Vas- 
 coniam properare videres horri biles ferro; immo 
 vires tanti regni quantum in climata quatuor mundi 
 patent cunctas. Recueil des Historians, t. xi., p. 
 83. But we have the roll of the army which Louis 
 VI. led against the Emperor Henry V., A. D. 1120, 
 in a national war : and it was entirely composed 
 of troops from Champagne, the Isle of France, the 
 Orleannois, and other provinces north of the Loire. 
 Velly, t. iii., p. 62. Yet this was a sort of convo- 
 cation of the ban : Rex ut eum tota Francia sequa- 
 tur, invitat. Even so late as the reign of Philip 
 Augustus, in a list of the knights bannerets of 
 France, though those of Britany, Flanders, Cham- 
 pagne, and Burgundy, besides the royal domains, 
 are enumerated, no mention is made of the prov- 
 inces beyond the Loire. Du Chesne, Script Re- 
 rum Gallicarum, t. v., p. 262. 
 
 * In a subsequent chapter, I shall illustrate, at 
 much greater length, the circumstances of the 
 French monarchy with respect to its feudal vas- 
 sals. It would be inconvenient to anticipate the 
 subject at present, which is rather of a legal than 
 narrative character. 
 
28 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 malic rivalry of the French and Eng- 
 lish monarchies. Hostilities had sever- 
 al times occurred between Philip I. and 
 the two Williams ; but the wars that be- 
 gan under Louis VI. lasted, with no long 
 interruption, for three centuries and a 
 half, and form, indeed, the most leading 
 feature of French history during the mid- 
 dle ages.* Of all the royal vassals, the 
 dukes of Normandy were the proudest 
 and most powerful. Though they had 
 submitted to do homage, they could not 
 forget that they came in originally by 
 force, and that in real strength they were 
 fully equal to their sovereign. Nor had 
 the conquest of England any tendency 
 to diminish their pretensions. f 
 
 Louis VII. ascended the throne with 
 T VTT better prospects than his father. 
 L [A. D. 1137.] He had married 
 Eleanor, heiress of the great dutchy of 
 Guienne. But this union, which prom- 
 ised an immense accession of strength 
 to the crown, was rendered unhappy 
 by the levities of that princess. Re- 
 pudiated by Louis, who felt rather as a 
 husband than a king, Eleanor immedi- 
 ately married Henry II. of England; 
 who, already inheriting Normandy from 
 his mother, and Anjou from his father, 
 became possessed of more than one half 
 of France, and an overmatch for Louis, 
 even if the great vassals of the crown 
 had been always ready to maintain its 
 supremacy. One might venture perhaps 
 to conjecture that the sceptre of France 
 would eventually have passed from the 
 Capets to the Plantagenets, if the vexa- 
 tious quarrel with Becket at one time, 
 and the successive rebellions fomented 
 by Louis at a later period, had not em- 
 barrassed the great talents and ambitious 
 spirit of Henry. 
 
 [A. D. 1180.] But the scene quite chan- 
 Phiiip AU- ged when Philip Augustus, son 
 gustus. o f Louis VII., came upon the 
 stage. No prince comparable to him in 
 systematic ambition and military enter- 
 prise had reigned in France since Char- 
 lemagne. From his reign the French 
 monarchy dates the recovery of its lus- 
 tre. He wrested from the Count of 
 Flanders the Vermandois (that part of 
 Pieardy which borders on the Isle of 
 
 * Velly, t. iii., p. 40. 
 
 f The Norman historians maintain that their 
 dukes did not owe any service to the King of 
 France, but only simple homage, or, as it was 
 called, per paragium. Recueil des Historiens, 
 t. xi. , pref., p. 161. They certainly acted upon this 
 principle; and the manner in which they first 
 came into the country is not very consistent with 
 dependance. 
 
 France and Champagne),* and, subse- 
 quently, the county of Artois. But the 
 most important conquests of Philip were 
 obtained against the kings of England. 
 Even Richard L, with all his prowess, 
 lost ground in struggling against an ad- 
 versary, not less active, and more pol- 
 itic than himself. [A. D. 1203.] But when 
 John not only took possession conquest of 
 of his brother's dominions, but Normandy, 
 confirmed his usurpation by the mur- 
 der, as was very probably surmised, of 
 the heir, Philip, artfully taking advantage 
 of the general indignation, summoned 
 him as his vassal to the court of his 
 peers. John demanded a safe conduct. 
 Willingly, said Philip ; let him come un- 
 molested. And return ? inquired the Eng- 
 lish envoy. If the judgment of his peers 
 permit him, replied the king. By all the 
 saints of France, he exclaimed, when 
 farther pressed, he shall not return un- 
 less acquitted. The Bishop of Ely still 
 remonstrated, that the Duke of Nor- 
 mandy could not come without the King 
 of England; nor would the barons of 
 that country permit their sovereign to 
 run the risk of death or imprisonment. 
 What of that, my lord bishop? cried 
 Philip. It is well known that my vas- 
 sal, the Duke of Normandy, acquired 
 England by force. But, if a subject 
 obtains any accession of dignity, shall 
 his paramount lord therefore lose his 
 rights If 
 
 It may be doubted whether, in thus 
 citing John before his court, the King of 
 France did not stretch his feudal sover- 
 eignty beyond its acknowledged limits. 
 Arthur was cjertainly no immediate vas- 
 sal of the. crown for Britany ; and though 
 he had done homage to Philip for Anjou 
 and Maine, yet a subsequent treaty had 
 abrogated his investiture, and confirmed 
 his uncle in the possession of those prov- 
 inces.! But tn . e vigour of Philip, and the 
 meanness of his adversary, cast a shade 
 over all that might be novel or irregular 
 in these proceedings. John, not appear- 
 ing at his summons, was declared guilty 
 of felony, and his fiefs confiscated. The 
 execution of this sentence was not in- 
 
 * The original counts of Vermandois were de- 
 scended from Bernard, king of Italy, grandson of 
 Charlemagne : but their fief passed by the dona- 
 tion of Isabel, the last countess, to her husband, 
 the Earl of Flanders, after her death in 1183. The 
 principal towns of the Vermandois are St. Quentin 
 and Peronne. Art de verifier les Dates, t. ii., 
 p. 700. 
 
 t Mat. Paris, p. 238, edit. 1684. 
 
 J The illegality of Philip's proceedings is well 
 argued by Mably, Observations sur PHistoire de 
 France, 1. iii., c, 6. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 Misted to a dilatory arm. Philip poured 
 his troops into Normandy, and took town 
 after town, while the King of England, in- 
 fatuated by his own wickedness and cow- 
 ardice, made hardly an attempt at defence. 
 In two years Normandy, Maine, and An- 
 jou were irrecoverably lost. [A. D. 1223.] 
 Poitou and Guienne resisted longer : but 
 the conquest of the first was completed 
 Louis vm b y L uis VIII., successor of 
 Philip, and the subjection of the 
 second seemed drawing near, when the 
 arms of Louis were diverted to differ- 
 ent, but scarcely less advantageous ob- 
 jects. 
 
 The country of Languedoc, subject to 
 Affairs of the counts of Toulouse, had 
 Languedoc. been unconnected, beyond any 
 other part of France, with the kings 
 of the house of Capet. Louis VII. hav- 
 ing married his sister to the reigning 
 count, and travelled himself through the 
 country, began to exercise some de- 
 gree of authority, chiefly in confirming 
 the rights of ecclesiastical bodies, who 
 were vain, perhaps, of this additional 
 sanction to the privileges which they al- 
 ready possessed.* But the remoteness 
 of their situation, with a difference in 
 language and legal usages, still kept the 
 people of this province apart from those 
 of the north of France. 
 
 About the middle of the twelfth centu- 
 ry, certain religious opinions, which it is 
 not easy, nor, for our present purpose, 
 material to define, but, upon every suppo- 
 sition, exceedingly adverse to those of 
 the church,f began to spread over Lan- 
 guedoc. Those who imbibed them have 
 borne the name of Albigeois. though they 
 were in no degree peculiar to the district 
 of Albi. In despite of much preaching 
 and some persecution, these errors made 
 a continual progress; till Innocent III., 
 in 1198, despatched commissaries, the 
 
 * According to the Benedictine historians, Vich 
 and Vaissette, there is no trace of any act of sover- 
 eignty exercised by the kings of France in Lan- 
 guedoc from 955, when Lothaire confirmed a char- 
 ter of his predecessor Raoul, in favour of the Bish- 
 op of Puy, till the reign of Louis VII. (Hist, de 
 Languedoc, tome ii., p. 88.) They have published, 
 however, an instrument of Louis VI. in favour 
 of the same church, confirming those of former 
 princes. (Appendix, p. 473.) Neither the counts of 
 Toulouse, nor any lord of the province, were pres- 
 ent in a very numerous national assembly, at the 
 coronation of Philip I. (Id., p. 200.) I do not rec- 
 ollect to have ever met with the name of the Count 
 of Toulouse as a subscribing witness to the char- 
 ters of the first Capetian kings in the Recueil des 
 Historiens, where many are published : though 
 that of the Duke of Guienne sometimes occurs. 
 
 t For the real tenets of the Languedocian secta- 
 ries, I refer to the last chapter of the present work, 
 where the subject will be taken up again. 
 
 seed of the inquisition, with ample pow- 
 ers both to investigate and to chastise. 
 Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, wheth- 
 er inclined towards the innovators, as 
 was then the theme of reproach, or, as 
 is more probable, disgusted with the inso- 
 lent interference of the pope and his mis- 
 sionaries, provoked them to pronounce 
 a sentence of excommunication against 
 him. [A. D. 1208.] Though this was 
 taken off, he was still suspected ; and 
 upon the assassination of one of the in- 
 quisitors, in which Raymond had no con- 
 cern, Innocent published a crusade both 
 against the count and his subjects, calling 
 upon the King of France, and the nobil- 
 ity of that kingdom, to take up the cross, 
 with all the indulgences usually held 
 out as allurements to religious warfare. 
 Though Philip would not interfere, a 
 prodigious number of knights undertook 
 this enterprise, led partly by ecclesias- 
 tics, and partly by some of the first 
 barons in France. It was prosecuted 
 with every atrocious barbarity which su- 
 perstition, the mother of crimes, could 
 inspire. Languedoc, a country, for that 
 age, flourishing and civilized, was laid 
 waste by these desolaters; her cities 
 burnt ; her inhabitants swept away by 
 fire and the sword. And this was to 
 punish a fanaticism ten thousand times 
 more innocent than their own, and er- 
 rors which, according to the worst im- 
 putations, left the laws of humanity and 
 the peace of social life unimpaired.* 
 
 The crusaders were commanded by 
 Simon de Montfort, a man, like crusade 
 Cromwell, whose intrepidity, against the 
 hypocrisy, and ambition, mark- Albi s eois ' 
 ed him for the hero of a holy war. 
 The energy of such a mind, at the 
 head of an army of enthusiastic war- 
 riors, may well account for successes 
 which then appeared miraculous. But 
 Montfort was cut off before he could 
 realize his ultimate object, an independ- 
 ent principality ; and Raymond was able 
 to bequeath the inheritance of his an- 
 cestors to his son. [A. D. 1222.] Rome, 
 however, was not yet appeased ; upon 
 some new pretence, she raised up a 
 still more formidable enemy against the 
 younger Raymond. Louis VIII. suffer- 
 
 * The Albigensian war commenced with the 
 storming of Bezieres, and a massacre, wherein 
 15,000 persons, or, according to some narrations, 
 60,000, were put to the sword. Not a living soul 
 escaped, as witnesses assure us. It was here that 
 a Cistertian monk, who led on the crusaders, an- 
 swered the inquiry, how the Catholics were to be 
 distinguished from heretics. Kill them all ! God 
 will know his own. Besides Vaissette, see Sismon- 
 di, Litterature du Midi, t. i., p. 201. 
 
30 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHIP. 1. 
 
 ed himself to be diverted from the con- 
 quest of Guienne, to take the cross 
 against the supposed patron of heresy. 
 After a short and successful war, Louis, 
 dying prematurely, left the crown of 
 France to a son only twelve years old. 
 But the Count of Toulouse was still 
 pursued, till, hopeless of safety in so 
 unequal a struggle, he concluded a trea- 
 ty upon very hard terms. [A. D. 1229.] 
 By this he ceded the greater part of 
 Languedoc ; and giving his daughter in 
 marriage to Alphonso, brother of Louis 
 IX., confirmed to them, and to the king 
 in failure of their descendants, the rever- 
 sion of the rest, in exclusion of any other 
 children whom he might have. Thus fell 
 the ancient house of Toulouse, through 
 one of those strange combinations of for- 
 tune which thwart the natural course of 
 human prosperity, and disappoint the 
 plans of wise policy and beneficent gov- 
 ernment.* 
 
 [A. D. 1226.] The rapid progress of 
 Lo ix rova l P wer under Philip Au- 
 gustus and his son had scarce- 
 ly given the great vassals time to re- 
 flect upon the change which it produ- 
 ced in their situation. The crown, with 
 which some might singly have measured 
 their forces, was now an equipoise to 
 their united weight. And such a union 
 was hard to be accomplished among men 
 not always very sagacious in policy, and 
 divided by separate interests and animos- 
 ities. They were not, however, insensi- 
 ble to the crisis of their feudal liberties ; 
 and the minority of Louis IX., guided 
 only by his mother, the regent Blanche 
 of Castile, seemed to offer a favourable 
 opportunity for recovering their former 
 situation. Some of the most considera- 
 ble barons, the counts of Britany, Cham- 
 pagne, and la Marche, had, during the 
 time of Louis VIII., shown an unwilling- 
 ness to push the Count of Toulouse too 
 far, if they did not even keep up a se- 
 cret understanding with him. They now 
 broke out into open rebellion; but the 
 address of Blanche detached some from 
 the league, and her firmness subdued the 
 rest. For the first fifteen years of Louis's 
 reign, the struggle was frequently renew- 
 ed ; till repeated humiliations convinced 
 the refractory that the throne was no 
 longer to be shaken. A prince so feeble 
 as Henry III. was unable to afford them 
 
 * The best account of this crusade against the 
 Albigeois is to be found in the third volume of 
 Vaissette's History of Languedoc : the Benedictine 
 spirit of mildness and veracity tolerably counter- 
 balancing the prejudices of orthodoxy. Velly, 
 Hist, de France, t. lii., has abridged this work. 
 
 that aid from England, which, if ms 
 grandfather or son had then reigned, 
 might probably have lengthened these 
 civil wars. 
 
 But Louis IX. had methods of preserv- 
 ing his ascendency very dif- His charac . 
 ferent from military prowess, ter. itsex- 
 That excellent prince was per- c 
 haps the most eminent pattern of un- 
 swerving probity and Christian strict- 
 ness of conscience, that ever held the 
 sceptre in any country. There is a pe- 
 culiar beauty in the reign of St. Louis, 
 because it shows the inestimable ben- 
 efit which a virtuous king may confer 
 on his people, without possessing any 
 distinguished genius. For nearly half a 
 century that he governed France, there 
 is not the smallest want of moderation 
 or disinterestedness in his actions; and 
 yet he raised the influence of the mon- 
 archy to a much higher point than the 
 most ambitious of his predecessors. [A. 
 D. 1259.] To the surprise of his own and 
 later times, he restored great part of his 
 conquests to Henry III., whom he might 
 naturally hope to have expelled from 
 France. It would indeed have been a 
 tedious work to conquer Guienne, which 
 was full of strong places, and the subju- 
 gation of such a province might have 
 alarmed the other vassals of his crown. 
 But it is the privilege only of virtuous 
 minds to perceive that wisdom resides in 
 moderate counsels ; no sagacity ever 
 taught a selfish and ambitious sovereign 
 to forego the sweetness of immediate 
 power. An ordinary king, in the circum- 
 stances of the French monarchy, would 
 have fomented, or, at least, have rejoiced 
 in the dissensions which broke out among 
 the principal vassals; Louis constantly 
 employed himself to reconcile them. In 
 this, too, his benevolence had all the ef- 
 fects of far-sighted policy. It had been 
 the practice of his three last predecessors 
 to interpose their mediation in behalf of 
 the less powerful classes ; the clergy, the 
 inferior nobility, and the inhabitants of 
 chartered towns. Thus the supremacy 
 of the crown became a familiar idea ; but 
 the perfect integrity of St. Louis wore 
 away all distrust, and accustomed even 
 the most jealous feudatories to look upon 
 him as their judge and legislator. And 
 as the royal authority was hitherto shown 
 only in its most amiable prerogatives, 
 the dispensation of favour, and the re- 
 dress of wrong, few were watchful enough 
 to remark the transition of the French 
 constitution from a feudal league to an 
 absolute monarchy. 
 
 It was perhaps fortunate for the dis- 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 31 
 
 play of St. Louis's virtues, that the 
 throne had already been strengthened 
 by the less innocent exertions of Philip 
 Augustus and Louis VIII. A century 
 earlier, his mild and scrupulous character, 
 unsustained by great actual power, might 
 not have inspired sufficient awe. But the 
 crown was now grown so formidable, and 
 Louis was so eminent for his firmness 
 and bravery, qualities, without which 
 every other virtue would have been in- 
 effectual, that no one thought it safe to 
 run wantonly into rebellion, while his 
 disinterested administration gave no one 
 a pretext for it. Hence the latter part 
 of his reign was altogether tranquil, and 
 employed in watching over the public 
 peace and the security of travellers; 
 administering justice personally or by 
 the best counsellors ; and compiling that 
 code of feudal customs, called the Estab- 
 lishments of St. Louis, which is the first 
 monument of legislation after the acces- 
 sion of the house of Capet. Not satisfi- 
 ed with the justice of his own conduct, 
 Louis aimed at that act of virtue which 
 is rarely practised by private men, and 
 had perhaps no example among kings, 
 restitution. Commissaries were appoint- 
 ed to inquire what possessions had 
 been unjustly annexed to the royal do- 
 main during the two last reigns. These 
 were restored to the proprietors, or, 
 where length of time had made it diffi- 
 cult to ascertain the claimant, their value 
 was distributed among the poor.* 
 
 It has been hinted already that all this 
 ,* A f ta excellence of heart in Lou- 
 
 atiu delects. . -T-.T- 11 . i 
 
 is IX. was not attended with 
 that strength of understanding which is 
 necessary, we must allow, to complete 
 the usefulness of a sovereign. During 
 his minority, Blanche of Castile, his mo- 
 ther, had filled the office of regent with 
 great courage and firmness. But, after he 
 grew up to manhood, her influence seems 
 to have passed the limit which gratitude 
 and piety would have assigned to it ; and, 
 as her temper was not very meek or pop- 
 ular, exposed the king to some degree of 
 contempt. He submitted even to be re- 
 strained from the society of his wife 
 Margaret, daughter of Raymond, count 
 of Provence, a princess of great virtue 
 and conjugal affection. Joinville relates a 
 curious story, characteristic of Blanche's 
 
 * Velly, tome v., p. 150. This historian has ve"ry 
 properly dwelt for almost a volume on St. Louis's 
 internal administration ; it is one of the most valu- 
 able parts of his work. Joinville is a real witness, 
 on whom, when we listen, it is impossible not to 
 rely. Collection des Memoires relatifs & 1'Histoire 
 de France, tome ii., pp. 140-156. 
 
 arbitrary conduct, and sufficiently derog- 
 atory to Louis.* 
 
 But the principal weakness of this king, 
 which almost effaced all the good effects 
 of his virtues, was superstition. It would 
 be idle to sneer at those habits of abste- 
 miousness and mortification which were 
 part of the religion of his age ; and, at 
 the worst, were only injurious to his own 
 comfort. But he had other prejudices, 
 which, though they may be forgiven, 
 must never be defended. No one was 
 ever more impressed than St. Louis with 
 a belief in the duty of exterminating all 
 enemies to his own faith. With these, 
 he thought no layman ought to risk him- 
 self in the perilous ways of reasoning, 
 but to make answer with his sword as 
 stoutly as a strong arm and a fiery zeal 
 could carry that argument.! Though, 
 fortunately for his fame, the persecu- 
 tion against the Albigeois, which had 
 been the disgrace of his father's short 
 reign, was at an end before he reach- 
 ed manhood, he suffered a hypocritical 
 monk to establish a tribunal at Paris for 
 the suppression of heresy, where many 
 innocent persons suffered death. 
 
 But no events in Louis's life were more 
 memorable than his two crusades, which 
 lead us to look back on the nature and 
 circumstances of that most singular phe- 
 nomenon in European history. Though 
 the crusades involved all the western 
 nations of Europe, without belonging 
 peculiarly to any one, yet as France was 
 more distinguished than the rest in most 
 of those enterprises, I shall introduce the 
 subject as a sort of digression from the 
 main course of French history. 
 
 Even before the violation of Pales- 
 tine by the Saracen arms, it had been 
 a prevailing custom among the The era- 
 Christians of Europe to visit sades. 
 those scenes rendered interesting by 
 religion, partly through delight in the 
 effects of local association, partly in 
 obedience to the prejudices or com- 
 
 * Collection des Memoires, tome ii., p. 241. 
 
 t Aussi vous dis je, me dist le roy, que nul, si 
 n'est grant clerc, et theologien parfait, ne doit dis- 
 puter aux Juifs ; mais doit 1'omme lay, quant il oit 
 mesdire d-e la foy chretienne, defendre la chose, 
 non pas seulement des paroles, mais a bonne espee 
 tranchant, et en frapper les medisans et mescreans 
 a travers le corps, tant qu'elle y pourra entrer. 
 Joinvilie, in Collection des Memoires, tome i., p. 
 23. This passage, which shows a tolerable degree 
 of bigotry, did not require to be strained farther 
 still by Mosheim, vol. iii., p. 273 (edit. 1803). 1 
 may observe by the way, that this writer, who 
 sees nothing in Louis IX. except his intolerance, 
 ought not to have charged him with issuing an 
 edict in favour of the inquisition, in 1229, when he 
 had not assumed the government. 
 
32 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 mands of superstition^ These pilgrim- 
 ages became more frequent in later times, 
 in spite, perhaps in consequence, of the 
 danger and hardships which attended 
 them. For a while the Mahometan 
 possessors of Jerusalem permitted or 
 even encouraged a devotion which they 
 found lucrative ; but this was interrupted 
 whenever the ferocious insolence with 
 which they regarded all infidels got the 
 better of their rapacity. During the 
 eleventh century, when, from increasing 
 superstition, and some particular fancies, 
 the pilgrims were more numerous than 
 ever, a change took place in the govern- 
 ment of Palestine, which was overrun 
 by the Turkish hordes from the north. 
 These barbarians treated the visiters of 
 Jerusalem with still greater contumely, 
 mingling with their Mahometan bigotry 
 a consciousness of strength and cour- 
 age, and a scorn of the Christians, whom 
 they knew only by the debased natives 
 of Greece and Syria, or by these humble 
 and defenceless palmers. When such 
 insults became known throughout Eu- 
 rope, they excited a keen sensation of 
 resentment among nations equally cour- 
 ageous and devout ; which, though want- 
 ing as yet any definite means of satisfy- 
 ing itself, was ripe for whatever favoura- 
 ble conjuncture might arise. 
 
 Twenty years before the first crusade, 
 Gregory VII. had projected the scheme 
 of imbodying Europe in arms against 
 Asia; a scheme worthy of his daring 
 mind, and which, perhaps, was never for- 
 gotten by Urban II., who in every thing 
 loved to imitate his great predecessor.* 
 This design of Gregory was founded upon 
 the supplication of the Greek Emperor 
 Michael, which was renewed by Alexius 
 Comnenus to Urban with increased im- 
 portunity. The Turks had now taken 
 Nice, and threatened, from the opposite 
 shore, the very walls of Constantinople. 
 Every one knows whose hand held a 
 torch to that inflammable mass of enthu- 
 siasm that pervaded Europe ; the hermit 
 of Picardy, who, roused by witnessed 
 wrongs and imagined visions, journeyed 
 from land to land, the apostle of a holy 
 war. The preaching of Peter was pow- 
 erfully seconded by Urban. [A. D. 1095.] 
 In the councils of Piacenza and of Cler- 
 
 * Gregory addressed, in 1074, a sort of encyclic 
 letter to all who would defend the Christian faith, 
 enforcing upon them the duty of taking up arms 
 against the Saracens, who had almost come up to 
 the walls of Constantinople. No mention of Pal- 
 estine is made in this letter. Labbe", Concilia, t. x., 
 p. 44. St. Marc, AbrSge Chron. de 1'Hist. de 
 i'ltalie, t. iii., p. 614. 
 
 mont, the deliverance of Jerusalem was 
 eloquently recommended and exultingly 
 undertaken. It is the will of God ! was 
 the tumultuous cry that broke from the 
 heart and lips of the assembly at Cler- 
 mont ; and these words afford at once 
 the most obvious and most certain ex- 
 planation of the leading principle of the 
 crusades. Later writers, incapable of 
 sympathizing with the blind fervour of 
 zeal, or anxious to find a pretext for its 
 effect somewhat more congenial to the 
 spirit of our times, have sought political 
 reasons for that which resulted only from 
 predominant affections. No suggestion 
 of these will, I believe, be found in con- 
 temporary historians. To rescue the 
 Greek empire from its imminent peril, 
 and thus to secure Christendom from 
 enemies who professed towards it eter- 
 nal hostility, might have been a legiti- 
 mate and magnanimous ground of interfe- 
 rence ; but it operated scarcely, or not at 
 all, upon those who took the cross. In- 
 deed, it argues strange ignorance of the 
 eleventh century to ascribe such refine- 
 ments of later times even to the princes 
 of that age. The Turks' were no doubt 
 repelled from the neighbourhood of Con- 
 stantinople by the crusaders ; but this 
 was a collateral effect of their enterprise. 
 Nor had they any disposition to serve the 
 interest of the Greeks, whom they soon 
 came to hate, and not entirely without 
 provocation, with almost as much ani- 
 mosity as the Moslems themselves. 
 
 Every means was used to excite an ep- 
 idemical phrensy ; the remission of pen- 
 ance, the dispensation from those prac- 
 tices of self-denial which superstition im- 
 posed or suspended at pleasure, the ab- 
 solution of all sins, and the assurance of 
 eternal felicity. None doubted that such 
 as perished in the war received immedi- 
 ately the reward of martyrdom.* False 
 miracles and fanatical prophecies, which 
 were never so frequent, wrought up the 
 enthusiasm to a still higher pitch. And 
 these devotional feelings, which are usu- 
 ally thwarted and balanced by other pas- 
 sions, fell in with every motive that could 
 influence the men of that time ; with cu- 
 riosity, restlessness, the love of license, 
 thirst for war, emulation, ambition. Of 
 the princes who assumed the cross, some, 
 probably, from the beginning speculated 
 upon forming independent establishments 
 in the East. In later periods, the tempo 
 
 * Nam qui pro Christi nomine decertantes, IB 
 acie fidelium et Christiana militia dicuntur occum 
 bere, non solum infamiae, verum et peccaminum et 
 delictorum omnimodam credimus abolitionem pro 
 mereri. Will. Tyr., 1. x., c. 20. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 33 
 
 ral benefits of undertaking a crusade un- 
 doubtedly blended themselves with less 
 selfish considerations. Men resorted to 
 Palestine as in modern times they have 
 done to the colonies, in order to redeem 
 their time or repair their fortune. Thus 
 Gui de Lusignan, after flying from France 
 for murder, was ultimately raised to the 
 throne of Jerusalem. To the more vul- 
 gar class were held out inducements 
 which, though absorbed in the overruling 
 fanaticism of the first crusade, might be 
 exceedingly efficacious when it began 
 rather to flag. During the time that a 
 crusader bore the cross, he was free from 
 suit for his debts, and the interest of them 
 was entirely abolished ; he was exempt- 
 ed, in some instances at least, from tax- 
 es, and placed under the protection of the 
 church, so that he could not be im- 
 pleaded in any civil court, except on 
 criminal charges, or disputes relating to 
 land.* 
 
 None of the sovereigns of Europe took 
 a part in the first crusade ; but many of 
 their chief vassals, great part of the in- 
 ferior nobility, and a countless multitude 
 of the common people. The priests left 
 their parishes, and the monks their cells ; 
 and, though the peasantry were then in 
 general bound to the soil, we find no 
 check given to their emigration for this 
 cause. Numbers of women and children 
 swelled the crowd ; it appeared a sort of 
 sacrilege to repel any one from a work 
 which was considered as the manifest 
 design of Providence. But if it were 
 lawful to interpret the will of Providence 
 by events, few undertakings have been 
 more branded by its disapprobation than 
 the crusades. So many crimes and so 
 much misery have seldom been accumu- 
 lated in so short a space as in the three 
 years of the first expedition. We should 
 be warranted by contemporary writers in 
 stating the loss of the Christians alone 
 during this period at nearly a million ; 
 but, at the least computation, it must have 
 exceeded half that number, f To engage 
 in the crusade, and to perish in it, were 
 almost synonymous. Few of those myr- 
 iads who were mustered in the plains of 
 
 * Otho of Frisingen, c. 35, has inserted a bull 
 of Eugenius III., in 1146, containing some of these 
 privileges. Others are granted by Philip Augustus 
 in 1214. Ordonnances des Rois de France, tome i. 
 See also Du Cange, voc. Crucis Privilegia. 
 
 f William of Tyre says, that at the review be- 
 fore Nice there were found 600,000 of both sexes, 
 exclusive of 100,000 cavalry armed in mail. L. ii., 
 c. 23. But Fulk of Chartres reckons the same 
 number, besides women, children, and priests. An 
 immense slaughter had previously been made in 
 Hungary of the rabble under Gaultier Sans- Avoir. 
 C 
 
 Nice returned to gladden their friends in 
 Europe with the story of their triumph 
 at Jerusalem. Besieging alternately and 
 besieged in Antioch, they drained to the 
 lees the cup of misery: three hundred 
 thousand sat down before that place; 
 next year there remained but a sixth part 
 to pursue the enterprise. But their loss- 
 es were least in the field of battle ; the 
 intrinsic superiority of European prow- 
 ess was constantly displayed ; the angel 
 of Asia, to apply the bold language of 
 our poet, lugh and unmatchable, where 
 her rival was not, became a fear ; and the 
 Christian lances bore all before them in 
 their shock from Nice to Antioch, Edes- 
 sa and Jerusalem. [A. D. 1099.] It was 
 here, where their triumph was consum- 
 mated, that it was stained with the most 
 atrocious massacre ; not limited to the 
 hour of resistance, but renewed deliber- 
 ately even after that famous penitential 
 procession to the holy sepulchre, which 
 might have calmed their ferocious dispo- 
 sitions, if, through the misguided enthu- 
 siasm of the enterprise, it had not been 
 rather calculated to excite them.* 
 
 The conquests obtained at such a price 
 by the first crusade were chiefly com- 
 prised in the maritime parts Latin con . 
 of Syria. Except the state of quests in 
 Edessa beyond the Euphrates,! Syria - 
 which, in its best days, extended over 
 great part of Mesopotamia, the Latin 
 possessions never reached more than 
 a few leagues from the sea. Within 
 the barrier of Mount Libanus, their arms 
 might be feared, but their power was 
 never established; and the prophet was 
 still invoked in the mosques of Aleppo 
 and Damascus. The principality of An- 
 tioch to the north, the kingdom of Jeru- 
 salem, with its feudal dependances of 
 Tripoli and Tiberias, to the south, were 
 assigned, the one to Boemond, a brother 
 of Robert Guiscard, count of Apulia, the 
 other to Godfrey of Boulogne,! whose ex- 
 
 *The work of Mailly, entitled L'Esprit des 
 Croisades, is deserving of considerable praise for 
 its diligence and impartiality. It carries the his- 
 tory, however, no farther than the first expedition. 
 Gibbon's two chapters on the crusades, though not 
 without inaccuracies, are a brilliant portion of his 
 great work. The original writers are chiefly col- 
 lected in two folio volumes, entitled Gesta Dei per 
 Francos. Hanover, 1611. 
 
 t Edessa was a little Christian principality, sur- 
 rounded by, and tributary to, the Turks. The in- 
 habitants invited Baldwin, on his progress in the 
 first crusade, and he made no great scruple of sup- 
 planting, the reigning prince, who indeed is repre- 
 sented as a tyrant and usurper. Esprit des Croi- 
 sades, t. iv., p. 62. De Guignes, Hist, des Huns, 
 t. ii., pp. 135-162. 
 
 t Godfrey never took the title of King of Jeru- 
 salem, not choosing, he said, to wear a crown of 
 
34 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 traordinary merit had justly raised him to 
 a degree of influence with the chief crusa- 
 ders, that has been sometimes confound- 
 ed with a legitimate authority.* In the 
 course of a few years, Tyre, Ascalon, 
 and the other cities upon the seacoast, 
 were subjected by the successors of 
 Godfrey on the throne of Jerusalem. But 
 as their enemies had been stunned, not 
 killed, by the western storm, the Latins 
 were constantly molested by the Mahom- 
 etans of Egypt and Syria. They were 
 exposed, as the outposts of Christendom, 
 with no respite and few resources. [A. D. 
 Second cru- 1147.] A second crusade, in 
 sade. which the Emperor Conrad III. 
 
 and Louis VII. of France were engaged, 
 each with seventy thousand cavalry, 
 made scarce any diversion; and that 
 vast army wasted away in the passage 
 of Natolia.f 
 
 The decline of the Christian establish- 
 ments in the East is ascribed by William 
 
 Decline of . f Tvre to tlie extreme vi- 
 the Latin ciousness of their manners, to 
 principalities the adoption of European arms 
 by the orientals, and to the 
 union of the Mahometan principalities 
 under a single chief.J Without denying 
 the operation of these causes, and espe- 
 cially the last, it is easy to perceive one 
 more radical than all the three, the in- 
 adequacy of their means of self-defence. 
 The kingdom of Jerusalem was guarded 
 
 gold in that city where his Saviour had been 
 crowned with thorns. Baldwin, Godfrey's brother, 
 who succeeded him within two years, entitles 
 himself, Rex Hierusalem, Latinorum primus. 
 Will. Tyr., 1. ii., c. 12. 
 
 * The heroes of the crusade are just like those 
 of romance. Godfrey is not only the wisest, but 
 the strongest man in the army. Perhaps Tasso 
 has lost some part of this physical superiority for 
 the sake of contrasting him with the imaginary 
 Rinaldo. He cleaves a Turk in twain from the 
 shoulder to the haunch. A noble Arab, after the 
 taking of Jerusalem, requests him to try his sword 
 
 rn a camel, when Godfrey with ease cuts off 
 head. The Arab, suspecting there might be 
 something peculiar in the blade, desires him to do 
 the same with his sword ; and the hero obliges 
 him by demolishing a second camel. Will. Tyr., 1. 
 ix., c. 22. 
 
 t Vertot puts the destruction in the second cru- 
 sade at two hundred thousand men. Hist, de 
 Malthe, p. 129 : and from William of Tyre's lan- 
 guage, there seems no reason to consider this an 
 exaggeration. L. xvi., c. 19. 
 
 t L. xxi., c. 7. John of Vitry also mentions the 
 change of weapons by the Saracens in imitation of 
 the Latins, using the lances and coat of mail in- 
 stead of bows and arrows, c. 92. But, according 
 to a more ancient writer, part of Soliman's (the 
 Kilidge Arslan of de Guignes) army in the first 
 crusade was in armour, loricis et galeis et clypeis 
 aureis valde armati. Albertus Aquensis, 1. ii., c. 
 27. I may add to this a testimony of another kind 
 not less decisive. In the Abbey of St. Denis, 
 
 only, exclusive of European volunteers, 
 by the feudal service of eight hundred 
 and sixty-six knights, attended each by 
 four archers on horseback, by a militia 
 of five thousand and seventy-five burgh- 
 ers, and by a conscription, in great exi- 
 gencies, of the remaining population.* 
 William of Tyre mentions an army of 
 one thousand three hundred horse and 
 fifteen thousand foot as the greatest 
 which had ever been collected, and pre- 
 dicts the utmost success from it if wise- 
 ly conducted-! This was a little before 
 the irruption of Saladin. In the last 
 fatal battle Lusignan seems to have had 
 somewhat a larger force.J Nothing can 
 more strikingly evince the ascendency 
 of Europe, than the resistance of these 
 Prankish acquisitions in Syria during 
 nearly two hundred years. Several of 
 their victories over the Moslems were 
 obtained against such disparity of num- 
 bers, that they may be compared with 
 whatever is most illustrious in history 
 or romance. $ These perhaps were less 
 due to the descendants of the first crusa- 
 ders, settled in the Holy Land,|| than to 
 those volunteers from Europe, whom 
 martial ardour and religious zeal impel- 
 led to the service. It was the penance 
 commonly imposed upon men of rank 
 for the most heinous crimes, to serve a 
 number of years under the banner of the 
 cross. Thus a perpetual supply of war- 
 riors was poured in from Europe ; and in 
 
 there were ten pictures in stained glass, repre- 
 senting sieges and battles in the first crusade. 
 These were made by order of Suger, the minister 
 of Louis VI., and consequently in the early part 
 of the twelfth century. In many of them the 
 Turks are painted in coats of mail, sometimes 
 even in a plated cuiras. In others they are quite 
 unarmed, and in flowing robes. Montfaucon, Mon- 
 umens de la Monarchic Fran9aise, t. i., pi. 50. 
 
 * Gibbon, c. 98, note 125. Jerusalem itself was 
 very thinly inhabited. For all the heathens, says 
 William of Tyre, had perished in the massacre 
 when the city was taken ; or, if any escaped, they 
 were not allowed to return : no heathen being 
 thought fit to dwell in the holy city. Baldwin in- 
 vited some Arabian Christians to settle in it. 
 
 t . xxii., c. 27. 
 
 J A primo introitu Latinorum in terrain sanc- 
 tam, says John de Vitry, nostri tot milites in uno 
 proelio congregare nequiverunt. Erant enim mille 
 ducenti milites loricati ; peditum autem cum ar- 
 mis, arcubus et balistis circiter viginti millia, in- 
 faustse expeditioni interfuisse dicuntur. Gesta Dei 
 per Francos, p. 1118. 
 
 A brief summary of these victories is given by 
 John of Vitry, c. 93. 
 
 || Many of these were of a mongrel extraction, 
 descended from a Frank parent on one side, and 
 Syrian on the other. These were called Poulains, 
 Pullani ; and were looked upon as a mean, degen- 
 erate race. Du Cange ; Gloss, v., Pullani ; and 
 Observations sur Joinville, in Collection des Me 
 moires relatifs a PHistoire de France, t. ii., p. 190 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 35 
 
 this sense, the crusades may be said to 
 have lasted without intermission during 
 the whole period of the Latin settle- 
 ments. Of these defenders, the most re- 
 nowned were the military orders of the 
 Knights of the Temple and of the Hos- 
 pital of St. John ;* instituted, the one in 
 1124, the other in 1118, for the sole pur- 
 pose of protecting the Holy Land. The 
 Teutonic order, established in 1190, when 
 the kingdom of Jerusalem was falling, 
 soon diverted its schemes of holy war- 
 fare to a very different quarter of the 
 world. Large estates, as well in Pales- 
 tine as throughout Europe, enriched the 
 two former institutions ; but the pride, 
 rapaciousness, and misconduct of both, 
 especially of the Templars, seem to have 
 balanced the advantages derived from 
 their valour. f [A. D. 1187.] At length, 
 the famous Saladin, usurping the throne 
 of a feeble dynasty which had reigned in 
 Egypt, broke in upon the Christians of 
 Jerusalem; the king and the kingdom 
 fell into his hands ; nothing remained but 
 a few strong towns upon the seacoast. 
 
 [A. D. 1189.] These misfortunes rous- 
 Thirdcru- ed once more the princes of 
 sade. Europe, and the third crusade 
 was undertaken by three of her sover- 
 eigns, the greatest in personal estima- 
 tion as well as dignity; by the Empe- 
 ror Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Au- 
 gustus of France, and our own Richard 
 Cceur de Lion. But this, like the "pre- 
 ceding enterprise, failed of permanent ef- 
 fect ; and those feats of romantic prow- 
 ess, which made the name of Richard 
 so famous both in Europe and Asia,J 
 proved only the total inefficacy of all 
 exertions in an attempt so impractica- 
 ble. Palestine was never the scene of 
 another crusade. [A. D. 1204.] One 
 great armament was diverted to the siege 
 of Constantinople; and another [A. D. 
 1218] wasted in fruitless attempts upon 
 Egypt. The Emperor Frederick II. after- 
 ward procured the restoration of Jerusa- 
 lem by the Saracens ; but the Christian 
 
 * The St. John of Jerusalem was neither the 
 Evangelist, nor yet the Baptist, but a certain Cyp- 
 riot, surnamed the Charitable, who had been pa- 
 triarch of Alexandria. 
 
 t See a curious instance of the misconduct and 
 insolence of the Templars, in William of Tyre, 1. 
 xx., c. 32. The Templars possessed nine thou- 
 sand manors, and the knights of St. John nineteen 
 thousand, in Europe. The latter were almost as 
 much reproached as the Templars for their pride 
 and avarice. L. xviii., c. 6. 
 
 t When a Turk's horse started at a bush, he 
 would chide him, Joinville says, with, Guides tu 
 qu'y soit le roi Richard ? Women kept their chil- 
 dren quiet with the threat of bringing Richard to 
 them. 
 
 C2 
 
 princes of Syria were unable to defend 
 it, and their possessions were gradually 
 reduced to the maritime towns. Acre, 
 the last of these, was finally taken by 
 storm in 1291 ; and its ruin closes the 
 history of the Latin dominion in Syria, 
 which Europe had already ceased to 
 protect. 
 
 The two last crusades were under- 
 taken by St. Louis. [A. D. Crusades of 
 
 1248.] In the first he was at- st. Louis. 
 tended by 2800 knights and 50,000 or- 
 dinary troops.* He landed at Damiet- 
 ta in Egypt, for that country was now 
 deemed the key of the Holy Land, and 
 easily made himself master of the city. 
 But, advancing up the country, he found 
 natural impediments, as well as enemies, 
 in his way ; the Turks assailed him with 
 Greek fire, an instrument of warfare al- 
 most as surprising and terrible as gun- 
 powder ; he lost his brother, the Count of 
 Artois, with many knights, at Massoura, 
 near Cairo ; and began too late a retreat 
 towards Damietta. Such calamities now 
 fell upon this devoted army, as have 
 scarce ever been surpassed ; hunger and 
 want of every kind, aggravated by an un- 
 sparing pestilence. At length the king 
 was made prisoner, and very few of the 
 army escaped the Turkish cimeter in 
 battle or in captivity. Four hundred 
 thousand livres were paid as a ransom 
 for Louis. He returned to France, and 
 passed near twenty years in the exercise 
 of those virtues which are his best title 
 to canonization. But the fatal illusions 
 of superstition were still always at his 
 heart ; nor did it fail to be painfully ob- 
 served by his subjects, that he still kept 
 the cross upon his garment. [A. D. 1270.] 
 His last expedition was originally design- 
 ed for Jerusalem. But he had received 
 some intimation that the King of Tunis 
 was desirous of embracing Christianity. 
 That these intentions might be carried 
 into effect, he sailed out of his way to 
 the coast of Africa, and laid siege to that 
 city. A fever here put an end to his life, 
 sacrificed to that ruling passion which 
 never would have forsaken him. But he 
 had survived the spirit of the crusades ; 
 the disastrous expedition to Egypt had 
 cured his subjects, though not himself, of 
 their folly ;f his son, after making terms 
 
 *The Arabian writers give him 9500 knights, 
 and 130,000 common soldiers. But I greatly pre- 
 fer the authority of Joinville, who has twice men- 
 tioned the number of knights in the text. On Gib- 
 bon's authority, I put the main body at 50,000 ; but 
 if Joinville has stated this, I have missed the pas- 
 sage. Their vessels amounted to 1800. 
 
 t The refusal of Joinville to accompany the king 
 
36 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 with Tunis, returned to France; the 
 Christians were suffered to lose what 
 they still retained in the Holy Land ; and 
 though many princes in subsequent ages 
 talked loudly of renewing the war, the 
 promise, if it were ever sincere, was nev- 
 er accomplished. 
 
 [A. D. 1270.] Louis IX. had increased 
 the royal domain by the an- 
 hihp m. ne x a tion of several counties and 
 other less important fiefs ; but, soon af- 
 ter the accession of Philip III. (sur- 
 named the Bold), it received a far more 
 considerable augmentation. Alfonso, the 
 late king's brother, had been invested with 
 the county of Poitou, ceded by Henry 
 III., together with part of Auvergne and 
 of Saintonge ; and held also, as has been 
 said before, the remains of the great fief 
 of Toulouse, in right of his wife Jane, 
 heiress of Raymond VII. [A. D. 1271.] 
 Upon his death, and that of his countess, 
 which happened about the same time, 
 the king entered into possession of all 
 these territories. This acquisition brought 
 the sovereigns of France into contact 
 with new neighbours, the kings of Aragon 
 and the powers of Italy. [A. D. 1285.] 
 The first great and lasting foreign war 
 which they carried on was that of Phil- 
 ip III. and Philip IV. against the former 
 kingdom, excited by the insurrection of 
 Sicily. Though effecting no change in 
 the boundaries of their dominions, this 
 war may be deemed a sort of epoch in 
 the history of France and Spain, as well 
 as in that of Italy, to which it more pe- 
 culiarly belongs. 
 
 There still remained five great and 
 ancient fiefs of the French crown; 
 Philip the Champagne, Guienne, Flanders, 
 Fair. Burgundy, and Britany. [A. D. 
 1285.] But Philip IV., usually called the 
 Fair, married the heiress of the first, a 
 little before his father's death; and, al- 
 
 in this second crusade is very memorable, and gives 
 us an insight into the bad effects of both expedi- 
 tions. Le Roy de France et le Roy de Navarre 
 me pressoient fort de me croiser, et entreprendre 
 le chemin du pelerinage de la croix. Mais je leur 
 respondi, que tandis que j'avoie este oultre-mer au 
 service de Dieu, que les gens et officers du Roy de 
 France, avoient trop greve et foulle mes subjets, 
 tant qu'ils en estoient apovris ; tellement que james 
 il ne seroit, que eulx et moy ne nous en sortissons. 
 Et veoie clerement, si je me mectoie au pelerinage 
 de la croix, que ce seroit la totale destruction de 
 mesdiz povres subjets. Depuis ouy-je dire a plu- 
 sieurs, que ceux qui luy conseillerent 1'enterprinse 
 de la croix, firent un trez grant mal, et peche- 
 rent mor tellement. Car tandis qu'il fust au roy- 
 aume de France, tout son royaume vivoit en paix, 
 et regnoit justice. Et incontinent qu'il en fust 
 ors, tout commenqa a decliner, et a empirer. T. ii., 
 p. 158. 
 In the Fabliaux of Le Grand d'Aussy, we have 
 
 though he governed that county in her 
 name, without pretending to reunite it 
 to the royal domain, it was at least, in 
 a political sense, no longer a part of 
 the feudal body. With some of his 
 other vassals Philip used more violent 
 methods. A parallel might be drawn 
 between this prince and Philip Augus- 
 tus. But while in ambition, violence 
 of temper, and unprincipled rapacity, 
 as well as in the success of their at- 
 tempts to establish an abso- 
 lute authority, they may be 
 considered as nearly equal, Frenchmen. 
 we may remark this differ- ^J"^ 61 - 
 ence, that Philip the Fair, who 
 was destitute of military talents, gain- 
 ed those ends by dissimulation which 
 his predecessor had reached by force. 
 
 The dutchy of Guienne, though some- 
 what abridged of its original extent, was 
 still by far the most considerable of the 
 French fiefs ; even independently of its 
 connexion with England.* Philip, by 
 dint of perfidy, and by the egregious in- 
 capacity of Edmund, brother of Edward 
 I., contrived to obtain, and to keep for 
 several years, the possession of this great 
 province. [A. D. 1292.] A quarrel among 
 some French and English sailors having 
 provoked retaliation, till a sort of pirati- 
 cal war commenced between the two 
 countries, Edward, as Duke of Guienne, 
 was summoned into the king's court to 
 answer for the trespasses of his subjects. 
 Upon this he despatched his brother to 
 settle terms of reconciliation, with fuller 
 powers than should have been intrusted 
 to so credulous a negotiator. Philip so 
 outwitted this prince, through a fictitious 
 treaty, as to procure from him the surren- 
 der of all the fortresses in Guienne. He 
 then threw off the mask, and after again 
 
 a neat poem by Rutuboeuf, a writer of St. Louis's 
 age, in a dialogue between a crusader and a non- 
 crusader, wherein, though he gives the last word 
 to the former, it is plain that he designed the oppo- 
 site scale to preponderate. T. ii., p. 163. 
 
 * Philip was highly offended that instruments 
 made in Guienne should be dated by the year of 
 Edward's reign, and not of his own. This almost 
 sole badge of sovereignty had been preserved by 
 the kings of France during all the feudal ages. A 
 struggle took place about it, which is recorded in 
 a curious letter from John de Greilli to Edward. 
 The French court at last consented to let dates be 
 thus expressed: Actum fuit, regnante P. rege 
 Francis, E. rege Angliae tenente ducatum Aquita- 
 niae. Several precedents were shown by the Eng- 
 lish, where the counts of Toulouse had used the 
 form, Regnante A. comite Tolosae. Rymer, t. ii., 
 p. 1083. As this is the first time that 1 quote Ry- 
 mer, it may be proper to observe that my referen- 
 ces are to the London edition, the paging of which 
 is preserved on the margin of that printed at the 
 Hague. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 37 
 
 summoning Edward to appear, pronoun- 
 ced the confiscation of his fief.* This 
 business is the greatest blemish in the 
 political character of Edward. But his 
 eagerness about the acquisition of Scot- 
 land rendered him less sensible to the 
 danger of a possession in many respects 
 more valuable ; and the spirit of resist- 
 ance among the English nobility, which 
 his arbitrary measures had provoked, 
 broke out very opportunely for Philip [A. 
 D. 1303], to thwart every effort for the 
 recovery of Guienne by arms. But after 
 repeated suspensions of hostilities, a trea- 
 ty was finally concluded, by which Phil- 
 ip restored the province, on the agree- 
 ment of a marriage between his daughter 
 Isabel and the heir of England. 
 
 To this restitution he was chiefly in- 
 duced by the ill success that attended his 
 arms in Flanders, another of the great 
 fiefs which this ambitious monarch had 
 endeavoured to confiscate. We have not 
 perhaps as clear evidence of the original 
 injustice of his proceedings towards the 
 Count of Flanders as in the case of Gui- 
 enne ; but he certainly twice detained his 
 person, once after drawing him on some 
 pretext to his court, and again, in viola- 
 tion of the faith pledged by his generals. 
 The Flemings made, however, so vigor- 
 ous a resistance, that Philip was unable to 
 reduce that small country [A. D. 1302] ; 
 and in one famous battle at Courtray, they 
 discomfited a powerful army with that 
 utter loss and ignominy to which the un- 
 disciplined impetuosity of the French 
 nobles was pre-eminently exposed, f 
 
 Two other acquisitions of Philip the 
 Fair deserve notice ; that of the counties 
 of Angouleme and la Marche, upon a sen- 
 tence of forfeiture (and, as it seems, a 
 very harsh one) passed against the reign- 
 ing count ; and that of the city of Lyons 
 and its adjacent territory, which had not 
 even feudally been subject to the crown 
 of France for more than three hundred 
 years. Lyons was the dowry of Matilda, 
 daughter of Louis IV., on her marriage 
 with Conrad, king of Burgundy, and was 
 bequeathed with the rest of that kingdom 
 by Rodolph, in 1032, to the empire. Fred- 
 erick Barbarossa conferred upon the arch- 
 bishop of Lyons all regalian rights over 
 
 * In the view I have taken of this transaction, I 
 have been guided by several instruments in Ry- 
 mer, which leave no doubt on my mind. Velly, of 
 course, represents the matter more favourably for 
 Philip. 
 
 t The Flemings took at Courtray 4000 pair of 
 gilt spurs, which were only worn by knights. 
 These Velly, happily enough, compares to Hanni- 
 bal's three bushels of gold rings at C annas. 
 
 the city, with the title of Imperial Vicar. 
 France seems to have had no concern 
 with it, till St. Louis was called in as a 
 mediator in disputes between the chapter 
 and the city, during a vacancy of the see, 
 and took the exercise of jurisdiction upon 
 himself for the time. Philip III. having 
 been chosen arbitrator in similar circum- 
 stances, insisted, before he would restore 
 the jurisdiction, upon an oath of fealty 
 from the new archbishop. This oath, 
 which could be demanded, it seems, by 
 no right but that of force, continued to be 
 taken, till, in 1310, an archbishop resist- 
 ing what he had thought a usurpation, the 
 city was besieged by Philip IV., and the 
 inhabitants not being unwilling to submit, 
 was finally united to the French crown.* 
 Philip the Fair left three sons, who 
 successively reigned in France; Louis x. 
 Louis, surnamed Hutin, Philip the 1314 - 
 Long, and Charles the Fair; with a 
 daughter, Isabel, married to Edward II. 
 of England. Louis, the eldest, survived 
 his father little more than a year, leav- 
 ing one daughter, and his queen preg- 
 nant. The circumstances that ensued 
 require to be accurately sta- Question of 
 ted. Louis had possessed, in saiique-iaw. 
 right of his mother, the king- j^'P v - 
 dom of Navarre, with the coun- ; 
 ties of Champagne and Brie. Upon his 
 death, Philip, his next brother, assumed 
 the regency both of France and Na- 
 varre; and, not long afterward, entered 
 into a treaty with Eudes, duke of Bur- 
 gundy, uncle of the princess Jane, Louis's 
 daughter, by which her eventful rights to 
 the succession were to be regulated. It 
 was agreed that, in case the queen should 
 be delivered of a daughter, these two 
 princesses, or the surviver of them, 
 should take, the grandmother's inherit- 
 ance, Navarre and Champagne, on re- 
 leasing all claim to the throne of France. 
 But this was not to take place till th&r 
 age of consent, when, if they should re- 
 fuse to make such renunciation, their 
 claim was to remain, and right to be done 
 to them therein ; but, in return, the release 
 made by Philip of Navarre and Cham- 
 pagne was to be null. In the meantime 
 he was to hold the government of France, 
 Navarre, and Champagne, receiving hom- 
 age of vassals in all these countries as 
 governor ; saving the right of a male heir 
 to the late king, in the event of whose 
 birth the treaty was not to take effect.f 
 
 * Velly, t. vii., p. 404. For a more precise ac- 
 count of the political dependance of Lyons and its 
 district, see 1'Art de verifier les Dates, t. ii., p. 469. 
 
 t Hist, de Charles le Mauvais, par Secousse, 
 vol. ii., p. 2. 
 
38 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 This convention was made on the 17th of 
 July, 1316 ; and on the 15th of November 
 the queen brought into the world a son, 
 John I. (as some called him), who died in 
 four days. The conditional treaty was 
 now become absolute ; in spirit, at least, 
 if any cavil might be raised about the ex- 
 pression ; and Philip was, by his own 
 agreement, precluded from taking any 
 other title than that of regent or govern- 
 or, until the princess Jane should attain 
 the age to concur in or disclaim the pro- 
 visional contract of her uncle. Instead 
 of this, however, he procured himself to 
 be consecrated at Rheims ; though, on 
 account of the avowed opposition of the 
 Duke of Burgundy, and even of his own 
 brother Charles, it was thought prudent 
 to shut the gates during the ceremony, 
 and to dispose guards throughout the 
 town. Upon his return to Paris, an as- 
 sembly, composed of prelates, 
 barons, and burgesses of that 
 city, was convened, who acknowledged 
 him as their lawful sovereign, and, if we 
 may believe an historian, expressly de- 
 clared, that a woman was incapable of 
 succeeding to the crown of France.* 
 The Duke of Burgundy, however, made 
 a show of supporting his niece's interests, 
 till, tempted by the prospect of a marriage 
 with the daughter of Philip, he shamefully 
 betrayed her cause, and gave up in her 
 name, for an inconsiderable pension, not 
 only her disputed claim to the whole 
 monarchy, but her unquestionable right 
 to Navarre and Champagne. f I have 
 been rather minute in stating these de- 
 tails, because the transaction is misrepre- 
 sented by every historian, not excepting 
 those who have written since the publica- 
 tion of the documents which illustrate it. J 
 
 In this contest, every way memorable, 
 but especially on account of that which 
 sprung out of it, the exclusion of females 
 from the throne of France was first pub- 
 licly discussed. The French writers 
 almost unanimously concur in asserting, 
 
 * Tune etiam declaratum fuit, quod in regno 
 Francia mulier non succedit. Contin. Gill. Nan- 
 gis, in Spicilegio d'Achery, tome hi. This monk, 
 without talents, and probably without private infor- 
 mation, is the sole contemporary historian of this 
 important period. He describes the assembly 
 which confirmed Philip's possession of the crown ; 
 quamplures proceres et regni nobiles ac magnates 
 una cum plerisque praelatis et burgensibus Parisi- 
 ensis civitatis. 
 
 t Hist, ue Charles le Mauvais, t. ii.,p. 6. Jane 
 and her husband, the Count of Evreux, recovered 
 Navarre after the death of Charles the Fair. 
 
 J Velly, who gives several proofs of disingenu- 
 ousness in this part of history, mutilates the treaty 
 of the 17th of July, 1316, in order to conceal Philip 
 the Long's breach of faith towards his nieee. 
 
 that such an exclusion was built upon a 
 fundamental maxim of their government. 
 No written law, nor even, so far as I 
 know, the direct testimony of any an- 
 cient writer, has been brought forward to 
 confirm this position. For as to the text 
 of the Salique-law, which was frequently 
 quoted, and has indeed given a name to 
 this exclusion of females, it can only by 
 a doubtful and refined analogy be con- 
 sidered as bearing any relation to the 
 succession of the crown. It is certain, 
 nevertheless, that, from the time of 
 Clovis, no woman had ever reigned in 
 France ; and although not an instance of 
 a sole heiress had occurred before, yet 
 some of the Merovingian kings left 
 daughters, who might, if not rendered 
 incapable by their sex, have shared with 
 their brothers in partitions then com- 
 monly made.* But, on the other hand, 
 these times were gone quite out of 
 memory, and France had much in the 
 analogy of her existing usages to recon- 
 cile her to a female reign. The crown 
 resembled a great fief; and the great fiefs 
 were universally capable of descending 
 to women. Even at the consecration of 
 Philip himself, Maud, countess of Artois, 
 held the crown over his head among the 
 other peers. f And it was scarcely be- 
 yond the recollection of persons living, 
 that Blanche had been legitimate regent 
 of France during the minority of St. 
 Louis. 
 
 For these reasons, and much more from 
 the provisional treaty concluded between 
 Philip and the Duke of Burgundy, it may 
 be fairly inferred, that the Salique-law, as 
 it was called, was not so fixed a principle 
 at that time as has been contended. But, 
 however this may be, it received at the 
 accession of Philip the Long a sanction 
 which subsequent events more thorough- 
 ly confirmed. Philip himself leaving only 
 
 * The treaty of Andely, in 587, will be found to 
 afford a very strong presumption that females were 
 at that time excluded from reigning in France. 
 Greg. Turon., 1. ix. 
 
 t The continuator of Nangis says indeed of this : 
 de quo aliqui indignati fuerunt. But these were 
 probably the partisans of her nephew Robert, who 
 had been excluded by a judicial sentence of Philip 
 IV., on the ground that the right of representation 
 did not take place in Artois ; a decision considered 
 by many as unjust. Robert subsequently renewed 
 his appeal to the court of Philip of Valois : but, un- 
 happily for himself, yielded to the temptation of 
 forging documents in support of a claim which 
 seems to have been at least plausible without such 
 aid. This unwise dishonesty, which is not without 
 parallel in more private causes, not only ruined his 
 pretensions to the county of Artois, but produced 
 a sentence of forfeiture, and even of capital punish- 
 ment, against himself. See a pretty good account 
 of Robert's process in Velly, t. viii., p. 262. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 39 
 
 . three daughters, his brother 
 IV - Charles mounted the throne 
 [A. D. 1322] ; and upon his death, the rule 
 was so unquestionably established, that 
 his only daughter was excluded by the 
 Philip of Count of Valois, grandson of 
 Valois. philip the Bold. [A. D. 1328.] 
 This prince first took the regency, the 
 queen dowager being pregnant, and, up- 
 on her giving birth to a daughter, was 
 crowned king. No competitor or op- 
 ponent appeared in France ; but one 
 more formidable than any whom France 
 could have produced, was awaiting the 
 occasion to prosecute his imagined right 
 with all the resources of valour and 
 genius, and to carry desolation over that 
 great kingdom with as little scruple as if 
 he was preferring a suit before a civil tri- 
 bunal. 
 
 From the moment of Charles IV.'s 
 Claim *f death, Edward IIL " of Eng- 
 Edwardin. j an< j buoyed himself up with 
 a notion of his title to the crown of 
 France, in right of his mother, Isabel, 
 sister to the three last kings. We can 
 have no hesitation in condemning the in- 
 justice of this pretension. Whether the 
 Salique-law were or were not valid, no 
 advantage could be gained by Edward. 
 Even if we could forget the express or 
 tacit decision of all France, there stood 
 in his way Jane, the daughter of Louis 
 X., three of Philip the Long, and one of 
 Charles the Fair. Aware of this, Edward 
 set up a distinction, that, although females 
 were excluded from succession, the same 
 rule did not apply to their male issue ; and 
 thus, though his mother Isabel could not 
 herself become Queen of France, she 
 might transmit a title to him. But this 
 was contrary to the commonest rules of 
 inheritance : and if it could have been re- 
 garded at all, Jane had a son, afterward 
 the famous King of Navarre, who stood 
 one degree nearer to the crown than Ed- 
 ward. 
 
 It is asserted in some French authori- 
 ties, that Edward preferred a claim to the 
 regency immediately after the decease 
 of Charles the Fair, and that the States 
 General, or at least the peers of France, 
 adjudged that dignity to Philip de Valois. 
 Whether this be true or not, it is clear 
 that he entertained projects of recovering 
 his right as early, though his youth and 
 the embarrassed circumstances of his 
 government threw insuperable obstacles 
 in the way of their execution.* He did 
 
 * Letters of Edward III., addressed to certain 
 nobles and towns in the south of France, dated 
 March 28, 1328, four days before the birth of 
 Charles IV.'s posthumous daughter, intimate this 
 
 liege homage therefore to Philip for 
 Guienne, and for several years, while the 
 affairs of Scotland engrossed his atten- 
 tion, gave no sign of meditating a more 
 magnificent enterprise. As he advanced 
 in manhood, and felt the consciousness 
 of his strength, his early designs grew 
 mature, and produced a series of the most 
 important and interesting revolutions in 
 the fortunes of France. These will form 
 the subject of the ensuing pages. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 War of Edward III. in France. Causes of his 
 Success. Civil Disturbances of France. Peace 
 of Bretigni its Interpretation considered. 
 
 resolution. Rymer, vol. iv., p. 344, et seq. But an 
 instrument, dated at Northampton, on the 16th of 
 May, is decisive : This is a procuration to the bish- 
 ops of Worcester and Litchfield, to demand and 
 take possession of the kingdom of France, "in our 
 name, which kingdom has devolved and appertains 
 to us as to the right heir." P. 354. To this mis- 
 sion Archbishop Stratford refers, in his vindication 
 of himself from Edward's accusation of treason in 
 1340; and informs us that the two bishops actually 
 proceeded to France, though without mentioning 
 any further particulars. Novit enim qui nihil igno- 
 rat, quod cum quaestio de regno Franciae post mor- 
 tem regis Caroli, fratris serenissimae matris vestrae, 
 in parliaments tune apud Northampton celebrate, 
 tractata discussaque fuisset ; quodque idem regnum 
 Franciae ad vos hasreditario jure extiterat legitime 
 devolutum ; et super hoc fuit ordinatum, quod, duo 
 episcopi, Wigorniensis tune, mine autern Wintom- 
 ensis, ac Coventriensis et Lichfeldensis in Fran- 
 ciam dirigerent gressus suos, nomineque vestro 
 regnum Franciae vindicarent et prsedicti Philippi 
 de Valesio eoronationem pro viribus impedirent ; 
 qui juxta ordinationem praedictam legationem iis 
 injunctam tune assumentes, gressus suos versus 
 Franciam direxerunt ; quse quidem legatio maxim- 
 am guerrae praesentis materiam ministravit. Wil- 
 kins. Concilia, t. i., p. 664. 
 
 There is no evidence in Rymer's Foedera to cor- 
 roborate Edward's supposed claim to the regency 
 of France upon the death of Charles IV. ; and it is 
 certainly suspicious, that no appointment of am- 
 bassadors or procurators for this purpose should 
 appear in so complete a collection of documents. 
 The French historians generally assert this, upon 
 the authority of the continuator of William of Nan- 
 gis, a nearly contemporary, but not always well- 
 informed writer. It is curious to compare the four 
 chief English historians. Rapin affirms both the 
 claim to the regency, on Charles IV.'s death, and 
 that to the kingdom, after the birth of his daugh- 
 ter. Carte, the most exact historian we have, 
 mentions the latter, and is silent as to the former. 
 Hume passes over both, and intimates that Ed- 
 ward did not take any steps in support of his pre- 
 tensions in 1328. Henry gives the supposed trial 
 of Edward's claim to the regency before the States 
 General at great length, and makes no allusion to 
 the other, so indisputably authenticated in Rymer. 
 It is, I think, most probable, that the two bishops 
 never made the formal demand of the throne as 
 they were directed by their instructions. Strat- 
 ford's expressions seem to imply that they .did jiot.. 
 
40 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 Charles V. Renewal of the War. Charles VI. 
 his Minority and Insanity. Civil Dissensions 
 of the Parties of Orleans and Burgundy. Assas- 
 sination of both these Princes. Intrigues of 
 their Parties with England under Henry IV. 
 Henry V. invades France. Treaty of Troyes. 
 State of France in the first Years of Charles VII. 
 Progress and subsequent Decline of the Eng- 
 lish Arms their Expulsion from France. 
 Change in the Political Constitution. Louis XI. 
 his Character. Leagues formed against him. 
 Charles, Duke of Burgundy his Prosperity 
 and Fall. Louis obtains Possession of Burgun- 
 dy his Death. Charles VIII. Acquisition of 
 Britany. 
 
 No war had broken out in Europe* since 
 War of Ed- t ^ ie ^ ^ ^ e Roman Empire, 
 
 ward III. in SO memorable as that of Ed- 
 France, ward III. and his successors 
 against France, whether we consider its 
 duration, its object, or the magnitude and 
 variety of its events. It was a strug- 
 gle of one hundred and twenty years, 
 interrupted but once by a regular paci- 
 fication, where the most ancient and ex- 
 tensive dominion in the civilized world 
 was the prize, twice lost and twice re- 
 covered in the conflict, while individual 
 courage was wrought up to that high 
 pitch which it can seldom display since 
 the regularity of modern tactics has chas- 
 tised its enthusiasm, and levelled its dis- 
 tinctions. There can be no occasion to 
 dwell upon the events of this war, which 
 are familiar to almost every reader ; it is 
 rather my aim to develop and arrange 
 those circumstances which, when rightly 
 understood, give the clew to its various 
 changes of fortune. 
 
 France was, even in the fourteenth 
 Causes of his century, a kingdom of such 
 extent and compactness of 
 figure, such population and resources, 
 and filled with so spirited a nobility, 
 that the very idea of subjugating it by 
 a foreign force must have seemed the 
 most extravagant dream of ambition.* 
 Yet, in the course of about twenty years 
 of war, this mighty nation was reduced 
 to the lowest state of exhaustion, and dis- 
 membered of considerable provinces by 
 an ignominious peace. What was the 
 
 * The pope (Benedict XII.) wrote a strong letter 
 to Edward (March, 1340), dissuading him from ta- 
 king the title and arms of France, and pointing out 
 the impossibility of his ever succeeding. I have 
 no doubt but that this was the 'common opinion. 
 But the Avignon popes were very subservient to 
 France. Clement VI., as well as his predecessor, 
 Benedict XII., threatened Edward with spiritual 
 arms. Rymer, t. v., p. 88 and 465. It required Ed- 
 ward's spirit and steadiness to despise these men- 
 aces. But the time when they were terrible to 
 princes was rather passed by ; and the Holy See 
 never ventured to provoke the king, who treated 
 the church, throughout his reign, with admirable 
 firmness and temper. 
 
 combination of political causes which 
 brought about so strange a revolution, 
 and, though not realizing Edward's hopes 
 to their extent, redeemed them from the 
 imputation of rashness in the judgment 
 of his own and succeeding ages ] 
 The first advantage which Edward 
 
 III. possessed in this contest, character of 
 
 was derived from the splen- Edward in. 
 dour of his personal charac- and his son. 
 ter, and from the still more eminent vir- 
 tues of his son. Besides prudence and 
 military skill, these great princes were 
 endowed with qualities peculiarly fitted 
 for the times in which they lived. Chiv- 
 alry was then in its zenith ; and in all the 
 virtues which adorned the knightly char- 
 acter, in courtesy, munificence, gallantry, 
 in all delicate and magnanimous feelings, 
 none were so conspicuous as Edward III. 
 and the Black Prince. As later princes 
 have boasted of being the best gentle- 
 men, they might claim to be the prowest 
 knights in Europe ; a character not quite 
 dissimilar, yet of more high pretension. 
 Their court was, as it were, the sun of 
 that system which embraced the valour 
 and nobility of the Christian world ; and 
 the respect which was felt for their ex- 
 cellences, while it drew many to their 
 side, mitigated in all the rancour and fe- 
 rociousness of hostility. This war was 
 like a great tournament, where the com- 
 batants fought indeed a outrance, but with 
 all the courtesy and fair play of such an 
 entertainment, and almost as much for 
 the honour of their ladies. In the school 
 of the Edwards were formed men not in- 
 ferior in any nobleness of disposition to 
 their masters ; Manni, and the Captal de 
 Buch, Felton, Knollys, and Calverley, 
 Chandos, and Lancaster. On the French 
 side, especially after Du Guesclin came 
 on the stage, these had rivals almost 
 equally deserving of renown. If we could 
 forget, what never should be forgotten, 
 the wretchedness and devastation that 
 fell upon a great kingdom, too dear a 
 price for the display of any heroism, we 
 might count these English wars in France 
 among the brightest periods in history. 
 
 Philip of Valois and John his son show- 
 ed but poorly in comparison character of 
 with their illustrious enemies. Philip vi. 
 Yet they had both considerable and JohIK 
 virtues ; they were brave,* just, liberal, 
 
 * The bravery of Philip is not questioned. But 
 a French historian, in order, I suppose, to enhance 
 this quality, has presumed to violate truth in an 
 extraordinary manner. The challenge sent by Ed- 
 ward, ofTering to decide his claim to the kingdom 
 by single combat, is well known. Certainly it con- 
 veys no imputation on the King of France to have 
 declined this unfair proposal. But Velly has rep- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 41 
 
 and the latter, in particular, of unshaken 
 fidelity to his word. But neither was be- 
 loved by his subjects; the misgovern- 
 ment and extortion of their predecessor 
 during half a century had alienated th 
 public mind, and rendered their own taxe 
 and debasement of the coin intolerable 
 Philip was made by misfortune, John ^ 
 nature, suspicious and austere ; and al 
 though their most violent acts seem neve 
 to have wanted absolute justice, yet thej 
 were so ill conducted, and of so arbitrary 
 a complexion, that they greatly impairec 
 the reputation, as well as interests, o: 
 these monarchs. In the execution of 
 Clisson under Philip, in that of the Con 
 netable d'Eu under John, and still mor< 
 in that of Harcourt, even in the imprison 
 ment of the King of Navarre, though ev- 
 ery one of these might have been guilty 
 of treasons, there were circumstance 
 enough to exasperate the disaffected, and 
 to strengthen the party of so politic a 
 competitor as Edward. 
 
 Next to the personal qualities of the 
 Resources of King of England, his resour- 
 ces in this war must be ta- 
 ken into the account. It was 
 
 the King of 
 England. 
 
 after long hesitation that he assumec 
 the title and arms of France, from 
 which, unless upon the best terms, he 
 could not recede without loss of honour. 
 
 resented him as accepting it, on condition that Ed- 
 ward would stake the crown of England against 
 that of France; an interpolation which may be 
 truly called audacious, since not a word of this is 
 in Philip's letter, preserved in Rymer, which the 
 historian had before his eyes, and actually quotes 
 upon the occasion. Hist, de France, t. via., p. 382. 
 * The first instrument in which Edward disal- 
 lows the title of Philip, is his convention with the 
 Emperor Louis of Bavaria, wherein he calls him 
 nunc pro rege Francorum se gerentem. The date 
 of this is August 26, 1337, yet on the 28th of the 
 same month, another instrument gives him the 
 title of king ; and the same occurs in subsequent 
 instances. At length we have an instrument of 
 procuration to the Duke of Brabant, October 7, 
 1337, empowering him to take possession of the 
 crown of France in the name of Edward : atten- 
 dentes inclitum regnum Franciae ad nos fore jure 
 successionis legitime devolutum. Another of the 
 same date appoints the said duke his vicar-general 
 and lieutenant of France. The king assumed in 
 this commission the title Rex Franciae et Anglis ; 
 in other instruments he calls himself Rex Angliae 
 et Franciae. It was necessary to obviate the jeal- 
 ousy of the English, who did not, in that age, 
 admit the precedence of France. Accordingly, 
 Edward had two great seals, on which the two 
 kingdoms were named in a different order. But, in 
 the royal arms, those of France were always in the 
 first quarter, as they continued to be until the ac- 
 cession of the house of Brunswick. 
 
 Probably Edward III. would not have entered 
 into the war merely on account of his claim to the 
 crown. He had disputes with Philip about Gui- 
 enne; and that prince had, rather unjustifiably, 
 abetted Robert Bruce in Scotland. I am not in- 
 
 In the meantime he strengthened him- 
 self by alliances with the emperor, with 
 the cities of Flanders, and with most of 
 the princes in the Netherlands and on 
 the Rhine. Yet I do not know that he 
 profited much by these conventions, since 
 he met with no success till the scene of 
 the war was changed from the Flemish 
 frontier to Normandy and Poitou. The 
 troops of Hainault alone were constantly 
 distinguished in his service. 
 
 But his intrinsic strength was at home. 
 England had been growing in riches since 
 the wise government of his grandfather, 
 Edward I., and through the market open- 
 ed for her wool with the manufacturing 
 towns of Flanders. She was tranquil 
 within; and her northern enemy, the 
 Scotch, had been defeated and quelled. 
 The parliament, after some slight precau- 
 tions against a very probable effect of 
 Edward's conquest of France, the reduc- 
 tion of their own island into a province, 
 entered, as warmly as improvidently, 
 into his quarrel. The people made it 
 their own, and grew so intoxicated with 
 the victories of this war, that for some 
 centuries the injustice and folly of the 
 enterprise do not seem to have struck 
 the gravest of our countrymen. 
 
 There is, indeed, ample room for na- 
 tional exultation at the names Exce i lence of 
 of Crecy, Poitiers, and Az- the English 
 incourt. So great was the armies- 
 disparity of numbers upon those famous 
 days, that we cannot, with the French 
 historians, attribute the discomfiture of 
 their hosts merely to mistaken tactics 
 and too impetuous valour. They yield- 
 ed rather to that intrepid steadiness in 
 danger, which had already become the 
 iharacteristic of our English soldiers, and 
 which, during four centuries, has ensured 
 ;heir superiority, whenever ignorance or 
 nfatuation has not led them into the 
 field. But these victories, and the quali- 
 ies that secured them, must chiefly be 
 ascribed to the freedom of our constitu- 
 ion, and to the superior condition of the 
 people. Not the nobility of England, not 
 he feudal tenants, won the battles of 
 >ecy and Poitiers ; for these were fully 
 natched in the ranks of France ; but the 
 eomen, who drew the bow with strong 
 and steady arms, accustomed to its use 
 n their native fields, and rendered fear- 
 ess by personal competence and civil 
 reedom. It is well known that each of 
 he three great victories was due to our 
 .rchers, who were chiefly of the middle 
 lass, and attached, according to the sys- 
 
 lined to lay any material stress upon the instiga- 
 on of Robert of Artois. 
 
42 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 tern of that age, to the knights and 
 squires who fought in heavy armour with 
 the lance. Even at the battle of Poitiers, 
 of which our country seems to have the 
 least right to boast, since the greater 
 part of the Black Prince's small army 
 was composed of Gascons, the merit of 
 the English bowmen is strongly attested 
 by Froissart.* 
 
 Yet the glorious termination to which 
 Edward was enabled, at least for a 
 Condition time, to bring the contest, was 
 ft 1 r I tb l e Ce rat ^ er t ^ ie WOf k f fortune than 
 banieof of valour and prudence. Until 
 Poitiers, the battle of Poitiers, he had 
 made no progress towards the conquest 
 of France. That country was too vast, 
 and his army too small, for such a revo- 
 lution. The victory of Crecy gave him 
 nothing but Calais ; a post of considera- 
 ble importance in war and peace, but 
 rather adapted to annoy than to subjugate 
 the kingdom. But at Poitiers he obtain- 
 ed the greatest of prizes, by taking pris- 
 oner the King of France. Not only the 
 love of freedom tempted that prince to 
 ransom himself by the utmost sacrifices, 
 but his captivity left France defenceless, 
 and seemed to annihilate the monarchy 
 itself. The government was already 
 odious; a spirit was awakened in the 
 people, which might seem hardly to be- 
 long to the fourteenth century ; and the 
 convulsions of our own time are some- 
 times strongly paralleled by those which 
 succeeded the battle of Poitiers. Al- 
 ready the States General had established 
 a fundamental principle, that no resolution 
 could be passed as the opinion of the 
 whole, unless each of the three orders 
 concurred in its adoption.! The right of 
 levying and of regulating the collection 
 of taxes was recognised. But that as- 
 sembly which met at Paris immediately 
 after the battle, went far greater lengths 
 in the reform and control of government. 
 From the time of Philip the Fair, the 
 abuses natural to arbitrary power had 
 harassed the people. There now seem- 
 ed an opportunity of redress ; and how- 
 ever seditious, or even treasonable, may 
 have been the motives of those who 
 guided this assembly of the States, espe- 
 cially the famous Marcel, it is clear that 
 many of their reformations tended to lib- 
 erty and the public good.J But the tu- 
 
 * Au vraydire, les archers d'Angleterre faisoient 
 a leurs gens grant avantage. Car Us tiroyent tant 
 espessement, que les Francois ne S9avoyent dequel 
 coste entendre, qu'ilsne fussent consuy vis de tray t ; 
 et s'avancoyent tousjours ces Anglois, et petit a 
 petit enqueroyent terre. Part I., c. 162. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois de France, t. ii. 
 
 t I must refer the reader onward to the next 
 
 multuous scenes which passed in the 
 capital, sometimes heightened into civil 
 war, necessarily distracted men from the 
 common defence against Edward. These 
 tumults were excited, and the distraction 
 increased, by Charles, king of Navarre, 
 surnamed the bad, to whom the French 
 writers have, not perhaps unjustly, at- 
 tributed a character of unmixed and in- 
 veterate malignity. He was grandson of 
 Louis Hutin, by his daughter Jane, and, 
 if Edward's pretence of claiming through 
 females could be admitted, was a nearer 
 heir to the crown ; the consciousness of 
 which seems to have suggested itself to 
 his depraved mind as an excuse for his 
 treacheries, though he could entertain 
 very little prospect of asserting the claim 
 against either contending party. John 
 had bestowed his daughter in marriage 
 on the King of Navarre ; but he very soon 
 gave a proof of his character, by procu- 
 ring the assassination of the king's favour- 
 ite, Charles de la Cerda. An irreconci- 
 lable enmity was the natural result of this 
 crime. Charles became aware that he 
 had offended beyond the possibility of 
 forgiveness, and that no letters of pardon, 
 nor pretended reconciliation, could secure 
 him from the king's resentment. Thus, 
 impelled by guilt into deeper guilt, he 
 entered into alliances with Edward, and 
 fomented the seditious spirit of Paris. 
 Eloquent and insinuating, he was the 
 favourite of the people, whose grievan- 
 ces he affected to pity, and with whose 
 leaders he intrigued. As his paternal 
 inheritance, he possessed the county of 
 Evreux in Normandy. The proximity 
 of this to Paris created a formidable di- 
 version in favour of Edward III., and 
 connected the English garrisons of the 
 north with those of Poitou and Guienne. 
 There is no affliction which did not 
 fall upon France during this miserable 
 period. A foreign enemy was in the 
 heart of the kingdom, the king a prisoner, 
 the capital in sedition, a treacherous 
 prince of the blood in arms against the 
 sovereign authority. Famine, the sure 
 and terrible companion of war, for sev- 
 ral years desolated the country. In 
 1348, a pestilence, the most extensive 
 and unsparing of which we have any 
 memorial, visited France as well as the 
 rest of Europe, and consummated the 
 work of hunger and the sword.* The 
 
 chapter for more information on this subject. This 
 separation is inconvenient, but it arose indispensa- 
 sly out of my arrangement, and prevented greater 
 inconveniences. 
 
 * A full account of the ravages made by this 
 memorable plague may be found in Matteo Villa- 
 
PART. II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 43 
 
 companies of adventure, mercenary troops 
 in the service of John or Edward, find- 
 ing no immediate occupation after the 
 truce of 1357, scattered themselves over 
 the country in search of pillage. No 
 force existed sufficiently powerful to 
 check these robbers in their career. 
 Undismayed by superstition, they com- 
 pelled the pope to redeem himself in 
 Avignon by the payment of forty thou- 
 sand crowns.* France was the passive 
 victim of their license, even after the 
 pacification concluded with England, till 
 
 (some were diverted into Italy, and others 
 led by Du Guesclin to the war of Castile. 
 Impatient of this wretchedness, and stung 
 by the insolence and luxury of their lords, 
 the peasantry of several districts broke out 
 into a dreadful insurrection. [A. D. 1358.] 
 This was called the Jacquerie, from the 
 cant phrase Jacques bon homme, applied 
 to men of that class ; and was marked by 
 all the circumstances of horror incident 
 to the rising of an exasperated and unen- 
 lightened populace. f 
 
 ni, the second of that family who wrote the Histo- 
 ry of Florence. His brother and predecessor, John 
 Villani, was himself a victim to it. The disease 
 began in the Levant about 1346 ; from whence 
 Italian traders brought it to Sicily, Pisa, and Ge- 
 noa. In 1348 it passed the Alps and spread over 
 France and Spam ; in the next year it reached 
 Britain, and in 1350 laid waste Germany and other 
 northern states ; lasting generally about five months 
 in each country. At Florence, more than three 
 out of five died. Muratori, Script. Rerum Itali- 
 carum, t. xiv., p. 12. The stories of Boccaccio's 
 Decamerone, as is well known, are supposed to be 
 related by a society of Florentine ladies and gen- 
 tlemen retired to the country during this pesti- 
 lence. 
 
 * Froissart, p. 187. This troop of banditti was 
 commanded by Arnaud de Ceryole, surnamed 
 1'Archipretre, from a benefice which, although a 
 layman, he possessed, according to the irregularity 
 of those ages. See a memoir on the life of Arnaud 
 de Cervole, in the twenty-fifth volume of the Acad- 
 emy of Inscriptions. 
 
 t The second continuator of Nangis, a monk of 
 no great abilities, but entitled to notice as our most 
 contemporary historian, charges the nobility with 
 spending the money raised upon the people by op- 
 pressive taxes, in playing at dice " et alios inde- 
 centes jocos." D'Achery, Spicilegium, t. iii., p. 
 114 (folio edition). All the miseries that followed 
 the battle of Poitiers he ascribes to bad govern- 
 ment and neglect of the common weal ; but espe- 
 cially to the pride and luxury of the nobles. I am 
 aware that this writer is biased in favour of the 
 King of Navarre ; but he was an eyewitness of the 
 people's misery, and perhaps a less exceptionable 
 authority than Froissart, whose love of pageantry 
 and habits of feasting in the castles of the great, 
 seem to have produced some insensibility towards 
 the sufferings of the lower classes. It is a painful 
 circumstance, which Froissart and the continuator 
 of Nangis attest, that the citizens of Calais, more 
 interesting than the common heroes of history, 
 were unrewarded, and begged their bread in mis- 
 ery throughout France. Villaret contradicts this, 
 
 Subdued by these misfortunes, though 
 Edward had made but slight progress 
 towards the conquest of the country, the 
 regent of France, afterward Charles V., 
 submitted to the peace of Bre- p ea ceof 
 tigni. [A. D. 1360.] By this treaty, Bretigni. 
 not to mention less important articles, 
 all Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, 
 the Limousin, and the Angoumois, as 
 well as Calais, and the county of Pon- 
 thieu, were ceded in full sovereignty 
 to Edward ; a price abundantly compen- 
 sating his renunciation of the title of 
 France, which was the sole concession 
 stipulated in return. Every care seems 
 to have been taken to make the cession of 
 these provinces complete. The first six 
 articles of the treaty expressly surren- 
 der them to the King of England. By the 
 seventh, John and his son engage to con- 
 vey within a year from the ensuing 
 Michaelmas all their rights over them, 
 and especially those of sovereignty and 
 feudal appeal. The same words are re- 
 peated still more emphatically in the 
 eleventh, and some other articles. The 
 twelfth stipulates the change of mutual re- 
 nunciations ; by John, of all right over the 
 ceded countries ; by Edward, of his claim 
 to the throne of France. At Calais, the 
 treaty of Bretigni was renewed by John, 
 who, as a prisoner, had been no party to 
 the former compact, with the omission 
 only of the twelfth article, respecting the 
 exchange of renunciations. But that it 
 was not intended to waive them by this 
 omission, is abundantly manifest by in- 
 struments of both the kings, in which 
 
 on the authority of an ordinance which he has seen 
 in their favour. But that was not a time when 
 ordinances were very sure of execution. Vill., t. 
 ix., p. 470. I must add, that the celebrated story 
 of the six citizens of Calais, which has of late been 
 called in question, receives strong confirmation 
 from John Villani, who died very soon afterward. 
 L. xii., c. 96. Froissart of course wrought up the 
 circumstances after his manner. In all the colour- 
 ing of his history, he is as great a master as Livy ; 
 and as little observant of particular truth. M. de 
 Brequigny, almost the latest of those excellent 
 antiquaries whose memoirs so much illustrate the 
 French Academy of Inscriptions, has discussed the 
 history of Calais, and particularly this remarkable 
 portion of it. Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscriptions, 
 1. 1. 
 
 Petrarch has drawn a lamentable picture of the 
 state of France in 1360, when he paid a visit to 
 Paris. I could not believe, he says, that this was 
 the same kingdom which I had once seen so rich 
 and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my 
 eyes but a fearful solitude, an extreme poverty, 
 lands uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even the 
 neighbourhood of Paris manifested everywhere 
 marks of destruction and conflagration. The 
 streets are deserted; the roads overgrown with 
 weeds : the whole is a vast solitude. Mem, de 
 Petrarque, t. iii., p. 541. 
 
44 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 reference is made to their future inter- 
 changes at Bruges, on the feast of St. 
 Andrew, 1361. And, until that time 
 should arrive, Edward promises to lay 
 aside the title and arms of France (an 
 engagement which he strictly kept),* and 
 John to act in no respect as king or su- 
 zerain over the ceded provinces. Finally, 
 on November 15, 1361, two commission- 
 ers are appointed by Edward to receive 
 the renunciations of the King of France 
 at Bruges on the ensuing feast of St. An- 
 drew,f and to do whatever might be mu- 
 tually required by virtue of the treaty. 
 These, however, seem to have been 
 withheld, and the twelfth article of the 
 treaty of Bretigni was never expressly 
 completed. By mutual instruments, exe- 
 cuted at Calais, October 24, it had been 
 declared, that the sovereignty of the 
 ceded provinces, as well as Edward's 
 right to the crown of France, should re- 
 main as before, although suspended as to 
 its exercise, until the exchange of renun- 
 ciations, notwithstanding any words of 
 present conveyance or release in the 
 treaties of Bretigni and Calais. And 
 another pair of letters patent, dated 
 October 26, contains the form of renun- 
 ciations, which, it is mutually declared, 
 should have effect by virtue of the pres- 
 ent letters, in case one party should be 
 ready to exchange such renunciations 
 at the time and place appointed, and 
 the other should make default therein. 
 These instruments, executed at Calais, 
 are so prolix, and so studiously envel- 
 oped, as it seems, in the obscurity of 
 technical language, that it is difficult to 
 extract their precise intention. It ap- 
 pears, nevertheless, that whichever par- 
 ty was prepared to perform what was 
 required of him at Bruges on November 
 30, 1361, the other, then and there making 
 default, would acquire not only what our 
 lawyers might call an equitable title, but 
 an actual vested right, by virtue of the 
 provision in the letters patent of October 
 26, 1360. The appointment above men- 
 tioned of Edward's commissioners on 
 November 15, 1361, seems to throw upon 
 the French the burden of proving that 
 John sent his envoys with equally full 
 powers to the place of meeting, and that 
 the non-interchange of renunciations was 
 owing to the English government. But 
 though an historian, sixty years later 
 (Juvenal des Ursins), asserts that the 
 
 * Edward gives John the title of King of France, 
 in an instrument bearing date at Calais, October 
 22, 1360. Rymer, t. vi., p. 217. The treaty was 
 signed October 24 Id., p. 219. 
 
 t Rymer, t. vi., p. 339. 
 
 French commissioners attended at Bru- 
 ges, and that those of Edward made 
 default, this is certainly rendered improb- 
 able, by the actual appointment of com- 
 missioners made by the King of England 
 on the 15th of November, by the silence 
 of Charles V. after the recommencement 
 of hostilities, who would have rejoiced in 
 so good a ground of excuse, and by the 
 language of some English instruments, 
 complaining that the French renuncia- 
 tions were withheld.* It is suggested by 
 the French authors, that Edward was un- 
 willing to execute a formal renunciation 
 of his claim to the crown. But we can 
 hardly suppose that, in order to evade 
 this condition, which he had voluntarily 
 imposed upon himself by the treaties of 
 Bretigni and Calais, he would have left 
 his title to the provinces ceded by those 
 conventions imperfect. He certainly 
 deemed it indefeisible, and acted with- 
 out any complaint from the French 
 
 * It appears that, among other alleged infrac- 
 tions of the treaty, the King of France had re- 
 ceived appeals from Armagnac, Albret, and other 
 nobles of Aquitaine, not long after the peace. For, 
 in February, 1362, a French envoy, the Count de 
 Tancarville, being in England, the privy council 
 presented to Edward their bill of remonstrances 
 against this conduct of France ; et semble au con- 
 seil le roy d'Angleterre que consider^ la fourme de 
 la ditte paix, qui tant estoit honourable et proffita- 
 ble au royaume de France et a tout chretiente, que 
 la reception desdittes appellacions, n'a mie este 
 bien faite, ne passee si ordenement, ne a si bon af- 
 fection et amour comme il droit avoir este faite de 
 raison parmi 1'effet et 1'intention de la paix, et ail- 
 liances affermees et entr'eux semble estre moult 
 prejudiciables et contraires & 1'onneur et a 1'estat 
 du roy et de son fils le prince et de toute la maison 
 d'Angleterre, et pourra estre evidente matiere de 
 rebellion des subgiez, et aussi donner tres-grant 
 occasion d'enfraindre la paix, si bon remede sur 
 ce n'y soit mis plus hastivement. Upon the whole, 
 they conclude that, if the King of France would re- 
 pair this trespass, and send his renunciation of 
 sovereignty, the king should send his of the title 
 of France. Martenne, Thes. Anec., t. i., p. 1487. 
 
 Four princes of the blood, or, as they are termed, 
 Seigneurs des Fleurdelys, were detained as hos- 
 tages for the due execution of the treaty of Bre- 
 tigni, which, from whatever pretence, was delayed 
 for a considerable time. Anxious to obtain their 
 liberty, they signed a treaty at London in Novem- 
 ber, 1362, by which, among other provisions, it was 
 stipulated that the King of France should send 
 fresh letters, under his seal, conveying and releas- 
 ing the territories ceded by the peace, without the 
 clause contained in the former letters, retaining the 
 ressort : et que en ycelles lettres soit expressement 
 compris transport de la souverainete et du ressort, 
 &c. Et le roi d'Engleterre et ses enfans ferront 
 semblablement autiels renonciations, sur ce q'il 
 doit faire de sa partie. Rymer, t. vi., p. 396. This 
 treaty of London was never ratified by the French 
 government ; but I use it as a proof that Edward 
 imputed the want of mutual renunciations to 
 France, and was himself ready to perform his part 
 of the treaty. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 45 
 
 court, as the perfect master of those 
 countries. He created his son Prince 
 of Aquitaine, with the fullest powers 
 over that new principality, holding it in 
 fief of the crown of England by the 
 yearly rent of an ounce of gold.* And 
 the court of that great prince was kept 
 for several years at Bordeaux. 
 
 I have gone something more than usual 
 into detail as to these circumstances, be- 
 cause a very specious account is given by 
 some French historians and antiquaries, 
 which tends to throw the blame of the 
 rupture in 1368 upon Edward Ill.f Un- 
 founded as was his pretension to the 
 crown of France, and actuated as we 
 must consider him by the most ruinous 
 ambition, his character was unblemished 
 by ill faith. There is no apparent cause 
 to impute the ravages made in France by 
 soldiers formerly in the English service 
 to his instigation, nor any proof of a con- 
 nexion with the King of Navarre subse- 
 quently to the peace of Bretigni. But a 
 good lesson may be drawn by conquerors 
 from the change of fortune that befell Ed- 
 ward III. A long warfare, and unex- 
 ampled success, had procured for him 
 some of the richest provinces of France. 
 Within a short time he was entirely strip- 
 ped of them, less through any particular 
 misconduct, than in consequence of the 
 
 * Rym., t. vi., p. 385-389. One clause is re- 
 markable ; Edward reserves to himself the right of 
 creating the province of Aquitaine into a kingdom. 
 So high were the notions of this great monarch, in 
 an age when the privilege of creating new king- 
 doms was deemed to belong only to the pope and 
 the emperor. Etiam si per nos hujusmodi pro- 
 vincise ad regalis honoris titulum et fastigium im- 
 posterum sublimentur ; quam erectionem facien- 
 dam per nos ex tune specialiter reservamus. 
 
 t Besides Villaret, and other historians, the 
 reader who feels any curiosity on this subject 
 may consult three memoirs in the 15th volume of 
 the Academy of Inscriptions by MM. S^cousse, 
 Salier, and Bonamy. These distinguished anti- 
 quaries unite, but the third with much less confi- 
 dence and passion than the other two, in charging 
 the omission upon Edward. The observations in 
 the text will serve, I hope, to repel their argu- 
 ments, which, I may be permitted to observe, no 
 English writer has hitherto undertaken to answer. 
 This is not said in order to assume any praise to 
 myself; in fact, I have been guided, in a great 
 degree, by one of the adverse counsel, M. Bonamy, 
 whose statement of facts is very fair, and makes 
 me suspect a little that he saw the weakness of 
 his own cause. 
 
 The authority of Christine de Pisan, a contem- 
 porary panegyrist of the French king, is not per- 
 haps very material in such a question: but she 
 seems wholly ignorant of this supposed omission 
 on Edward's side, and puts the justice of Charles 
 V.'s war on a very different basis ; namely, that 
 treaties not conducive to the public interest ought 
 not to be kept. Collection des Me'moires, t. v., 
 p. 137. A principle more often acted upon than 
 avowed ! 
 
 intrinsic difficulty of preserving such ac- 
 quisitions. The French were already 
 knit together as one people ; and even 
 those whose feudal duties sometimes 
 led them into the field against their 
 sovereign, could not endure the feeling 
 of dismemberment from the monarchy. 
 When the peace of Bretigni was to be 
 carried into effect, the nobility of the 
 south remonstrated against the loss of 
 the king's sovereignty, and showed, it is 
 said, in their charters granted by Charle- 
 magne, a promise never to transfer the 
 right of protecting them to another. The 
 citizens of Rochelle implored the king 
 not to desert them, and protested their 
 readiness to pay half their estates in 
 taxes rather than fall under the power 
 of England. John, with heaviness of 
 heart, persuaded these faithful people to 
 comply with that destiny which he had 
 not been able to surmount. At length 
 they sullenly submitted: we will obey, 
 they said, the English with our lips, but 
 our hearts shall never forget their allegi- 
 ance.* Such unwilling subjects might 
 perhaps have been won by a prudent gov- 
 ernment ; but the temper of the Prince 
 of Wales, which was rather stern and ar- 
 bitrary, did not conciliate their hearts to 
 his cause. f After the expedition into 
 Castile, a most injudicious and fatal en- 
 terprise, he attempted to impose a heavy 
 tax upon Guienne. This was extended 
 to the lands of the nobility, who claimed 
 an immunity from all impositions. Many 
 of the chief lords in Guienne and Gascony 
 carried their complaints to the throne of 
 Charles V., who had succeeded 
 his father in 1364, appealing to Rupture of 
 him as the prince's sovereign the peace of 
 and judge. After a year's delay, Breti s ni - 
 the king ventured to summon the Black 
 Prince to answer these charges before the 
 peers of France [A. D. 1368], and the war 
 immediately recommenced between the 
 two countries.! 
 
 Though it is impossible to reconcile the 
 conduct of Charles upon this occasion to 
 those stern principles of rectitude which 
 
 * Froissart, part i., chap. 214. 
 
 t See an anecdote of his difference with the 
 Seigneur d'Albret, one of the principal barons in 
 Sascony, to which Froissart, who was then at 
 Bordeaux, ascribes the alienation of the southern 
 nobility, chap. 244. Edward III., soon after the 
 peace of Bretigni, revoked all his grants in Gui- 
 enne. Rymer, t. vi., p. 391. 
 
 t On November 20, 1368, some time before the 
 summons of the Prince of Wales, a treaty was con- 
 cluded between Charles, and Henry, king of Cas- 
 tile, wherein the latter expressly stipulates, that 
 whatever parts of Guienne or England he might 
 conquer, he would give up to the King of France. 
 Rymer, t. vi., p. 598. 
 
46 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 ought always to be obeyed, yet the ex- 
 ceeding injustice of Edward in the former 
 war, and the miseries which he inflicted 
 upon an unoffending people in the prose- 
 cution of his claim, will go far towards 
 extenuating this breach of the treaty of 
 Bretigni. It is observed, indeed, with 
 some truth, by Rapin, that we judge of 
 Charles's prudence by the event ; and 
 that, if he had been unfortunate in the 
 war, he would have brought on himself 
 the reproaches of all mankind, and even 
 of those writers who are now most ready 
 to extol him. But his measures had been 
 so sagaciously taken, that except through 
 that perverseness of fortune, against 
 which, especially in war, there is no se- 
 curity, he could hardly fail of success. 
 The elder Edward was declining through 
 age, and the younger through disease ; 
 the ceded provinces were eager to return 
 to their native king, and their garrisons, 
 as we may infer by their easy reduction, 
 feeble and ill supplied. France, on the 
 other hand, had recovered breath after 
 her losses : the sons of those who had 
 fallen or fled at Poitiers were in the field ; 
 a king, not personally warlike, but emi- 
 nently wise and popular, occupied the 
 throne of the rash and intemperate John. 
 She was restored by the policy of Charles 
 V. and the valour of Du Guesclin. This 
 hero, a Breton gentleman without for- 
 tune or exterior graces, was the great- 
 est ornament of France during that age. 
 Though inferior, as it seems, to Lord 
 Chandos in military skill, as well as in 
 the polished virtues of chivalry, his un- 
 wearied activity, his talent of inspiring 
 confidence, his good fortune, the gen- 
 erosity and frankness of his character, 
 have preserved a fresh recollection of his 
 name, which has hardly been the case 
 with our countryman. 
 
 In a few campaigns, the English were 
 The English deprived of almost all their con- 
 lose ail their quests, and even, in a great de- 
 sonquests. g re e, of their original posses- 
 sions in Guienne. They were still formi- 
 dable enemies, not only from their cour- 
 age and alacrity in the war, but on ac- 
 count of the keys of France which they 
 held in their hands ; Bordeaux, Bayonne, 
 and Calais, by inheritance or conquest ; 
 Brest and Cherbourg, in mortgage from 
 their allies, the Duke of Britany and King 
 of Navarre. But the successor of Edward 
 III. was Richard II. ; a reign of feeble- 
 ness and sedition gave no opportunity for 
 prosecuting schemes of ambition. The 
 war, protracted with few distinguished 
 events for several years, was at length 
 suspended by repeated armistices, not in 
 
 deed very strictly observed, and which 
 the animosity of the English would not 
 Dermit to settle in any regular treaty. 
 Nothing less than the terms obtained at 
 Bretigni, emphatically called the Great 
 Peace, would satisfy a frank and cour- 
 ageous people, who deemed themselves 
 cheated by the manner of its infraction. 
 The war was therefore always popular 
 n England, and the credit which an am- 
 bitious prince, Thomas, duke of Glouces- 
 er, obtained in that country, was chiefly 
 owing to the determined opposition which 
 showed to all French connexions. 
 But the politics of Richard II. were of a 
 different cast ; and Henry IV. was equal- 
 y anxious to avoid hostilities with France ; 
 so that, before the unhappy condition of 
 that kingdom tempted his son to revive 
 he claims of Edward in still more favour- 
 able circumstances, there had been thirty 
 years of respite, and even some intervals 
 of friendly intercourse between the two 
 nations. Both, indeed, were weakened by 
 nternal discord ; but France more fatally 
 than England. But for the calamities of 
 Charles VI. 's reign, she would probably 
 have expelled her enemies from the king- 
 dom. The strength of that fertile and 
 populous country was recruited with sur- 
 prising rapidity. Sir Hugh Calverley, a 
 famous captain in the wars of Edward 
 III., while serving in Flanders, laughed at 
 the herald, who assured him that the King 
 of France's army, then entering the coun- 
 try, amounted to 26,000 lances ; asserting 
 that he had often seen their largest mus- 
 ters, but never so much as a fourth part 
 of the number.* The relapse of this 
 great kingdom under Charles VI. was 
 more painful and perilous than her first 
 crisis; but she recovered from each 
 through her intrinsic and inextinguisha- 
 ble resources. 
 
 Charles V., surnamed the Wise, after a 
 reign which, if we overlook a little ob- 
 liquity in the rupture of the peace of Bre- 
 tigni, may be deemed one of the most 
 honourable in French history, dying pre- 
 maturely, left the crown to his Access i 0n of 
 son, a boy of thirteen, under Chariesvi. 
 the care of three ambitious un- 138 - . 
 cles, the dukes of Anjou, Berry, and Bur- 
 gundy. Charles had retrieved the glory, 
 restored the tranquillity, revived the spirit 
 of his country ; the severe trials which 
 exercised his regency, after the battle of 
 Poitiers, had disciplined his mind ; he be- 
 came a sagacious statesman, an encour- 
 ager of literature, a beneficent lawgiver. 
 He erred doubtless, though upon plausible 
 
 * Froissart, p. ii., c. 142. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 47 
 
 grounds, in accumulating a vast treasure, 
 which the Duke of Anjou seized before 
 he was cold in the grave. But all the 
 fruits of his wisdom were lost in the suc- 
 ceeding reign. In a government essen- 
 tially popular, the youth or imbecility of 
 the sovereign creates no material de- 
 rangement. In a monarchy, where all 
 the springs of the system depend upon 
 one central force, these accidents, which 
 are sure in the course of a few genera- 
 tions to recur, can scarcely fail to dislo- 
 cate the whole machine. During the for- 
 ty years that Charles VI. bore the name 
 of king, rather than reigned in France, 
 that country was reduced to a state far 
 more deplorable than during the captivi- 
 ty of John. 
 
 A great change had occurred in the 
 political condition of France during the 
 fourteenth century. As the feudal mili- 
 tia became unserviceable, the expenses of 
 war were increased through the necessi- 
 ty of taking troops into constant pay ; 
 and while more luxurious refinements of 
 living heightened the temptations to pro- 
 fuseness, the means of enjoying them 
 were lessened by improvident alienations 
 of the domain. Hence taxes, hitherto al- 
 most unknown, were levied incessantly, 
 and with all those circumstances of op- 
 pression which are natural to the fiscal 
 proceedings of an arbitrary government. 
 These, as has been said before, gave rise 
 to the unpopularity of the two first Valois, 
 and were nearly leading to a complete 
 revolution in the convulsions that suc- 
 ceeded the battle of Poitiers. The con- 
 fidence reposed in Charles V.'s wisdom 
 and economy kept every thing at rest 
 during his reign, though the taxes were 
 still very heavy. But the seizure of his 
 vast accumulations by the Duke of Anjou, 
 and the ill faith with which the new gov- 
 ernment imposed subsidies, after promis- 
 ing their abolition, provoked the people 
 of Paris, and sometimes of other places, 
 Seditions to repeated seditions. The States 
 at Paris. General not only compelled the 
 government to revoke these impositions 
 and restore the nation, at least according 
 to the language of edicts, to all their lib- 
 erties, but, with less wisdom, refused to 
 make any grant of money. Indeed, a re- 
 markable spirit of democratical freedom 
 was then rising in those classes on whom 
 the crown and nobility had so long tram- 
 pled. An example was held out by the 
 Flemings, who, always tenacious of their 
 privileges, because conscious of their abil- 
 ity to maintain them, were engaged in a 
 furious conflict with Louis, count of Flan- 
 ders. The court of France took part in 
 
 this war ;* and after obtaining a decisive 
 victory over the citizens of Ghent, Charles 
 VI. returned to chastise those of Paris. f 
 Unable to resist the royal army, the city 
 was treated as the spoil of conquest ; its 
 immunities abridged ; its most active lead- 
 ers put to death; a fine of uncommon 
 severity imposed ; and the taxes renew- 
 ed by arbitrary prerogative. But the peo- 
 ple preserved their indignation for a fa- 
 vourable moment ; and were unfortunate- 
 ly led by it, when rendered subservient 
 to the ambition of others, into a series of 
 crimes, and a long alienation from the 
 interests of their country. 
 
 It is difficult to name a limit beyond 
 which taxes will not be borne without 
 impatience, when they appear to be call- 
 ed for by necessity, and faithfully ap- 
 plied ; nor is it impracticable for a skil- 
 ful minister to deceive the people in both 
 these respects. But the sting of taxation 
 is wastefulness. What high-spirited man 
 could see without indignation the earn- 
 ings of his labour, yielded ungrudgingly 
 to the public defence, become the spoil 
 of parasites and peculators 1 It is this 
 that mortifies the liberal hand of public 
 spirit ; and those statesmen who deem 
 
 * The Flemish rebellion, which originated in an 
 attempt, suggested by bad advisers to the count, to 
 impose a tax upon the people of Ghent without 
 their consent, is related in a very interesting man- 
 ner by Froissart, p. ii., c. 37, &c., who equals He- 
 rodotus in simplicity, liveliness, and power over the 
 heart. I would advise the historical student to ac- 
 quaint himself with these transactions, and with 
 the corresponding tumults at Paris. They are 
 among the eternal lessons of history ; for the un- 
 just encroachments of courts, the intemperate pas- 
 sions of the multitude, the ambition of demagogues, 
 the cruelty of vicious factions, will never cease to 
 have their parallels and their analogies ; while the 
 military achievements of distant times afford, in 
 general, no instruction, and can hardly occupy too 
 little of our time in historical studies. The pref- 
 aces to the fifth and sixth volumes of the Ordon- 
 nances des Rois de France, contain more accurate 
 information as to the Parisian disturbances than 
 can be found in Froissart. 
 
 t If Charles VI. had been defeated by the Flem- 
 ings, the insurrection of the Parisians, Froissart 
 says, would have spread over France ; toute gentil- 
 lesse et noblesse eut ete morte et perdue en France ; 
 nor would the Jacquerie have ever been si grande 
 et si horrible, c. 120. To the example of the Gan- 
 tois he ascribes the tumults which broke out about 
 the same time in England as well as in France, c. 
 84. The Flemish insurrection would probably 
 have had more important consequences, if it had 
 been cordially supported by the English govern- 
 ment. But the danger of encouraging that demo- 
 cratical spirit which so strongly leavened the com- 
 mons of England, might justly be deemed by Rich- 
 ard II. 's council much more than a counterbalance 
 to the advantage of distressing France. When too 
 late, some attempts were made, and the Flemish 
 towns acknowledged Richard as King of France in 
 1384. Rymer t. vii., p. 448. 
 
48 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 the security of government to depend 
 not on laws and armies, but on the moral 
 sympathies and prejudices of the people, 
 will vigilantly guard against even the 
 suspicion of prodigality. In the present 
 stage of society it is impossible to con- 
 ceive that degree of misapplication which 
 existed in the French treasury under 
 Charles VI., because the real exigencies 
 of the state could never again be so in- 
 considerable. Scarcely any military force 
 was kept up ; and the produce of the 
 grievous impositions then levied was 
 chiefly lavished upon the royal house- 
 hold, or plundered by the officers of gov- 
 ernment.* This naturally resulted from 
 the peculiar and afflicting circumstances 
 of this reign. The Duke of Anjou pre- 
 tended to be entitled by the late king's 
 appointment, if not by the constitution 
 of France, to exercise the government 
 as regent during the minority ;f but this 
 
 * The expenses of the royal household, which 
 under Charles V. were 94,000 livres, amounted in 
 1412 to 450,000. Villaret., t. iii., p. 243. Yet the 
 king was so ill supplied that his plate had been 
 pawned. When Montagu, minister of the finan- 
 ces, was arrested, in 1409, all this plate was found 
 concealed in his house. 
 
 t It has always been an unsettled point, whether 
 the presumptive heir is entitled to the regency of 
 France ; and, if he be so to the regency, whether 
 this includes the custody of the minor's person. 
 The particular case of the Duke of Aniou is sub- 
 ject to a considerable apparent difficulty. Two 
 instruments of Charles V., bearing the same date 
 of October, 1374, as published by Dupuy (Trait6 
 de Majorite des Rois, p. 161), are plainly irrecon- 
 cilable with each other ; the former giving the 
 exclusive regency to the Duke of Anjou, reserving 
 the custody of the minor's person to other guar- 
 dians ; the latter conferring not only this custody, 
 but the government of the kingdom, on the queen, 
 and on the dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, with- 
 out mentioning the Duke of Anjou's name. Daniel 
 calls these testaments of Charles V., whereas they 
 are in the form of letters patent ; and supposes 
 that the king had suppressed both, as neither party 
 seems to have availed itself of their authority in 
 the discussions that took place after the king's 
 death. (Hist, de France, t. iii., p. 662, edit. 1720.) 
 Villaret, as is too much his custom, slides over the 
 'difficulty without notice. But M. de Brequigny 
 (Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscript., t. 1., p. 533) ob- 
 serves that the second of these instruments, as 
 published by M. Secousse, in the Ordonnances 
 des Rois, t. vi., p. 406, differs most essentially from 
 that in Dupuy, and contains no mention whatever 
 .-. of the government. It is therefore easily recon- 
 cileable with the first, that confers the regency on 
 the Duke of Anjou. As Dupuy took it from the 
 same source as Secousse, namely, the Tressor 
 des Charles, a strong suspicion of wilful interpo- 
 lation falls upon him, or upon the editor of this 
 posthumous work, printed in 1655. This date 
 will readily suggest a motive for such an interpo- 
 lation, to those who recollect the circumstances 
 of France at that time, and for some years before ; 
 Anne of Austria having maintained herself in pos- 
 session of a testamentary regency against the pre- 
 sumptive heir. 
 
 period, which would naturally be very 
 short, a law of Charles V. having fixed 
 the age of majority at thirteen, was still 
 more abridged by consent ; and after the 
 young monarch's coronation, he was 
 considered as reigning with full personal 
 authority. Anjou, Berry, and Burgundy, 
 together with the king's maternal uncle, 
 the Duke of Bourbon, divided the actual 
 exercise of government. 
 
 The first of these soon undertook an 
 expedition into Italy, to possess himself 
 of the crown of Naples, in which he per- 
 ished. Berry was a profuse and voluptu- 
 ous man, of no great talents ; though his 
 rank, and the middle position which he 
 held between straggling parties, made 
 him rather conspicuous throughout the 
 revolutions of that age. The most re- 
 spectable of the king's uncles, the Duke 
 of Bourbon, being further removed from 
 the royal stem, and of an unassuming 
 character, took a less active part than 
 his three coadjutors. Burgundy, an am- 
 bitious and able prince, maintained the 
 ascendency, until Charles, weary of a 
 restraint which had been protracted by 
 his uncles till he was in his twenty-first 
 year [A. D. 1387], took the reins into 
 his own hands. The dukes of Burgundy 
 and Berry retired from court, and the 
 administration was committed to a dif- 
 ferent set of men, at the head of whom 
 appeared the Constable de Clisson, a sol- 
 dier of great fame in the English wars. 
 The people rejoiced in the fall of the 
 princes by whose exactions they had 
 been plundered; but the new ministers 
 soon rendered themselves odious by sim- 
 ilar conduct. The fortune of Clisson, 
 after a few years' favour, amounted to 
 1,700,000 livres, equal in weight of sil- 
 ver, to say nothing of the depreciation 
 of money, to ten times that sum at pres- 
 ent.* 
 
 [A. D. 1393.] Charles VI. had reigned 
 five years from his minority, Derangement 
 when he was seized with a ofChariesvi. 
 derangement of intellect, which continu- 
 ed, through a series of recoveries and 
 relapses, to his death. He passed thirty 
 years in a pitiable state of suffering, .neg- 
 lected by his family, particularly by the 
 most infamous of women, Isabel of Ba- 
 varia, his queen, to a degree which is 
 hardly credible. The ministers were 
 immediately disgraced; the princes re- 
 assumed their stations. For several years 
 the Duke of Burgundy conducted the 
 government. But this was in opposition 
 to a formidable rival, Louis, duke of Or- 
 
 Froissart, p. iv., c. 46. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 49 
 
 leans, the king's brother. It was impos- 
 
 Partiesof s ^ e tnat a P rmce so near 
 
 Burgundy the throne, favoured by the 
 and Orleans. q ue en perhaps with criminal 
 fondness, and by the people on account 
 of his external graces, should not ac- 
 quire a share of power. He succeeded 
 at length in obtaining the whole manage- 
 ment of affairs ; wherein the outrageous 
 dissoluteness of his conduct, and still 
 more the excessive taxes imposed, ren- 
 dered him altogether odious. The Paris- 
 ians compared his administration with 
 that of the Duke of Burgundy ; and from 
 that time ranged themselves on the side 
 of the latter and his family, throughout 
 the long distractions to which the am- 
 bition of these princes gave birth. 
 
 The death of the Duke of Burgundy, 
 in 1404, after several fluctuations of suc- 
 cess between him and the Duke of Or- 
 leans, by no means left his party without 
 a head. Equally brave and ambitious, 
 but far more audacious and unprincipled, 
 his son John, surnamed Sans-peur, sus- 
 tained the same contest. A reconcilia- 
 tion had been, however, brought about 
 with the Duke of Orleans; they had 
 sworn reciprocal friendship, and partici- 
 pated, as was the custom, in order to 
 render these obligations more solemn, 
 in the same communion. In the midst 
 Murder of f tms outward harmony [A. 
 the Duke of D. 1407], the Duke of Orleans 
 Orleans. was assassinated in the streets 
 of Paris. After a slight attempt at con- 
 cealment, Burgundy avowed and boasted 
 of the crime, to which he had been in- 
 stigated, it is said, by somewhat more 
 than political jealousy.* From this fatal 
 moment the dissensions of the royal fam- 
 ily began to assume the complexion of 
 civil war. The queen, the sons of the 
 Duke of Orleans, with the dukes of Ber- 
 ry and Bourbon, united against the assas- 
 sin. But he possessed, in addition to his 
 own appanage of Burgundy, the county 
 of Flanders as his maternal inheritance ; 
 and the people of Paris, who hated the 
 Duke of Orleans, readily forgave, or rath- 
 er exulted in, his murder. 
 
 It is easy to estimate the weakness of 
 the government from the terms upon 
 which the Duke of Burgundy was per- 
 mitted to obtain pardon at Chartres, a 
 year after the perpetration of the crime. 
 As soon as he entered the royal pres- 
 ence, every one rose, except the king, 
 
 * Orleans is said to have boasted of the Dutchess 
 of Burgundy's favours. Vill., t. xii., p. 474. Amel- 
 gard, who wrote about eighty years after the time, 
 says, vim etiam inferre attentare praesumpsit. No- 
 tices des Manuscrits du Roi, t. i., p. 411. 
 
 queen, and dauphin. The duke, approach- 
 ing the throne, fell on his knees ; when 
 a lord, who acted as a sort of counsel 
 for him, addressed the king : " Sire, the 
 Duke of Burgundy, your cousin and ser- 
 vant, is come before you, being informed 
 that he has incurred your displeasure on 
 account of what he caused to be done to 
 the Duke of Orleans your brother, for 
 your good and that of your kingdom, as 
 he is ready to prove when it shall please 
 you to hear it; and therefore requests 
 you, with all humility, to dismiss your 
 resentment towards him, and to receive 
 him into your favour."* 
 
 This insolent apology was all the 
 atonement that could be extorted for the 
 assassination of the first prince of the 
 blood. [A. D. 1410.] It is not wonderful 
 that the Duke of Burgundy soon obtained 
 the management of affairs, and drove his 
 adversaries from the capital. The prin- 
 ces, headed by the father-in- civiiwar 
 law of the young Duke of Or- between the 
 leans, the Count of Armagnac, P^ 1168 - 
 from whom their party was now denomi- 
 nated, raised their standard against him ; 
 and the north of France was rent to 
 pieces by a protracted civil war, in which 
 neither party scrupled any extremity of 
 pillage or massacre. Several times peace 
 was made; but each faction, conscious 
 of their own insincerity, suspected that 
 of their adversaries. The king, of whose 
 name both availed themselves, was only 
 in some doubtful intervals of reason ca- 
 pable of rendering legitimate the acts of 
 either. The dauphin, aware of the tyr- 
 anny which the two parties alternately 
 exercised, was forced, even at the ex- 
 pense of perpetuating a civil war, to 
 balance one against the other, and per- 
 mit neither to be wholly subdued. He 
 gave peace to the Armagnacs at Aux- 
 erre, in despite of the Duke of Burgundy ; 
 and having afterward united with them 
 against this prince [A. D. 1412], and car- 
 ried a successful war into Flanders, he 
 disappointed their revenge by concluding 
 with him a treaty at Arras. [A. D. 1414.] 
 
 This dauphin, and his next brother, died 
 within sixteen months of each other, by 
 which the rank devolved upon Charles, 
 youngest son of the king. The Count 
 of Armagnac, now Constable of France, 
 retained possession of the government. 
 But his severity and the weight of tax- 
 es revived the Burgundian party in 
 Paris [A. D. 1417], which a rigid Apnl> 
 proscription had endeavoured to destroy. 
 He brought on his head the implacable 
 
 * Monstrelet, part i., f. 112. 
 
EUROPE DURING TOE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 hatred of the queen, whom he had not 
 only shut out from public affairs, but dis- 
 graced by the detection of her gallant- 
 ries. [A. D. 1417.] Notwithstanding her 
 ancient enmity to the Duke of Burgundy, 
 she made overtures to him, and, being 
 delivered by his troops from confinement, 
 declared herself openly on his side. A 
 few obscure persons stole the city keys, 
 and admitted the Burgundians into Paris. 
 The tumult which arose showed in a 
 moment the disposition of the inhabi- 
 tants ; but this was more horribly dis- 
 played a few days afterward, when the 
 populace, rushing to the prisons 
 2> [A. D. 1418], massacred the Con- 
 stable d'Armagnac and his partisans. Be- 
 tween three and four thousand persons 
 were murdered on this day, which has 
 no parallel but what our own age has 
 witnessed, in the massacre perpetrated 
 by the same ferocious populace of Paris, 
 under circumstances nearly similar. [A. 
 D. 1419.] Not long afterward an agree- 
 ment took place between the Duke of 
 Burgundy, who had now the king's per- 
 son, as well as the capital, in his hands, 
 and the dauphin, whose party was enfee- 
 bled by the loss of almost all its lead- 
 ers. This reconciliation, which mutual 
 interest should have rendered permanent, 
 had lasted a very short time, when the 
 Assassination Duke of Burgundy was assas- 
 of the Duke of sinated at an interview with 
 Burgundy. Charles, in his presence, and 
 by the hands of his friends, though not 
 perhaps with his previous knowledge.* 
 
 * There are three suppositions conceivable to 
 explain this important passage in history, the as- 
 sassination of John Sans-peur. 1. It was pretend- 
 ed by the dauphin's friends at the time, and has 
 been maintained more lately (St. Foix, Essais sur 
 Paris, t. iii., p. 209, edit. 1767), that he had pre- 
 meditated the murder of Charles, and that his own 
 was an act of self-defence. This is, I think, quite 
 improbable ; the dauphin had a great army near 
 the spot, while the duke was only attended by five 
 hundred men. Villaret indeed, and St. Foix, in 
 order to throw suspicion upon the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy's motives, assert that Henry V. accused 
 him of having made proposals to him which he 
 could not accept without offending God ; and con- 
 jecture that this might mean the assassination of 
 the dauphin. But the expressions of Henry do 
 not relate to any private proposals of the duke, but 
 to demands made by him and the queen, as proxies 
 for Charles VI., in conference for peace, which he 
 says he could not accept without offending God 
 and contravening his own letters patent. (Rymer, 
 t. ix., p. 790.) It is not, however, very clear what 
 this means. 2. The next hypothesis is, that it 
 was the deliberate act of Charles. But his youth, 
 his feebleness of spirit, and especially the conster- 
 nation into which, by all testimonies, he was 
 thrown by the event, are rather adverse to this ex- 
 planation. 3. It remains only to conclude that 
 Tanegui de Chastel, and other favourites of the 
 dauphin, long attached to the Orleans faction, who 
 
 From whomsoever the crime proceeded, 
 it was a deed of infatuation, and plunged 
 France afresh into a sea of perils, from 
 which the union of these factions had 
 just afforded a hope of extricating her. 
 
 It has been mentioned already that 
 the English war had almost i ntr jg ues0 f 
 ceased during the reigns of French princes 
 Richard II. and Henry IV. with En land - 
 The former of these was attached by in- 
 clination, and latterly by marriage, to the 
 court of France : and though the French 
 government showed at first some dispo- 
 sition to revenge his dethronement, yet 
 the new king's success, as well as domes- 
 tic quarrels, deterred it from any serious 
 renewal of the war. A long commercial 
 connexion had subsisted between Eng- 
 land and Flanders, which the dukes of 
 Burgundy, when they became sovereigns 
 of the latter country upon the death of 
 Count Louis, in 1384, were studious to 
 preserve by separate truces.* They act- 
 ed upon the same pacific policy when 
 their interest predominated in the councils 
 of France. Henry had even a negotia- 
 tion pending for the marriage of his eld- 
 est son with a princess of Burgundy,! 
 when an unexpected proposal from the 
 opposite side set more tempting views 
 before his eyes. The Armagnacs, press- 
 ed hard by the Duke of Burgundy, offer- 
 ed, in consideration of only 4000 troops, 
 the pay of which they would themselves 
 defray, to assist him in the recovery of 
 Guienne and Poitou. Four princes of 
 the blood, Berry, Bourbon, Orleans, 
 and Alen9on, disgraced their names y * 
 by signing this treaty.^ [A. D. 1412.] 
 Henry broke off his alliance with Bur- 
 gundy, and sent a force into France, 
 which found, on its arrival, that the prin- 
 ces had made a separate treaty, without 
 the least concern for their English allies. 
 After his death, Henry V. engaged for 
 some time in a series of negotiations 
 with the French court, where the Or- 
 leans party now prevailed, and with the 
 Duke of Burgundy. He even secretly 
 treated at the same time for a marriage 
 with Catharine of France (which seems 
 
 justly regarded the duke as an infamous assassin, 
 and might question his sincerity or their own 
 safety if he should regain the ascendant, took ad- 
 vantage of this opportunity to commit an act of re- 
 taliation, less criminal, but not less ruinous in its 
 consequences, than that which had provoked it. 
 Charles, however, by his subsequent conduct, re- 
 cognised their deed, and naturally exposed him- 
 self to the resentment of the young Duke of Bur- 
 
 gundy 
 
 ymer, t. viii., p. 511. Villaret, t. xii., p. 174. 
 t Idem, t. viii., p. 721. 
 j Rymer, t. viii., pp. 726, 737, 738. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 51 
 
 to have been his favourite, as it was ulti- 
 mately his successful, project), and with 
 a daughter of the duke ; a duplicity not 
 creditable to his memory.* But Henry's 
 ambition, which aimed at the highest 
 quarry, was not long fettered by nego- 
 tiation ; and indeed his proposals of mar- 
 rying Catharine were coupled with such 
 exorbitant demands, as France, notwith- 
 standing all her weakness, could not ad- 
 mit ; though she would have ceded Gui- 
 enne, and given a vast dowry with the 
 
 Invasion of P rim *Sf.t T [A. D. 1415] He 
 
 France by invaded Normandy, took Har- 
 
 Henry V. flg^ an( J WQn fa e g reat battle 
 
 of Azincourt on his march to Calais. J 
 
 The flower of French chivalry was 
 mowed down in this fatal day, but espe- 
 cially the chiefs of the Orleans party, 
 and the princes of the royal blood, met 
 with death or captivity. Burgundy had 
 still suffered nothing ; but a clandestine 
 negotiation had secured the duke's neu- 
 trality, though he seems not to have en- 
 tered into a regular alliance till a year 
 after the battle of Azincourt : when, by a 
 secret treaty at Calais, he acknowledged 
 the right of Henry to the crown of 
 France, and his own obligation to do 
 him homage, though its performance was 
 to be suspended till Henry should be- 
 come master of a considerable part of 
 the kingdom. $ In a second invasion 
 the English achieved the conquest of 
 Normandy; and this, in all subsequent 
 negotiations for peace during the life 
 of Henry, he would never consent to 
 relinquish. After several conferences, 
 which his demands rendered abortive, 
 the French court at length consented to 
 add Normandy to the cessions made in 
 the peace at Bretigni ;|| and the treaty, 
 
 * Rymer, t. ix., p. 136. 
 
 f The terms required by Henry's ambassadors in 
 1415, were the crown of France ; or, at least, re- 
 serving Henry's rights to that, Normandy, Tou- 
 raine, Maine, Guienne, with the homage of Brit- 
 any and Flanders. The French offered Guienne 
 and Saintonge, and a dowry of 800,000 gold crowns 
 for Catharine. The English demanded 2,000,000. 
 Rymer, t. ix., p. 218. 
 
 t The English army at Azincourt was probably 
 of not more than 15,000 men ; the French were, at 
 the least, 50,000, and by some computations much 
 more numerous. They lost 10,000 killed, of whom 
 9000 were knights or gentlemen. Almost as many 
 were made prisoners. The English, according to 
 Monstrelet, lost 1600 men; but their own his- 
 torians reduce this to a very small number. It is 
 curious that the Duke of Berry, who advised the 
 French to avoid an action, had been in the battle 
 of Poitiers fifty -nine years before. VilL, t. xiii., 
 p. 355. 
 
 f) Compare Rymer, t. ix., p. 34, 138, 304, 394. 
 The last reference is to the treaty of Calais. 
 
 !! Rym., t. ix., p. 628, 763. Nothing can be more 
 D2 
 
 though labouring under some difficulties, 
 seems to have been nearly completed, 
 when the Duke of Burgundy [A. 
 D. 1419], for reasons unexplain- July l 
 ed, suddenly came to a reconciliation 
 with the dauphin. This event, which 
 must have been intended adversely to 
 Henry, would probably have broken off 
 all parley on the subject of peace, if it 
 had not been speedily followed by one 
 still more surprising, the assassi- 
 nation of the Duke of Burgundy 
 at Montereau. i 
 
 An act of treachery so apparently un- 
 provoked, inflamed the minds of that 
 powerful party which had looked up to 
 the duke as their leader and patron. 
 The city of Paris especially abjured at 
 once its respect for the supposed author 
 of the murder, though the legitimate heir 
 of the crown. A solemn oath was taken 
 by all ranks to revenge the crime; the 
 nobility, the clergy, the parliament, vy- 
 ing with the populace in their invec- 
 tives against Charles, whom they now 
 styled only pretended (soi-disant) dau- 
 phin. Philip, son of the assassinated 
 duke, who, with all the popularity and 
 much of the ability of his father, did not 
 inherit his depravity, was instigated by a 
 pardonable excess of filial resentment to 
 ally himself with the King of England. 
 These passions of the people and the 
 Duke of Burgundy, concurring with the 
 imbecility of Charles VI., and the ran- 
 cour of Isabel towards her son, Treaty of 
 led to the treaty of Troyes. This Troyes. 
 compact, signed by the queen May> 1420> 
 and duke, as proxies of the king, who 
 had fallen into a state of unconscious id- 
 iocy, stipulated that Henry V., upon his 
 marriage with Catharine, should become 
 immediately regent of France, and, after 
 the death of Charles, succeed to the 
 kingdom, in exclusion not only of the 
 dauphin, but of all the royal family.* It 
 is unnecessary to remark that these fla- 
 gitious provisions were absolutely inval- 
 id. But they had at the time the strong 
 
 insolent than the tone of Henry's instructions to 
 his commissioners, p. 628. 
 
 * As if through shame on account of what was to 
 follow, the first articles contain petty stipulations 
 about the dower of Catharine. The sixth gives 
 the kingdom of France, after Charles's decease, to 
 Henry and his heirs. The seventh concedes the 
 immediate regency. Henry kept Normandy by 
 right of conquest, not in virtue of any stipulation 
 in the treaty, which he was too proud to admit. 
 The treaty of Troyes was confirmed by the States 
 General, or rather by a partial convention which 
 assumed the name, in December, 1420. Rym., t. x., 
 p. 30. The parliament of England did the same. 
 Id., p. 110. It is printed at full length by Villa- 
 ret, t. xv., p. 84. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 sanction offeree ; and Henry might plau- 
 sibly flatter himself with a hope of estab- 
 lishing his own usurpation as firmly in 
 France as his father's had been in Eng- 
 land. What neither the comprehensive 
 policy of Edward III., the energy of the 
 Black Prince, the valour of their Knolly- 
 ses and Chandoses, nor his own victories 
 could attain, now seemed, by a strange 
 vicissitude of fortune, to court his ambi- 
 tion. During two years that Henry lived 
 after the treaty of Troyes, he governed 
 the north of France with unlimited au- 
 thority in the name of Charles VI. The 
 latter survived his son-in-law but a few 
 weeks ; and the infant Henry VI. was 
 immediately proclaimed King of France 
 and England, under the regency of his 
 uncle the Duke of Bedford. 
 
 Notwithstanding the disadvantage of a 
 state of minority, the English cause 
 France at the was less weakened by the 
 accession of death of Henry than might 
 
 Charles VII. ^ been ^^ [A . D. 
 
 1422.] The Duke of Bedford partook of 
 the same character, and resembled his 
 brother in faults as well as virtues ; in his 
 haughtiness and arbitrary temper, as in his 
 energy and address. At the accession of 
 Charles VII., the usurper was acknowl- 
 edged by all the northern provinces of 
 France, except a few fortresses, by most 
 of Guienne, and the dominions of Bur- 
 gundy. [A. D. 1423.] The Duke of Brit- 
 any soon afterward acceded to the treaty 
 of Troyes, but changed his party again sev- 
 eral times within a few years. The cen- 
 tral provinces, with Languedoc, Poitou, 
 and Dauphine, were faithful to the king. 
 For some years the war continued without 
 any decisive result ; but the balance was 
 clearly swayed in favour of England. 
 
 For this it is not difficult to as- 
 the U success sign several causes. The ani- 
 oftheEng- mosity of the Parisians and the 
 
 Duke of Burgundy against the 
 Armagnac party still continued, mingled 
 in the former with dread of the .king's re- 
 turn, whom they judged themselves to 
 have inexpiably offended. The war had 
 brought forward some accomplished com- 
 manders in the English army; surpas- 
 sing, not indeed in valour and enterprise, 
 but in military skill, any whom France 
 could oppose to them. Of these the 
 most distinguished, besides the Duke of 
 Bedford himself, were Warwick, Salis- 
 bury, and Talbot. Their troops, too, 
 were still very superior to the French. 
 But this, we must in candour allow, pro- 
 ceeded in a great degree from the mode 
 in which they were raised. The war 
 was so popular in England, that it was 
 
 easy to pick the best and stoutest re- 
 cruits,* and their high pay allured men 
 of respectable condition to the service. 
 We find in Rymer a contract of the Earl 
 of Salisbury to supply a body of troops, 
 receiving a shilling a day for every man 
 at arms, and sixpence for each archer.f 
 This is perhaps equal to fifteen times the 
 sum at our present value of money. 
 They were bound indeed to furnish their 
 own equipments and horses. But France 
 was totally exhausted by her civil and 
 foreign war, and incompetent to defray 
 the expenses even of the small force 
 which defended the wreck of the monar- 
 chy. Charles VII. lived in the utmost 
 poverty at Bourges.J The nobility had 
 scarcely recovered from the fatal slaugh- 
 ter of Azincourt, and the infantry, com- 
 posed of peasants or burgesses, which 
 had made their army so numerous upon 
 that day, whether from inability to com- 
 pel their services, or experience of their 
 inefficacy, were never called into the 
 field. It became almost entirely a war 
 of partisans. Every town in Picardy, 
 Champagne, Maine, or wherever the con- 
 test might be carried on, was a fortress ; 
 and in the attack or defence of these gar- 
 risons, the valour of both nations was 
 called into constant exercise. This mode 
 of warfare was undoubtedly the best in 
 the actual state of France, as it gradually 
 improved her troops, and flushed them 
 with petty successes. But what princi- 
 pally led to its adoption was the license 
 and insubordination of the royalists, who, 
 receiving no pay, owned no control, and 
 thought that, provided they acted against 
 the English and Burgundians, they were 
 free to choose their own points of attack. 
 Nothing can more evidently show the 
 weakness of France, than the high terms 
 by which Charles VII. was content to 
 purchase the assistance of some Scot- 
 tish auxiliaries. The Earl of Buchan 
 was made constable ; the Earl of Doug- 
 las had the dutchy of Touraine, with a 
 new title, lieutenant-general of the king- 
 dom. At a subsequent time, Charles of- 
 fered the province of Saintonge to James 
 I. for an aid of 6000 men. These Scots 
 fought bravely for France, though urisuc- 
 
 * Monstrelet, part i., f. 303. 
 
 t Rym., t. x., p. 392. This contract was for 600 
 men at arms, including six bannerets, and thirty- 
 four bachelors; and for 1700 archers; bien et 
 suffisamment montez, armez, et arraiez comme a 
 leurs estats appartient. The pay was, for the earl, 
 6s. 8d. a day ; for a banneret, 4s. ; for a bachelor, 
 2s. ; for every other man at arms, Is. ; and for 
 each archer, 6d. Artillery-men were paid higher 
 than men at arms. 
 
 J Villaret, t. xiv., p. 302. 
 
PART II.J 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 cessfully, at Crevant and Verneuil; but 
 it must be owned they set a sufficien 
 value upon their service. Under al 
 these disadvantages, it would be unjus 
 to charge the French nation with any in- 
 feriority of courage, even in the most 
 unfortunate periods of this war. Though 
 frequently panic-struck in the field of bat- 
 tle, they stood sieges of their walled towns 
 with matchless spirit and endurance. Per- 
 haps some analogy may be found between 
 the character of the French commonalty 
 during the English invasion, and the 
 Spaniards of the late peninsular war. 
 But to the exertions of those brave 
 nobles who restored the monarchy of 
 Charles VII., Spain has afforded no ade- 
 quate parallel. 
 
 It was, however, in the temper of 
 Character Charles VII. that his enemies 
 or cuaries found their chief advantage. This 
 prince is one of the few whose 
 character has been improved by prosper- 
 ity. During the calamitous morning of 
 his reign, he shrunk from fronting the 
 storm, and strove to forget himself in 
 pleasure. Though brave, he was never 
 seen in war ; though intelligent, he was 
 governed by flatterers. Those who had 
 committed the assassination at Monte- 
 reau under his eyes were his first favour 
 ites ; as if he had determined to avoid 
 the only measure through which he could 
 hope for better success, a reconciliation 
 with the Duke of Burgundy. The Count 
 de Richemont, brother of the Duke of 
 Britany, who became afterward one of 
 the chief pillars of his throne, consented 
 to renounce the English alliance, and ac- 
 cept the rank of constable, on condition 
 that these favourites should quit the 
 court. [A. D. 1424.] Two others, who 
 successively gained a similar influence 
 over Charles, Richemont publicly caused 
 to be assassinated, assuring the king that 
 it was for his own and the public good. 
 Such was the debasement of morals and 
 government which twenty years of civil 
 war had produced! Another favourite, 
 La Tremouille, took the dangerous office, 
 and, as might be expected, employed his 
 influence against Richemont, who for 
 some years lived on his own domains, 
 rather as an armed neutral than a friend, 
 though he never lost his attachment to 
 the royal cause. 
 
 It cannot therefore surprise us, that with 
 all these advantages the regent Duke of 
 Bedford had almost completed the cap- 
 ture of the fortresses north of the Loire, 
 Siege of when he invested Orleans in 1428. 
 Orleans, if tn i s c i ty had fallen, the central 
 provinces, which were less furnished with 
 
 defensible places, would have lain open 
 to the enemy ; and it is said that Charles 
 VII. in despair was about to retire into 
 Dauphine. At this time his affairs were 
 restored by one of the most marvellous 
 revolutions in history. A country girl 
 overthrew the power of Eng- 
 land. We cannot pretend to JoanofA - 
 explain the surprising story of the Maid 
 of Orleans ; for, however easy it may be 
 to suppose that a heated and enthusiastic 
 imagination produced her own visions, it 
 is a much greater problem to account for 
 the credit they obtained, and for the suc- 
 cess that attended her. Nor will this be 
 solved by the hypothesis of a concerted 
 stratagem ; which, if we do not judge al- 
 together from events, must appear liable 
 to so many chances of failure, that it 
 could not have suggested itself to any ra- 
 tional person. However, it is certain that 
 the appearance of Joan of Arc turned the 
 tide of war, which from that moment 
 flowed without interruption in Charles's 
 favour. A superstitious awe enfeebled 
 the sinews of the English. They hung 
 back in their own country, or deserted 
 from the army, through fear of the incan- 
 tations, by which alone they conceived so 
 extraordinary a person to succeed.* As 
 men always make sure of Providence 
 for an ally, whatever untoward fortune 
 appeared to result from preternatural 
 causes was at once ascribed to infernal 
 enemies ; and such bigotry may be plead- 
 ed as an excuse, though a very miserable 
 one, for the detestable murder of this 
 heroine. f 
 
 The spirit which Joan of Arc had roused 
 did not subside. France recovered con- 
 fidence in her own strength, which had 
 been chilled by a long course of adverse 
 fortune. The king, too, shook off his in- 
 
 * Rym., t. x., p. 458-472. This, however, is con- 
 jecture ; for the cause of their desertion is not men- 
 tioned in these proclamations, though Ryrner has 
 printed it in their title. But the Duke of Bedford 
 speaks of the turn of success as astonishing, and 
 due only to the superstitious fear which the Eng- 
 lish had conceived of a female magician. Rymer, 
 t. x., p. 408. 
 
 t M. de 1'Averdy, to whom we owe the copious 
 account of the proceedings against Joan of Arc, as 
 well as those which Charles VII. instituted in or- 
 der to rescind the former, contained in the third 
 volume of Notices des Manuscrits du Roi, has just- 
 ly made this remark, which is founded on the ea- 
 gerness shown by the university of Paris in the 
 prosecution, and on its being conducted before an 
 'nquisitor ; a circumstance exceedingly remarkable 
 n the ecclesiastical history of France, But anoth- 
 er material observation arises out of this. The 
 maid was pursued with peculiar bitterness by her 
 countrymen of the English, or rather Burgundian, 
 action ; a proof that, in 1430, their animosity 
 against Charles VII. was still ardent. 
 
54 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. 1. 
 
 The king dolence,* and permitted Riche- 
 retrieves his mont to exclude his unworthy 
 affairs, favourites from the court. This 
 led to a very important consequence. 
 The Duke of Burgundy, whose alliance 
 with England had been only the fruit of 
 indignation at his father's murder, fell nat- 
 urally, as that passion wore out, into sen- 
 timents more congenial to his birth and 
 interests. A prince of the house of Capet 
 could not willingly see the inheritance 
 of his ancestors transferred to a stranger. 
 And he had met with provocation both 
 from the regent and the Duke of Glou- 
 cester, who, in contempt of all policy and 
 justice, had endeavoured, by an invalid 
 marriage with Jacqueline, countess of 
 Hainault and Holland, to obtain provinces 
 which Burgundy designed for himself. 
 Yet the union of his sister with Bedford, 
 the obligations by which he was bound, 
 and, most of all, the favour shown by 
 andisrecon- Charles VII. to the assassins of 
 ciied to the his father, kept him for many 
 
 * It is a current piece of history, that Agnes So- 
 rel, mistress of Charles VII., had the merit of dis- 
 suading him from giving up the kingdom as lost, 
 at the time when Orleans was besieged in 1428. 
 Mezeray, Daniel, Villaret, and, I believe, every oth- 
 er modern historian, have mentioned this circum- 
 stance ; and some of them, among whom is Hume, 
 with the addition, that Agnes threatened to leave 
 the court of Charles for that of Henry, affirming 
 that she was born to be the mistress of a great 
 king. The latter part of this tale is evidently a 
 fabrication, Henry VI. being at the time a child of 
 seven years old. But I have, to say the least, great 
 doubts of the main story. It is not mentioned by 
 contemporary writers. On the contrary, what they 
 say of Agnes leads me to think the dates incompat- 
 ible. Agnes died (in childbed, as some say) in 
 1450 ; twenty-two years after the siege of Orleans. 
 Monstrelet says that she had been about five years in 
 the service of the queen ; and the king taking pleas- 
 ure in her liveliness and wit, common fame had 
 spread abroad that she lived in concubinage with 
 him. She certainly had a child, and was willing 
 that it should be thought the king's ; but he always 
 denied it, et le pouvoit bien avoir emprunte ailleurs. 
 Pt. iii., f. 25. Olivier de la Marche, another 
 contemporary, who lived in the court of Burgundy, 
 says, about the year 1444, le Roy avoit nouvelle- 
 ment esleve une pauvre demoiselle, gentifemme, 
 nommee Agnes Sorel, et mis en tel triumphe et tel 
 pouvoir, que son estat estoit a comparer aux grandes 
 princesses de Royaume, et certes c'estoit une des 
 plus belles femmes que je vey oncques, et fit en sa 
 qualite beaucoup au Royaume de France. Elle 
 avancoit devers le Roy Junes gens d'armes, et gen- 
 tils compaignons, et dont le Roy depuis fut bien 
 servy. La Marche. M^m. Hist., t. viii., p. 145. 
 Du Clercq, whose memoirs were first published in 
 the same collection, says, that Agnes mourut par 
 poison moult jeune. Ib., t. viii., p. 410. And the 
 continuator of Monstrelet, probably John Chartier, 
 speaks of the youth and beauty of Agnes, which 
 exceeded that of any other woman in France, and 
 of the favour shown her by the king, which so much 
 excited the displeasure of the dauphin, on his moth- 
 er's account, that he was suspected of having caused 
 
 years on the English side, al- Duke of 
 though rendering it less and less Bur i und y- 
 assistance. But at length he concluded a 
 treaty at Arras, the terms of which he dic- 
 tated rather as a conqueror, than as a sub- 
 ject negotiating with his sovereign. [A. D. 
 1435.] Charles, however, refused nothing 
 for such an end ; and, in a very short time, 
 the Burgundians were ranged with the 
 French against their old allies of England. 
 It was now time for the latter to aban- 
 don those magnificent projects impolicy or 
 of conquering France, which the English, 
 temporary circumstances alone had seem- 
 ed to render feasible. But as it is a nat- 
 ural effect of good fortune in the game of 
 war to render a people insensible to its 
 gradual change, the English could not 
 persuade themselves that their affairs 
 were irretrievably declining. Hence 
 they rejected the offer of Normandy and 
 Guienne, subject to the feudal superiority 
 of France, which was made to them at 
 the congress of Arras ;* and some years 
 
 her to be poisoned. Fol. 68. The same writer af- 
 firms of Charles VII. that he was, before the peace 
 of Arras, de moult belle vie et devote ; but after- 
 ward enlaidit sa vie de tenir malles femmes en 
 son hostel, &c., fol. 86. 
 
 It is for the reader to judge how far these passa- 
 ges render it improbable that Agnes Sorel was 
 the mistress of Charles VII. at the siege of Orleans 
 in 1428, and, consequently, whether she is entitled 
 to the praise which she has received, of being in- 
 strumental in the deliverance of France. The tra- 
 dition, however, is as ancient as Francis I., who 
 made in her honour a quatrain which is well known. 
 This probably may have brought the story more 
 into vogue, and led Mezeray, who was not very 
 critical, to insert it in his history, from which it has 
 passed to his followers. Its origin was apparently 
 the popular cha acter of Agnes. She was the Nell 
 Gwyn of France ; and justly beloved, not only for 
 her charity and courtesy, but for bringing forward 
 men of merit, and turning her influence, a virtue 
 very rare in her class, towards the public interest. 
 From thence it was natural to bestow upon her, in 
 after-times, a merit not ill suited to her character, 
 but which an accurate observation of dates seems 
 to render impossible.. But whatever honour I am 
 compelled to detract from Agnes Sorel, I am wil- 
 ling to transfer undiminished to a more unblemish- 
 ed female, the injured queen of Charles VII., Mary 
 of Anjou, who has hitherto only shared with the 
 usurper of her rights the credit ofawakening Charles 
 from his lethargy. Though I do not know on what 
 foundation even this rests, it is not unlikely to be 
 true, and, in deference to the sex, let it pass undis- 
 puted. 
 
 * Villaret says, Les plenipotentiaries de Charles 
 offrirent la cession de la Normandie et de la Gui- 
 enne en toute propri&d, sous la clause de Vhommage a 
 la couronne, t. xv., p. 174. But he does not quote 
 his authority, and I do not like to rely on an histo- 
 rian not eminent for accuracy in fact, or precision in 
 language. If his expression is correct, the French 
 must have given up the feudal appeal, or ressort, 
 which had been the great point in dispute between 
 Edward III. and Charles V., preserving only a 
 homage per paragium, as it was called, which im- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 afterward, when Paris, with the adjacent 
 provinces, had been lost, the English am- 
 bassadors, though empowered by their 
 private instructions to relax, stood upon 
 demands quite disproportionate to the ac- 
 tual position of affairs.* As foreign ene- 
 mies, they were odious even in that part 
 of France which had acknowledged to 
 Henry ;f and when the Duke of Burgundy 
 deserted their side, Paris and every other 
 city were impatient to throw off the yoke. 
 A feeble monarchy and a selfish council 
 They lose completed their ruin : the neces- 
 aii their sary subsidies were raised with 
 ; onquests. difficultv [ A . D 1449], and, when 
 raised, misapplied. It is a proof of 
 the exhaustion of France, that Charles 
 was unable, for several years, to reduce 
 Normandy or Guienne, which were so 
 ill provided for defence.J At last he 
 came with collected strength to the con- 
 test, and, breaking an armistice upon 
 slight pretences, within two years over- 
 whelmed the English garrisons in each 
 of these provinces. All the inheritance 
 of Henry II. and Eleanor, all the con- 
 quests of Edward III. and Henry V., ex- 
 cept Calais and a small adjacent district, 
 were irrecoverably torn from the crown 
 of England. A barren title, that idle tro- 
 phy of disappointed ambition, was pre- 
 served, with strange obstinacy, to our 
 own age. 
 
 In these second English wars, we find 
 condition little left of that generous feel- 
 <f rin^e * n wn i c h na d, in general, dis- 
 serondEn- tinguished the contemporaries 
 gushwars. o f Edward III. The very vir- 
 tues which a state of hostility promotes 
 are not proof against its long continuance, 
 and sink at last into brutal fierceness. 
 Revenge and fear excited the two fac- 
 tions of Orleans and Burgundy to all 
 atrocious actions. The troops serving 
 under partisans on detached expeditions, 
 according to the system of the war, lived 
 at free quarters on the people. The his- 
 tories of the time are full of their outrages, 
 from which, as is the common case, the 
 unprotected peasantry most suffered.^ 
 
 plied no actual supremacy. Monstrelet says only, 
 que per certaines conditions luy seroient accorddes 
 les seigneuries de Guienne et Normandie. 
 
 * See the instructions given to the English ne- 
 gotiators in 1439, at length, in Rymer, t. x., p. 724. 
 
 t Villaret, t. xiv., p. 448. 
 
 j Amelgard, from whose unpublished memoirs 
 of Charles VIE. and Louis XI. some valuable ex- 
 tracts are made in the Notices des Manuscrits, t. i., 
 p. 403, attributes the delay in recovering Norman- 
 dy solely to the king's slothfulness and sensuality. 
 In fact, the people of that province rose upon the 
 English, and almost emancipated themselves, with 
 little aid from Charles. 
 
 $ Monstrelet, passim. A long metrical corn- 
 
 Even those laws of war, which the cour- 
 teous sympathies of chivalry had enjoin- 
 ed, were disregarded by a merciless fury. 
 Garrisons surrendering after a brave de- 
 fence were put to death. Instances of 
 this are very frequent. Henry V. ex- 
 cepts Alain Blanchard, a citizen who had 
 ditinguished himself during the siege, 
 from the capitulation of Rouen, and or- 
 ders him to execution. At the taking of 
 a town of Champagne, John of Luxem- 
 burg, the Burgundian general, stipulates 
 that every fourth and sixth man should 
 be at his discretion ; which he exercises 
 by causing them all to be hanged.* Four 
 hundred English from Pontoise, stormed 
 by Charles VII., in 1441, are paraded in 
 chains and naked through the streets of 
 Paris, and thrown afterward into the 
 Seine. This infamous action cannot but 
 be ascribed to the king.f 
 
 At the expulsion of the English, France 
 emerged from the chaos with 
 an altered character and new ? ve m?Si 
 features of government. The the reign of 
 royal authority and supreme c 
 jurisdiction of the parliament were uni- 
 versally recognised.. Yet there was a 
 tendency towards insubordination left 
 
 plaint of the people of France, curious as a speci- 
 men of versification, as well as a testimony to the 
 misfortunes of the time, may be found in this his- 
 torian. Part i., fol. 321. Notwithstanding the 
 treaty of Arras, the French and Burgundians made 
 continual incursions upon each other's frontiers, 
 especially about Laon and in the Vermandois. 
 So that the people had no help, says Monstrelet, 
 si non de crier miserablement a Dieu leur createur 
 vengeance ; et que pis estoit, quand ils obtenoient 
 aucun sauf-conduit d'aucuns capitaines peu en es- 
 toit entretenu, mesmement tout d'un parti. Pt. ii., 
 f. 139. These pillagers were called Ecorcheurs, 
 because they stripped the people of their shirts. 
 And this name superseded that of Armagnacs, by 
 which one side had hitherto been known. Even 
 Xaintrailles and La Hire, two of the bravest cham- 
 pions of France, were disgraced by these habits 
 of outrage. Ibid., fol, 144, 150, 175. Oliv. de la 
 Marche, in Collect, des Memoires, t. viii., p. 25 ; t. 
 v., p. 323. 
 
 Pour la plupart, says Villaret, se faire guerrier, 
 ou voleur de grands chemins, signifioit la me'me 
 chose. 
 
 * Monstrelet, part ii., f. 79, This John of Lux- 
 emburg, count de Ligny, was a distinguished cap- 
 tain on the Burgundian side, and for a long time 
 would not acquiesce in the treaty of. Arras. He 
 disgraced himself by giving up to the Duke of 
 Bedford his prisoner Joan of Arc for 10,000 francs. 
 The famous Count of St. Pol was his nephew, and 
 inherited his great possessions in the county of 
 Vermandois. Monstrelet relates a singular proof 
 of the good education which his uncle gave him. 
 Some prisoners having been made in an engage- 
 ment, si fut le jeune Comte de St. Pol: mis en voye 
 de guerre ; car le Comte de Ligny son oncle luy 
 en feit occire aucuns, le quel y prenoit grand plav 
 sir, part ii., fol. 95. 
 
 t Villaret, t. xv., p. 327, 
 

 56 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 among the great nobility, arising in part 
 from the remains of old feudal privileges, 
 but still more from that lax administra- 
 tion, which, in the convulsive struggles 
 of the war, had been suffered to prevail. 
 In the south were some considerable vas- 
 sals, the houses of Foix, Albret, and Ar- 
 magnac, who, on account of their dis- 
 tance from the seat of empire, had al- 
 ways maintained a very independent con- 
 duct. The dukes of Britany and Bur- 
 gundy were of a more formidable charac- 
 ter, and might rather be ranked among 
 foreign powers than privileged subjects. 
 The princes, too, of the royal blood, who, 
 during the late reign, had learned to par- 
 take or contend for the management, were 
 ill inclined towards Charles VII., himself 
 jealous, from old recollections, of their 
 ascendency. They saw that the consti- 
 tution was verging rapidly towards an 
 absolute monarchy, from the direction of 
 which they would studiously be excluded. 
 This apprehension gave rise to several 
 attempts at rebellion during the reign of 
 Charles VII., and to the war, commonly 
 entitled, for the Public Weal (du bien pub- 
 lic), under Louis XL Among the preten- 
 ces alleged by the revolters in each of 
 these, the injuries of the people were 
 not forgotten ;* but from the people they 
 received small support. Weary of civil 
 dissension, and anxious for a strong gov- 
 ernment to secure them from depredation, 
 the French had no inducement to intrust 
 even their real grievances to a few male- 
 content princes, whose regard for the 
 common good they had much reason to 
 distrust. Every circumstance favoured 
 Charles VII. and his son in the attainment 
 of arbitrary power. The country was 
 pillaged by military ruffians. Some of 
 these had been led by the dauphin to a 
 war in Germany, but the remainder still 
 infested the high roads and villages. 
 Charles established his companies of or- 
 donnance, the basis of the French regular 
 army, in order to protect the country 
 from such depredators. They consisted 
 of about nine thousand soldiers, all cav- 
 alry, of whom fifteen hundred were hea- 
 vy-armed ; a force not very considerable, 
 
 * The confederacy formed at Nevers in 1441, 
 by the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, with many 
 other princes, made a variety of demands, all rela- 
 ting to the grievances which different classes of 
 the state, or individuals among themselves, suffer- 
 ed under the administration of Charles. These 
 may be found at length in Monstrelet, p. ii., f. 193 ; 
 and are a curious document of the change which 
 was then working in the French constitution. In 
 his answer, the king claims the right, in urgent 
 cases, of levying taxes without waiting for the con- 
 sent of the States General 
 
 but the first, except mere body-guards, 
 which had been raised in any part of 
 Europe as a national standing army.* 
 These troops were paid out of the pro- 
 duce of a permanent tax, called the taille ; 
 an innovation still more important than 
 the former. But the present benefit 
 cheating the people, now prone to sub- 
 missive habits, little or no opposition was 
 made; except in Guienne, the inhabi- 
 tants of which had speedy reason to re- 
 gret the mild government of England, 
 and vainly endeavoured to return to its 
 protection.! 
 
 [A. D. 1461.] It was not long before the 
 new despotism exhibited itself in LouisXI 
 its harshest character. LouisXI., 
 son of Charles VII., who, during his fa- 
 ther's reign, had been connected with the 
 discontented princes, came to the throne 
 greatly endowed with those virtues and 
 vices which conspire to the success of a 
 king. Laborious vigilance in His charac- 
 business, contempt of pomp, af- ter - 
 fability to inferiors, were his excellen- 
 ces ; qualities especially praiseworthy in 
 an age characterized by idleness, love of 
 
 * Olivier de la Marche speaks very much in fa- 
 vour of the companies of ordonnance, as having 
 repressed the plunderers, and restored internal 
 police. Collection des Memoires, t. viii., p. 148. 
 Amelgard pronounces a vehement philipic against 
 them ; but it is probable that his observation of the 
 abuses they had fallen into was confined to the 
 reign of Louis XL Notices des Manuscrits, ubi 
 supra. 
 
 t The insurrection of Guienne in 1452, which 
 for a few months restored that province to the Eng- 
 lish crown, is accounted for in the curious me- 
 moirs of Amelgard, above mentioned. It proceed- 
 ed solely from the arbitrary taxes imposed by 
 Charles VII. in order to defray the expenses of his 
 regular army. The people of Bordeaux complain- 
 ed of exactions not only contrary to their ancient 
 privileges, but to the positive conditions of their 
 capitulation. But the king was deaf to such re- 
 monstrances. The province of Guienne, he says, 
 then perceived that it was meant to subject it to 
 the same servitude as the rest of France, where 
 the leeches of the state boldly maintain, as a fun- 
 damental maxim, that the king has a right to tax 
 all his subjects, how and when he pleases ; which 
 is to advance that in France no man has any thing 
 that he can call his own, and that the king can 
 take all at his pleasure ; the proper condition of 
 slaves, whose peculium, enjoyed by their master's 
 permission, belongs to him, like their persons, and 
 may be taken away whenever he chooses. Thus 
 situated, the people of Guienne, especially those 
 of Bordeaux, alarmed themselves, and excited by 
 some of the nobility, secretly sought about for 
 means to regain their ancient freedom ; and hav- 
 ing stiil many connexions with persons of rank in 
 England, they negotiated with them, &c. No- 
 tices des Manuscrits, p. 433. The same cause is 
 assigned to this revolution by Du Clercq, also a con- 
 temporary writer, living in the dominions of Bur- 
 gundy. Collection des Memoires, t. ix., p. 400. 
 Villaret has not known, or not chosen to know, 
 any thing of the matter. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 67 
 
 pageantry, and insolence. To these vir- 
 tues he added a perfect knowledge of all 
 persons eminent for talents or influence 
 in the countries with which he was con- 
 nected, and a well-judged bounty, that 
 thought no expense wasted to draw them 
 into his service or interest. In the fif- 
 teenth century this political art had hard- 
 ly been known, except perhaps in Italy ; 
 the princes of Europe had contended with 
 each other by arms, sometimes by treach- 
 ery, but never with such complicated 
 subtlety of intrigue. Of that insidious 
 cunning, which has since been brought 
 to perfection, Louis XI. may be deemed 
 not absolutely the inventor, but the most 
 eminent improver; and its success has 
 led perhaps to too high an estimate of his 
 abilities. Like most bad men, he some- 
 times fell into his own snare, and was be- 
 trayed by his confidential ministers, be- 
 cause his confidence was generally repo- 
 sed in the wicked. And his dissimulation 
 was so notorious, his tyranny so oppres- 
 sive, that he was naturally surrounded 
 by enemies, and had occasion for all his 
 craft to elude those rebellions and con- 
 federacies which might perhaps not have 
 been raised against a more upright sov- 
 ereign. At one time the monarchy was 
 on the point of sinking before a combina- 
 tion, which would have ended in dismem- 
 L de bering France. [A. D. 1461.] 
 nominated This was the league denomina- 
 of the Pub- ted of the Public Weal, in which 
 all the princes and great vassals 
 of the French crown were concerned: 
 the dukes of Britany, Burgundy, Alen- 
 Son, Bourbon, the Count of Dunois, so 
 renowned for his valour in the English 
 wars, the families of Foix and Armagnac ; 
 and, at the head of all, Charles, duke of 
 Berry, the king's brother and presumptive 
 heir. So unanimous a combination was 
 not formed without a strong provocation 
 from the king, or at least without weighty 
 grounds for distrusting his intentions ; but 
 the more remote cause of this confeder- 
 acy, as of those which had been raised 
 against Charles VII., was the critical po- 
 sition of the feudal aristocracy from the 
 increasing power of the crown. This 
 war of the Public Weal was in fact a 
 struggle to preserve their independence ; 
 and from the weak character of the Duke 
 of Berry, whom they would, if successful, 
 have placed upon the throne, it is possi- 
 ble that France might have been in a 
 manner partitioned among them, in the 
 event of their success, or at least that Bur- 
 gundy and Britany would have thrown 
 off the sovereignty that galled them. 
 The strength of the confederates in 
 
 this war much exceeded that of the king ; 
 but it was not judiciously employed, and, 
 after an indecisive battle at Montlhery, 
 they failed in the great object of reducing 
 Paris, which would have obliged Louis to 
 fly from his dominions. It was his policy 
 to promise every thing, in trust that for- 
 tune would afford some opening to repair 
 his losses, and give scope to his superior 
 prudence. Accordingly, by the treaty of 
 Conflans, he not only surrendered afresh 
 the towns upon the Somme, which he had 
 lately redeemed from the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, but invested his brother with the 
 dutchy of Normandy as his appanage. 
 
 The term appanage denotes the provis- 
 ion made for the younger chil- A 
 dren of a king of France. This A PP ana s es - 
 always consisted of lands and feudal su- 
 periorities held of the throne by the te- 
 nure of peerage. It is evident that this 
 usage, as it produced a new class of 
 powerful feudatories, was hostile to the 
 interests and policy of the sovereign, and 
 retarded the subjugation of the ancient 
 aristocracy. But a usage coeval with the 
 monarchy was not to be abrogated, and 
 the scarcity of money rendered it impos- 
 sible to provide for the younger branches 
 of the royal family by any other means. 
 It was restrained, however, as far as cir- 
 cumstances would permit. Philip IV. 
 declared that the county of Poitiers, be- 
 stowed by him on his son, should revert 
 to the crown on the extinction of male 
 heirs. But this, though an important pre- 
 cedent, was not, as has often been assert- 
 ed, a general law. Charles V. limited 
 the appanages of his own sons to twelve 
 thousand livres of annual value in land. 
 By means of their appanages, and through 
 the operation of the Salique-law, which 
 made their inheritance of the crown a 
 less remote contingency, the princes of 
 the blood royal in France were at all 
 times (for the remark is applicable long 
 after Louis XL) a distinct and formidable 
 class of men, whose influence was always 
 disadvantageous to the reigning monarch, 
 and, in general, to the people. 
 
 No appanage had ever been granted in 
 France so enormous as the dutchy of Nor- 
 mandy. One third of the whole nation- 
 al revenue, it is declared, was derived 
 from that rich province. Louis could not 
 therefore sit down under such terms as, 
 with his usual insincerity, he had accept- 
 ed at Conflans. In a very short time he 
 attacked Normandy, and easily compell- 
 ed his brother to take refuge in Britany ; 
 nor were his enemies ever able to pro- 
 cure the restitution of Charles's appanage. 
 During the rest of his reign, Louis had 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 powerful coalitions to withstand ; but his 
 prudence and compliance with circum- 
 stances, joined to some mixture of good 
 fortune, brought him safely through his 
 perils. The Duke of Britany, a prince of 
 moderate talents, was unable to make 
 any formidable impression, though gen- 
 erally leagued with the enemies of the 
 king. The less powerful vassals were 
 successfully crushed by Louis with deci- 
 sive vigour : the dutchy of Alen9on was 
 confiscated ; the Count of Armagnac was 
 assassinated ; the Duke of Nemours, and 
 the Constable of St. Pol, a politician as 
 treacherous as Louis, who had long be- 
 trayed both him and the Duke of Burgun- 
 dy, suffered upon the scaffold. The king's 
 brother, Charles, after disquieting him 
 for many years, died suddenly in Guienne 
 [A. D. 1472], which had finally been grant- 
 ed as his appanage, with strong suspicions 
 of having been poisoned by the king's 
 contrivance. Edward IV. of England 
 was too dissipated and too indolent to be 
 fond of war; and, though he once en- 
 tered France [A. D. 1475] with an army 
 more considerable than could have been 
 expected after such civil bloodshed as 
 England had witnessed, he was induced, 
 by the stipulation of a large pension, to 
 give up the enterprise.* So terrible was 
 still in France the apprehension of an 
 English war, that Louis prided himself 
 upon no part of his policy so much as the 
 warding this blow. Edward showed a 
 desire to visit Paris ; but the king gave 
 him no invitation, lest, he said, his broth- 
 er should find some handsome women 
 there, who might tempt him to return in 
 a different manner. Hastings, Howard, 
 and others of Edward's ministers, were 
 secured by bribes in the interest of Louis, 
 which the first of these did not scruple to 
 receive at the same time from the Duke 
 of Burgundy, f 
 
 This was the most powerful enemy 
 House of whom the craft of Louis had to 
 Burgundy, counteract. In the last days of 
 
 * The army of Edward consisted of 1500 men at 
 arms, and 14,000 archers ; the whole very well ap- 
 pointed. Comines, t. xi., p. 238. There seems to 
 have been a great expectation of what the English 
 would do, and great fears entertained by Louis, 
 who grudged no expense to get rid of them. 
 
 t Comines, 1. vi., c. 2. Hastings had the mean 
 cunning to refuse to give his receipt for the pen- 
 sion he took from Louis XI. " This present," he 
 said to the king's agent, " comes from your mas- 
 ter's good pleasure, and not at my request ; and if 
 you mean I should receive it, you may put it here 
 into my sleeve, but you shall have no discharge 
 from me ; for I will not have it said that the Great 
 Chamberlain of England is a pensioner of the King 
 of France, nor have my name appear in the books 
 of the Chambre des Comptes." Ibid. 
 
 the feudal system, when the house of 
 Capet had almost achieved the subjuga- 
 tion of those proud vassals among whom 
 it had been originally number- Its succes . 
 ed, a new antagonist sprung up sive acquisi- 
 to dispute the field against the. tions - 
 crown. John, king of France, granted 
 the dutchy of Burgundy by way of appa- 
 nage to his third son, Philip. By his 
 marriage with Margaret, heiress of Louis, 
 count of Flanders, Philip acquired that 
 province, Artois, the county of Burgundy 
 (or Franche-comte), and the Nivernois. 
 Philip the Good, his grandson, who car- 
 ried the prosperity of this family to its 
 height, possessed himself, by various ti- 
 tles, of the several other provinces which 
 composed the Netherlands. These were 
 fiefs of the empire, but latterly not much 
 dependant upon it, and alienated by their 
 owners without its consent. At the peace 
 of Arras, the districts of Macon and Aux- 
 erre were absolutely ceded to Philip, and 
 great part of Picardy conditionally made 
 over to him, redeemable on the pay- 
 ment of four hundred thousand crowns.* 
 These extensive, though not compact do- 
 minions, were abundant in population and 
 wealth, fertile in corn, wine, and salt, and 
 full of commercial activity. Thirty years 
 of peace which followed the treaty of Ar- 
 ras, with a mild and free government, 
 raised the subjects of Burgundy to a de- 
 gree of prosperity quite unparalleled in 
 these times of disorder ; and this was dis- 
 played in general sumptuousness of dress 
 and feasting. The court of Philip and his 
 son Charles was distinguished for its 
 pomp and riches, for pageants and tour- 
 naments ; the trappings of chivalry, per- 
 haps without its spirit : for the military 
 
 * The Duke of Burgundy was personally excused 
 from all homage and service to Charles VII. ; but, 
 if either died, it was to be paid by the heir, or to 
 the heir. Accordingly, on Charles's death, Philip 
 did homage to Louis. This exemption can hardly 
 therefore have been inserted to gratify the pride of 
 Philip, as historians suppose. Is it not probable 
 that, during his resentment against Charles, he 
 might have made some vow never to do him horn- 
 age, which this reservation in the treaty was in- 
 tended to preserve ? 
 
 It is remarkable that Villaret says, the Duke of 
 Burgundy was positively excused by the 25th ar- 
 ticle of the peace of Arras from doing homa'ge to 
 Charles, or his successors kings of France, t. xvi., p. 
 404. For this assertion too he seems to quote the 
 Tresor des Chartes, where probably the original 
 treaty is preserved. Nevertheless, it appears other- 
 wise, as published by Monstrelet at full length, 
 who could have no motive to falsify it ; and Phil- 
 ip's conduct in doing homage to Louis is hardly 
 compatible with Villaret's assertion. Daniel cop- 
 ies Monstrelet without any observation. In the 
 same treaty, Philip is entitled Duke by the grace of 
 God ; which was reckoned a mark of independ- 
 ence, and not usually permitted to a vassal, 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 59 
 
 character of Burgundy had been impaired 
 by long tranquillity.* 
 
 During the lives of Philip and Charles 
 Character VII. , each understood the other's 
 of Charles, rank, and their amity was little 
 Duke of interrupted. But their succes- 
 r ' sprs, the most opposite of hu- 
 man kind in character, had one common 
 quality, ambition, to render their antipa- 
 thy more powerful. Louis was eminently 
 timid and suspicious in policy ; Charles 
 intrepid beyond all men, arid blindly pre- 
 sumptuous : Louis stooped to any humili- 
 ation to reach his aim ; Charles was too 
 haughty to seek the fairest means of 
 strengthening his party. An alliance of 
 his daughter with the Duke of Guienne, 
 brother of Louis, was what the malecon- 
 tent French princes most desired, and 
 the king most dreaded ; but Charles, 
 either averse to any French connexion, 
 or willing to keep his daughter's suit- 
 ers in dependance, would never directly 
 accede to that, or any other proposition 
 for her marriage. On Philip's death, in 
 1467, he inherited a great treasure, which 
 he soon wasted in the prosecution of his 
 schemes. These were so numerous and 
 vast, that he had not time to live, says 
 Comines, to complete them, nor would 
 one half of Europe have contented him. 
 It was his intention to assume the title 
 of king ; and the Emperor Frederick III. 
 was at one time actually on his road to 
 confer this dignity, when some suspicion 
 caused him to retire ; and the project was 
 never renewed. f It is evident that, if 
 Charles's capacity had borne any propor- 
 tion to Ms pride and courage, or if a prince 
 less politic than Louis XI. had been his 
 contemporary in France, the province of 
 Burgundy must have been lost to the 
 monarchy. For several years these 
 great rivals were engaged, sometimes in 
 open hostility, sometimes in endeavours 
 to overreach each other; but Charles, 
 though not much more scrupulous, was 
 
 * P. de Comines, 1. i., c. 2 and 3 ; 1. v., c. 9. Du 
 Clercq, in Collection des Memoires, t. ix., p. 389. 
 In the investiture granted by John to the first Phil- 
 ip of Burgundy, a reservation is made, that the roy- 
 al taxes shall be levied throughout that appanage. 
 But during the long hostility between the kingdom 
 and dutchy, this could not have been enforced : 
 and by the treaty of Arras, Charles surrendered all 
 right to tax the duke's dominions. Monstrelet, f. 
 114. 
 
 t Gamier, t. xviii., p. 62. It is observable that 
 Comines says not a word of this ; for which Gar- 
 nier seems to quote Belcarius, a writer of the six- 
 teenth age. But even Philip, when Morvilliers, 
 Louis's chancellor, used menaces towards him, in- 
 terrupted the orator with these words: Je veux 
 que chacun scache que, si j'eusse voulu, je fusse 
 roi. Villaret, t. xvii., p. 44. 
 
 far less an adept in these mysteries of 
 politics than the king. 
 
 Notwithstanding the power of Bur- 
 gundy, there were some dis- Insubordina . 
 advantages in its situation, tionofthe 
 It presented (I speak of all ^ ish 
 Charles's dominions under the 
 common name, Burgundy) a very ex- 
 posed frontier on the side of Germany 
 and Switzerland, as well as France ; and 
 Louis exerted a considerable influence 
 over the adjacent princes of the empire, 
 as well as the united cantons. The peo- 
 ple of Liege, a very populous city, had 
 for a long time been continually rebelling 
 against their bishops, who were the allies 
 of Burgundy; Louis was of course not 
 backward to foment their insurrections ; 
 which sometimes gave the dukes a good 
 deal of trouble. The Flemings, and 
 especially the people of Ghent, had been 
 during a century noted for their repub- 
 lican spirit and contumacious defiance of 
 their sovereign. Liberty never wore a 
 more unamiable countenance than among 
 these burghers ; who abused the strength 
 she gave them by cruelty and insolence. 
 Ghent, when Froissart wrote, about the 
 year 1400, was one of the strongest cities 
 in Europe, and would have required, he 
 says, an army of two hundred thousand 
 men to besiege it on every side, so as to 
 shut up all access by the Lys and Scheldt. 
 It contained eighty thousand men of age 
 to bear arms ;* a calculation which, al- 
 though, as I presume, much exaggerated, 
 is evidence of great actual populousness. 
 Such a city was absolutely impregnable, 
 at a time when artillery was very imper- 
 fect both in its construction and manage- 
 ment. Hence, though the citizens of 
 Ghent were generally beaten in the field 
 with great slaughter, they obtained toler- 
 able terms from their masters, who knew 
 the danger of forcing them to a desperate 
 defence. 
 
 No taxes were raised in Flanders, or 
 indeed throughout the dominions of Bur- 
 gundy, without consent of the three 
 estates. In the time of Philip, not a 
 great deal of money was levied upon the 
 people ; but Charles obtained every year 
 a pretty large subsidy, which he expend- 
 ed in the hire of Italian and English mer- 
 cenaries, f An almost uninterrupted suc- 
 
 * Froissart, part ii., c. 67. 
 
 t Comines, 1. iv.,c. 13. It was very reluctantly 
 that the Flemings granted any money. Philip once 
 begged for a tax on salt, promising never to ask any 
 thing more ; but the people of Ghent, and, in imi- 
 tation of them, the whole county, refused it. Du 
 Clercq, p. 389. Upon his pretence of taking the 
 cross, they granted him a subsidy, though less 
 than he had requested, on condition that it should 
 
60 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I 
 
 cess had attended his enterprises for a 
 length of time, and rendered his dispo- 
 sition still more overweening. [A. D. 
 1474.] His first failure was before Nuz, 
 a little town near Cologne, the possession 
 of which would have made him nearly 
 master of the whole course of the Rhine, 
 for he had already obtained the landgravi- 
 ate of Alsace. Though compelled to raise 
 the siege, he succeeded in occupying, next 
 year, the dutchy of Lorraine. But his 
 overthrow was reserved for an enemy 
 whom he despised, and whom none could 
 have thought equal to the contest. [A. D. 
 1476.] The Swiss had given him some 
 slight provocation, for which they were 
 ready to atone ; but Charles was unused 
 to forbear ; and perhaps Switzerland 
 came within his projects of conquest. 
 Defeats of ^ Granson, in the Pays de 
 Charles at Vaud, he was entirely routed, 
 Granson w jth more disgrace than slaugh- 
 ' ter.* But, having reassembled 
 his troops, and met the confederate army 
 of Swiss and Germans at Morat, near Fri- 
 burg, he was again defeated with vast 
 loss. On this day the power of Bur- 
 gundy was dissipated: deserted by his 
 allies, betrayed by his mercenaries, he 
 set his life upon another cast at Nancy, 
 desperately giving battle to the Duke of 
 His death Lorraine with a small dispirited 
 army, and perished in the en- 
 gagement. [A. D. 1477.] 
 
 Now was the moment when Louis, 
 Claim of who had held back while his 
 tbe^auAcea* enem y was breaking his force 
 sionofBur- against the rocks of Switzer- 
 gundy. land, came to gather a harvest 
 which his labour had not reaped. Charles 
 
 not be levied if the crusade did not take place, 
 which put an end to the attempt. The states 
 knew well that the duke would employ any money 
 they gave him in keeping up a body of gens d'armes 
 like his neighbour, the King of France ; and though 
 the want of such a force exposed their country to 
 pillage, they were too good patriots to place the 
 means of enslaving it in the hands of their sover- 
 eign. Grand doute faisoient les sujets, et pour 
 plusieurs raisons, de se mettre en cette sujetion, ou 
 ils voyoient le royaume de France, a cause de ses 
 gens d'armes. A la verite, leur grand doute n'es- 
 toit pas sans cause : car quand il se trouva cinq 
 cens hommes d'armes, la volonte luy vint d'en 
 avoir plus, et de plus hardiment entreprendre con- 
 tre tous ses voisins. Comines, 1. iii., c. 4, 9. 
 
 Du Clercq, a contemporary writer of very good 
 authority, mentioning the story of a certain widow 
 who had remarried the day after her husband's 
 death, says that she was in some degree excusa- 
 ble, because it was the practice of the duke and 
 his officers to force rich widows into marrying 
 their soldiers or other servants, t. ix., p. 418. 
 
 * A famous diamond, belonging to Charles of 
 Burgundy, was taken in the plunder of his tent by 
 the Swiss at Granson. After several changes of 
 owners, most of whom were ignorant of its value, 
 
 left an only daughter, undoubted heiress 
 of Flanders and Artois, as well as of his 
 dominions out of France ; but whose 
 right of succession to the dutchy of Bur- 
 gundy was more questionable. Origi- 
 nally, the great fiefs of the crown de- 
 scended to females; and this was the 
 case with respect to the two first men- 
 tioned. But John had granted Burgundy 
 to his son Philip by way of appanage ; 
 and it was contended that appanages re- 
 verted to the crown in default of male 
 heirs. In the form of Philip's investi- 
 ture, the dutchy was granted to him and 
 his lawful heirs, without designation of 
 sex. The construction, therefore, must 
 be left to the established course of law. 
 This, however, was by no means ac- 
 knowledged by Mary, Charles's daughter, 
 who maintained, both that no general law 
 restricted appanages to male heirs, and 
 that Burgundy had always been consider- 
 ed as a feminine fief, John himself having 
 possessed it, not by reversion as king (for 
 descendants of the first dukes were then 
 living), but by inheritance derived through 
 females.* Such was this question of suc- 
 cession between Louis XI. and Mary of 
 Burgundy, upon the merits of whose pre- 
 tensions I will not pretend altogether to 
 decide; but shall only observe, that if 
 Charles had conceived his daughter to 
 be excluded from this part of his inherit- 
 ance, he would probably, at Conflans 
 or Peronne, where he treated upon the 
 vantage-ground, have attempted at least 
 to obtain a renunciation of Louis's claim. 
 There was one obvious mode of pre- 
 venting all further contests, and of conduct 
 aggrandizing the French monar- or Louis, 
 chy far more than by the reunion of Bur- 
 gundy. This was the marriage of Mary 
 with the dauphin, which was ardently 
 
 it became the first jewel in the French crown. 
 Gamier, t. xviii., p. 361. 
 
 * It is advanced with too much confidence by 
 several French historians, either that the ordinan- 
 ces of Philip IV. and Charles V. constituted a 
 general law against the descent of appanages to 
 female heirs, or that this was a fundamental law 
 of the monarchy. Du Clos, Hist, de Louis XL, 
 t. h., p. 252. Garnier, Hist, de France, t. xviii., 
 p. 258. The latter position is refuted by frequent 
 instances of female succession ; thus Artois had 
 passed by a daughter of Louis le Male into the 
 house of Burgundy. As to the above-mentioned 
 ordinances, the first applies only to the county of 
 Poitiers ; the second does not contain a syllable 
 that relates to succession. (Ordonnances des Rois, 
 t. vi., p. 54.) The doctrine of excluding female 
 heirs was more consonant to the pretended Salique- 
 law, and the recent principles as to inalienability of 
 domain, than to the analogy of feudal rules and 
 precedents. M. Gaillard, in his Observations sur 
 1'Histoire de Velly, Villaret, et Garnier, has a judi- 
 cious note on this subject, t. iii., p. 304. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 61 
 
 wished in France. Whatever obstacles 
 might occur to this connexion, it was nat 
 ural to expect on the opposite side ; from 
 Mary's repugnance to an infant husband 
 or from the jealousy which her subjects 
 were likely to entertain, of being incor- 
 porated with a country worse governec 
 than their own. The arts of Louis would 
 have been well employed in smoothing 
 these impediments.* But he chose to 
 seize upon as many towns as, in those 
 critical circumstances, lay exposed to 
 him, and stripped the young dutchess of 
 Artois and Tranche Comte. Expecta- 
 tions of the marriage he sometimes held 
 out, but, as it seems, without sincerity. 
 Indeed, he contrived irreconcilably to 
 alienate Mary by a shameful perfidy, be- 
 traying the ministers whom she had in- 
 trusted upon a secret mission to the peo 
 pie of Ghent, who put them to the torture, 
 and afterward to death, in the presence 
 and amid the tears and supplications of 
 their mistress. [A. D. 1477.] Thus the 
 French alliance becoming odious in 
 France, this princess married Maximilian 
 of Austria, son of the Emperor Frederick ; 
 a connexion which Louis strove to pre- 
 vent, though it was impossible then to 
 foresee that it was ordained to retard the 
 growth of France, and to bias the fate 
 of Europe during three hundred years. 
 This war lasted till after the death of 
 Mary, who left one son, Philip, and one 
 daughter, Margaret. By a treaty of peace 
 concluded at Arras in 1482, it was agreed 
 that this daughter should become the 
 dauphin's wife, with Franche Comte and 
 Artois, which Louis held already for her 
 dowry, to be restored in case the marriage 
 should not take effect. The homage of 
 Flanders, and appellant jurisdiction of 
 the parliament over it, were reserved to 
 the crown. 
 
 Meanwhile Louis was lingering in dis- 
 Sickness ease an ^ torments of mind, the 
 and death of retribution of fraud and tyranny. 
 Louis XL TwQ years before his death he 
 was struck with an apoplexy, from which 
 
 * Robertson, as well as some other moderns, 
 have maintained, on the authority of Comines, that 
 Louis XI. ought in policy to have married the 
 young princess to the Count of Angouleme, father 
 of Francis I. , a connexion which she would not have 
 disliked. But certainly nothing could have been 
 more adverse to the interests of the French mon- 
 archy than such a marriage, which would have 
 put a new house of Burgundy at the head of those 
 princes whose confederacies had so often endan- 
 gered the crown. Comines is one of the most ju- 
 dicious of historians ; but his sincerity may be rath- 
 er doubtful in the opinion above mentioned ; for he 
 wrote in the reign of Charles VIII., when the Count 
 of Angouleme was engaged in the same faction as 
 himself. 
 
 he never wholly recovered. As he felt 
 his disorder increasing, he shut himself up 
 in a palace near Tours, to hide from the 
 world the knowledge of his decline.* His 
 solitude was like that of Tiberius at Ca- 
 preae, full of terror and suspicion, and deep 
 consciousness of universal hatred. All 
 ranks, he well knew, had their several 
 injuries to remember : the clergy, whose 
 liberties he had sacrificed to the see of 
 Rome, by revoking the Pragmatic Sanc- 
 tion of Charles VII. ; the princes, whose 
 blood he had poured upon the scaffold; 
 the parliament, whose course of justice 
 he had turned aside ; the commons, who 
 groaned under his extortion, and were 
 plundered by his soldiery. f The palace, 
 fenced with portcullises and spikes of 
 iron, was guarded by archers and cross- 
 bow men, who shot at any that approach- 
 ed by night. Few entered this den ; but 
 to them he showed himself in magnifi- 
 cent apparel, contrary to his former cus- 
 tom, hoping thus to disguise the change 
 of his meager body. He distrusted his 
 friends and kindred, his daughter and his 
 son, the last of whom he had not suffered 
 even to read or write, lest he should too 
 soon become his rival. No man ever so 
 much feared death, to avert which he 
 stooped to every meanness, and sought 
 every remedy. His physician had sworn 
 that, if he were dismissed, the king would 
 not survive a week; and Louis, enfee- 
 bled by sickness and terror, bore the 
 rudest usage from this man, and endeav- 
 oured to secure his services by vast 
 rewards. Always credulous in relics, 
 though seldom restrained by superstition 
 from any crime,| he eagerly bought up 
 
 * For Louis's illness and death, see Comines, 
 ,. vi., c. 7-12, an Gamier, t. xiz., p. 112, &c. 
 Plessis, his last residence, about an English mile 
 from Tours, is now a dilapidated farmhouse, and 
 can never have been a very large building. The 
 vestiges of royalty about it are few ; but the prin- 
 cipal apartments have been destroyed, either in 
 the course of ages or at the revolution. 
 
 t See a remarkable chapter in Philip de Co- 
 mines, 1. iv., c. 19, wherein he tells us that Charles 
 VII. had never raised more than 1,800,000 francs a 
 year in taxes; but Louis XL, at the time of his 
 death, raised 4,700,000, exclusive of some military 
 mpositions ; et surement c'estoit compassion de 
 voir et scavoir la pauvret6 du peuple. In this 
 chapter he declares his opinion that no king can 
 ustly levy money on his subjects without their 
 consent, and repels all common arguments to the 
 contrary. 
 
 | An exception to this was when he swore by 
 he cross of St. Lo, after which he feared to vio- 
 ate his oath. The Constable of St. Pol, whom 
 jouis invited with many assurances to court, be- 
 hought himself of requiring this oath before he 
 ;rusted his promises, which the king refused ; and 
 St. Pol prudently stayed away. Gam., t. xviii., p. 
 72. Some report that he had a similar respect for 
 
62 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. I. 
 
 treasures of this sort, and even procured 
 a Calabrian hermit, of noted sanctity, to 
 journey as far as Tours in order to re- 
 store his health. Philip de Comines, 
 who attended him during this infirmity, 
 draws a parallel between the torments 
 he then endured and those he had for- 
 merly inflicted on others. Indeed, the 
 whole of his life was vexation of spirit. 
 " I have known him (says Comines), and 
 been his servant in the flower of his age, 
 and in the time of his greatest prosperi- 
 ty ; but never did I see him without un- 
 easiness and care. Of all amusements 
 he loved only the chase, and hawking in 
 its season. And in this he had almost 
 as much uneasiness as pleasure ; for he 
 rode hard, and got up early, and some- 
 times went a great way, and regarded no 
 weather : so that he used to return very 
 weary, and almost ever in wrath with 
 some one. I think that from his child- 
 hood he never had any respite of labour 
 and trouble to his death. And I am cer- 
 tain that if all the happy days of his 
 life, in which he had more enjoyment 
 than uneasiness, were numbered, they 
 would be found very few ; and at least 
 that they would be twenty of sorrow for 
 every one of pleasure."* 
 
 Charles VIII. was about thirteen years 
 Charles old when he succeeded his father 
 VIIL Louis. [A. D. 1483.] Though the 
 law of France fixed the majority of her 
 kings at that age, yet it seems not to have 
 been strictly regarded on this occasion, 
 and at least Charles was a minor by nature, 
 if not by law. A contest arose, therefore, 
 for the regency, which Louis had intrusted 
 to his daughter Anne, wife of the Lord de 
 Beaujeu, one of the Bourbon family. The 
 Duke of Orleans, afterward Louis XII., 
 claimed it as presumptive heir of the 
 crown, and was seconded by most of the 
 princes. Anne, however, maintained her 
 ground, and ruled France for several years 
 in her brother's name with singular spirit 
 and address, in spite of the rebellions 
 which the Orleans party raised up against 
 her. These were supported by the Duke 
 of Britany, the last of the great vassals of 
 the crown, whose daughter, as he had no 
 male issue, was the object of as many 
 suiters as Mary of Burgundy. 
 
 The dutchy of Britany was peculiarly 
 Affairs of circumstanced. The inhabitants, 
 Britany. whether sprung from the ancient 
 republicans of Armorica, or, as some have 
 thought, from an emigration of Britons 
 
 a leaden image of the Virgin, which he wore in his 
 nat ; as alluded to by Pope : " A perjured prince a 
 leaden saint revere." 
 * Comines, 1. vi., c. 13. 
 
 during the Saxon invasion, had not on- 
 
 perhaps, as the weaker to the stronger, 
 to the Merovingian kings.* In the ninth 
 century, the dukes of Britany did hom- 
 age to Charles the Bald, the right of which 
 was transferred afterward to the dukes 
 of Normandy. This formality, at that 
 time no token of real subjection, led to 
 consequences beyond the views of either 
 party. For when the feudal chains, that 
 had hung so loosely upon the shoulders 
 of the great vassals, began to be straiten- 
 ed by the dexterity of the court, Britany 
 found itself drawn among the rest to the 
 same centre. The old privileges of in- 
 dependence were treated as usurpation ; 
 the dukes were menaced with confiscation 
 of their fief, their right of coining money 
 disputed, their jurisdiction impaired by ap- 
 peals to the parliament of Paris. How r 
 ever, they stood boldly upon their right, 
 and always refused to pay liege homage^ 
 which implied an obligation of service to 
 the lord, in contradistinction to simple 
 homage, which was a mere symbol of 
 feudal dependance.f 
 
 About the time that Edward III. made 
 pretensions to the crown of France, a. 
 controversy somewhat resembling it arose 
 in the dutchy of Britany, between the fam- 
 ilies of Blois and Montfort. This led to 
 a long and obstinate war, connected all 
 along as a sort of underplot with the great 
 drama of France and England. At last, 
 Montfort, Edward's ally, by the defeat and 
 death of his antagonist, obtained the 
 dutchy, of which Charles V. soon after 
 gave him the investiture. This prince and 
 his family were generally inclined to Eng- 
 lish connexions ; but the Bretons would 
 seldom permit them to be effectual. Two 
 cardinal feelings guided the conduct of 
 this brave and faithful people ; the one, 
 an attachment to the French nation and 
 monarchy in opposition to foreign ene- 
 
 * Gregory of Tours says, that the Bretons were 
 subject to France from the death of Clovis, and 
 that their chiefs were styled counts, not kings, L 
 iv., c. 4. However, it seems clear from Nigellus, 
 a writer of the life of Louis the Debonair, that they 
 were almost independent in his time. There was 
 even a march of the Britannic frontier which sep- 
 arated it from France ; and they had a king of their 
 own. It is hinted, indeed, that they had been for- 
 merly subject ; for, after a victory of Louis over 
 them, Nigellus says, Imperio sociat perdita regna 
 dm. In the next reign of Charles the Bald, Hinc- 
 mar tells us, regnum undique a Paganis, et falsis 
 Christianis, scilicet Britonibus, est circumscriptum, 
 Epist. 18. See, too, Capitularia Car. Calvi., A, 
 D. 877, tit. 23. 
 
 t Villaret, t. xii., p. 82 t. xv.>p. 199. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 63 
 
 mies ; the other, a zeal for their own priv- 
 ileges, and the family of Montfort, in oppo- 
 sition to the encroachments of the crown. 
 In Francis II. , the present duke, the male 
 line of that family was about to be ex- 
 tinguished. His daughter Anne was nat- 
 urally the object of many suiters, among 
 whom were particularly distinguished the 
 Duke of Orleans, who seems to have been 
 preferred by herself; the Lord of Albret, 
 a member of the Gascon family of Foix, 
 favoured by the Breton nobility, as most 
 likely to preserve the peace and liberties 
 of their country, but whose age rendered 
 him not very acceptable to a youthful 
 princess ; and Maximilian, king of the 
 Romans. Britany was rent by factions, 
 and overrun by the armies of the regent 
 of France, who did not lose this opportu- 
 nity of interfering with its domestic 
 troubles, and of persecuting her private 
 enemy, the Duke of Orleans. Anne of 
 Britany, upon her father's death, finding 
 no other means of escaping the addresses 
 of Albret, was married, by proxy, to Max- 
 imilian. [A. D. 1489.] This, however, ag- 
 gravated the evils of the country, since 
 France was resolved at all events to break 
 off so dangerous a connexion. And as 
 Maximilian himself was unable, or took 
 not sufficient pains, to relieve his betroth- 
 ed wife from her embarrassments, she 
 was ultimately compelled to accept the 
 Mnrri _ nf hand of Charles VIII. He 
 
 IHaiTlaiJC 0* -i -, , , 111 
 
 Charles vin. had long been engaged by the 
 
 t0 f Brita?i tCheSS treatv f Arras to marry the 
 daughter of Maximilian, and 
 that princess was educated at the French 
 court. But this engagement had not pre- 
 vented several years of hostilities, and 
 continual intrigues with the towns of 
 Flanders against Maximilian. The double 
 injury which the latter sustained in the 
 marriage of Charles with the heiress of 
 Britany seemed likely to excite a pro- 
 tracted contest ; but the King of France, 
 who had other objects in view, and per- 
 haps was conscious that he had not acted 
 a fair part, soon came to an accommoda- 
 tion, by which he restored Artois and 
 Tranche Comte. 
 
 [A. D. 1492.] France was now consol- 
 idated into a great kingdom ; the feudal 
 system was at an end. The vigour of 
 Philip Augustus, the paternal wisdom of 
 St. Louis, the policy of Philip the Fair, 
 had laid the foundations of a powerful 
 monarchy, which neither the arms of Eng- 
 land, nor seditions of Paris, nor rebellions 
 of the princes, were able to shake. Be- 
 sides the original fiefs of the French 
 crown, it had acquired two countries be- 
 yond the Rhone which properly depend- 
 
 ed only upon the empire, Dauphine, un- 
 der Philip of Valois, by the bequest of 
 Humbert, the last of its princes ; and Pro- 
 vence, under Louis XL, by that of Charles 
 of Anjou.* [A. D. 1481.] Thus having 
 conquered herself, if I may use the phrase, 
 and no longer apprehensive of any for- 
 eign enemy, France was prepared, under 
 a monarch flushed with sanguine ambi- 
 tion, to carry her arms into other coun- 
 tries, and to contest the prize of glory 
 and power upon the ample theatre of 
 Europe. f 
 
 * The country now called Dauphine" formed part 
 of the kingdom of Aries or Provence, bequeathed 
 by Rodolph III. to the Emperor Conrad II. But 
 the dominion of the empire over these new acqui- 
 sitions being little more than nominal, a few of the 
 chief nobility converted their respective fiefs into 
 independent principalities. One of these was the 
 lord or dauphin of Vienne, whose family became 
 ultimately masters of the whole province. Hum- 
 bert, the last of these, made John, son of Philip of 
 Valois, his heir, on condition that Dauphin^ should 
 be constantly preserved as a separate possession, 
 not incorporated with the kingdom of France. This 
 bequest was confirmed by the Emperor Charles 
 IV., whose supremacy over the province was thus 
 recognised by the kings of France, though it soon 
 came to be altogether disregarded. 
 
 Provence, like Dauphine, was changed from a 
 feudal dependance to a sovereignty, in the weak- 
 ness and dissolution of the kingdom of Aries, about 
 the early part of the eleventh century. By the 
 marriage of Douce, heiress of the first line of sover- 
 eign counts, with Raymond Berenger, count of 
 Barcelona, in 1112, it passed into that distinguish- 
 ed family. In 1167 it was occupied or usurped by 
 Alfonso II., king of Arragon, a relation, but not 
 heir, of the house of Berenger. Alfonso bequeath- 
 ed Provence to his second son, of the same name, 
 and from whom it descended to Raymond Beren- 
 ger IV. This count dying without male issue in 
 1245, his youngest daughter Beatrice took posses- 
 sion by virtue of her father's testament. But this 
 succession being disputed by other claimants, and 
 especially by Louis IX., who had married her eld- 
 est sister, she compromised differences by mar- 
 rying Charles of Anjou, the king's brother. The 
 family of Anjou reigned in Provence, as well as in 
 Naples, till the death of Joan in 1382, who, having 
 no children, adopted Louis of Anjou, brother of 
 Charles V., as her successor. This second Ange- 
 vin line ended in 1481 by the death of Charles III., 
 though Renier, duke of Lorraine, who was de- 
 scended through a female, had a claim which it 
 does not seem easy to repel by argument. It was 
 very easy, however, for Louis XL, to whom Charles 
 III. had bequeathed his rights, to repel it by force, 
 and accordingly he took possession of Provence, 
 which was permanently united to the crown by let- 
 ters patent 9f Charles VIII. in I486.* 
 
 t The principal authority, exclusive of original 
 writers, on which I have relied for this chapter, is 
 the history of France by Velly, Villaret, and Gar- 
 nier ; a work which, notwithstanding several de- 
 fects, has absolutely superseded those of Mezeray 
 and Daniel. The part of the Abbe Velly comes 
 down to the middle of the eighth volume (12mo. 
 edition), and of the reign of Philip de Valois. His 
 continuator Villaret was interrupted by death in 
 the seventeenth volume, and in the reign of Louis 
 
 t Art (to verifier 1st Date*, t. ., p. 445. Garoier, t. ziz., pp. 57, 474. 
 
64 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY IN FRANCE. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 State of Ancient Germany. Effects of the Con- 
 quest of Gaul by the Franks. Tenures of Land. 
 Distinction of Laws. Constitution of the an- 
 cient Frank Monarchy. Gradual Establishment 
 of Feudal Tenures. Principles of a Feudal Re- 
 lation. Ceremonies of Homage and Investiture. 
 Military Service. Feudal Incidents of Relief, 
 Aid, Wardship, &c. Different Species of Fiefs. 
 Feudal Law-books. 
 
 GERMANY, in the age of Tacitus, was di- 
 vided among a number of independent 
 tribes, differing greatly in population and 
 importance. Their country, overspread 
 with forests and morasses, afforded little 
 Political state arable land, and the cultivation 
 of ancient of that little was inconstant. 
 Germany. Their occupations were prin- 
 cipally the chase and pasturage ; without 
 cities, or even any contiguous dwellings. 
 They had kings, elected out of particu- 
 lar families ; and other chiefs, both for 
 war and administration of justice, whom 
 merit alone recommended to the public 
 choice. But the power of each was 
 greatly limited; and the decision of all 
 
 XI. In my references to this history, which for 
 common facts I have not thought it necessary to 
 make, I have merely named the author of the par- 
 ticular volume which I quote. This has made the 
 above explanation convenient, as the reader might 
 imagine that I referred to three distinct works. 
 Of these three historians, Gamier, the last, is the 
 most judicious, and, I believe, the most accurate. 
 His prolixity, though a material defect, and one 
 which has occasioned the work itself to become an 
 immeasurable undertaking, which could never be 
 completed on the same scale, is chiefly occasioned 
 by too great a regard to details, and is more tolera- 
 ble than a similar fault in Villaret, proceeding from 
 a love of idle declamation and sentiment. Villaret, 
 however, is not without merits. He embraces, 
 perhaps, more fully than his predecessor Velly, 
 those collateral branches of history which an en- 
 lightened reader requires almost in preference to 
 civil transactions, the laws, manners, literature, 
 and, in general, the whole domestic records of a na- 
 tion. These subjects are not always well treated ; 
 but the book itself, to which there is a remarkably 
 full index, forms upon the whole a great repository 
 of useful knowledge. VilJaret had the advantage 
 of official access to the French archives, by which 
 he has no doubt enriched his history ; but his ref- 
 erences are indistinct, and his composition breathes 
 an air of rapidity and want of exactness. Velly's 
 characteristics are not very dissimilar. The style 
 of both is exceedingly bad, as has been severely 
 noticed, along with their other defects, byGaillard, 
 in Observations sur 1'Histoire de Velly, Villaret, et 
 Gamier. (4 vols. 12mo., Paris, 1806.) 
 
 leading questions, though subject to the 
 previous deliberation of the chieftains, 
 sprung from the free voice of a popular 
 assembly.* The principal men, however, 
 of a German tribe fully partook of that 
 estimation which is always the reward 
 of valour, and commonly of birth. They 
 were surrounded by a cluster of youths, 
 the most gallant and ambitious of the na- 
 tion, their pride at home, their protection 
 in the field; whose ambition was flat- 
 tered, or gratitude conciliated, by such 
 presents as a leader of barbarians could 
 confer. These were the institutions of 
 the people who overthrew the empire of 
 Rome, congenial to the spirit of infant 
 societies, and such as travellers have 
 found among nations in the same stage 
 of manners throughout the world. And, 
 although in the lapse of four centuries 
 between the ages of Tacitus and Clovis, 
 some change may have been wrought by 
 long intercourse with the Romans, yet 
 the foundations of their political system 
 were unshaken. 
 
 When these tribes from Germany and 
 the neighbouring countries poured down 
 upon the empire, and began to p . . f 
 form permanent settlements, lands in con- 
 they made a partition of the queredprov- 
 lands in the conquered prov- in 
 inces between themselves anc the origi- 
 nal possessors. The Burgundians and 
 Visigoths took two thirds of their re- 
 spective conquests, leaving the remain- 
 der to the Roman proprietor. Each Bur- 
 gundian was quartered, under the gentle 
 name of guest, upon one of the former 
 tenants, whose reluctant hospitality con- 
 fined him to the smaller portion of his 
 estate. f The Vandals in Africa, a more 
 furious race of plunderers, seized all the 
 best lands.! The Lombards of Italy took a 
 third part of the produce. We cannot dis- 
 cover any mention of a similar arrange- 
 ment in the laws or history of the Franks. 
 
 * De minoribus rebus principes consultant, de 
 majoribus omnes ; ita tamen, ut ea quoque, quo- 
 rum penes plebem arbitriurn est, apud principes 
 pertractentur. Tac. de Mor. Germ.,c. xi. Acida- 
 Uus and Grotius contend for prcetractentur ; which 
 would be neater, but the same sense appears to be 
 conveyed by the common reading. 
 
 t Leg. Burgund., c. 54, 55. 
 
 i Procopius De Bello Vandal., 1. i., c. 5. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 65 
 
 It is, however, clear that they occupied, 
 by public allotment or individual pillage, 
 a great portion of the lands of France. 
 
 The estates possessed by the Franks, as 
 Allodial and their property, were termed al- 
 saiique lands, lodial; a word which is some- 
 times restricted to such as had descended 
 by inheritance.* These were subject to 
 no burden except that of public defence. 
 They passed to all the children equally, 
 or, in their failure, to the nearest kin- 
 dred.! But of these allodial possessions, 
 there was a particular species, denomi- 
 nated Salique, from which females were 
 expressly excluded. What these lands 
 were, and what was the cause of the ex- 
 clusion, has been much disputed. No 
 solution seems more probable, than that 
 the ancient lawgivers of the Salian 
 Franks! prohibited females from inherit- 
 ing the lands assigned to the nation upon 
 its conquest of Gaul, both in compliance 
 with their ancient usages, and in order 
 to secure the military service of every 
 proprietor. But lands subsequently ac- 
 quired, by purchase or other means, 
 though equally bound to the public de- 
 fence, were relieved from the severity 
 of this rule, and presumed not to belong 
 to the class of Salique. $ Hence, in the 
 Ripuary law, the code of a tribe of 
 Franks settled upon the banks of the 
 Rhine, and differing rather in words than 
 in substance from the Salique-law, which 
 
 * Allodial lands are commonly opposed to bene- 
 ficiary or feudal ; the former being strictly pro- 
 prietary, while the latter depended upon a superi- 
 or. In this sense the word is of continual recur- 
 rence in ancient histories, laws, and instruments. 
 It sometimes, however, bears the sense of inherit- 
 ance ; and this seems to be its meaning in the 
 famous 62d chapter of the Salique-law : de Alodis. 
 Alodium interdum opponitur comparato, says Du 
 Cange, in formulis veteribus. Hence, in the char- 
 ters of the eleventh century, hereditary fiefs are 
 frequently termed alodia. Recueil des Historiens 
 de France, t. xi., preface. Vaissette, Hist, de 
 Languedoc, t. ii., p. 109. 
 
 t Leg. Salicae, c. 62. 
 
 i The Salique-laws appear to have been framed 
 by a Christian prince, and after the conquest of 
 Gaul. They are therefore not older than Clovis. 
 Nor can they be much later, since they were altered 
 by one of his sons. 
 
 $ By the German customs, women, though 
 treated with much respect and delicacy, were not 
 endowed at their marriage. Dotem non uxor ma- 
 rito, sed maritus uxori confert. Tacitus, c. 18. A 
 similar principle might debar them of inheritance 
 in fixed possessions. Certain it is, that the exclu- 
 sion of females was not unfrequent among the 
 Teutonic nations. We find it in the laws of the 
 Thuringians and of the Saxons ; both ancient 
 codes, though not free from interpolation. Leib- 
 nitz, Scriptores Renim Brunswicensium, t. i., pp. 
 81 and 83. But this usage was repugnant to the 
 principles of Roman law, which the Franks found 
 prevailing in their new country, and to the natural 
 feeling which leads a man to prefer his own de- 
 
 it serves to illustrate, it is said, that a 
 woman cannot inherit her grandfather's 
 estate (haereditas aviatica), distinguish- 
 ing such family property from what the 
 father might have acquired.* And Mar- 
 culfus uses expressions to the same ef- 
 fect. There existed, however, a right 
 of setting aside the law, and admitting 
 females to succession by testament. It 
 is rather probable, from some passages 
 in the Burgundian code, that even the 
 lands of partition (sortes Burgundionum) 
 were not restricted to male heirs, f And 
 the Visigoths admitted women on equal 
 terms to the whole inheritance. 
 
 A controversy has been maintained in 
 France, as to the condition of the Roman 
 Romans, or, rather, the provincial natives of 
 inhabitants of Gaul, after the in- GauL 
 vasion of Clovis. But neither those who 
 have considered the Franks as barbarian 
 conquerors, enslaving the former pos- 
 sessors, nor the Abbe du Bos, in whose 
 theory they appear as allies and friend- 
 ly inmates, are warranted by historical 
 facts. On the one hand, we find the Ro- 
 mans not only possessed of property, 
 and governed by their own laws, but ad- 
 mitted to the royal favour, and the high- 
 est offices ;J while the bishops and cler- 
 gy, who were generally of that nation,^ 
 
 scendants to collateral heirs. One of the prece- 
 dents in Marculfus (1. ii., form 12) calls the exclu- 
 sion of females diuturna et impia consuetudo. In 
 another, a father addresses his daughter : Omnibus 
 non habetur incognitum, quod, sicut lex Salica con- 
 tinet, de rebus meis, quod mihi ex alode parentum 
 meorum obvenit, apud germanos tuos fihos meos 
 minime inhaereditate succedere poteras. Formulae 
 Marculfo adjectae, 49. These precedents are sup- 
 posed to have been compiled about the latter end 
 of the seventh century. 
 
 * C. 56. 
 
 1 1 had in former editions asserted the contrary 
 of this, on the authority of Leg. Burgund., c. 78, 
 which seemed to limit the succession of estates, 
 called sortes, to male heirs. But the expressions 
 are too obscure to warrant this inference ; and M. 
 Guizot (Essais Sur 1'Hist. de France, vol. i., p. 
 95) refers to the 14th chapter of the same code 
 for the opposite proposition. But this, too, is not 
 absolutely clear, as a general rule. 
 
 J Daniel conjectures that Clotaire I. was the 
 first who admitted Romans into the army, which 
 had previously been composed of Franks. From 
 this time we find many in high military command. 
 (Hist, de la Milice Francoise. t. i., p. 11.) It 
 seems by a passage in Gregory of Tours, by Du 
 Bos (t. iii., p. 547), that some Romans affected the 
 barbarian character by letting their hair grow. If 
 this were generally permitted, it would be a strong- 
 er evidence of approximation between the two 
 races than any that Du Bos has adduced. Mon- 
 tesquieu certainly takes it for granted that a Ro- 
 man might change his law, and. thus become to all 
 material intents a Frank. (Esprit des Loix, 1. 
 xxviii., c. 4.) But the passage on which he relies 
 is read differently in the manuscripts. 
 
 $ Some bishops, if we may judge from their bar- 
 barous names, and other circumstances, were not 
 
66 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 grew up continually in popular estima- 
 tion, in riches, and in temporal sway. 
 Yet it is undeniable that a marked line 
 was drawn at the outset between the 
 conquerors and the conquered. Though 
 one class of Romans retained estates of 
 their own, yet there was another, called 
 tributary, who seem to have cultivated 
 those of the Franks, and were scarcely 
 raised above the condition of predial ser- 
 vitude. But no distinction can be more 
 unequivocal than that which was estab- 
 lished between the two nations in the 
 weregild, or composition for homicide. 
 Capital punishment for murder was con- 
 trary to the spirit of the Franks, who, 
 like most barbarous nations, would have 
 thought the loss of one citizen ill repair- 
 ed by that of another. The weregild 
 was paid to the relations of the slain, ac- 
 cording to a legal rate. This was fixed by 
 the Salique-law at six hundred solidi for 
 an Antrustion of the king ; at three hun- 
 dred for a Roman conviva regis (meaning 
 a man of sufficient rank to be admitted 
 to the royal table) ; at two hundred for a 
 common Frank; at one hundred for a 
 Roman possessor of lands ; and at forty- 
 five for a tributary, or cultivator of anoth- 
 er's property. In Burgundy, where re- 
 ligion and length of settlement had intro- 
 duced different ideas, murder was pun- 
 ished with death. But other personal 
 injuries were compensated, as among the 
 Franks, by a fine, graduated according to 
 the rank and nation of the aggrieved 
 party.* 
 
 The barbarous conquerors of Gaul and 
 Distinc- Italy were guided by notions 
 tionofiaws. very different from those of 
 Rome, who had imposed her own laws 
 upon all the subjects of her empire. Ad- 
 hering in general to their ancient cus- 
 toms without desire of improvement, 
 they left the former habitations in unmo- 
 lested enjoyment of their civil institu- 
 tions. The Frank was judged by the Sa- 
 
 Romans. See, for instance, Gregory of Tours, 1. 
 vi., c. 9. But no distinction was made among 
 them on this account. The composition for the 
 murder of a bishop was nine hundred solidi ; for 
 that of a priest, six hundred of the same coin. 
 Leges Salicse, c. 58. 
 
 * Leges Salicse, c. 43. Leges Burgundionum, 
 tit. 2. Murder and robbery were made capital by 
 Childebert, king of Paris ; but Francus was to be 
 sent for trial in the royal court, debilior persona in 
 loco pendatur. Baluz., t. i., p. 17. I am inclined 
 to think that the word Francus does not absolutely 
 refer to the nation of the party ; but rather to his 
 rank, as opposed to debilior persona ; and, conse- 
 quently, that it had already acquired the sense of 
 freeman, or frceborn (ingenuus), which is perhaps 
 its strict meaning. Du Cange, voc. Francus, 
 quotes the passage in this sense. 
 
 lique or the Ripuary code ; the Gaul follow- 
 ed that, of Theodosius.* This grand dis- 
 tinction of Roman and barbarian, accord- 
 ing to the law which each followed, was 
 common to the Frank, Burgundian, and 
 Lombard kingdoms. But the Ostrogoths, 
 whose settlement in the empire and ad- 
 vance in civility of manners were earlier, 
 inclined to desert their old usages, and 
 adopt the Roman jurisprudence.! The 
 laws of the Visigoths too were compiled 
 by bishops upon a Roman foundation, 
 and designed as a uniform code, by which 
 both nations should be governed.^ The 
 name of Gaul or Roman was not entirely 
 lost in that of Frenchman, nor had the 
 separation of their laws ceased, even in 
 the provinces north of the Loire, till after 
 the time of Charlemagne. $ Ultimately, 
 however, the feudal customs of succes- 
 sion, which depended upon principles 
 quite remote from those of the civil law, 
 and the rights of territorial justice which 
 the barons came to possess, contributed 
 to extirpate the Roman jurisprudence in 
 that part of France. But in the south, 
 from whatever cause, it survived the 
 revolutions of the middle ages ; and thus 
 arose a leading division of that kingdom 
 into pays coutumiers and pays du droit 
 ecrit; the former regulated by a vast va- 
 riety of ancient usages, the latter by the 
 civil law. || 
 
 * Inter Romanes negotia causarum Romanis le- 
 gibus praecipimus terminari. Edict. Clotair. I., 
 circ. 560. Baluz. Capitul., t. i., p. 7. 
 
 f Giannone, 1. in., c. 2. 
 
 i Hist, de Languedoc, t. i., p. 242. Heineccius, 
 Hist. Juris German., c. i., s. 15. 
 
 () Suger, in his life of Louis VI., uses the ex- 
 pression lex Salica (Recueil des Historiens, t. xii., 
 p. 24) ; and I have some recollection of having met 
 with the like words in other writings of as modern 
 a date. But I am not convinced that the original 
 Salique code was meant by this phrase, which may 
 have been applied to the local feudal customs. 
 The capitularies of Charlemagne are frequently 
 termed lex Salica. Many of these are copied from 
 the Theodosian code. 
 
 || This division is very ancient, being found in 
 the edict of Pistes, under Charles the Bald, in 
 864 ; where we read, in illis regionibus, quae legem 
 Romanam sequuntur. (Recueil des Historiens, t. 
 vii., p. 664.) Montesquieu thinks that the Roman 
 law fell into disuse in the north of France on ac- 
 count of the superior advantages, particularly in 
 point of composition for offences, annexed to the 
 Salique-law ; while that of the Visigoths being more 
 equal, the Romans under their government had 
 no inducement to quit their own code. ( Esprit des 
 Loix, 1. xxviii., c. 4.) But it does not appear that 
 the Visigoths had any peculiar code of laws till 
 after their expulsion from the kingdom of Tou- 
 louse. They then retained only a small strip of 
 territory in France, about Narbonne and Montpe- 
 lier. 
 
 However, the distinction of men according to 
 their laws was preserved for many centuries, both 
 in France and Italy. A judicial proceeding of the 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 67 
 
 The kingdom of Clovis was divided 
 into a number of districts, each under the 
 government of a count, a name familiar 
 to Roman subjects, by which they ren- 
 dered the graf of the Germans. The 
 Provincial authority of this officer extend- 
 
 o? the" 1 " 6 " 1 ed over a11 the mnabitants > as 
 French well Franks as natives. It was 
 Empire. his duty to administer justice, 
 to preserve tranquillity, to collect the 
 royal revenues, and to lead, when requi- 
 red, the free proprietors into the field.* 
 The title of a duke implied a higher dig- 
 nity, and commonly gave authority over 
 several counties. f These offices were 
 
 year 918, published by the historians of Languedoc 
 (t. ii., Appendix, p. 56), proves that the Roman, 
 Gothic, and Salique codes were then kept perfectly 
 separate, and that there were distinct judges for 
 the three nations. The Gothic law is referred to 
 as an existing authority in a charter of 1070. 
 Idem, t. iii., p. 274. De Marca, M area Hispanica, p. 
 1159. Every man, both in France (Hist, de Lan- 
 guedoc, t. ii., Appendix, p. 69) and in Italy, seems 
 to have had the right of choosing by what law he 
 would be governed. Volumus, says Lothaire I. in 
 824, ut cunctus populus Romanus interrogetur, 
 quali lege vult vivere, ut tali, quali professi fuerint 
 vivere velle, vivant. Quod si offensionem contra 
 eandem legem fecerint, eidem legi quum profiten- 
 tur, subjacebunt. Women upon marriage usually 
 changed their law, and adopted that of their hus- 
 band, returning to their own in widowhood ; but 
 to this there are exceptions. Charters are found, 
 as late as the twelfth century, with the expression, 
 qui professus sum lege Longobardica [aut] lege 
 Salica [aut] lege Alemannorum vivere. But soon 
 afterward the distinctions were entirely lost, partly 
 through the prevalence of the Roman law, and 
 partly through the multitude of local statutes in 
 the Italian cities. Muratori, Antiquitates Italia?, 
 Dissertat. 22. Du Cange, v. Lex. Heineccius, 
 Historia Juris Germanici, c. ii., s. 51. 
 
 * Marculfi Formulae, 1. i., 32. 
 
 t Houard, the learned translator of Littleton 
 (Anciens Loix des Francois, t. i., p. 6), supposes 
 these titles to have been applied indifferently. But 
 the contrary is easily proved, and especially by a 
 line of Fortunatus, quoted by Du Cange and others : 
 
 " Qui modo dat Comitis, del tibi jura Ducis." 
 The cause of M. Houard's error may perhaps be 
 worth noticing. In the above cited form of Mar- 
 culfus, a precedent (in law language) is given for 
 the appointment of a duke, count, or patrician. 
 The material part being the same, it was only ne- 
 cessary to fill up the blanks, as we should call it, by 
 inserting the proper designation of office. It is ex- 
 pressed therefore, actionem comitatus, ducatus, aut 
 patriciatus in pago illo, quam ant ecessor t uus ille usque 
 nunc visus est egisse, tibi agendum regendumque 
 commisimus. Montesquieu has fallen into a sim- 
 ilar mistake (1. xxx., c. 16), forgetting for a mo- 
 ment, like Houard, that these instruments in Mar- 
 cuifus were not records of real transactions, but 
 general forms for future occasion. 
 
 The office of patrician is rather more obscure. 
 It seems to have nearly corresponded with what 
 was afterward called mayor of the palace, and to 
 have implied the command of all the royal forces. 
 Such at least were Celsus, and his successor Mum- 
 molus, under Gontran. This is probable too from 
 analogy. The patrician was the highest officer in 
 E2 
 
 originally conferred during pleasure ; but 
 the claim of a son to succeed his father 
 would often be found too plausible or too 
 formidable to be rejected, and it is highly 
 probable that, even under the Merovin- 
 gian kings, these provincial governors 
 had laid the foundations of that independ- 
 ence which was destined to change the 
 countenance of Europe.* The Lombard 
 dukes, those especially of Spoleto and 
 Benevento, acquired very early an hered- 
 itary right of governing their provinces, 
 and that kingdom became a sort of fed- 
 eral aristocracy.f 
 
 The throne of France was always fil- 
 led by the royal house of Meroveus. 
 However complete we may ima- ... 
 gine the elective rights of the JXr 
 Franks, it is clear that a funda- French mo- 
 mental law restrained them to narchv - 
 this family. Such indeed had been the 
 monarchy of their ancestors the Ger- 
 mans ; such long continued to be those 
 of Spain, of England, and perhaps of all 
 European nations. The reigning family 
 was immutable ; but at every vacancy 
 the heir awaited the confirmation of a 
 popular election, whether that were a 
 substantial privilege, or a mere ceremo- 
 ny. Exceptions, however, to the lineal 
 succession, are rare in the history of any 
 country, unless where an infant heir was 
 thought unfit to rule a nation of freemen. 
 But in fact it is vain to expect a system 
 
 the Roman empire, from the time of Constantino, 
 and we know how much the Franks themselves, 
 and still more their Gaulish subjects, affected to 
 imitate the style of the imperial court. 
 
 * That the offices of count and duke were origi- 
 nally but temporary, may be inferred from several 
 passages in Gregory of Tours ; as 1. v., c. 37 ; 1. viii., 
 c. 18. But it seems by the laws of the Alemanni, 
 c. 35, that the hereditary succession of their dukes 
 was tolerably established at the beginning of the 
 seventh century, when their code was promulgated. 
 The Bavarians chose their own dukes out of one 
 family, as is declared in their laws ; tit. ii., c. 1 and 
 c. 20. (Lindebrog, Codex Legum antiquarum.) 
 This the Emperor Henry II. confirms in Ditmar; 
 Npnne scitis (he says), Bajuarios ab initio ducem 
 eligendi liberam habere potestatem? (Schmidt, 
 Hist, des Allemands, t. ii., p. 404.) Indeed, the 
 consent of these German provincial nations, if I 
 may use the expression, seems to have been always 
 required, as in an independent monarchy. Ditmar, 
 a chronicler of the tenth century, says, that Eckard 
 was made Duke of Thuringia totius populi consen- 
 su. Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique, t. i., p. 184. 
 With respect to France properly so called, or the 
 kingdoms of Neu stria and Burgundy, it may be 
 less easy to prove the existence of hereditary offices 
 under the Merovingians. But the feebleness of 
 their government makes it probable that so natural 
 a symptom of disorganization had not failed to en- 
 sue. The Helvetian counts appear to have been 
 nearly independent, as early as this period. (Plan- 
 ta's Hist, of the Helvetic Confederacy, chap, i.) 
 
 t Giannonej ]. iv. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 of constitutional laws rigidly observed 
 in ages of anarchy and ignorance. Those 
 antiquaries who have maintained the 
 most opposite theories upon such points 
 are seldom in want of particular instan- 
 ces to support their respective conclu- 
 sions.* 
 
 Clovis was a leader of barbarians, who 
 Limited au- respected his valour, and the 
 thority of rank which they had given him, 
 but were incapable of servile 
 feelings, and jealous of their common as 
 well as individual rights. In order to 
 appreciate the power which he possessed, 
 we have only to look at the well-known 
 vase of story of the vase of Soissons. 
 Soissons. When the plunder taken in Clo- 
 vis's invasion of Gaul was set out in this 
 place for distribution, he begged for him- 
 self a precious vessel, belonging to the 
 church of Rheims. The army having 
 expressed their willingness to consent, 
 " You shall have nothing here," exclaim- 
 ed a soldier, striking it with his battle- 
 axe, "but what falls to your share by 
 lot." Clovis took the vessel, without 
 marking any resentment; but found an 
 opportunity, next year, of revenging him- 
 self by the death of the soldier. It is im- 
 possible to resist the inference which is 
 supplied by this story. The whole be- 
 haviour of Clovis is that of a barbarian 
 chief, not daring to withdraw any thing 
 from the rapacity, or to chastise the 
 rudeness, of his followers. 
 
 But if such was the liberty of the 
 Power of Franks when they first became 
 the kings conquerors of Gaul, we have 
 *' good reason to believe that they 
 did not long preserve it. A people not 
 very numerous spread over the spacious 
 provinces of Gaul, wherever lands were 
 assigned to, or seized by them.f It be- 
 came a burden to attend those general 
 assemblies of the nation, which were an- 
 nually convened in the month of March, 
 to deliberate upon public business, as 
 
 * Hottoman (Franco-Gallia, c. vi.) and Boulain- 
 villiers (Etat de la France) seem to consider the 
 crown as absolutely elective. The Abbe Vertot 
 (Memoires de 1'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. iv.) main- 
 tains a limited right of election within the reigning 
 family. M. de Foncemagne (t. vi. and t. viii. of 
 the same collection) asserts a strict hereditary de- 
 scent. Neither perhaps sufficiently distinguishes 
 acts of violence from those of right, nor observes 
 the changes in the French constitution between 
 Clovis and Childeric III. 
 
 t Du Bos, Hist. Critique, t. ii., p. 301, maintains 
 that Clovis had not more than 3000 or 4000 Franks 
 in his army, for which he produces some, though 
 not very ancient, authorities. The smallness of 
 the number of Salians may account for our finding 
 no mention of the partitions made in their favour. 
 See, however, Du Bos, t. iii., p. 466. 
 
 well as to exhibit a muster of military 
 strength. After some time, it appears 
 that these meetings drew together only 
 the bishops, and those invested with civil 
 offices.* The ancient inhabitants of 
 Gaul, having little notion of political lib- 
 erty, were unlikely to resist the most ty- 
 rannical conduct. Many of them became 
 officers of state and advisers of the sov- 
 ereign, whose ingenuity might teach 
 maxims of despotism unknown in the 
 forests of Germany. We shall scarcely 
 wrong the bishops by suspecting them of 
 more pliable courtliness than was natural 
 to the long-haired warriors of Clovis. f 
 Yet it is probable that some of the 
 Franks were themselves instrumental in 
 this change of their government. The 
 court of the Merovingian kings was 
 crowded with followers, who have been 
 plausibly derived from those of the 
 German chiefs described by Tacitus ; 
 men, forming a distinct and elevated 
 class in the state, and known by the ti- 
 tles of Fideles, Leudes, and Antrustiones. 
 They took an oath of fidelity to the king 
 upon their admission into that rank, and 
 were commonly remunerated with gifts 
 of land. Under different appellations we 
 find, as some antiquaries think, this class 
 of. courtiers in the early records of Lom- 
 bardy and England. The general name 
 of vassals (from Gwas, a Celtic word for 
 a servant) is applied to them in every 
 country 4 By the assistance of these 
 faithful supporters, it has been thought 
 that the regal authority of Clovis's suc- 
 cessors was ensured. However this 
 
 * Du Bos, t. iii., p. 327. Mably, Observ. sur 
 FHistoire de France, 1. i., c. 3. 
 
 t Gregory of Tours, throughout his history, 
 talks of the royal power in the tone of Louis XI V.'s 
 court. If we were obliged to believe all we read, 
 even the vase of Soissons would bear witness to 
 the obedience of the Franks. 
 
 J The Gasindi of Italy, and the Anglo-Saxon royal 
 Thane, appear to correspond, more or less, to the 
 Antrustions of France. The word Thane, howev- 
 er, was used in n. very extensive sense, and com- 
 prehended all tree proprietors of land. That of 
 Leudes seems 10 imply only subjection, and is fre- 
 quently applied to the whole body of a nation, as 
 well as, in a stricter sense, to the king's personal 
 vassals. This name they did not acquire original- 
 ly by possessing benefices, but rather, by being 
 vassals or servants, became the object of benefi- 
 ciary donations. In one of Marculfus's precedents, 
 
 I. i., f. 18, we have the form by which an Antrus- 
 tion was created. See Du Cange, under these sev- 
 eral words, and Muratori's thirteenth dissertation 
 on Italian antiquities. The Gardingi, sometimes 
 mentioned in the laws of the Visigoths, do not ap- 
 pear to be of the same description. 
 
 Boantus * * * * vallatus in domo sua, ab ho- 
 minibus regis interfectus est. Greg. Tur., 1. viii., c. 
 
 II. A few spirited retainers were sufficient to ex- 
 ecute the mandates of arbitrary power among a 
 barbarous, disunited people. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 69 
 
 may be, the annals of his more immedi- 
 ate descendants exhibit a course of op- 
 pression, not merely displayed, as will 
 often happen among uncivilized people, 
 though free, in acts of private injustice, 
 but in such general tyranny as is incom- 
 patible with the existence of any real 
 checks upon the sovereign.* 
 
 But before the middle of the seventh 
 century, the kings of this line had fallen 
 into that contemptible state which has 
 Degeneracy been described in the last chap- 
 
 faUT r yal ter ' Tne ma y rs of tne palace, 
 Mayors of who, from mere officers of the 
 the palace, court, had now become masters 
 of the kingdom, were elected by the 
 Franks, not indeed the whole body of 
 that nation, but the provincial governors, 
 and considerable proprietors of land.f 
 Some inequality there probably existed 
 from the beginning in the partition of 
 estates, and this had been greatly in- 
 creased by the common changes of prop- 
 erty, by the rapine of those savage times, 
 
 * The proofs of this may be found in almost 
 every page of Gregory : among other places, see 1. 
 iv., c. 1 ; J. vi., c. 29 ; 1. ix., c. 30. In all edicts pro- 
 ceeding from the first kings, they are careful to ex- 
 press the consent of their subjects. Clovis's lan- 
 guage runs Populus noster petit. His son Chil- 
 debert expresses himself: una cum nostris optima- 
 tibus pertractavimus convenit una cum leudis 
 nostris. But in the famous treaty of Andeley, A. 
 D. 587, no national assent seems to have been ask- 
 ed or given to its provisions, which were very im- 
 portant. And an edict of one of the Clotaires (it is 
 uncertain whether the first or second of that name, 
 though Montesquieu has given good reasons for 
 the latter) assumes a more magisterial tone, with- 
 out any mention of the Leudes. 
 
 t The revolution which ruined Brunehaut was 
 brought about by the defection of her chief nobles, 
 especially Warnachar, mayor of Austrasia. Upon 
 Clotaire II. 's victory over her, he was compelled to 
 reward these adherents at the expense of the mon- 
 archy. Warnachar was made mayor of Burgundy, 
 with an oath from the king never to dispossess him. 
 (Fredegarius, c. 42.) In 626, the nobility of Bur- 
 gundy declined to Blect a mayor, which seems to 
 have been considered as their right. From this 
 time nothing was done without the consent of the 
 aristocracy. Unless we ascribe all to the different 
 ways of thinking in Gregory and Fredegarius, the 
 one a Roman bishop, the other a Frank or Bur- 
 gundian, the government was altogether changed. 
 
 It might even be surmised, that the crown was 
 considered as more elective than before. The au- 
 thor of Gesta Regum Francorum, an old chronicler 
 who lived in those times, changes his form of ex- 
 pressing a king's accession from that of Clotaire 
 II. Of the earlier kings he says only, regnum 
 recepit. But of Clotaire, Franci quoque praedic- 
 tum Clotairium regem parvulum supra se in reg- 
 num statuerunt. Again, of the accession of Dago- 
 bert I. : Austrasii Franci superiores congregati in 
 unum. Dagobertum supra se in regnum statuunt. 
 In another place, Decedente prsefato rege Clodo- 
 veo, Franci Clotairium seniorem puerum extribus 
 sibi regem statuerunt. Several other instances 
 might be quoted. 
 
 and by royal munificence. Thus arose 
 that landed aristocracy, which became 
 the most striking feature in the political 
 system of Europe during many centuries, 
 and is in fact its great distinction, both 
 from the despotism of Asia, and the 
 equality of republican governments. 
 
 There has been some dispute about 
 the origin of nobility in France, 
 which might perhaps be settled, 
 or at least better understood, by fixing 
 our conception of the term. In our mod- 
 ern acceptation, it is usually taken to im- 
 ply certain distinctive privileges in the 
 political order, inherent in the blood of 
 the possessor, and consequently not 
 transferable like those which property 
 confers. Limited to this sense, nobility, 
 I conceive, was unknown to the con- 
 querors of Gaul till long after the down- 
 fall of the Roman empire. They felt, no 
 doubt, the common prejudice of mankind 
 in favour of those whose ancestry is con- 
 spicuous, when compared with persons 
 of obscure birth. This is the primary 
 meaning of nobility, and perfectly distin- 
 guishable from the possession of exclu- 
 sive civil rights. Those who are ac- 
 quainted with the constitution of the 
 Roman republic, will recollect an in- 
 stance of the difference between these 
 two species of hereditary distinction, in 
 the patricii and the nobiles. Though I dp 
 not think that the tribes of German ori- 
 gin paid so much regard to genealogy as 
 some Scandinavian and Celtic nations 
 (else the beginnings of the greatest 
 houses would not have been so envelop- 
 ed in doubt as we find them), there are 
 abundant traces of the respect in which 
 families of known antiquity were held 
 among them.* 
 
 But the essential distinction of ranks in 
 France, perhaps also in Spain and Lom- 
 bardy, was founded upon the possession 
 of land, or upon civil employment. The 
 aristocracy of wealth preceded that of 
 
 * The antiquity of French nobility is maintained 
 temperately by Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. i., 
 p. 361, and with acrimony by Montesquieu, Esprit 
 des Loix, 1. xxx., c. 25. Neither of them proves 
 any more than 1 have admitted. The expression 
 of Ludovicus Pius to his freedman, Rex fecit te 
 liberum, non nobilem : quod impossibile est post 
 libertatem, is very intelligible, without imagining a 
 privileged class. Of the practical regard paid to 
 birth, indeed, there are many proofs. It seems to 
 have been a recommendation in the choice of 
 bishops. (Marculfi Formulae, 1. i., c. 4, cum notis 
 Bignonii, in Baluzii Capitularibus.) It was proba- 
 bly much considered in conferring dignities. Fre- 
 degarius says of Protadius, mayor of the palace to 
 Brunehaut, Quoscunque genere nobiles reperiebat, 
 totos humiliare conabatur, ut nullus reperiretur, qui 
 gradum, quern arripuerat, potuisset assumere. 
 
70 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 birth, which indeed is still chiefly depend- 
 ant upon the other for its importance. A 
 Frank of large estate was styled a noble ; 
 if he wasted or was despoiled of his 
 wealth, his descendants fell into the 
 mass of the people, and the new pos- 
 sessor became noble in his stead. In 
 these early ages, property did not very 
 frequently change hands, and desert the 
 families who had long possessed it. 
 They were noble by descent, therefore, 
 because they were rich by the same 
 means. Wealth gave them power, and 
 power gave them pre-eminence. But no 
 distinction was made by the Salique or 
 Lombard codes in the composition for 
 homicide, the great test of political sta- 
 tion, except in favour of the king's vas- 
 sals. It seems, however, by some of the 
 barbaric codes, those namely of the Bur- 
 gundians, Visigoths, Saxons, and the Eng- 
 lish colony of the latter nation,* that the 
 free men were ranged by them into two 
 or three classes, and a difference made 
 in the price at which their lives were 
 valued: so that there certainly existed 
 the elements of aristocratic privileges, if 
 we cannot in strictness admit their com- 
 pletion at so early a period. The Antrus- 
 tions of the kings of the Franks were also 
 noble, and a composition was paid for their 
 murder treble of that for an ordinary citi- 
 zen: but this was a personal, not an 
 hereditary distinction. A link was want- 
 ing to connect their eminent privileges 
 with their posterity ; and this link was to 
 be supplied by hereditary benefices. 
 
 Besides the lands distributed among 
 Fiscal the nation, others were reserved to 
 lands, the crown, partly for the support of 
 its dignity, and partly for the exercise of 
 its munificence. These were called fis- 
 cal lands ; they were dispersed over dif- 
 ferent parts of the kingdom, and formed 
 the most regular source of revenue. f 
 But the greater portion of them were 
 granted out to favoured subjects, under 
 the name of benefices, the nature of 
 which is one of the most important 
 points in the policy of these ages. 
 
 * Leg. Burgund., tit. 26. Leg. Visigoth., 1. ii., 
 t. 2, c. 4 (in Lindebrog). Du Cange, voc. Adalingus, 
 Nobilis. Wilkins, Leg. Ang. Sax., passim. I think 
 it cannot be denied that nobility, founded either 
 upon birth or property, and distinguished from mere 
 personal freedom, entered into the Anglo-Saxon 
 system. Thus the eorl and ceorl are opposed to 
 each other, like the noble and roturier in France. 
 
 t The demesne lands of the crown are continu- 
 ally mentioned in the early writers ; the kings, in 
 journeying to different parts of their dominions, 
 took up their abode in them. Charlemagne is very 
 full in his directions as to their management Ca- 
 pitularia, A, D. 797, et alibi. 
 
 Benefices were, it is probable, 
 most frequently bestowed upon 
 the professed courtiers, the Antrustiones 
 or Leudes, and upon the provincial gov- 
 ernors. It by no means appears that 
 any conditions of military service were 
 expressly annexed to these grants : but 
 it may justly be presumed that such fa- 
 vours were not conferred without an ex- 
 pectation of some return ; and we read, 
 both in law and history, that beneficiary 
 tenants were more closely connected 
 with the crown than mere allodial pro- 
 prietors. Whoever possessed a benefice 
 was bound to serve his sovereign in the- 
 field. But of allodial proprietors only the \ 
 owner of three mansi was called upon! 
 for personal service. Where there were * 
 three possessors of single mansi, one 
 went to the army, and the others con- 
 tributed to his equipment.* Such at least 
 were the regulations of Charlemagne, 
 whom I cannot believe, with Mably, to 
 have relaxed the obligations of military 
 attendance. After the peace of Coblentz, 
 in 860, Charles the Bald restored all allo- 
 dial property belonging to his subjects 
 who had taken part against him, but not 
 his own beneficiary grants, which they 
 were considered as having forfeited. 
 
 Most of those who have written upon 
 the feudal system, lay it down that Their 
 benefices were originally precari- extent, 
 ous, and revoked at pleasure by the 
 sovereign ; that they were afterward 
 granted for life ; and, at a subsequent pe- 
 riod, became hereditary. No satisfactory 
 proof, however, appears to have been 
 brought of the first stage in this prog- 
 ress, f At least, I am not convinced, 
 
 * Capitul. Car. Mag., ann. 807 and 812. I can- 
 not define the precise area of a mansus. It con- 
 sisted, according to Du Cange, of twelve jugera ; 
 but what he meant by a juger I know not. The 
 ancient Roman juger was about five eighths of an 
 acre ; the Parisian arpent was a fourth more than 
 one. This would make a difference as two to one. 
 
 f The position which I have taken upon me to 
 controvert, is laid down in almost every writer on 
 the feudal system. Besides Sir James Craig, Spel- 
 man, and other older authors, Houard, in his An- 
 ciennes Loix des Francois, t. i., p. 5, and the edi- 
 tors of the Benedictine Collection, t. xi., p. 163, 
 
 take the same point for granted. Mably, Oh 
 tions sur 1'Histoire de France, 1. i., c. 3, call's it, 
 une verite que M. de Montesquieu a tres bien prou- 
 vee. And Robertson affirms with "unusual posi- 
 tiveness, " These benefices were granted origi- 
 nally only during pleasure. No circumstance rela- 
 ting to the customs of the middle ages is better as- 
 certained than this-, and innumerable proofs of it 
 might be added to those produced in L'Esprit des 
 Loix, and by Du Cange." HisL Charles V., vol. i., 
 not. 8. 
 
 These testimonies, which Robertson has not 
 chosen to bring forward, we cannot conjecture; 
 nor is it easy to comprehend by what felicity he 
 
 
PART L] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 71 
 
 that beneficiary grants were ever consid- 
 ered as resumable at pleasure, unless 
 where some delinquency could be impu- 
 ted to the vassal. It is possible, though 
 I am not aware of any documents which 
 prove it, that benefices may, in some in- 
 stances, have been granted for a term of 
 years, since even fiefs, in much later 
 times, were occasionally of no greater 
 extent. Their ordinary duration, how- 
 ever, was at least the life of the posses- 
 sor, after which they reverted to the 
 
 has discovered, in the penury of historical records 
 during the sixth and seventh centuries, innumera- 
 ble proofs of a usage which, by the confession of 
 all, did not exist at any later period. But as the 
 authorities quoted by Montesquieu have appeared 
 conclusive both to Mably and Robertson, it may 
 be proper to examine them separately. The fol- 
 lowing is the passage in the L'Esprit des Loix on 
 which they rely. 
 
 On ne peut pas douter que d'abord les fiefs ne 
 fussent amovibles. On voit, dans Gregoire de 
 Tours, que 1'on ote a Sunegisile et a Galloman 
 tout ce qu'ils tenoient du rise, et qu'on ne leur 
 laisse que ce qu'ils avoient en propriete. Gontran, 
 elevant au trone son neveu Childebert, eut une 
 conference secrette avec lui, et lui indiqua ceux a 
 qui il devoit donner des fiefs, et ceuxnqui ildevoit 
 les oter. Dans une formule de Marculfe, le roi 
 donne en echange, non seulement des benefices 
 que son fisc tenoit, mais encore ceux qu'un autre 
 avoit tenus. La loi des Lombards oppose les ben- 
 efices a la propriete. Les historiens, les formules, 
 les codes des differens peuples barbares, tous les 
 monumens qui nous restent, sont unanimes. En- 
 fin, ceux qui ont ecrit le Livre des Fiefs, nous ap- 
 prennent que d'abord les seigneurs purent les oter 
 a leur volonte, qu'ensuite ils les assurerent pour un 
 an, et apres les donne rent pour toujours, l.xxx., c.16. 
 
 The first of Montesquieu's authorities is from 
 Gregory of Tours, 1. ix., c. 38. Sunegisilus and 
 Gallomagnus, two courtiers of Childebert, having 
 been accused of a treasonable conspiracy, fled to 
 sanctuary, and refused to stand their trial. Their 
 beneficiary lands were upon this very justly taken 
 away by a judicial sentence. What argument can 
 be drawn from a case of forfeiture for treason or 
 outlawry, that benefices were granted only during 
 pleasure? 2. Gontran is said by Gregory to have 
 advised his nephew Childebert, quos honoraret 
 muneribus, quos ab honore depelleret, 1. vii., 33. 
 But honour is more commonly used in the earliest 
 writers for an office of dignity than for a landed es- 
 tate ; and even were the word to bear in this place 
 the latter meaning, we could not fairly depend on 
 an authority, drawn from times of peculiar tyranny 
 and civil convulsion. I am not contending that 
 men were secure in their beneficiary, since they 
 certainly were not so in their allodial estates : the 
 sole question is as to the right they were supposed 
 to possess in respect of them. 3. in the precedent 
 of Marculfus, quoted by Montesquieu, the king is 
 supposed to grant lands which some other person 
 had lately held. But this is meant as a designation 
 of the premises, and would be perfectly applicable, 
 though the late possessor were dead. 4. It is cer- 
 tainly true that the Lombard laws (that is, laws 
 enacted by the successors of Charlemagne in Lom- 
 bardy), and the general tenour of ancient records, 
 with a few exceptions, oppose benefices to propri- 
 ety : but it does not follow that the former were 
 revocable at pleasure. This opposition of allodial 
 
 fisc.* Nor can I agree with those who 
 deny the existence of hereditary benefi- 
 ces under the first race of French kings. 
 The codes of the Burgundians and of the 
 Visigoths, which advert to them, are, by 
 analogy, witnesses to the contrary.! The 
 precedents given in the forms of Marcul- 
 fus (about 660) for the grant of a bene- 
 fice, contain very full terms, extending it 
 to the heirs of the beneficiary.! And 
 Mably has plausibly inferred the perpetu- 
 ity of benefices, at least in some instan- 
 
 to feudal estates subsists at present, though the ten- 
 ure of the latter is any thing rather than precarious. 
 5. As to the Libri Feudorum, which are a compila- 
 tion by some Milanese lawyers in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, they cannot be deemed of much authority for 
 the earlier history of the feudal system in France. 
 There is certainly reason to think, that even in the 
 eleventh century, the tenure of fiefs in some parts 
 of Lombardy was rather precarious ; but whether 
 this were by any other law than that of the strong- 
 er, it would be hard to determine. 
 
 Du Cange, to whom Robertson also refers, gives 
 this definition of a benefice ; prsedium fiscale, quod 
 a rege vel principe, vel ab alio quolibet ad vitam 
 viro nobili utendum conceditur. In a subsequent 
 place, indeed, he says : nee tantum erant ad vi- 
 tam, sed pro libitu auferebantur. For this he only 
 cites a letter of the bishops to Louis the Debonair ; 
 Ecclesiae nobis a Deo commissae non talia sunt 
 beneficia, et hujusmodi regis proprietas, ut pro lib- 
 itu suo inconsulte illas possit dare, aut auferre. 
 But how slight a foundation does this afford for 
 the inference that lay benefices were actually lia- 
 ble to be resumed at pleasure ! Suppose even this 
 to be a necessary application in the argument of 
 those bishops, is it certain that they stated the law 
 of their country with accuracy ? Do we not find 
 greater errors than this every day in men's speech 
 and writings, relative to points with which they 
 are not immediately concerned ? In fact, there is 
 no manner of doubt that benefices were granted 
 not only for life, but as inheritances, in the reign of 
 Loui.s. In the next sentence Du Cange adds a 
 qualification which puts an end to the controversy, 
 so far as his authority is concerned ; Non temere 
 tamen, nee sine legali judicio auferebantur. That 
 those two sentences contradict each other is man- 
 ifest ; the latter, in my opinion, is the more correct 
 position. 
 
 * The following passage from Gregory of Tours 
 seems to prove, that although sons were occasion- 
 ally permitted to succeed their fathers, an indul- 
 gence which easily grew up into a right, the crown 
 had, in his time, an unquestionable reversion after 
 the death of its original beneficiary. Hoc tempore 
 et "Wandelinus, nutritor Childeberti regis, obiit ; 
 sed in locum ejus nullus est subrogatus, eo quod 
 regina mater curam velit propriam habere de filio. 
 Qucecunque de fisco meruit, fisci juribus sunt relata. 
 Obiit his diebus Bodegesilus dux plenus dierum ; 
 sed nihil de facultate eius filiis minutum est, 1. viii., 
 c. 22. Gregory's work, however, does not go far- 
 ther than 595. 
 
 t Leges Bargundionum, tit i. Leges Wisigoth., 
 1. v., tit. 2. 
 
 J Marculf., form. xii. and xiv.,1. i. This prece- 
 dent was in use down to the eleventh century ; its 
 expressions recur in almost every charter. The 
 earliest instance I have seen of an actual grant to 
 a private person, is of Charlemagne to one John, ia 
 795. Baluzii Capitularia, t. ii., p. 1400. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 ces, from the language of the treaty at 
 Andely in 587, and of an edict of Clotaire 
 II. some years later.* We can hardly 
 doubt at least that children would put in 
 a very strong claim to what their father 
 had enjoyed ; and the weakness of the 
 crown in the seventh century must have 
 rendered it difficult to reclaim its property. 
 A natural consequence of hereditary 
 Sub-infeu- benefices was that those who 
 dation. possessed them carved out por- 
 tions to be held of themselves by a simi- 
 lar tenure. Abundant proofs of this cus- 
 tom, best known by the name of sub-in- 
 feudatipn, occur even in the capitularies 
 of Pepin and Charlemagne. At a later 
 period it became universal ; and what 
 had begun perhaps through ambition or 
 pride, was at last dictated by necessity. 
 In that dissolution of all law which en- 
 sued after the death of Charlemagne, the 
 powerful leaders, constantly engaged in 
 domestic warfare, placed their chief de- 
 pendance upon men whom they attached 
 by gratitude, and bound by strong condi- 
 tions. The oath of fidelity which they 
 had taken, the homage which they had 
 paid to the sovereign, they exacted from 
 their own vassals. To render military 
 service became the essential obligation 
 which the tenant of a benefice under- 
 took; and out of those ancient grants, 
 now become for the most part hereditary, 
 there grew up in the tenth century, both 
 in name and reality, the system of feudal 
 tenures. f 
 
 * Quicquid antefati reges ecclesiis aut fidelibus 
 suis contulerunt, aut adhuc conferre cum justitia 
 Deo propitiante voluerint, stabiliter conservetur; 
 et quicquid unicuique fidelium in utriusquei regno 
 per legem et justitiam redhibetur, nullum ei prae- 
 judicium ponatur, sed liceat res debitas possidere 
 atque recipere. Et si aliquid unicuique per inter- 
 regna sine culpa sublatum est, audientia habita 
 restauretur. Et de eo quod per munificentias prae- 
 cedentium regum unusquisque usque ad transitum 
 gloriosae memoriae domini Chlothacharii regis pos- 
 sedit, cum securitate possideat ; et quod exinde 
 fidelibus personis ablatum est, de praesenti recipiat. 
 Foedus Andeliacum, in Gregor. Turon., 1. ix., c. 20. 
 
 Quaecunque ecclesiae vel clericis vel quibuslibet 
 personis a gloriosae memoriae praefatis principibus 
 munificentise largitate collatae sunt, omni rirmitate 
 perdurent. Edict. Chlotachar. I. vel potius II. in 
 Recueil des Historiens, t. iv., p. 116. 
 
 f Somner says, that he has not found the word 
 feudum anterior to the year 1000 ; and Muratori, a 
 still greater authority, doubts whether it was used 
 so early. I have, however, observed the words 
 feum and fevum, which are manifestly corruptions 
 of feudum, in several charters about 960. Vais- 
 sette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., Appendix, p. 107, 
 128, et alibi. Some of these fiefs appear not to 
 have been hereditary. But, independently of pos- 
 itive instances, can it be doubted that some word 
 of barbarous original must have answered, in the 
 vernacular languages, to the Latin beneficium ? See 
 Du Cange v. Feudum. 
 
 This revolution was accompanied by 
 another still more important. usurpation 
 The provincial governors, the of provincial 
 dukes and counts, to whom g vernor - 
 we may add the marquises or mar- 
 graves, intrusted with the custody of the 
 frontiers, had taken the lead in all pub- 
 lic measures after the decline of the 
 Merovingian kings. Charlemagne, duly 
 jealous of their ascendency, checked it 
 by suffering the dutchies to expire with- 
 out renewal, by granting very few coun- 
 ties hereditarily, by removing the admin- 
 istration of justice from the hands of the 
 counts into those of his own itinerant 
 judges, and, if we are not deceived in 
 his policy, by elevating the ecclesiasti- 
 cal order as a counterpoise to that of the 
 nobility. Even in his time, the faults of 
 the counts are the constant theme of the 
 capitularies ; their dissipation and neglect 
 of duty, their oppression of the poorer 
 proprietors, and their artful attempts to 
 appropriate the crown lands situated 
 within their territory.* If Charlemagne 
 was unable to redress those evils, how 
 much must they have increased under 
 his posterity ! That great prince seldom 
 gave more than one county to the same 
 person ; and, as they were generally of 
 moderate size, co-extensive with episco- 
 pal diocesses, there was less danger, if 
 this policy had been followed, of their 
 becoming independent.! But Louis the 
 Debonair, and, in a still greater degree, 
 Charles the Bald, allowed several coun- 
 ties to be enjoyed by the same person. 
 The possessors constantly aimed at ac- 
 quiring private estates within the limits 
 of their charge, and thus both rendered 
 themselves formidable, and assumed a 
 kind of patrimonial right to their digni- 
 ties. By a capitulary of Charles the 
 Bald, A. D. 877, the succession of a son 
 to the father's county appears to be rec- 
 ognised as a known usage. t In the next 
 century there^ followed an entire prostra- 
 tion of the royal authority, and the counts 
 usurped their governments as little sover- 
 eignties, with the domains and all rega- 
 lian rights, subject only to the feudal su- 
 periority of the king. They now added 
 
 * Capitularia Car. Mag. et Lud. Pii., passim. 
 Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. ii.,p. 158. Gail- 
 lard, Vie de Charlem., t. iii., p. 118. 
 
 t Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. i., p. 587, 
 700, and not. 87. 
 
 t Baluzii Capitularia, t. ii., p. 263 and 269. 
 This is a questionable point, and most French an- 
 tiquaries consider this famous capitulary as the 
 foundation of an hereditary right in counties. I 
 am inclined to think that there was at least a 
 practice of succession, which is implied and guar- 
 antied by this provision. 
 
 $ It appears, by the record of a process in 918, 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 the name of the county to their own, 
 and their wives took the appellation of 
 countess.* In Italy, the independence 
 of the dukes was still more complete ; 
 and although Otho the Great and his de- 
 scendants kept a stricter rein over those 
 of Germany, yet we find the great fiefs 
 of their empire, throughout the tenth cen- 
 tury, granted almost invariably to the 
 male and even female heirs of the last 
 possessor. 
 
 Meanwhile, the allodial proprietors, 
 Change of w ^ na( ^ hitherto formed the 
 aiiodiai into strength of the state, fell into a 
 feudal te- muc h worse condition. They 
 were exposed to the rapacity of 
 the counts, who, whether as magistrates 
 and governors, or as overbearing lords, 
 had it always in their power to harass 
 them. Every district was exposed to 
 continual hostilities ; sometimes from a 
 foreign enemy, more often from the own- 
 ers of castles and fastnesses, which in the 
 tenth century, under pretence of resisting 
 the Normans and Hungarians, served the 
 purposes of private war. Against such a 
 system of rapine, the military compact 
 of lord and vassal was the only effectual 
 shield; its essence was the reciprocity 
 of service and protection. But an insula- 
 ted allodialist had no support : his for- 
 tunes were strangely changed, since he 
 claimed, at least in right, a share in the 
 legislation of his country, and could com- 
 pare with pride his patrimonial fields with 
 the temporary benefices of the crown. 
 Without law to redress his injuries, with- 
 out the royal power to support his right, 
 he had no course left but to compromise 
 with oppression, and subject himself, in 
 return for protection, to a feudal lord. 
 During the tenth and eleventh centuries 
 it appears that allodial lands in France had 
 chiefly become feudal : that is, they had 
 been surrendered by their proprietors, 
 and received back again upon the feudal 
 conditions ; or, more frequently, perhaps, 
 the owner had been compelled to ac- 
 knowledge himself the man or vassal of a 
 suzerain, and thus to confess an original 
 grant which had never existed. f Changes 
 
 that the counts of Toulouse had already so far 
 usurped the rights of their sovereign, as to claim 
 an estate on the ground of its being a royal bene- 
 fice. Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., Appen., p. 56. 
 
 * Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. i., p. 588, and 
 infii, t. ii., p. 38, 109. and Appendix, p. 56. 
 
 t Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., p. 109. It must be 
 confessed, that there do not occur so many specific 
 instances of this conversion of allodial tenure into 
 feudal, as might be expected, in order to warrant 
 the supposition in the text. Several records, how- 
 ever, are quoted by Robertson, Hist. Charles V., 
 note 8 ; and others may be found in diplomatic col- 
 lections. A precedent for surrendering allodial prop- 
 
 of the same nature, though not perhaps 
 so extensive, or so distinctly to be traced, 
 took place in Italy and Germany. Yet 
 it would be inaccurate to assert that the 
 prevalence of the feudal system has been 
 unlimited ; in a great part of France, allo- 
 dial tenures always subsisted ; and many 
 estates in the empire were of the same 
 description.* 
 
 There are, however, vestiges of a very 
 universal custom distinguishable 
 from the feudal tenure of land, ofpersonai 
 though so analogous to it, that it commend- 
 seems to have nearly escaped auon> 
 the notice of antiquaries. From this si- 
 lence of other writers, and the great ob- 
 scurity of the subject, I am almost afraid 
 to notice, what several passages in an- 
 cient laws and instruments concur to 
 prove, that, ./besides the relation establish- 
 ed betweenlord and vassal by beneficiary 
 grants, there was another species more 
 personal, and more closely resembling, 
 that of patron and client in the Roman 
 republic. This was usually called com- 
 mendation; and appears to have been 
 founded on two very general principles, 
 both of which the distracted state of so- 
 ciety inculcated. The weak needed the- - 
 protection of the powerful ; and the gov- 
 ernment needed some security for public 
 order. Even before the invasion of the 
 Franks, Salvian, a writer of the fifth cen- 
 tury, mentions the custom of obtaining 
 
 erty to the king, and receiving it back as his bene- 
 fice, appears even in Marculfus, 1. i., form. 13. The 
 county of Cominges, between the Pyrenees, Tou- 
 louse, and Bigorre, was allodial till 1244, when it 
 was put under the feudal protection of the Count 
 of Toulouse. It devolved by escheat to the crown 
 in 1443. Villaret, t. xv., p. 346. 
 
 In many early charters, the king confirms the 
 possession even of allodial property, for greater se- 
 curity in lawless times ; and, on the other hand, in 
 those of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the word 
 allodium is continually used for a feud, or heredita- 
 ry benefice, which renders this subject still more 
 obscure. 
 
 * The maxim, Nulle terre sans seigneur, was so 
 far from being universally received in France, that 
 in almost all southern provinces, or pays du droit 
 ecrit, lands were presumed to be allodial, unless 
 the contrary was shown, or, as it was called, franc- 
 aleux sans titre. The parliaments, however, seem 
 latterly to have inclined against this presumption, 
 and have thrown the burden of proof on the party 
 claiming allodiality. For this see Denisart, Dic- 
 tionnaire des Decisions, art. Franc-aleu. And the 
 famous maxim of the Chancellor Duprat, nulle 
 terre sans seigneur, was true, as I learn from the 
 dictionary of Houard, with respect to jurisdiction, 
 though false as to tenure ; allodial lands insulated 
 (enclaves) within the fief of a lord, being subject 
 to his territorial justice. Diet, de Houard, art. 
 Aleu. 
 
 In Germany, according to Du Cange, voc. Baro, 
 there is a distinction between Barones and Sem- 
 per-Barones ; the latter holding their lands allo- 
 dially. 
 
74 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 the protection of the great by money, and 
 blames their rapacity, though he allows 
 the natural reasonableness of the prac- 
 tice.* The disadvantageous condition of 
 the less powerful freemen, which ended 
 in the servitude of one part, and in the 
 feudal vassalage of another, led such as 
 fortunately still preserved their allodial 
 property to ensure its defence by a stipu- 
 lated payment of money. Such pay- 
 ments, called Salvamenta, may be traced 
 in extant charters, chiefly indeed of mon- 
 asteries.! In the case of private persons, 
 it may be presumed that this voluntary 
 contract was frequently changed by the 
 stronger party into a perfect feudal de- 
 pendance. From this, however, as I 
 imagine, it proj>erly differed in being ca- 
 pable of dissolution at the inferior's pleas- 
 ure, without incurring a forfeiture, as well 
 ,as in having no relation to land. / Hom- 
 age, however, seems to have been inci- 
 i dent to commendation, as well as to vas- 
 salage. Military service was sometimes 
 -Hhe condition of this engagement. It was 
 the law of France, so late at least as the 
 commencement of the third race of kings, 
 that no man could take a part in private 
 wars except in defence of his own lord. 
 This we learn from an historian about the 
 end of the tenth century, who relates that 
 one Erminfrid, having been released from 
 his homage to Count Burchard, on ceding 
 the fief he had held of him to a monas- 
 tery, renewed the ceremony on a war 
 breaking out between Burchard and an- 
 other nobleman, wherein he was desirous 
 to give assistance; since, the author ob- 
 serves, it is not, nor has been the prac- 
 tice in France, for any man to be con- 
 cerned in war, except in the presence or 
 by the command of his lord.J Indeed, 
 there is reason to infer, from the capitu- 
 T^laries of Charles the Bald, that every man 
 | was bound to attach himself to some lord, 
 I though it was the privilege of a freeman 
 " to choose his own superior. $ And this 
 
 * Du Cange, v. Salvamentum. 
 
 t Id., Ibid. 
 
 j Recueil des Historians, t. x., p. 355. 
 
 $ Unusquisque liber homo, post mortem domini 
 sui, licentiam habeat se commendandi inter hoec 
 tria regna ad quemcunque voluerit. Similiter et 
 ille qui nondum alicui commendatus est. Baluzii 
 Capitularia, tome i., p. 443. A. D. 806. Volumus 
 etiam ut unusquisque liber homo in nostro regno 
 seniorem qualem voluerit in nobis et in nostris 
 fidelibus recipiat. Capit. Car. Calvi. A. D. 877. 
 Et volumus ut cujuscunque nostrum homo, in cu- 
 juscunque regno sit, cum seniore suo in hostem, 
 vel, aliis suis utilitatibus pergat. Ibid. See too 
 Baluze, t. i., p. 536, 537. 
 
 By the Establishments of St. Louis, c. 87, every 
 stranger coming to settle within a barony was to 
 acknowledge the baron as lord within a year and a 
 
 is strongly supported by the analogy of 
 our Anglo-Saxon laws, where it is fre- 
 quently repeated, that no man should con- 
 tinue without a lord. There are, too, as 
 it seems to me, a great number of pas- 
 sages in Domesday-book which confirm 
 this distinction between personal com- 
 mendation and the beneficiary tenure of 
 land. Perhaps I may be thought to dwell 
 too prolixly on this obscure custom ; but 
 as it tends to illustrate those mutual re- 
 lations of lord and vassal which supplied 
 the place of regular government in the 
 polity of Europe, and has seldom or never 
 been explicitly noticed, its introduction 
 seemed not improper. 
 
 It has been sometimes said that feuds 
 were first rendered hereditary in Ger- 
 many by Conrad II., surnamed Edict of Con- 
 the Salic. This opinion is per- rad the Salic. 
 haps erroneous. But there is a famous; 
 edict of that emperor at Milan, in the yeai 
 1037, which, though immediately relating 
 only to Lombardy, marks the full matu- 
 rity of the system, and the last stage of 
 its progress.* I have remarked already 
 the custom of sub-infeudation, or grants 
 of lands by vassals to be held of them- 
 selves, which had grown up with the 
 growth of these tenures. There had oc- f 
 curred, however, some disagreement, for / 
 want of settled usage, between these in-; 
 ferior vassals and their immediate lords, 
 which this edict was expressly designed 
 to remove. Four regulations of great 
 importance are established therein ; that 
 no man should be deprived of his fief, 
 whether held of the emperor or a mesne 
 lord, but by the laws of the empire, and 
 the judgment of his peers ;f that from 
 
 day, or pay a fine. In some places, he even be- 
 came the serf or villein of the lord. Ordonnances 
 des Rois, p. 187. Upon this jealousy of unknown 
 settlers, which pervades the policy of the middle 
 ages, was founded the droit d'aubaine, or right to 
 their moveables after their decease. See preface 
 to Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 15. 
 
 The article Commendatio, in Du Cange's Glos- 
 sary, furnishes some hints upon this subject, which 
 however that author does not seem to have fully 
 apprehended. Carpentier, in his Supplement to 
 the Glossary, under the word Vassaticum, gives 
 the clearest notice of it that I have anywhere 
 found. Since writing the above note, I have found 
 the subject touched by M. de. Montlosier, Hist, de 
 la Monarchic Franchise, t. i., p. 854. 
 
 * Spelman tells us, in his Treatise of Feuds, 
 chap, ii., that Conradus Salicus, a French emperor, 
 but of German descent [what can this mean?], went 
 to Rome about 915 to fetch his crown from Pope 
 John X., when, according to him, the succession 
 of a son to his father's fief was first conceded. An 
 almost unparalleled blunder in so learned a writer ! 
 Conrad the Salic was elected at Worms in 1024, 
 crowned at Rome by John XIX. in 1027, and made 
 this edict at Milan in 1037. 
 
 f Nisi secundum constitutionem antecessorum 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 " 
 
 such judgment an immediate vassal might 
 appeal to his sovereign ; that fiefs should 
 be inherited by sons and their children ; 
 or, in their failure, by brothers, provided 
 they were feuda paterna, such as had de- 
 scended from the father ;* and that the 
 lord should not alienate the fief of his 
 vassal without his consent.f 
 
 Such was the progress of these feudal 
 tenures, which determined the political 
 character of every European monarchy 
 where they prevailed, as well as formed 
 the foundations of its jurisprudence. It 
 is certainly inaccurate to refer this sys- 
 tem, as is frequently done, to the destruc- 
 tion of the Roman empire by the northern 
 nations, though in the beneficiary grants 
 of those conquerors we trace its begin- 
 ning. Five centuries, however, elapsed 
 before the allodial tenures, which had 
 been incomparably the more general, 
 gave way, and before the reciprocal con- 
 tract of the feud attained its maturity. It 
 is now time to describe the legal quali- 
 ties and effects of this relation, so far 
 only as may be requisite to understand 
 its influence upon the political system. 
 
 The essential principle of a fief was a 
 Principles mutua l contract of support and 
 of a feudal fidelity. Whatever obligations 
 relation. j t ^[^ U p O n the vassal of ser- 
 vice to his lord, corresponding duties 
 of protection were imposed by it on 
 the lord towards his vassal. I If these 
 were transgressed on either side, the 
 
 nostrorum, et judicium parium suorum ; the very 
 expressions of Magna Charta. 
 
 * " Gerardus noteth," says Sir H. Spelman, " that 
 this law settled not the feud upon the eldest son, 
 or any other son of the feudatory particularly ; but 
 left it in the lord's election to please himself with 
 which he would." But the phrase of the edict 
 runs, filios ejus beneficium tenere : which, when 
 nothing more is said, can only mean a partition 
 among the sons. 
 
 t The last provision may seem strange, at so ad- 
 vanced a period of the system ; yet, according to 
 Giannone, feuds were still revocable by the lord in 
 some parts of Lombardy. Istoria di Napoli, 1. xiii., 
 c. 3. It seems, however, no more than had been 
 already enacted by the first clause of this edict. 
 Another interpretation is possible; namely, that 
 the lord should not alienate his own seignory with- 
 out his vassal's consent, which was agreeable to 
 the feudal tenures. This indeed would be putting 
 rather a forced construction on the words, ne do- 
 mino feudum militis alienare liceat. 
 
 J Crag.,Jus Feudale,!. ii., tit. 11. Beaumanoir, 
 Coutumes de Beauvoisis, c. Ixi., p. 311. Ass. de 
 Jerus., c. 217. Lib. Feud., 1. ii., tit. 26, 47. 
 
 Upon the mutual obligation of the lord towards 
 his vassal seems to be founded the law of warranty, 
 which compelled him to make indemnification 
 where the tenant was evicted of his land. This 
 obligation, however unreasonable it may appear to 
 us, extended, according to the feudal lawyers, to 
 cases of mere donation. Crag., 1. ii.,tit. 4. But- 
 ler's Notes on Co. Litt,, p. 365. 
 
 one forfeited his land, the other his 
 seigniory, or rights over it. Nor were 
 motives of interest left alone to operate 
 in securing the feudal connexion. The 
 associations founded upon ancient custom 
 and friendly attachment, the impulses of 
 gratitude and honour, the dread of infamy, 
 the sanctions of religion, were all em- 
 ployed to strengthen these ties, and to 
 render them equally powerful with the 
 relations of nature, and far more so than 
 those of political society. It is a ques- 
 tion agitated among the feudal lawyers, 
 whether a vassal is bound to follow the 
 standard of his lord against his own 
 kindred.* It was one more important, 
 whether he must do so against the king. 
 In the works of those who wrote when 
 the feudal system was declining, or who 
 were anxious to maintain the royal 
 authority, this is commonly decided in 
 the negative. Littleton gives a form of 
 homage, with a reservation of the allegi- 
 ance due to the sovereign ;f and the same 
 prevailed in Normandy and some other 
 countries.;}: A law of Frederick Barba- 
 rossa enjoins, that in every oath of fealty : 
 to an inferior lord, the vassal's duty to the ; 
 emperor should be expressly reserved. ; 
 But it was not so during the height of the 
 feudal system in France. The vassals 
 of Henry II. and Richard I. never hesi- 
 tated to adhere to them against the sover- 
 eign, nor do they appear to have incur- 
 red any blame on that account. Even 
 so late as the age of St. Louis, it is laid 
 down in his establishments, that if justice 
 is refused by the king to one of his vas- 
 sals, he might summon his own tenants, 
 under penalty of forfeiting their fiefs, to 
 assist him in obtaining redress by arms. 
 
 * Crag., 1. ii., tit. 4. t Sect. Ixxxv. 
 
 $ Houard, Anc. Loix des Frangois, p. 114. See 
 too an instance of this reservation in Recueil des 
 Historiens, t. xi., 447. 
 
 Si le Sire dit a son homme lige ; Venez vous 
 en avec moi, je veux guerroyer mon Seigneur, qui 
 me denie le jugement de sa cour, le vassal doit re- 
 pondre; j'irai scavoir, s'il est ainsi que vous me 
 dites. Alors il doit aller trouver le supSrieur, et 
 luy dire : Sire, le gentilhpmme de qui je tiens mon 
 fief, se plaint que vous lui refusez justice ; je viens 
 pour en scavoir la verite ; car je suis semonc6 de 
 marcher en guerre centre vous. Si la reponse est 
 que volon tiers il fera droit en sa cour, 1'homme 
 n'est point oblige de deferer a la requisition du 
 Sire; mais il doit, ou le suhre, ou se resoudre a 
 perdre son fief, si le chef Seigneur persiste dans 
 son refus. Etablissemens de St. Louis, c. 49. I 
 have copied this from Velly, t. vi., p. 213, who has 
 modernized the orthography, which is almost unin- 
 telligible in the Ordonnances des Rois. One MS. 
 gives the reading Roi instead of Seigneur. And the 
 law certainly applies to the king exclusively ; for, in 
 case of denial of justice by a mesnelord, there was 
 an appeal to the king's court, but from his injury 
 there could be no appeal but to the sword. 
 
76 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 The Count of Britany, Pierre de Dreux, 
 had practically asserted this feudal right 
 during the minority of St. Louis. In a 
 public instrument he announced to the 
 world that, having met with repeated in- 
 juries from the regent, and denial of jus- 
 tice, he had let the king know that he no 
 longer considered himself as his vassal, 
 but renounced his homage and defied 
 him.* 
 
 The ceremonies used in conferring a 
 fief were principally three : homage, fe- 
 Ceremonies of, alty, and investiture. 1. The 
 i. Homage. first was designed as a signif- 
 icant expression of the submission and 
 devotedness of the vassal towards his 
 lord. In performing homage, his head 
 was uncovered, his belt ungirt, his sword 
 and spurs removed ; he placed his hands, 
 kneeling, between those of the lord, and 
 promised to become his man from thence- 
 forward ; to serve him with life and limb 
 and worldly honour, faithfully and loyal- 
 ly, in consideration of the lands which he 
 held under him. None but the lord in 
 person could accept homage, which was 
 commonly concluded by a kiss.f 2. An 
 oath of fealty was indispensable 
 y " in every fief; but the ceremony 
 was less peculiar than that of homage, 
 and it might be received by proxy. It 
 was taken by ecclesiastics, but not by 
 minors ; and in language differed little 
 3. inves- from the form of homage. J 3. In- 
 titure. vestiture, or the actual convey- 
 ance of feudal lands, was of two kinds ; 
 proper and improper. The first was an 
 actual putting in possession upon the 
 ground, either by the lord or his deputy ; 
 which is called, in our law, livery of 
 seisin. The second was symbolical, and 
 cTTIlsfcsted in the delivery of a turf, a 
 
 * Du Cange, Observations sur Joinville, in Col- 
 lection des Memoires, t. i., p. 196. It was always 
 necessary for a vassal to renounce his homage be- 
 fore he made war on his lord, if he would avoid 
 the shame and penalty of feudal treason. After a 
 reconciliation, the homage was renewed. And in 
 this no distinction was made between the king and 
 another superior. Thus Henry II. did homage to 
 the King of France in 1188, having renounced his 
 former obligation to him at the commencement of 
 the preceding war. Matt. Paris, p. 126. 
 
 f Du Cange, Hominium, and Carpentier's Sup- 
 plement, id. voc. Littleton, s. 85. Assises de Jeru- 
 salem, c. 204. Crag., 1. i., tit. 11. Recueil des His- 
 toriens, t. ii., preface, p. 174. Homagium per pa- 
 ragium was unaccompanied by any feudal obliga- 
 tion, and distinguished from homagium ligeum, 
 which carried with it an obligation of fidelity. The 
 dukes of Normandy rendered only homage per 
 paragium to the kings of France, and received the 
 like from the dukes of Britany. In liege homage, 
 it was usual to make reservations of allegiance 
 to the king, or any other lord whom the homager 
 had previously acknowledged. 
 
 t LittL, s. 91. Du Cange, voc. Fidelitas. 
 
 stone, a wand, a branch, or whatever else 
 might have been made usual by the ca- 
 price of local custom. Du Cange enu- 
 merates not less than ninety-eight varie- 
 ties of investitures.* 
 
 Upon investiture, the duties of the vas- 
 sal commenced. These it is im- obligations 
 possible to define or enumerate ; of a vassal, 
 because the services of military tenure, 
 which is chiefly to be considered, were ^ 
 in their nature uncertain, and distinguish- 
 ed as such from those incident to feuds 
 of an inferior description. It was a 
 breach of faith to divulge the lord's coun- 
 sel, to conceal from him the machinations 
 of others, to injure his person or fortune, 
 or, to violate the sanctity of his roof and 
 th<3 honour of his family, f In battle he 
 was bound to lend his horse to his lord 
 when dismounted ; to adhere to his side 
 while fighting ; and to go into captivity, 
 as a hostage for him, when taken. His 
 
 * Du Cange, voc. Investitura. 
 
 t Assises de Jerusalem, c. 265. Home ne doit 
 a la feme de son seigneur, ne a sa fille requerre vi- 
 lainie de son cors, ne a sa sreur tant com elk est de- 
 moiselle en son hostel. I mention this part of feudal 
 duty on account of the light it throws on the stat- 
 ute of treasons, 25 E. III. One of the treasons 
 therein specified is, si omne violast la compaigne 
 le roy, ou leigntfile leroy nientmarid ou la compaig- 
 ne leigne fitz et heire le roy. Those who, like Sir 
 E. Coke and the modern lawyers in general, ex- 
 plain this provision by the political danger of con- 
 fusing the royal blood, do not apprehend its spirit. 
 It would be absurd, upon such grounds, to render 
 the violation of the king's eldest daughter treason- 
 able, so long only as she remains unmarried, when, 
 as is obvious, the danger of a spurious issue inher- 
 iting could not arise. I consider this provision 
 therefore as entirely founded upon the feudal prin- 
 ciples, which make it a breach of faith (that is, in 
 the primary sense of the word, a treason) to sully 
 the honour of the lord in that of the near relations 
 who were immediately protected by residence in 
 his house. If it is asked why this should be re- 
 stricted by the statute to the person of the eldest 
 daughter, I can only answer that this, which is not 
 more reasonable according to the common political 
 interpretation, is analogous to many feudal cus- 
 toms in our own and other countries, which attrib- 
 ute a sort of superiority in dignity to the eldest 
 daughter. 
 
 It may be objected, that in the reign of Edward 
 III. there was little left of the feudal principle in 
 any part of Europe, and least of all in England. 
 But the statute of treasons is a declaration of the 
 ancient law, and comprehends, undoubtedly, what 
 the judges who drew it could find in records now 
 perished, or in legal traditions of remote antiquity. 
 Similar causes of forfeiture are enumerated in the 
 Libri Feudorum, 1. i., tit. 5, and 1. ii., tit. 24. In the 
 establishments of St. Louis, c. 51, 52, it is said, 
 that a lord seducing his vassal's daughter intrust- 
 ed to his custody, lost his seigniory ; a vassal 
 guilty of the same crime towards the family of his 
 suzerain, forfeited his land. A proof of the tendency 
 which the feudal law had to purify public morals, 
 and to create that sense of indignation and resent- 
 ment with which we now regard such breaches of 
 honour. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 77 
 
 attendance was due to the lord's courts 
 sometimes to witness, and sometimes to 
 bear a part in, the administration of jus 
 tice.* 
 
 The measure, however, of military ser 
 Limitations vice, was generally settled by 
 of military some usage. Fortydays was 
 the usual term, aurm^pwhich 
 the tenant of a knight's fee was bound to 
 be in the field at his own expense. f This 
 was extended by St. Louis to sixty days, 
 except when the charter of infeudation 
 expressed a shorter period. But the 
 length of service diminished with the 
 quantity of land. For half a knight's fee 
 but twenty days were due ; for an eighth 
 part but five ; and when this was com- 
 muted for an escuage, or pecuniary as- 
 sessment, , the same proportion was ob- 
 served-! /Men turned of sixty, public 
 magistrates, and, of course, women, were 
 free from personal service, but obliged 
 to send their substitutes. A failure in 
 this primary duty incurred perhaps strict- 
 ly a forfeiture of the fief. But it was 
 usual for the lord to inflict an amerce- 
 
 * Assises de Jerusalem, c. 222. A vassal, at 
 least in many places, was bound to reside upon 
 his fief, or not to quit it without the lord's consent. 
 Du Cange, voc. Reseantia, Remanentia. Recu- 
 eil des Historiens, t. xi., preface, p. 172. 
 
 t In the kingdom of Jerusalem, feudal service 
 extended to a year. Assises de Jerusalem, c. 230. 
 It is obvious that this was founded on the peculiar 
 circumstances of that state. Service of castle- 
 guard, which was common in the north of England, 
 was performed without limitation of time. Lyttle- 
 ton's Henry II., vol. ii., p. 184. 
 
 | Du Cange, voc. Feudum militis ; Membrum 
 Loricae. Stuart's View of Society, p. 382. This 
 division by knights' fees is perfectly familiar in the 
 feudal law of England. But I must confess my 
 inability to adduce decisive evidence of it in that 
 of France, with the usual exception of Normandy. 
 According to the natural principle of fiefs, it might 
 seem that the same personal service would be re- 
 quired from the tenant, whatever were the extent 
 of his land. William the Conqueror, we know, dis- 
 tributed this kingdom into about 60,000 parcels of 
 nearly equal value, from each of which the service 
 of a soldier was due. He may possibly have been 
 the inventor of this politic arrangement. Some rule 
 must, however, have been observed in all countries 
 in fixing the amercement for absence, which could 
 only be equitable if it bore a just proportion to the 
 value of the fief. And the principle of the knight's 
 fee was so convenient and reasonable, that it is 
 likely to have been adopted in imitation of England 
 by other feudal countries. In the roll of Philip 
 III.'s expedition, as will appear by a note immedi- 
 ately below, there are, I think, several presumptive 
 evidences of it ; and though this is rather a late 
 authority to establish a feudal principle, yet I have 
 ventured to assume it in the text. 
 
 The knight's fee was fixed in England at the an- 
 nual value of 20Z. Every estate supposed to be 
 of this value, and entered as such in the rolls of the 
 exchequer, was bound to contribute the service of 
 a soldier, or to pay an escuage to the amount as- 
 sessed upon knights' fees. 
 
 ment, known in England by the name of 
 escuage.* Thus, in Philip III.'s expedi- 
 tion against the Count de Foix, in 1274, 
 barons were assessed for their default of 
 attendance, at a hundred sous a day for 
 the expenses which they had saved, and 
 fifty sous as a fine to the king ; banner- 
 ets, at twenty sous for expenses, and ten 
 as a fine ; knights and squires in the same 
 proportion. But barons and bannerets 
 were bound to pay an additional assess- 
 ment for every knight and squire of their 
 vassals whom they ought to have brought 
 with them into the field, f The regula- 
 tions as to place of service were less uni- 
 form than those which regard time. In 
 some places, the vassal was not bound 
 to go beyond the lord's territory ,J or only 
 so far as he might return the same day. 
 Other customs compelled him to follow 
 his chief upon all his expeditions. These 
 inconvenient and varying usages betray 
 the origin of the feudal obligations, not 
 founded upon any national policy, but 
 springing from the chaos of anarchy and 
 intestine war, which they were well cal- 
 culated to perpetuate. For the public de- 
 fence, their machinery was totally unser- 
 viceable, until such changes were wrought 
 as destroyed the character of the fabric. 
 
 Independently of the obligations of fe- 
 alty and service, which the nature of the 
 ontract created, other advantages were 
 derived from it by the lord, which have 
 been called feudal incidents ; these Feudal 
 were, 1. Reliefs. 2. Fines upon incidents, 
 alienation. 3. Escheats. 4. Aids ; to 
 which may be added, though not general- 
 y established, 5. Wardship, and 6. Mar- 
 riage. 
 
 1. Some writers have accounted for re- 
 liefs in the following manner. Ben- R ,. f 
 fices, whether depending upon the ' 
 crown or its vassals, were not originally 
 granted by way of absolute inheritance, 
 )ut renewed from time to time upon the 
 
 
 * Littleton, 1. ii., c. 3. Wright's Tenures, p. 121. 
 + Du Chesne, Script. Rerum Gallicarum, t. v., 
 >. 553. Daniel, Histoire de la Milice Franqoise, p. 
 72. The following extracts from the muster-roll of 
 his expedition will illustrate the varieties of feudal 
 )bligation. Johannes d'Ormoy debet servitium per 
 quatuor dies. Johannes Malet debet servitium per 
 iginti dies, pro quo servitio misit Richardum Ti- 
 het. Guido de Laval debet servitium duorum 
 militum et dimidii. Dominus Sabrandus dictus 
 Chabot dicit quod non debet servitium domino regi, 
 nisi in comitatu Pictaviensi, et ad sumptus regis, 
 amen venit ad preces regis cumtribus militihus et 
 luodecim scutiferis. Guido de Lusigniaco Dom. 
 de Pierac dicit, quod non debet aliquid regi praeter 
 homagium. 
 
 This was the custom of Beauvoisis. Beaxi- 
 manoir, c. 2. 
 
 Du Cange, et Carpentier, voc. Hostis. 
 
78 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 death of the possessor, till long custom 
 grew up into right. Hence a sum of 
 money, something between a price and a 
 gratuity, would naturally be offered by 
 the heir on receiving a fresh investiture 
 of the fief ; and length of time might as 
 legitimately turn this present into a due 
 of the lord, as it rendered the inheritance 
 of the tenant indefeisible. This is a very 
 specious account of the matter. But 
 those who consider the antiquity to which 
 hereditary benefices may be traced, and 
 the unreserved expressions of those in- 
 struments by which they were created, 
 as well as the undoubted fact that a large 
 proportion of fiefs had been absolute 
 allodial inheritances, never really granted 
 by the superior, will perhaps be led rath- 
 er to look for the origin of reliefs in that 
 rapacity with which the powerful are 
 ever ready to oppress the feeble. When 
 a feudal tenant died, the lord, taking ad- 
 vantage of his own strength and the con- 
 fusion of the family, would seize the es- 
 tate into his hands, either by the right of 
 force or under some litigious pretext. 
 Against this violence the heir could in gen- 
 eral have no resource but a compromise ; 
 and we know how readily acts of success- 
 ful injustice change their name, and move 
 demurely, like the wolf in the fable, under 
 the clothing of law. Reliefs and other 
 feudal incidents are said to have been es- 
 tablished in France* about the latter part 
 of the tenth century, and they certainly 
 appear in the famous edict of Conrad the 
 Salic, in 1037, which recognises the usage 
 of presenting horses and arms to the lord 
 upon a change of tenancy.f But this also 
 subsisted under the name of heriot, in 
 England, as early as the reign of Canute. 
 A relief was a sum of money (unless 
 where charter or custom introduced .a dif- 
 ferent tribute) due from every one of full 
 age taking a fief by descent. This was in 
 some countries arbitrary, or ad misericor- 
 diam, and the exactions practised under 
 this pretence, both upon superior and in 
 ferior vassals, ranked among the greatest 
 abuses of the feudal policy. Henry I. of 
 England promises in his charter that they 
 shall in future be just and reasonable ; 
 but the rate does not appear to have been 
 finally settled, till it was laid down in 
 Magna Charta, at about the fourth of the 
 annual value of the fief. We find also 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois de France, t. i., pre- 
 face, p. 10. 
 
 *, Servato usu valvassprum majorum in tradendis 
 armis equisque suis senioribus. This, among oth- 
 er reasons, leads me to doubt the received opinion, 
 that Italian fiefs were not hereditary before the 
 promulgation of this edict. 
 
 fixed reliefs among the old customs of 
 Normandy and Beauvoisis. By a law of 
 St. Louis, in 1245,* the lord was entitled 
 to enter upon the lands, if the heir could 
 not pay the relief, and possess them for 
 a year. This right existed uncondition- 
 ally in England under the name of primer 
 seisin, but was confined to the king.f 
 
 2. Closely connected with reliefs were 
 the fines paid to the lord upon Fines upon 
 the alienation of his vassal's alienation, 
 feud ; and indeed we frequently find them 
 called by the same name. The spirit of 
 feudal tenure established so intimate a 
 connexion between the two parties, that 
 it could be dissolved by neither without 
 requiring the other's consent. If the lord 
 transferred his seigniory, the tenant was 
 to testify his concurrence ; and this cer- 
 emony was long kept up in England un- 
 der the name of attornment. The assent 
 of the lord to his vassal's alienation was 
 still more essential, and more difficult to 
 be attained. He had received his fief, it 
 was supposed, for reasons peculiar to 
 himself or to his family ; at least, his 
 heart and arm were bound to his supe- 
 rior ; and his service was not to be ex- 
 changed for that of a stranger, who might 
 be unable or unwilling to render it. A 
 law of Lothaire II. in Italy forbids the 
 alienation of fiefs without the lord's con- 
 sent.^ This prohibition is repeated in 
 one of 'Frederick I., and a similar enact- 
 ment was made by Roger, king of Sicily. 
 By the law of France, the lord was enti- 
 tled, upon every alienation made by his 
 tenant, either to redeem the fief by pay- 
 ing the purchase-money, or to claim a 
 certain part of the value, by way of fine, 
 upon the change of tenancy. || In Eng- 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rpis, p. 55. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Placitum, Relevium, Sporla. 
 By many customs a relief was due on every change 
 of the lord, as well as of the vassal ; but this was 
 not the case in England. Beaumont speaks of re- 
 liefs as due only on collateral succession. Cou- 
 tumes de Beauvoisis, c. 27. In Anjou and Maine 
 they were not even due upon succession between 
 brothers. Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 58. And 
 M. de Pastoret, in his valuable preface to the six- 
 teenth volume of that collection, says it was a rule, 
 that the king had nothing upon lineal succession 
 of a fief, whether in the ascending or descending 
 line, but la bouche et les mains ; i. e. homage and 
 fealty, p. 20. 
 
 J Lib. Feudorum, 1. ii., tit. 9 and 52. This was 
 principally levelled at the practice of alienating 
 feudal property in favour of the church, which was 
 called pro anim& judicare. Radevicus in Gestis 
 Frederic. I., 1. iv., e. 7. Lib. Feud., 1. i., tit. 7, 16 ; 
 1. ii., tit. 10. 
 
 Giannone, 1. ii., c. 5. 
 
 11 Du Cange, v. Reaccapitum, Placitum, Racha- 
 tum. Pastoret, preface au seizieme tome des 
 Ordonnances, p. 20. Houard, Diet, du Droit Nor- 
 maud, art. Fief. Argou, Inst. du Droit Francois, 1. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 79 
 
 land, even the practice of sub-infeudation, 
 which was more conformable to the law 
 of fiefs and the military genius of the sys- 
 tem, but injurious to the suzerains, who 
 lost thereby their escheats and other ad- 
 vantages of seigniory, was checked by 
 Magna Charta,* and forbidden by the 
 statute 18 Edward I., called Quia Emp- 
 tores, which at the same time gave the 
 liberty of alienating lands, to be holden 
 of the grantor's immediate lord. The 
 tenants of the crown were not included 
 in this act; but that of 1 Edward III., c. 12, 
 enabled them to alienate, upon the pay- 
 ment of a composition into chancery, 
 which was fixed at one third of the annual 
 value of the lands. f 
 
 These restraints, placed for the lord's 
 advantage upon the transfer of feudal 
 property, are not to be confounded with 
 those designed for the protection of heirs 
 and preservation of families. Such were 
 the jus prolimeseos, in the books of the 
 fiefs,| an d retrait lignager of the French 
 law, which gave to the relations of the 
 vender a pre-emption upon the sale of 
 any fief, and a right of subsequent re- 
 demption. Such was the positive pro- 
 hibition of alienating a fief held by de- 
 scent from the father (feudum pater- 
 num), without the consent of the kindred 
 on that line. Such, too, were the still 
 
 ii., c. ii. In Beaumanoir's age and district at least, 
 sub-infeudation without the lord's license incurred 
 a forfeiture of the land; and his reason extends of 
 course more strongly to alienation. Coutumes de 
 Beauvoisis, c. 2. Velly, t. vi., p. 187. But, by the 
 general law of feuds, the former was strictly regu- 
 lar, while the tenant forfeited his land by the latter. 
 Craig mentions this distinction as one for which he 
 is perplexed to account. Jus Feudale, 1. iii., tit. 3, 
 p. 632. It is, however, perfectly intelligible upon 
 the original principles of feudal tenure. 
 
 * Dalrymple seems to suppose that the 32d chap- 
 ter of Magna Charta relates to alienation, and not 
 to sub-infeudation. Essay on Feudal Property, 
 ed. 1758, p. 83. See Sir E. Coke, 2 Inst., p. 65 and 
 501 ; and Wright on Tenures, contra. Mr. Har- 
 grave observes, that " the history of our law with 
 respect to the powers of alienation, before the stat- 
 ute of Quia emptores terrarum, is very much in- 
 volved in obscurity." Notes on Co. Litt, 43, a. 
 In Glanville's time, apparently, a man could only 
 alienate (to hold of himself) rationabilem partem 
 de terra sua, 1. vii., c. 1. But this may have been 
 in favour of the kindred, as much as of the lord. 
 Dalrymple's Essay, ubi supra. 
 
 It is probable that Coke is mistaken in supposing 
 that, " at the common law, the tenant might have 
 made a feoffment of the whole tenancy to be hold- 
 en of the lord." 
 
 f 2 Inst., p. 66. Blackstone's Commentaries, 
 vol. ii., c. 5. 
 
 t Lib. Feud., 1. v., 1. 13. There were analogies to 
 this jus 7rp<m//>7<ra>s in the Roman law, and, still 
 more closely, in the constitutions of the later By- 
 zantine emperors. 
 
 Alienatio feudi paterni non valet etiam domini 
 
 more rigorous fetters imposed by the En- 
 glish statute of entails, which precluded 
 all lawful alienation, till, after two centu- 
 ries, it was overthrown by the fictitious 
 process of a common recovery. Though 
 these partake in some measure of the feu- 
 dal spirit, and would form an important 
 head in the legal history of that system, 
 it will be sufficient to allude to them in 
 a sketch, which is confined to the devel- 
 opment of its political influence. 
 
 A custom very similar in effect to sub- 
 infeudation, was the tenure by frerage, 
 which prevailed in many parts of France. 
 Primogeniture, in that extreme which 
 our common law has established, was 
 unknown, I believe, in every country 
 upon the continent. The customs of 
 France found means to preserve the dig- 
 nity of families, and the indivisibility of 
 a feudal homage, without exposing the 
 younger sons of a gentleman to absolute 
 beggary or dependance. Baronies indeed 
 were not divided ; but the eldest son was 
 bound to make a provision in money, by 
 way of appanage, for the other children, 
 in proportion to his circumstances and 
 their birth.* As to inferior fiefs, in many 
 places, an equal partition was made ; in 
 others, the eldest took the chief portion, 
 generally two thirds, and received the 
 homage of his brothers for the remaining 
 part, which they divided. To the lord of 
 whom the fief was held, himself did hom- 
 age for the whole. f In the early times 
 of the feudal policy, when military ser- 
 vice was the great object of the relation 
 between lord and vassal, this, like all oth- 
 er sub-infeudation, was rather advanta- 
 geous to the former. For, when the 
 homage of a fief was divided, the service 
 was diminished in proportion. Suppose, 
 for example, the obligation of military 
 attendance for an entire manor to have 
 been forty days ; if that came to be equal- 
 ly split among two, each would owe but 
 a service of twenty. But if, instead of 
 being homagers to the same suzerain, 
 one tenant held immediately of the other, 
 
 voluntate, nisi agnatis consentientibus. Lib. Feud, 
 apud Wright on Tenures, p. 108 and 156. 
 
 * Du Cange, v. Apanamentum, Baro. Baronie 
 ne depart mie entre fre"res se leur pere ne leur a 
 fait partie ; mes Ii ainsnez doit faire avenant bien- 
 fet au puisne, et si doit les filles marier. Etablis- 
 sem. de St. Louis, c. 24. 
 
 f This was also the law of Flanders and Hai- 
 nault. Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdotor., t. i., p. 
 1092. The customs as to succession were exceed- 
 ingly various, as indeed they continued to be until 
 the late generalization of French law. Recueil 
 des Histor., t. ii., preface, p. 108 ; Hist, de Langue- 
 doc, t. ii., p. Ill and 511. In the former work it 
 is said that primogeniture was introduced by the 
 Normans from Scandinavia. 
 
80 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP II. 
 
 as every feudatory might summon the 
 aid of his own vassals, the superior lord 
 would in fact obtain the service of both. 
 Whatever opposition, therefore, was 
 made to the rights of sub-infeudation or 
 frerage, would indicate a decay in the 
 military character, the living principle of 
 feudal tenure. Accordingly, in the reign 
 of Philip Augustus, when the fabric was 
 beginning to shake, we find a confederate 
 agreement of some principal nobles, sanc- 
 tioned by the king, to abrogate the mesne 
 tenure of younger brothers, and estab- 
 lish an immediate, dependance of each 
 upon the superior lord.* This, however, 
 was not universally adopted, and the ori- 
 ginal frerage subsisted to the last in some 
 of the customs of France. f 
 
 3. As fiefs descended but to the poster- 
 Escheats ity of the first taker, or at the ut- 
 and forfeits. m0 st to his kindred, they neces- 
 sarily became sometimes vacant for want 
 of heirs ; especially where, as in England, 
 there was no power of devising them by 
 will. In this case, it was obvious that 
 they ought to revert to the lord, from 
 whose property they had been derived. 
 These reversions became more frequent 
 through the forfeitures occasioned by the 
 vassal's delinquency, either towards his 
 superior lord or the state. Various cases 
 are laid down in the Assises de Jerusa- 
 lem, where the vassal forfeits his land, 
 for a year, for his life, or for ever.| But 
 under rapacious kings, such as the Nor- 
 man line in England, absolute forfeitures 
 came to prevail, and a new doctrine was 
 introduced, the corruption of blood, by 
 which the heir was effectually excluded 
 from deducing his title, at any distant 
 time, through an attainted ancestor. 
 
 4. Reliefs, fines upon alienation, and 
 escheats, seem to be natural reser- 
 
 8> vations in the lord's bounty to his 
 vassal. He had rights of another class, 
 which principally arose out of fealty and 
 intimate attachment. Such were the 
 aids which he was entitled to call for in 
 certain prescribed circumstances. These 
 depended a great deal upon local custom, 
 and were often extorted unreasonably. 
 Du Cange mentions several as having 
 existed in France ; such as an aid for the 
 lord's expedition to the Holy Land, for 
 marrying his sister or eldest son, and for 
 paying a relief to his suzerain on taking 
 possession of his land. Of these, the 
 last appears to have been the most usual 
 in England. But this, and other aids oc- 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 29. 
 f Du Cange, Dissert. III. sur Joinville. Beau- 
 manoir, c. 47. 
 t C. 200, 201. $ Du Cange, voc. Auxilium. 
 
 casionally exacted by the lords, were felt 
 as a severe grievance ; and by Magna 
 Charta three only are retained ; to make 
 the lord's eldest son a knight, to marry 
 his eldest daughter, and to redeem his 
 person from prison. They were restrict- 
 ed to nearly the same description by a 
 law of William I. of Sicily, and by the 
 customs of France.* These feudal aids 
 are deserving of our attention, as the be- 
 ginnings of taxation, of which for a long 
 time they in a great measure answered the 
 purpose, till the craving necessities and 
 covetous policy of kings substituted for 
 them more durable and onerous burdens. 
 
 I might here, perhaps, close the enu- 
 meration of feudal incidents, but that the 
 two remaining, wardship and marriage, 
 though only partial customs, were those 
 of our own country, and tend to illustrate 
 the rapacious character of a feudal aris- 
 tocracy. 
 
 5. In England, and in Normandy, which 
 either led the way to or adopted all these 
 English institutions, the lord had War d S hip. 
 the wardship of his tenant during 
 minority.! By virtue of this right, he 
 had both the care of his person, and re- 
 ceived to his own use the profits of the 
 estate. There is something in this cus- 
 tom very conformable to the feudal spir- 
 it ; since none was so fit as the lord to 
 train up his vassal to arms; and none 
 could put in so good a claim to enjoy the 
 fief, while the military service for which it 
 had been granted was suspended. This 
 privilege of guardianship seems to have 
 been enjoyed by the lord in some parts 
 of Germany ;| but in the law of France, 
 the custody of the land was intrusted to 
 the next heir, and that of the person, as 
 in soccage tenures among us, to the near- 
 est kindred of that blood which could not 
 inherit. By a gross abuse of this cus- 
 
 * Giannone, 1. xii., c. 5. Velly, t. vi., p. 200. 
 Ordonnances des Rois. t. i., p. 138 ; t. xvi., preface. 
 
 t Recueil des Historiens, t. xi., pref., p. 162; 
 Argon, Inst. au Droit Frangois, 1. i., c. 6 ; Houard, 
 Anciennes Loix des Francois, t. i., p. 147. 
 
 J Schilter, Institutiones Juris Feudalis, p. 85. 
 
 Du Cange, v. Custodia. Assises de Jerusalem, 
 c. 178 ; Etablissemens de St. Louis, c. 17 ; Beau- 
 manoir, c. 15; Argou, 1. i., c. 6. The second of 
 these uses nearly the same expression as Sir John 
 Fortescue in accounting for the exclusion of the 
 next heir from guardianship of the person ; that 
 mauvaise convoitise li fairoit faire la garde du loup. 
 
 I know not any mistake more usual in English 
 writers who have treated of the feudal law, than 
 that of supposing that guardianship in chivalry was 
 a universal custom. A charter of 1198, in Rymer, 
 t. i., p. 105, seems indeed to imply that the inci- 
 dents of garde noble and of marriage existed in the 
 Isle of Oleron. But Eleanor, by a later instrument, 
 grants that the inhabitants of that island should 
 have the wardship and marriage of their heirs with- 
 
PART I.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 81 
 
 torn in England, the right of guardianship 
 in chivalry, or temporary possession o 
 the lands, was assigned over to strangers 
 This was one of the most vexatious part 
 of our feudal tenures, and was never per 
 haps more sorely felt, than in their las 
 stage under the Tudor and Stuart families 
 6. Another right given to the lord 03 
 
 Marriage tn6 N rman anc } English law 
 
 was that of marriage, or of ten 
 dering a husband to his female wards 
 while under age, whom they could no- 
 reject without forfeiting the value of th< 
 marriage ; that is, as much as any om 
 would give to the guardian for such an 
 alliance. This was afterward extendec 
 to male wards ; and became a very lucra 
 tive source of extortion to the crown, as 
 well as to mesne lords. This custom 
 seems to have had the same extent as 
 that of wardships. It is found in the an- 
 cient books of Germany, but not of 
 France.* The kings, however, and even 
 inferior lords of that country, required 
 their consent to be solicited for the mar- 
 riage of their vassals' daughters. Sev- 
 eral proofs of this occur in the history, 
 as well as in the laws of France; and 
 the same prerogative existed in Germa- 
 ny, Sicily, and England.f A still more 
 remarkable law prevailed in the kingdom 
 of Jerusalem. The lord might summon 
 
 out any interposition, and expressly abrogates all 
 the evil customs that her husband had introduced. 
 P. 112. From hence I should infer, that Henry 
 II. had endeavoured to impose these feudal bur- 
 dens (which perhaps were then new even in Eng- 
 land) upon his continental dominions. Radulphus 
 de Diceto tells us of a claim made by him to the 
 wardship of Chateauroux in Berry, which could 
 not legally have been subject to that custom. 
 Twysden X. Scriptores, p. 599. And he set up 
 pretensions to the custody of the dutchy of Brit- 
 any, after the death of his son Geoffrey. This 
 might perhaps be justified by the law of Norman- 
 dy, on which Britany depended. But Philip Au- 
 gustus made a similar claim. In fact, these polit- 
 ical assertions of right, prompted by ambition, and 
 supported by force, are bad precedents to establish 
 rules of jurisprudence. Both Philip and Henry 
 were abundantly disposed to realize so convenient 
 a prerogative as that of guardianship in chivalry 
 over the fiefs of their vassals. Lyttleton's Henry 
 II., vol. iii., p. 441. 
 
 * Schilter, ubi supra. Du Cange, voc. Dispara- 
 gare, seems to admit this feudal right in France : 
 but the passages he quotes do not support it. See 
 also the word Maritagium. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 155 ; Assises 
 de Jerus., c. 180, and Thaumassiere's note. Du 
 Cange, ubi supra. Glanvil., 1. vii., c. 12. Giannone, 
 1. xi., c. 5. Wright on Tenures, p. 94. St. Louis 
 in return declared that he would not marry his 
 own daughter without the consent of his barons. 
 Joinville, t. ii., p. 140. Henry I. of England had 
 promised the same. The guardian of a female mi- 
 nor was obliged to give security to her lord not to 
 marry her without his consent. Etablissemens de 
 St. Louis, c. 63. 
 
 j any female vassal to accept one of three 
 whom he should propose as her hus- 
 band. No other condition seems to have 
 been imposed on him in selecting these 
 suiters, than that they should be of equal 
 rank with herself. /Neither the maiden's 
 coyness, nor the widow's affliction,- nei- 
 ther aversion to the proffered candidates, 
 nor love to one more favoured, seem to 
 have passed as legitimate excuses. One, 
 only one plea, could come from the lady's 
 mouth, who was resolute to hold her 
 land in single blessedness. It was, that 
 she was past sixty years of age ; and, af- 
 ter this unwelcome confession, it is just- 
 ly argued by the author of the law-book 
 which I quote, that the lord could not de- 
 cently press her into matrimony.*"/ How- 
 ever outrageous such a usage may ap- 
 pear to our ideas, it is to be recollected 
 that the peculiar circumstances of that 
 little state rendered it indispensable to 
 possess in every fief a proper vassal to 
 fulfil the duties of war. 
 
 These feudal servitudes distinguish the 
 maturity of the system. No trace of them 
 appears in the capitularies of Charle- 
 magne and his family, nor in the instru- 
 ments by which benefices were granted. 
 [ believe that they did not make part of 
 the regular feudal law before the eleventh, 
 or perhaps the twelfth century, though 
 doubtless partial usages of this kind had 
 grown up antecedently to either of those 
 jeriods. If I am not mistaken, no allusion 
 occurs to the lucrative rights of seignio- 
 ry in the Assises de Jerusalem, which 
 are a monument of French usages in 
 he eleventh century. Indeed, that very 
 general commutation of allodial prop- 
 erty into tenure, which took place be- 
 tween the middle of the ninth and elev- 
 enth centuries, would hardly have been ef- 
 "ected, if fiefs had then been liable to such 
 mrdens and so much extortion. In half- 
 >arbarous ages, the strong are constant- 
 y encroaching upon the weak ; a truth 
 which, if it needed illustration, might find 
 t in the progress of the feudal system. 
 
 We have thus far confined our inquiry 
 o fiefs holden on terms of mili- p rop er and 
 ary service; since those are improper 
 he most ancient and regular, as feud8t 
 well as the most consonant to the spirit 
 if the system. They alone were called 
 Toper feuds, and all were presumed to 
 e of this description, until the contrary 
 was proved by the charter of investiture. 
 
 proper feud was bestowed without 
 
 * Ass. de Jerus., c. 224. I must observe, that 
 jauriere says this usage prevailed en plusieurs 
 eux, though he quotes no authority. Ordonnan- 
 es des Rois, p. 155. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP, II. 
 
 price, without fixed stipulation, upon a 
 ) vassal capable of serving personally in 
 / the field. But gradually, with the help 
 of a little legal ingenuity, improper fiefs 
 of the most various kinds were intro- 
 duced, retaining little of the characteris- 
 tics, and less of the spirit, which distin- 
 guished the original tenures. Women, if 
 indeed that were an innovation, were 
 admitted to inherit them;* they were 
 granted for a price, and without refer- 
 ence to military service. The language 
 of the feudal law was applied by a kind 
 of metaphor to almost every transfer of 
 property. Hence, pensions of money, and 
 allowances of pro visions, however remote 
 from right notions of a fief, were some- 
 times granted under that name ; and even 
 where land was the subject of the dona- 
 tion, its conditions were often lucrative, 
 often honorary, and sometimes ludi- 
 crous, f 
 
 There is one extensive species of feu- 
 Fiefs of dal tenure which may be distinctly 
 office, noticed. The pride of wealth in 
 the middle ages was principally exhibit- 
 ed in a multitude of dependants. The 
 court of Charlemagne was crowded with 
 officers of every rank, some of the most 
 eminent of whom exercised functions 
 about the royal person which would 
 have been thought fit only for slaves in 
 the palace of Augustus or Antonine. 
 The free-born Franks saw nothing me- 
 nial in the titles of cup-bearer, steward, 
 marshal, and master of the horse, which 
 are still borne by the noblest families in 
 every country of Europe, and by sover- 
 eign princes in the empire. From the 
 court of the king, this favourite piece of 
 magnificence descended to those of the 
 prelates and barons, who surrounded 
 themselves with household officers, call- 
 ed ministerials ; a name equally applied to 
 those of a servile and of a liberal descrip- 
 tion.! The latter of these were reward- 
 ed with grants of lands, which they held 
 under a feudal tenure by the condition of 
 performing some domestic service to the 
 
 * Women did not inherit fiefs in the German 
 empire. Whether they were ever excluded from 
 succession in France, I know not ; the genius of a 
 military tenure, and the old Teutonic customs, 
 preserved in the Salique-law, seem adverse to 
 their possession of feudal lands ; yet the practice, 
 at least from the eleventh century downwards, 
 does not support the theory. 
 
 t Crag., Jus Feudale, 1. i., tit. 10. Du Cange, 
 voc. Feudnm de Camera, &c. In the treaty be- 
 tween Henry I. of England and Robert, count of 
 Flanders, A. D. 1101, the king stipulates to pay 
 annually 400 marks of silver, in feodo, for the mili- 
 tary service of his ally. Rymer, Fcedera, t. i., p. 2. 
 
 t Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. iii., p. 92. 
 Du Cangs, v. Familia, Ministeriales. . 
 
 lord. What was called in our law grand 
 sergeantry, affords an instance of this spe- 
 cies of fief.* It is, however, an instance 
 of the noblest kind ; but Muratori has giv- 
 en abundance of proofs, that the common- 
 est mechanical arts were carried on in 
 the houses of the great, by persons receiv- 
 ing lands upon those conditions.! 
 
 These imperfect feuds, however, be- 
 long more properly to the history of law, 
 and are chiefly noticed in the present 
 sketch because they attest the partiality 
 manifested during the middle ages to the 
 name and form of a feudal tenure. In 
 the regular military fief we see the real 
 principle of the system, which might 
 originally have been defined, an alliance 
 of free landholders, arranged in degrees 
 of subordination according to their re- 
 spective capacities of affording mutual 
 support. 
 
 The peculiar and varied attributes of 
 feudal tenures naturally gave Feudal law- 
 rise to a new jurisprudence, reg- books - 
 ulating territorial rights in those parts of 
 Europe which had adopted the system. 
 For a length of time this rested in tra- 
 ditionary customs, observed in the do- 
 mains of each prince or lord, without 
 much regard to those of his neighbours. 
 Laws were made occasionally by the 
 emperor in Germany and Italy, which 
 tended to fix the usages of those coun- 
 tries. A.bout the year 1170, Girard and 
 Obertus, two Milanese lawyers, publish- 
 ed two books of the law of fiefs, which 
 obtained a great authority, and have been 
 regarded as the groundwork of that juris- 
 prudence. I A number of subsequent 
 commentators swelled this code with 
 their glosses and opinions, to enlighten 
 or obscure the judgment of the imperial 
 tribunals. These were chiefly civilians 
 or canonists, who brought to the inter- 
 pretation of old barbaric customs the 
 principles of a very different school. 
 Hence a manifest change was wrought 
 in the law of feudal tenure, which they 
 assimilated to the usufruct or the emphy- 
 teusis of the Roman code; modes of 
 property somewhat analogous in appear- 
 
 * " This tenure," says Littleton, " is where a 
 man holds his lands or tenements of our sovereign 
 lord the king by such services as he ought to do in 
 his proper person to the king, as to carry the banner 
 of the king, or his lance, or to lead his array, or to 
 be his marshal, or to carry his sword before him at 
 his coronation, or to be his sewer at his corona^ 
 tion, or his carver, or his butler, or to be one of his 
 chamberlains at the receipt of his exchequer, or to 
 do other like services." Sect. 153. 
 
 t Antiq. Ital., Dissert. 11, ad finem. 
 
 + Giannone, 1st. di Napoli, 1. xiii., c. 3. The 
 Libri Feudorurn are printed in most editions of the 
 Corpus Juris Civilis. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 83 
 
 ance, but totally distinct in principle 
 from the legitimate fief. These Lom- 
 bard lawyers propagated a doctrine, which 
 has been too readily received, that the 
 feudal system originated in their coun- 
 try; and some writers upon jurispru- 
 dence, such as Duck and Sir James 
 Craig, incline to give a preponderating 
 authority to their code. But whatever 
 weight it may have possessed within the 
 limits of the empire, a different guide 
 must be followed in the ancient customs 
 of France and England.* These were 
 fresh from the fountain of that curious 
 polity, with which the stream of Roman 
 law had never mingled its waters. In 
 England we know that the Norman sys- 
 tem, established between the conquest 
 and the reign of Henry II., was restrain- 
 ed by regular legislation, by paramount 
 courts of justice, and by learned writings, 
 from breaking into discordant local usa- 
 ges, except in a comparatively small 
 number of places, and has become the 
 principal source of our common law. 
 But the independence of the French 
 nobles produced a much greater variety 
 of customs. The whole number collect- 
 ed and reduced to certainty in the six- 
 teenth century amounted to two hundred 
 and eighty-five, or, omitting those incon- 
 siderable for extent or peculiarity, to 
 sixty. The earliest written customary 
 in France is that of Beam, which is said 
 to have been confirmed by Visftount Gas- 
 ton IV., in 1088. f Many others were 
 written in the two subsequent ages, of 
 which the customs of Beauvoisis, com- 
 piled by Beaumanoir under Philip III., 
 are the most celebrated, and contain a 
 mass of information on the feudal consti- 
 tution and manners. Under Charles VII., 
 an ordinance was made for the formation 
 of a general code of customary law, by 
 
 * Giannone explicitly contrasts the French and 
 Lombard laws respecting fiefs. The latter were 
 the foundation of the Libri Feudorum, and formed 
 the common law of Italy. The former were intro- 
 duced by Roger Guiscard into his dominions, in 
 three books of constitutions, printed in Lindebrog's 
 collection. There were several material differen- 
 ces, which Giannone enumerates, especially the 
 Norman custom of primogeniture. 1st. di Nap., 
 1. xi., c. 5. 
 
 f There are two editions of this curious old 
 code ; one at Pau, in 1552, republished with a fresh 
 title-page and permission of Henry IV., in 1602 ; 
 the other at Lescars, in 1633. These laws, as we 
 read them, are subsequent to a revision made in 
 the middle of the sixteenth century, in which they 
 were more or less corrected. The basis, however, 
 is unquestionably very ancient. We even find the 
 composition for homicide preserved in them, so 
 that murder was not a capital offence in Beam, 
 though robbery was such. Rubrica de Homicidis, 
 Art. xxxi. See too Rubrica de Poems, Art. i. and ii. 
 F2 
 
 ascertaining for ever in a written collec- 
 tion those of each district ; but the work 
 was not completed till the reign of Charles 
 IX. This was what may be called the 
 common law of the pays coutumiers, or 
 northern division of France, and the rule 
 of all their tribunals, unless where con- 
 trolled by royal edicts. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Analysis of the Feudal System. Its local extent. 
 View of the different Orders of Society during 
 the Feudal Ages. Nobility their Ranks and 
 Privileges. Clergy. Freemen. Serfs or Vil- 
 leins. Comparative State of France and Ger- 
 many. Privileges enjoyed by the French Vas- 
 sals. Right oY coining Money and of private 
 War. Immunity from Taxation. Historical 
 View of the Royal Revenue in France. Meth- 
 ods adopted to augment it by depreciation of the 
 Coin, &c. Legislative Power its state under 
 the Merovingian Kings and Charlemagne. 
 His Councils. Suspension of any general Legis- 
 lative Authority during the prevalence of Feudal 
 Principles. The King's Council. Means adopt- 
 ed to supply the Want of a National Assembly. 
 Gradual Progress of the King's Legislative 
 Power. Philip IV. assembles the States Gen- 
 eral. Their Powers limited to Taxation. 
 States under the Sons of Philip IV. States of 
 1355 and 1356. They nearly effect an entire 
 Revolution. The Crown recovers its Vigour. 
 States of 1380, under Charles VII. Subsequent 
 Assemblies under Charles VI. and Charles VII. 
 The Crown becomes more and more absolute. 
 Louis XL States of Tours in 1484. -Histori- 
 cal View of Jurisdiction in France. Its earli- 
 est stage under the first Race of Kings, and 
 Charlemagne. Territorial Jurisdiction. Feu- 
 dal Courts of Justice. Trial by Combat. Code 
 of St. Louis. The Territorial Jurisdictions give 
 way. Progress of the Judicial Power of the 
 Crown. Parliament of. Paris. Peers of 
 France. Increased Authority of the Parliament. 
 Registration of Edicts. Causes of the Decline 
 of Feudal System. Acquisitions of Domain by 
 the Crown. Charters of Incorporation granted 
 to Towns. Their previous Condition. First 
 Charters in the twelfth Century. Privileges 
 contained in them. Military Service of Feudal 
 Tenants commuted for Money. Hired Troops. 
 Change in the Military System "of Europe. 
 General View of the Advantages and Disadvan- 
 tages attending the Feudal System- 
 
 IT has been very common to seek for 
 the origin of feuds, or, at least, Anal0 g ies to 
 for analogies to them, in the the feudal te- 
 history of various countries. nure - 
 But, though it is of great importance to 
 trace the similarity of customs in differ- 
 ent parts of the world, because it guides 
 us to the discovery of general theorems 
 as to human society, yet we should be 
 on our guard against seeming analogies, 
 which vanish away when they are closely 
 observed. It is easy to find partial re- 
 semblances to the feudal system. The 
 relation of patron and client in the Ro- 
 man republic is not unlike that of lord 
 
84 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP II.. 
 
 and vassal, in respect of mutual fidelity ; 
 but it was not founded upon the tenure 
 of land, nor military service. The veter- 
 an soldiers, and, in later times, some bar- 
 barian allies of the emperors, received 
 lands upon condition of public defence ; 
 but they were bound not to an individual 
 lord, but to the state. Such a resem- 
 blance to fiefs may be found in the Zemin- 
 daries of Hindostan, and the Timariots of 
 Turkey. The clans of the Highlanders 
 and Irish followed their chieftain into the 
 field ; but their tie was that of imagined 
 kindred and respect for birth, not the 
 spontaneous compact of vassalage. Much 
 less can we extend the name of feud, 
 though it is sometimes strangely misap- 
 plied, to the polity of Poland and Russia. 
 All the Polish nobles were equal in rights, 
 and independent of each other ; all who 
 were less than noble were in servitude. 
 No government can be more opposite to 
 the long gradations and mutual duties of 
 the feudal system.* 
 
 The regular machinery and systematic 
 Extent of establishment of feuds, in fact, 
 the feudal may be considered as almost con- 
 system. fi ne to fa e dominions of Charle- 
 magne, and to those countries which af- 
 terward derived it from thence. In Eng- 
 land, it can hardly be thought to have ex- 
 isted in a complete state before the con- 
 quest. Scotland, it is supposed, borrow- 
 ed it soon after from her neighbour. The 
 Lombards of Benevento had introduced 
 feudal customs into the Neapolitan prov- 
 inces, which the Norman conquerors af- 
 terward perfected. Feudal tenures were 
 so general in the kingdom of Aragon, that 
 I reckon it among the monarchies which 
 were founded upon that basis. f Charle- 
 
 * In civil history many instances might be found 
 of feudal ceremonies in countries not regulated by 
 the -feudal law. Thus Selden has published an in- 
 feudation of a vayvod of Moldavia by the King of 
 Poland, A. D. 1485, in the regular forms, vol. iii., 
 p. 514. But these political fiefs have hardly any 
 connexion with the general system, and merely de- 
 note the subordination of one prince or people to 
 another. 
 
 t It is probable that feudal tenure was as ancient 
 in the north of Spain, as in the contiguous prov- 
 inces of France. But it seems to have chiefly pre- 
 vailed in Aragon about the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, when the Moors south of the Ebro were 
 subdued by the enterprise of private nobles, who, 
 after conquering estates for themselves, did homage 
 for them to the king. James I., upon the reduction 
 of Valencia, granted lands by way of fief, on con- 
 dition of defending that kingdom against the Moors, 
 and residing personally upon the estate. Many did 
 not perform this engagement, and were deprived 
 of the lands in consequence. It appears by the tes- 
 tament of this monarch, that feudal tenures sub- 
 sisted in every part of his dominions. Martenne, 
 Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i., p. 1141, 1155. An 
 edict of Peter II. in 1210 prohibits the alienation of 
 
 magne's empire, it must be remembered, 
 extended as far as the Ebro. But in 
 Castile* and Portugal they were very 
 rare, and certainly could produce no po- 
 litical effect. Benefices for life were 
 sometimes granted in the kingdoms of 
 Denmark and Bohemia.f Neither of 
 these, however, nor Sweden, nor Hunga- 
 ry, comes under the description of coun- 
 tries influenced by the feudal system. J 
 That system, however, after all these 
 limitations, was so extensively diffused, 
 that it might produce confusion, as well 
 as prolixity, to pursue the collateral 
 branches of its history in all the coun- 
 tries where it prevailed. But this em- 
 barrassment may be avoided without 
 any loss, I trust, of important informa- 
 tion. The English constitution will find 
 
 emphyteuses without the lord's consent. It is hard 
 to say whether regular fiefs are meant by this 
 word. De Marca, Marca Hispanica, p. 1396. This 
 author says that there were no arriere-fiefs in Cat- 
 Ionia. 
 
 The Aragonese fiefs appear however to have dif- 
 fered from those of other countries in some re- 
 spects. Zurita mentions fiefs according to the cus- 
 tom of Italy, which he explains to be such as were 
 liable to the usual feudal aids for marrying the 
 lord's daughter, and other occasions. We may in- 
 fer, therefore, that these prestations were not cus- 
 tomary in Aragon. Anales de Aragon, t. ii., p. 62. 
 
 * What is said of vassalage in Alfonzo X.'s code, 
 Las siete partidas, is short and obscure : nor am I 
 certain that it meant any thing more than voluntary 
 commendation, the custom mentioned in the former 
 part of this chapter, from which the vassal might 
 depart at pleasure. See, however, Du Cange, v. 
 Honour, where authorities are given for the exist- 
 ence of Castilian fiefs ; and I have met with occa- 
 sional mention of them in history. I believe that 
 tenures of this kind were introduced in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries ; but not to any great 
 extent. Marina, Teoria de las Cortes, t. iii., p. 14. 
 
 Tenures of a feudal nature, as I collect from 
 Freirii Institut. Juris Lusitani, tome ii., t. 1 and 3, 
 existed in Portugal, though the jealousy of the 
 crown prevented the system from being establish- 
 ed. There were even territorial jurisdictions in 
 that kingdom, though not, at least originally, in 
 Castile. 
 
 t Daniae regni politicus status. Elzevir, 1629. 
 Stransky, Respublica Bohemica. Ib. In one 
 of the oldest Danish historians, Sweno, I have no- 
 ticed this expression : Waldemarus, patris tune 
 potitus feodo. Langebek, Scrip. Rerum Danic., 
 t. i., p. 62. By this he means the dutchy of Sles- 
 wic, not a fief, but an honour or government pos- 
 sessed by Waldemar. Saxo Grammaticus calls 
 it more classically, paternae praefecturae dignitas. 
 Sleswic was, in later times, sometimes held as a 
 fief ; but this does not in the least imply that lands 
 in Denmark proper were feudal, of which I find no 
 evidence. 
 
 Though there were no feudal tenures in Swe- 
 den, yet the nobility and others were exempt from 
 taxes on condition of serving the king with a horse 
 and arms at their own expense ; and a distinction 
 was taken between liber and tributarius. But any 
 one of the latter might become of the former class, 
 or vice versa. Sueciae Descriptio. Elzevir, 1631, 
 p. 92. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 85 
 
 its place in another portion of this work ; 
 and the political condition of Italy, after 
 the eleventh century, was not much af- 
 fected, except in the kingdom of Naples, 
 an inconsiderable object by the laws of 
 feudal tenure. I shall confine myself, 
 therefore, chiefly to France and Germa- 
 ny ; and far more to the former than the 
 latter country. But it may be expedient 
 first to contemplate the state of society 
 in its various classes during the preva- 
 lence of feudal principles, before we trace 
 their influence upon the national govern- 
 ment. 
 
 It has been laid down already as most 
 Classes of probable that no proper 'aristoc- 
 society. racy, except that of wealth, was 
 
 lilit > r - known under the early kings of 
 France ; and it was hinted that hereditary 
 benefices, or, in other words, fiefs, might 
 supply the link that was wanting between 
 personal privileges and those of descent. 
 The possessors of beneficiary estates 
 were usually the richest and most con- 
 spicuous individuals in the estate. They 
 were immediately connected with the 
 crown, and partakers in the exercise of 
 justice and royal counsels. Their sons 
 now came to inherit this eminence ; and, 
 as fiefs were either inalienable, or at least 
 not very frequently alienated, rich fam- 
 ilies were kept long in sight ; and, wheth- 
 er engaged in public affairs, or living with 
 magnificence and hospitality at home, 
 naturally drew to themselves popular es- 
 timation. The dukes and counts, who 
 had changed their quality of governors 
 into that of lords over the provinces in- 
 trusted to them, were at the head of this 
 noble class. And in imitation of them, 
 their own vassals, as well as those of the 
 crown, and even rich allodialists, assu- 
 med titles from their towns or castles, and 
 thus arose a number of petty counts, bar- 
 ons, and viscounts. This distinct class 
 of nobility became coextensive with the 
 feudal tenures. For the military tenant, 
 however poor, was subject to no tribute, 
 no prestation, but service in the field ; he 
 was the companion of his lord in the 
 sports and feasting of his castle, the peer 
 of his court ; he fought on horseback, he 
 was clad in the coat of mail, while the 
 commonalty, if summoned at all to war, 
 came on foot, and with no armour of de- 
 fence. As every thing in the habits of 
 society conspired with that prejudice, 
 which, in spite of moral philosophers, 
 will constantly raise the profession of 
 arms above all others, it was a natural 
 consequence that a new species of aris- 
 tocracy, founded upon the mixed consid- 
 erations of birth, tenure, and occupation, 
 
 sprang out of the feudal system. Every 
 possessor of a fief was a gentleman, 
 though he owned but a few acres of land, 
 and furnished his slender contribution 
 towards the equipment of a knight. In 
 the Libri Feudorum indeed, those who 
 were three degrees removed from the 
 emperor in order of tenancy are consid- 
 ered as ignoble ;* but this is restrained 
 to modern investitures ; and in France, 
 where sub-infeudation was carried the 
 farthest, no such distinction has met my 
 observation.! 
 
 There still, however, wanted something 
 to ascertain gentility of blood, where 
 it was not marked by the actual tenure 
 of land. This was supplied by two in- 
 novations devised in the eleventh and 
 twelfth centuries : the adoption of sur- 
 names, and of armorial bearings. The 
 first are commonly referred to the former 
 age, when the nobility began to add the 
 names of their estates to their own, or, 
 having any way acquired a distinctive ap- 
 pellation, transmitted it to their poster- 
 ity. J As to armorial bearings, there is 
 no doubt that emblems somewhat similar 
 have been immemorially used both in war 
 and peace. The shields of ancient war- 
 riors, and devices upon coins or seals, 
 bear no distant resemblance to modern 
 blazonry. But the general introduction 
 of such bearings, as hereditary distinc- 
 tions, has been sometimes attributed to 
 tournaments, wherein the champions 
 were distinguished by fanciful devices ; 
 sometimes to the crusades, where a mul- 
 titude of all nations and languages stood 
 in need of some visible token to denote 
 the banners of their respective chiefs. In 
 fact, the peculiar symbols of heraldry 
 point to both these sources, and have 
 been borrowed in part from each. He- 
 reditary arms were perhaps scarcely used 
 by private families before the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century. || From that 
 
 * L. ii., 1. 10. 
 
 f The nobility of an allodial possession in France 
 depended upon its right to territorial jurisdiction. 
 Hence there were franc-aleux nobles, and franc- 
 aleux roturiers ; the latter of which were subject to 
 the jurisdiction of the neighbouring lord. Loiseau, 
 Traite des Seigneuries, p. 76. Denisart, Diction- 
 naire des Decisions, art. Franc-aleu. 
 
 t Mabillon, Traite de -Blplomatictue, 1. ii., c. 7. 
 The authors of the Nouveau Traite" de Diplomat- 
 ique, t. ii., p. 563, trace the use of surnames in a 
 few instances even to the beginning of the tenth 
 century ; but they did not become general, accord- 
 ing to them, till the thirteenth. 
 
 Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xx., p. 579. 
 
 H I should be unwilling to make a negative as- 
 sertion peremptorily in a matter of mere antiqua- 
 rian research ; but I am not aware of any decisive 
 evidence that hereditary arms were borne in the 
 twelfth century, except by a very few royal or al- 
 
86 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CttAP. II. 
 
 time, however, they became very general, 
 and have contributed to elucidate that 
 branch of history, whatever value we 
 may assign to it, which regards the de- 
 scent of illustrious families. 
 
 When the privileges of birth had thus 
 its privileges. been ren dered capable of le- 
 gitimate proof, they were en- 
 hanced in a great degree, and a line 
 drawn between the high-born and ignoble 
 classes, almost as broad as that which 
 separated liberty from servitude. All of- 
 fices of trust and power were conferred 
 oil the former-, those excepted which ap- 
 pertain to the legal profession. A ple- 
 beian could not possess a fief.* Such at 
 least was the original strictness : but as 
 the aristocratic principle grew weaker, 
 an indulgence was extended to heirs, and 
 afterward to purchasers.! They were 
 
 most royal families. Mabillon, Traite de Diplo- 
 matique, 1. ii., c. 18. Those of Geoffrey the Fair, 
 count of Anjou, who died in 1150, are extant on 
 his shield : azure, four lions rampant or. Hist. 
 Litt6raire de la France, t. ix., p. 165. If arms had 
 been considered as hereditary at that time, this 
 should be the bearing of England, which, as we all 
 know, differs considerably. Louis VII. sprinkled 
 his seal and coin with fleurs-de-lys, a very ancient 
 device, or rather ornament ; and the same as what 
 are sometimes called bees. The golden ornaments 
 found in the tomb of Childeric I. at Tournay, which 
 may be seen in the library of Paris, may pass either 
 for fleurs-de-lys or bees. Charles V. reduced the 
 number to three, and thus fixed the arms of France. 
 The counts of Toulouse used the cross in the 
 twelfth age ; but no other arms, Vaissette tells us, 
 can be traced in Languedoc so far back, t. hi., p. 
 514. 
 
 Armorial bearings were in use among the Sara- 
 cens during the later crusades; as appears by a 
 passage in Joinville, t. i., p. 88 (Collect, des Me- 
 moires), and Du Gangers note upon it. Perhaps, 
 however, they may have been adopted in imitation 
 of the Franks, like the ceremonies of knighthood. 
 Villaret ingeniously conjectures, that the separa- 
 tion of different branches of the same family by 
 their settlements in Palestine led to the use of he- 
 reditary arms, in order to preserve the connexion, 
 t xi., p. 113. 
 
 M. Sismondi, I observe, seems to entertain no 
 doubt that the noble families of Pisa, including that 
 whose name he bears, had their armorial distinc- 
 tions in the beginning of the twelfth century. Hist, 
 des Republ. Ital., t. 1, p. 373. It is at least proba- 
 ble that the heraldic devices were as ancient in 
 Italy as in any part of Europe. And the authors 
 of Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. iv., p. 3S8, 
 incline to refer hereditary arms even in France to 
 the beginning of the twelfth century, though with- 
 out producing any evidence for this. 
 
 * We have no English word that conveys the 
 full sense of roturier. How glorious is this deficien- 
 cy in our political language, and how different are 
 the ideas suggested by commoner! Roturier, ac- 
 cording to Du Cange, is derived from rupturarius, 
 a peasant, ab agrum rumpendo. 
 
 t The Establishments of St. Louis forbid this 
 innovation, but Beaumanoir contends that the pro- 
 hibition does not extend to descent or marriage, c. 
 48. The roturier who acquired a fief, if he chal- 
 
 even permitted to become noble by the 
 acquisition, or at least by its possession 
 for three generations.* But notwith- 
 standing this ennobling quality of the 
 land, which seems rather of an equivocal 
 description, it became an established right 
 of the crown to take, every twenty years, 
 and on every change of the vassal, a fine 
 known by the name of franc-fief, from 
 plebeians in possession of land held by a 
 noble tenure. f A gentleman in France 
 or Germany could not exercise any trade 
 without derogating, that is, losing the ad- 
 vantages of his rank. A few exceptions 
 were made, at least in the former coun- 
 try, in favour of some liberal arts, and 
 of foreign commerce. | But in nothing 
 does the feudal haughtiness of birth more 
 show itself, than in the disgrace which 
 attended unequal marriages. No chil- 
 dren could inherit a territory held imme- 
 diately of the empire, unless both their 
 parents belonged to the higher class of 
 nobility. In France, the offspring of a 
 gentleman by a plebeian mother were 
 reputed noble for the purposes of inherit- 
 ance, and of exemption from tribute. 
 But they could not be received into any 
 order of chivalry, though capable of sim- 
 ple knighthood ; nor were they consider- 
 ed as any better than a bastard class, 
 deeply tainted with the alloy of their 
 
 lenged any one, fought with ignoble arms ; but in 
 all other respects was treated as a gentleman, ibid. 
 Yet a knight was not obliged to do homage to the 
 roturier, who became his superior by the acquisi- 
 tion of a fief on which he depended. Carpentier, 
 Supplement, ad Du Cange, voc. Homagium. 
 
 * Etablissemens de St. Louis, c. 143, and note, 
 in Ordonnances des Rois, t. i. See also preface 
 to the same volume, p. xii. According to Mably, 
 the possession of a fief did not cease to confer no- 
 bility (analogous to our barony by tenure) till the 
 Ordonnance de Blois, in 1579. Observations sur 
 1'Hist. de France, 1. hi., c. 1, note 6. But Lauriere, 
 author of the preface above cited, refers to Bouteil- 
 ler, a writer of the fourteenth century, to prove 
 that no one could become noble without the king's 
 authority. The contradiction will not much per- 
 plex us, when we reflect on the disposition of law- 
 yers to ascribe all prerogatives to the crown, at the 
 expense of territorial proprietors, and of ancient 
 customary law. 
 
 t The right, originally perhaps usurpation, call- 
 ed franc-fief, began under Philip the Fair. Ordon- 
 nances des Rois, t. i., p. 324. Denisart, Art. Franc- 
 fief. 
 
 J Houard,Dict.duDroitNormand. Encyclope- 
 dic, Art. Noblesse. Argou, 1. ii., c. 2. 
 
 $ Nobility, to a certain degree, was communica- 
 ted through the mother alone, not only by the cus- 
 tom of Champagne, but in all parts of France ; that 
 is, the issue were " gentilhomrnes du fait de leur 
 corps," and could possess fiefs ; but, says Beauman- 
 oir, " la gentillesse par laquelle ondevient chevalier, 
 doit venir de par le pere," c. 45. There was a pro- 
 verbial maxim in the French law, rather emphatic 
 than decent, to express the derivation of gentility 
 from the father, and of freedom from the mother. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 maternal extraction. Many instances oc- 
 cur where letters of nobility have been 
 granted to reinstate them in their rank.* 
 For several purposes it was necessary to 
 prove four, eight, sixteen, or a greater 
 number of quarters, that is, of coats borne 
 by paternal and maternal ancestors, and 
 the same practice still subsists in Ger- 
 many. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that the original 
 nobility of the continent were what we 
 may call self-created, and did not derive 
 their rank from any such concessions of 
 'their respective sovereigns as have been 
 necessary in subsequent ages. In Eng- 
 land, the baronies by tenure might belong 
 to the same class, if the lands upon which 
 they depended had not been granted by 
 the crown. But the kings of France, be- 
 fore the end of the thirteenth century, 
 began to assume a privilege of creating 
 nobles by their own authority, and with- 
 out regard to the tenure of land. Philip 
 the Hardy, in 1271, was the first French 
 king who granted letters of nobility ; 
 under the reigns of Philip the Fair and 
 his children they gradually became fre- 
 quent, f This effected a change in the 
 character of the nobility ; and had as ob- 
 vious a moral, as other events of the same 
 age had a political influence, in diminish- 
 ing the power and independence of the 
 territorial aristocracy. The privileges 
 originally connected with ancient lineage 
 and extensive domains became common 
 to the low-born creatures of a court, and 
 lost consequently part of their title to 
 respect. The lawyers, as I have observed 
 above, pretended that nobility could not 
 exist without a royal concession. They 
 acquired themselves, in return for their 
 exaltation of prerogative, an official no- 
 bility by the exercise of magistracy. The 
 institutions of chivalry again gave rise to 
 a vast increase of gentlemen ; knighthood, 
 on whomsoever conferred by the sover- 
 eign, being a sufficient passport to noble 
 privileges. It was usual, perhaps, to 
 grant previous letters of nobility to a ple- 
 beian for whom the honour of knighthood 
 was designed. 
 
 In this noble or gentle class there were 
 Different or- several gradations. All those in 
 ders of nobii- France who held lands imme- 
 diately depending upon the 
 crown, whatever titles they might bear, 
 were comprised in the order of barons. 
 These were, originally, the peers of the 
 
 * Beaumanoir, c. 45. Du Cange, Dissert. 10, 
 sur Joinville. Carpentier, voc. Nobilitatio. 
 
 t Velly, t. vi., p. 432. Du Cange and Carpen- 
 tier, voce Nobilitaire, &c. Boulainvilliers, Hist, 
 de Pancien Gouvemement de France, t. i., p. 31.7 
 
 king's court ; they possessed the higher 
 territorial jurisdiction, and had the right 
 of carrying their own banner into the 
 field.* To these corresponded the Val- 
 vassores majores and Capitanei of the 
 empire. In a subordinate class were 
 the vassals of this high nobility, who, 
 upon the continent, were usually termed 
 Vavassors ; an appellation not unknown, 
 though rare, in England.f The Chate- 
 lains belonged to the order of Vavassors, 
 as they held only arriere fiefs : but hav- 
 ing fortified houses, from which they de- 
 rived their name (a distinction very im- 
 portant in those times), and possessing 
 ampler rights of territorial justice, they 
 rose above the level of their fellows in 
 the scale of tenure.J But after the per- 
 sonal nobility of chivalry became the ob- 
 ject of pride, the Vavassors, who obtain- 
 ed knighthood, were commonly styled 
 bachelors; those who had not received 
 that honour fell into the class of squires,^ 
 or damoiseaux. 
 
 * Beaumanoir, c. 34. Du Cange, v. Baro. Etab- 
 lissemens de St. Louis, 1. i., c. 24; 1. ii., c. 36. 
 The vassals of inferior lords were however called, 
 improperly, barons, both in France and England. 
 Recueil des Historiens, t. xi., p. 300. Madox, 
 Baronia Anglica, p. 133. In perfect strictness, 
 those only whose immediate tenure of the crown 
 was older than the accession of Hugh Capet, were 
 barons of France ; namely, Bourbon, Coucy, and 
 Beaujeu, or Beaujplois. It appears, however, by 
 a register in the reign of Philip Augustus, that fif- 
 ty-nine were reckoned in that class ; the feudato- 
 ries of the Capetian fiefs, Paris and Orleans, being 
 confounded with the original vassals of the crown. 
 Du Cange, voc. Baro. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Vavassor. Velly, t. vi,, p. 151. 
 Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 135. There is, per- 
 haps, hardly any word more loosely used than Va- 
 vassor. Bracton says, Sunt etiam Vavassores, 
 magnse dignitatis viri. In France and Germany 
 they are sometimes named with much less honour. 
 Je suis un chevalier ne de cest part, de .vavasseurs 
 et de basse gent, says a romance. This is to be ex- 
 plained by the poverty to which the subdivision of 
 fiefs reduced idle gentlemen. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Castellanus. Costumes de Poi- 
 tou, tit. iii. Loiseau, Traite des Seigneuries, p. 160. 
 Whoever had a right to a castle had la haute jus- 
 tice ; this being so incident to the castle, that it 
 was transferred along with it. There might, how- 
 ever, be a Seigneur haut-justicier beiowthe Chate- 
 lain ; and a ridiculous distinction was made as to 
 the number of posts by which their gallows might 
 be supported. A baron's instrument of execution 
 stood on four posts ; a chatelain's on three ; while 
 the inferior lord, who happened to possess la haute 
 justice, was forced to hang his subjects on a two- 
 legged machine. Coutumes de Poitou. Du Cange, 
 v. Furca. 
 
 Lauriere quotes from an old manuscript the- fol- 
 lowing short scale of ranks. Due est la premiere 
 dignite, puis comtes, puis viscomtes, et puis baron, 
 et puis chatelain, et puis vavasseur, et puis citaen, 
 et puis villain. Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 277. 
 
 The sons of knights, and gentlemen not yet 
 knighted, took the appellation of squires in the 
 twelfth century. Vaissette, Hist, de Lang., t. ii., 
 
88 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II, 
 
 It will be needless to dwell upon the 
 condition of the inferior clergy, whether 
 secular or professed, as it bears 
 y ' little upon the general scheme of 
 polity. The prelates and abbots, how- 
 ever, it must be understood, were com- 
 pletely feudal nobles. They swore feal- 
 ty for their lands to the king or other su- 
 perior, received the homage of their vas- 
 sals, enjoyed the same immunities, exer- 
 cised the same jurisdiction, maintained 
 the same authority, as the lay lords 
 among whom they dwelt. Military ser- 
 vice does not appear to have been re- 
 served in the beneficiary grants made to 
 cathedrals and monasteries. But, when 
 other vassals of the crown were called 
 upon to repay the bounty of their sover- 
 eign by personal attendance in war, the 
 ecclesiastical tenants were supposed to 
 fall within the scope of this feudal duty, 
 which men, little less uneducated and vi- 
 olent than their compatriots, were not 
 reluctant to fulfil. Charlemagne ex- 
 empted or rather prohibited them from 
 personal service by several capitularies.* 
 The practice, however, as every one who 
 has some knowledge of history will be 
 aware, prevailed in succeeding ages. 
 Both in national and private warfare, we 
 find very frequent mention of martial 
 prelates. f But, contrary as this actual 
 service might be to the civil, as well as 
 ecclesiastical laws, the clergy who held 
 military fiefs were of course bound to 
 fulfil the chief obligation of that tenure, 
 and send their vassals into the field. We 
 have many instances of their accompa- 
 nying the army, though not mixing in 
 the conflict ; and even the parish priests 
 
 p. 513. That of Damoiseau came into use in the 
 thirteenth. Id., t. hi., p. 529. The latter was, I 
 think, more usual in France. Du Cange gives lit- 
 tle information as to the word squire. (Scutifer.) 
 " Apud Anglos," he says, " penultima est nobilitatis 
 descriptio, inter Equitem et Generosum. Quod et 
 alibi in usu fuit." Squire was not used as a title 
 of distinction in England till the reign of Edward 
 III., and then but sparingly. Though by Henry 
 YI.'s time it was grown more common, yet none 
 assumed it but the sons and heirs of knights, and 
 some military men ; except officers in courts of 
 justice, who, by patent or prescription, had obtain- 
 ed that addition. Spelman's Posthumous Works, 
 p. 234. 
 
 * Mably, 1. i., c. 5. Baluze, t. i., p. 410,932, 987. 
 Any bishop, priest, deacon, or subdeacon bearing 
 arms was to be degraded, and not even admitted to 
 lay communion. Id., p. 932. 
 
 t One of the latest instances probably of a light- 
 ing bishop is Jean Montaigu, archbishop of Sens, 
 who was killed at Azincourt. Monstrelet says, 
 that he was " non pas en estat pontifical, car au 
 lieu de mitre il portoit une bacinet, pour dalma- 
 tique portoit un haubergeon, pour chasuble la 
 piece d'acier ; et au lieu de crosse. portoit une 
 hache," fol. 132. 
 
 headed the militia of their villages.* The 
 prelates however sometimes contrived to 
 avoid this military service, and the pay- 
 ments introduced in commutation for it, 
 by holding lands in frank-almoigne, a te- 
 nure which exempted them from every 
 species of obligation, except that of say- 
 ing masses for the benefit of the grant- 
 or's family.f But, notwithstanding the 
 warlike disposition of some ecclesiastics, 
 their more usual inability to protect the 
 estates of their churches against rapa- 
 cious neighbours suggested a new spe- 
 cies of feudal relation and tenure. The 
 rich abbeys elected an advocate, whose 
 business it was to defend their interests 
 both in secular courts, and, if necessary, 
 in the field. Pepin and Charlemagne 
 are styled Advocates of the Roman 
 church. This indeed was on a magnifi- 
 cent scale : but in ordinary practice, the 
 advocate of a monastery was some neigh- 
 bouring lord, who, in return for his pro- 
 tection, possessed many lucrative privi- 
 leges, and, very frequently, considerable 
 estates by way of fief from his ecclesias- 
 tical clients. Some of these advocates 
 are reproached with violating their obli- 
 gation, and becoming the plunderers of 
 those whom they had been retained to 
 defend.J 
 
 The classes below the gentry may be 
 divided into freemen and villeins. Of 
 the first were the inhabitants of cjiar- 
 tered towns, the citizens and burghers, 
 of whom morje^ will be said presently. 
 As to those wKb dwelt in the country, 
 we can have no difficulty in recognising, 
 so far as England is concerned, the socca- 
 gers, .whose tenure was free, though not 
 so noble as knight's service, and a nu- 
 merous body of tenants for term of life, 
 who formed that ancient basis of our 
 strength, the English yeomanry. But 
 the mere freemen are not at first sight 
 so distinguishable in other countries. In 
 French records and law-books of feudal 
 times, all besides the gentry are usually 
 confounded under the names of villeins 
 or hommes de pooste (gens potestatis). 
 
 * Daniel, Hist, de la Milice Francoise. t. i., 
 p. 88. 
 
 t Du Cange, Eleemosyna Libera. Madox, Ba- 
 ronia Angl., p. 115. Coke on Littleton, and other 
 English law-books. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Advocatus ; a full and useful 
 article. Recueil des Historiens, t. xi., preface, 
 p. 184. 
 
 Homo potestatis, non nobilis Ita nuncupan- 
 tur, quod in potestate domini sunt Opponuntur 
 viris nobilibus ; apud Butilerium Consuetudinarii 
 vocantur, Coustumiers, prestationibus scilicet ob- 
 noxii et operis. Du Cange, v. Potestas. As all 
 these freemen were obliged, by the ancient laws 
 of France, to live under the protection of some par- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 89 
 
 This proves the slight estimation in 
 which all persons of ignoble birth were 
 considered. For undoubtedly there ex- 
 isted a great many proprietors of land 
 and others, as free, though not as privi- 
 leged, as the nobility. In the south of 
 France, and especially Provence, the 
 number of freemen is remarked to have 
 been greater than in the parts on the 
 right bank of the Loire, where the feudal 
 tenures were almost universal.* I shall 
 quote part of a passage in Beaumanoir, 
 which points out this distinction of ranks 
 pretty fully. " It should be known," he 
 says,f "that there are three conditions 
 of men in this world ; the first is that of 
 gentlemen; and the second is that of 
 such as are naturally free, being born of 
 a free mother. All who have a right to 
 be called gentlemen are free, but all who 
 are free are not gentlemen. Gentility 
 comes by the father, and not by the 
 mother ; but freedom is derived from the 
 mother only ; and whoever is born of a 
 free mother is himself free, and has free 
 power to do any thing that is lawful." 
 
 In every age and country, until times 
 serfs of comparatively recent, personal ser- 
 vuieins. v itude appears to have been the 
 Ipt of a large, perhaps the greater portion, 
 of mankind. We lose a good deal of our 
 sympathy with the spirit of freedom in 
 Greece and Rome, when the importunate 
 recollection occurs to us of the tasks 
 which might be enjoined, and the punish- 
 ments which might be inflicted, without 
 control either of law or opinion, by the 
 keenest patriot of the Comitia, or the 
 Council of Five Thousand. A similar, 
 though less powerful, feeling will often 
 force itself on the mind, when we read 
 the history of the middle ages. The 
 Germans, in their primitive settlements, 
 were accustomed to the notion of sla- 
 very, incurred not only by captivity, but 
 by crimes, by debt, and especially by 
 Toss in gaming. When they invaded the 
 Roman empire, they found the same con- 
 dition established in all its provinces. 
 Hence, from the beginning of the era 
 now under review, servitude, under some- 
 what different modes, was extremely 
 common. There is some difficulty in 
 ascertaining its varieties and stages. In 
 the Salique laws, and in the Capitularies, 
 we read not only of Servi, but of Tribu- 
 
 ticular lord, and found great difficulty in choosing 
 a new place of residence, as they were subject to 
 many tributes and oppressive claims on the part of 
 their territorial superiors, we cannot be surprised 
 that they are confounded, at this distance, with 
 men in actual servitude. 
 
 * Heeren, Essai sur les Croisades, p. 122. 
 
 f Coutumes de Beauvoisis, c. 45, p. 256. 
 
 tarii, Lidi, and Coloni, who were cultiva- 
 tors of the earth, and subject to residence 
 upon their master's estate, though not 
 destitute of property or civil rights.* 
 Those who appertained to the demesne 
 lands of the crown were called Fiscalini. 
 The composition for the murder of one 
 of these was much less than that for a 
 freeman.! The number of these servile 
 cultivators was undoubtedly great, yet 
 in those early times, I should conceive, 
 much less than it afterward became. 
 Property was for the most part in small 
 divisions, and a Frank who could hardly 
 support his family upon a petty allodial 
 patrimony, was not likely to encumber 
 himself with many servants. But the ac- 
 cumulation of overgrown private wealth 
 had a natural tendency to make slavery 
 more frequent. Where the small propri- 
 etors lost their lands by mere rapine, we 
 may believe that their liberty was hard- 
 ly less endangered.! Even where this 
 was not the case, yet, as the labour 
 either of artisans or of free husbandmen 
 was but sparingly in demand, they were 
 often compelled to exchange their liber- 
 ty for bread. In seasons also of fam- 
 ine, and they were not unfrequent, many 
 freemen sold themselves to slavery. A 
 capitulary of Charles the Bald, in 864, 
 permits their redemption at an equitable 
 priQe.|| Others became slaves, as more 
 
 * These passages are too numerous for refer- 
 ence. In a very early charter in Martenne's The- 
 saurus Anecdotorum, t. i., p. 20, lands are granted, 
 cum hominibus ibidem permanentibus, quoscolona- 
 rio ordine vivere constituimus. Men of this class 
 were called in Italy Aldiones. A Lombard capitu- 
 lary of Charlemagne says : Aldiones ea lege vi- 
 vunt in Italia sub servitute dpminorum suorum, 
 qua Fiscalini, vel Lidi vivunt in Francia. Mura- 
 tori, Dissert. 14. 
 
 t Originally it was but 45 solidi. Leges Sali- 
 cae, c. 43 ; but Charlemagne raised it to 100. Ba- 
 luzii Capitularia, p. 402. There are several pro- 
 visions in the laws of this great and wise monarch 
 in favour of liberty. If a lord claimed any one ei- 
 ther as his villein or slave (colonus sive servus), 
 who had escaped beyond his territory, he was not 
 to be given up till strict inquiry had been made in 
 the place to which he was asserted to belong, as to 
 his condition and that of his family, p. 400. And 
 if the villein showed a charter of enfranchisement, 
 the proof of its forgery was to lie upon the lord. 
 No man's liberty could be questioned in the Hun- 
 dred-court. 
 
 t Montesquieu ascribes the increase of personal 
 servitude in France to the continual revolts and 
 commotions under the two first dynasties, 1. xxx., 
 c. 11. 
 
 Du Cange, v. Obnoxatio. 
 
 || Baluzii Capitularia. The Greek traders pur- 
 chased famished wretches on the coasts of Italy, 
 whom they sold to the Saracens. Muratori, An- 
 nali d'ltalia. A. D. 785. Much more would per- 
 sons in this extremity sell themselves to neighbour- 
 ing lords. 
 
DO 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 \fortunate men became vassals, to a pow- 
 erful lord, for the sake of his protection. 
 Many were reduced into this state through 
 inability to pay those pecuniary composi- 
 tions for offences, which were numerous, 
 and sometimes heavy, in the barbarian 
 codes of law ; and many more by neg- 
 lect of attendance on military expedi- 
 tions of the king, the penalty of which 
 was a fine called Heribann, with the al- 
 ternative of perpetual servitude.* A 
 source of loss of liberty which may 
 strike us as more extraordinary was su- 
 perstition ; men were infatuated enough 
 to surrender themselves, as well as their 
 properties, to churches and monasteries, 
 in return for such benefits as they might 
 reap by the prayers of their new mas- 
 ters, f 
 
 The characteristic distinction of a vil- 
 lein was his obligation to remain upon 
 his lord's estate. He was not only pre- 
 cluded from selling the lands upon which 
 he dwelt, but his person was bound, and 
 the lord might reclaim him at any time, 
 by suit in a court of justice, if he ventur- 
 ed to stray. But. equally liable to this 
 confinement, there were two classes of 
 villeins, whose condition was exceeding- 
 ly different. In England, at least from 
 the reign of Henry II., one only, and 
 that the inferior species, existed ; incapa- 
 ble of property, and destitute of redress, 
 except against the most outrageous in- 
 juries. | The lord could seize whatever 
 they acquired or inherited, or convey 
 them, apart from the land, to a stranger. 
 Their tenure bound them to what were 
 called villein services, ignoble in their 
 nature, and indeterminate in their de- 
 gree ; the felling of timber, the carrying 
 of manure, the repairing of roads for their 
 lord, who seems to have possessed an 
 equally unbounded right over their la- 
 bour and its fruits. But by the customs 
 of France and Germany, persons in this 
 abject state seem to have been called 
 serfs, and distinguished from villeins, 
 who were only bound to fixed payments 
 and duties in respect of their lord, though, 
 as it seems, without any legal redress, 
 if injured by him. " The third estate of 
 
 * Du Cange, Heribannum. A full heribannum 
 was 60 solid! ; but it was sometimes assessed in 
 proportion to the wealth of the party. 
 
 t Beaumanoir, c. 45. 
 
 1 Littleton, 1. ii., c. 11. Non potest aliquis 
 (says Glanvil), in villenagio positus, libertatem 
 suam propriis denariis suis quaerere quia omnia 
 catalla cujuslibet nativi intelliguntur esse in potes- 
 tate domini sui, 1. v., c. 5. 
 
 This is clearly expressed in a French law- 
 book of the thirteenth century, the Conseil of 
 Pierre des Fontaines, quoted by Du Cange, voc. 
 
 men," says Beaumanoir, in the passage 
 above quoted, " is that of such as are not 
 free ; and these are not all of one condi- 
 tion, for some are so subject to their 
 lord that he may take all they have, 
 alive or dead, and imprison him whenev- 
 er he pleases, being accountable to none 
 but God ; while others are treated more 
 gently, from whom the lord can take 
 nothing but customary payments, though 
 at their death all they have escheats to 
 him."* 
 
 Under every denomination of servitude, 
 the children followed their mother's con- 
 dition ; except in England, where the 
 father's state determined that of the chil- 
 dren ; on which account, bastards of fe- 
 male villeins were born free ; the law 
 presuming the liberty of their father. f 
 The proportion of freemen, therefore, 
 would have been miserably diminished, 
 if there had been no reflux of the tide 
 which ran so strongly towards slavery. 
 But the usage of manumission made a 
 sort of circulation between these two 
 
 Villanus. Et sache bien que selon Dieu tu n'as 
 mie pleniere poeste sur ton vilain. Dont se tu 
 prens du sien fors les droites redevances, que te 
 doit, tu les prens centre Dieu, et sur le peril de 
 fame et come robierres. Et ce qu'on dit toutes 
 les choses que vilains a, sont au Seigneur, c'est 
 voirs a garden Car s'il estoient son seigneur pro- 
 pre, il n'avoit nule difference entre serf et vilain, 
 mais par notre usage n'a entre toi et ton vilain juge 
 fors Dieu, tant com il est tes couchans et tes le- 
 vans, s'il n'a autre loi vers toi fors la commune. 
 This seems to render the distinction little more 
 than theoretical. 
 
 * Beaumanoir, c. 45. Du Cange, Villanus, Ser- 
 vus, and several other articles. Schmidt, Hist, 
 des Allemands, t. ii., p. 171, 435. By a law of the 
 Lombards, a free woman who married a slave 
 might be killed by her relations, or sold ; if they 
 neglected to do so, the fisc might claim her as its 
 own. Muratori. Dissert. 14. In France also, she 
 was liable to be treated as a slave. Marculfi For- 
 mulae, 1. ii., 29. Even in the twelfth century, it 
 was the law of Flanders, that whoever married a 
 villein became one himself, after he had lived with 
 her a twelvemonth. Recueil des Historiens, t. 
 xiii., p. 350. And, by a capitulary of Pepin, if a 
 man married a villein believing her to be free, he 
 might repudiate her and marry another. Baluze, 
 p. 181. 
 
 Villeins themselves could not marry without 
 the lord's license, under penalty of forfeiting 
 their goods, or at least of a mulct. Du Cange, v. 
 Forismaritagium. This seems to be the true origin 
 of the famous mercheta mulierum, which has been 
 ascribed to a very different custom. Du Cange, v. 
 Mercheta Mulierum. Dalrymple's Annals of Scot- 
 land, vol. i., p. 312. Archseologia, vol. xii., p. 31. 
 
 t Littleton, s. 188. - Bracton indeed holds, that 
 the spurious issue of a neif, though by a free fa- 
 ther, should be a villein, quia sequitur conditionem 
 matris, quasi vulgo conceptus, 1. i., c. 6. But the 
 laws of Henry I. declare that a son should follow 
 his father's condition ; so that this peculiarity is 
 very ancient in our law. Leges Hen. I., c. 75 
 and 77. 
 
PART II.} 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 01 
 
 General states of mankind. This, as is 
 abolition of well known, was an exceeding- 
 viiianage. jy common practice with the 
 Romans ; and is mentioned, with certain 
 ceremonies prescribed, in the Prankish 
 and other early laws. The clergy, and 
 especially several popes, enforced it as a 
 duty upon laymen ; and inveighed against 
 the scandal of keeping Christians in bond- 
 age.* But they were not, it is said, equal- 
 ly ready in performing their own parts ; 
 the villeins upon church lands were 
 among the last who were emancipated.! 
 As society advanced in Europe, the man- 
 umission of slaves grew more frequent.! 
 By the indulgence of custom in some 
 places, or perhaps by original convention, 
 villeins might possess property, and thus 
 purchase their own redemption. Even 
 where they had no legal title to property, 
 it was accounted inhuman to divest them 
 of their little possession (the peculium of 
 Roman law) ; nor was their poverty, per- 
 haps, less tolerable, upon the whole, than 
 that of the modern peasantry in most 
 countries of Europe. It was only in re- 
 spect of his lord, it must be remembered, 
 that the villein, at least in England, was 
 without rights ; he might inherit, pur- 
 chase, sue in the courts of law ; though, 
 
 * Enfranchisements by testament are very com- 
 mon. Thus, in the will of Seniofred, count of Bar- 
 celona, in 966, we find the following piece of cor- 
 rupt Latin : de ipsos servos meos et ancillas, illi 
 qui traditi fuerunt faciatis illos liberos propter re- 
 medium animae meae ; et alii qui fuerunt de paren- 
 torum meorum remaneant ad fratres meos. Marca 
 
 t Schmidt, Hist, des All., t. i., p. 361. See, how- 
 ever, a charter of manumission from the chapter 
 of Orleans, in 1224, to all their slaves, under certain 
 conditions of service. Martenne, Thesaurus Anec- 
 dot, t. i., p. 914. Conditional manumissions were 
 exceedingly common. Du Cange, v. Manumis- 
 sio ; a long article. 
 
 t No one could enfranchise his villein without 
 the superior lord's consent ; for this was to dimin- 
 ish the value of his land apeticer le fief. Beauma- 
 noir, c. 15. Etablissemens de St. Loius, c. 34. 
 It was necessary, therefore, for the villein to obtain 
 the suzerain's confirmation; otherwise he only 
 changed masters and escheated, as it were, to the 
 superior ; for the lord who had granted the charter 
 of franchise was estopped from claiming him again. 
 
 Littleton, s. 189. Perhaps this is not applica- 
 ble to other countries. Villeins were incapable of 
 being received as witnesses against freemen. Re- 
 cueil des Historiens, t. xiv., preface, p. 65. There 
 are some charters of kings of France admitting 
 the serfs of particular monasteries to give evidence, 
 or to engage in the judicial combat, against free- 
 men. Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 3. But I do 
 not know that their testimony, except against their 
 lord, was ever refused in England ; their state of 
 servitude not being absolute, like that of negroes 
 in the West Indies, but particular and relative, as 
 that of an apprentice or hired servant. This sub- 
 ject, however, is not devoid of obscurity, and I may 
 probably return to it in another place. 
 
 as defendant in a real action, or suit 
 wherein land was claimed, he might 
 shelter himself under the plea of villan- 
 age. The peasants of this condition 
 were sometimes made use of in war, and 
 rewarded with enfranchisement ; espe- 
 cially in Italy, where the cities and petty 
 states had often occasion to defend them- 
 selves with their own population ; and in 
 peace the industry of free labourers must 
 have been found more productive and 
 better directed. Hence the eleventh and 
 twelfth centuries saw the number of 
 slaves in Italy begin to decrease ; early in 
 the fifteenth, a writer quoted by Murato- 
 ri speaks of them as no longer existing.* 
 The greater part of the peasants in some 
 countries of Germany had acquired their 
 liberty before the end of the thirteenth 
 century ; in other parts, as well as in all 
 the northern and eastern regions of Eu- 
 rope, they remained in a sort of villan- 
 age till the present age. Some very few 
 instances of predial servitude have been 
 discovered in England, so late as the 
 time of Elizabeth,! and perhaps they 
 might be traced still lower. Louis Hutin, 
 in France, after innumerable particular 
 instances of manumission had taken 
 place, by a general edict in 1315, reci- 
 ting that his kingdom is denominated the 
 kingdom of the Franks, that he would 
 have the fact to correspond with the 
 name, emancipates all persons in the 
 royal domains upon paying a just com- 
 position, as an example for other lords 
 possessing villeins to follow.^ Philip 
 the Long renewed the same edict three 
 years afterward ; a proof that it had not 
 been carried into execution. $ Indeed, 
 there are letters of the former prince, 
 wherein, considering that many of his 
 subjects are not apprized of the extent 
 of the benefit conferred upon them, he 
 directs his officers to tax them as high 
 as their fortunes can well bear. II 
 
 * Dissert. 14. 
 
 t Barrington's Observations on the ancient Stat- 
 utes, p. 274. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 583. 
 
 $ Id., p. 653. 
 
 II Velly, t. viii., p. 38. Philip the Fair had eman- 
 cipated the villeins in the royal domains throughout 
 Languedoc, retaining only an annual rent for their 
 lands, which thus became censives, or emphyteuses. 
 It does not appear by the charter that he sold this 
 enfranchisement, though there can be little doubt 
 about it. He permitted his vassals to follow the 
 example. Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. iv. 
 Appendix, p. 3 and 12. 
 
 It is not generally known, I think, that predial 
 servitude was not abolished in all parts of France 
 till the revolution. In some places, says Pasquier, 
 the peasants are taillables a volont6, that is, their 
 contribution is not permanent, but assessed by the 
 lord with the advice of prud' hommes, resseants 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 It is deserving of notice that a distinc- 
 tion existed from very early times in the 
 nature of lands, collateral, as it were, 
 to that of persons. Thus we find mansi 
 ingenui and mansi serviles in the oldest 
 charters, corresponding to the bocland 
 and folkland of the Anglo-Saxons, the 
 liberum tenementum and villenagium, or 
 freehold and copyhold, of our later law. 
 In France, all lands held in roture appear 
 to be considered as villein tenements, and 
 are so termed in Latin, though many of 
 them rather answer to our soccage free- 
 holds. But, although originally this ser- 
 vile quality of lands was founded on the 
 state of their occupiers, yet there was 
 this particularity, that lands never chan- 
 ged their character along with that of the 
 possessor ; so that a nobleman might, and 
 often did, hold estates in roture, as well 
 as a roturier acquire a fief. Thus in 
 England the terre tenants in villanage, 
 who occur in our old books, were not 
 villeins, but freemen holding lands which 
 had been from time immemorial of a vil- 
 lein quality. 
 
 At the final separation of the French 
 Compara- fr m the German side of Char 
 tive state of lemagne's empire by the treaty 
 France and O f Verdun, in 843, there was 
 perhaps hardly any difference 
 in the constitution of the two kingdoms. 
 If any might be conjectured to have ex- 
 isted, it would be a greater independence, 
 and fuller rights of election in the nobil- 
 ity and people of Germany. But in the 
 /lapse of another century, France had lost 
 all her political unity, and her kings all 
 their authority ; while the Germanic em- 
 pire was entirely unbroken, under an 
 effectual, though not absolute, control 
 of its sovereign. No comparison can be 
 made between the power of Charles the 
 Simple and Conrad the First, though the 
 former had the shadow of an hereditary 
 
 sur les lieux, according to the peasant's ability. 
 Others pay a fixed sum. Some are called serfs de 
 poursuite, who cannot leave their habitations, but 
 may be followed by the lord into any part of France 
 for the taille upon their goods. This was the case 
 in part of Champagne, and the Nivernois. Nor 
 could these serfs, or gens de mainmorte, as they 
 were sometimes called, be manumitted without 
 letters patent of the king, purchased by a fine. 
 Recherches de la France, 1. iv., c. 5. Du Bos in- 
 forms us that, in 1651, the Tiers Etat prayed the 
 king to cause all serfs (hommes de poote) to be en- 
 franchised on paying a composition ; but this was 
 not complied with, and they existed in many parts 
 when he wrote. Histoire Critique, t. iii., p. 298. 
 Argou, in his Institutions du Droit Franqois, con- 
 firms this, and refers to the customaries of Niver- 
 nois and Vitry, 1. i., c. 1. And M. de Brequigny, 
 in his preface to the twelfth volume of the collec- 
 tion of Ordonnances, p. 22, says, that throughout 
 almost the whole jurisdiction of the parliament of 
 
 right, and the latter was chosen from 
 among his equals. A long succession of 
 feeble princes or usurpers, and destruc- 
 tive incursions of the Normans, reduced 
 France almost to a dissolution of society ; 
 while Germany, under Conrad, Henry, 
 and the Othos, found their arms not less 
 prompt and successful against revolted 
 vassals than external enemies. The 
 high dignities were less completely he- 
 reditary than they had become in France ; 
 they were granted, indeed, pretty regu- 
 larly, but they were solicited as well as 
 granted ; while the chief vassals of the 
 French crown assumed them as patrimo- 
 nial sovereignties, to which a royal in- 
 vestiture gave more of ornament than 
 sanction. 
 
 In the eleventh century, these imperial 
 prerogatives began to lose part of their 
 lustre. The long struggles of the princes 
 and clergy against Henry IV. and his son, 
 the revival of more effective rights of 
 election on the extinction of the house 
 of Franconia, the exhausting contests of 
 the Swabian emperors in Italy, the in- 
 trinsic weakness produced by a law of 
 the empire, according to which the reign- 
 ing sovereign could not retain an impe- 
 rial fief more than a year in his hands, 
 gradually prepared that independence of 
 the German aristocracy, which reached 
 its height about the middle of the thir- 
 teenth century. During this period the 
 French crown had been insensibly gain- 
 ing strength; and as one monarch de- 
 generated into the mere head of a con- 
 federacy, the other acquired unlimited 
 power over a solid kingdom. 
 
 It would be tedious, and not very in- 
 structive, to follow the details of Ger- 
 man public law during the middle ages : 
 nor are the more important parts of it 
 easily separable from civil history. In 
 this relation they will find a place in a 
 subsequent chapter of the present work. 
 
 Besangon, the peasants were attached to the soil, 
 not being capable of leaving it without the lord's 
 consent ; and that in some places he even inherited 
 their goods in exclusion of the kindred. I recol- 
 lect to have read in some part of Voltaire's corre- 
 spondence, an anecdote of his interference, with that 
 zeal against oppression which is the shining side 
 of his moral character, in behalf of some of these 
 wretched slaves of Franche-comte. 
 
 About the middle of the fifteenth century, some 
 Catalonian serfs who had escaped into France 
 being claimed by their lords, the parliament of 
 Toulouse declared that every man who entered 
 the kingdom en criant France, should become free. 
 The liberty of our kingdom is such, says Mezeray, 
 that its air communicates freedom to those who 
 breathe it, and our kings are too august to reign 
 over any but freemen. Villaret, t. xv., p. 348. How 
 much pretence Mezeray had for such a flourish, 
 may be decided by the former part of this note. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 93 
 
 France demands a more minute attention ; 
 and in tracing the character of the feudal 
 system in that country, we shall find 
 ourselves developing the progress of a 
 very different polity. 
 
 To understand in what degree the peers 
 Privileges of and barons of France, during 
 the French the prevalence of feudal prin- 
 rassais. ciples, were independent of the 
 crown, we must look at their leading 
 privileges. These may be reckoned ; 
 1. The right of coining money; 2. That 
 of waging private war ; 3. The exemption 
 from all public tributes, except the feudal 
 aids ; 4. The freedom from legislative 
 control; and, 5. The exclusive exercise 
 of original judicature in their dominions. 
 Privileges so enormous, and so contrary 
 to all principles of sovereignty, might lead 
 us, in strictness, to account France rather 
 a collection of states, partially allied to 
 each other, than a single monarchy. 
 
 I. Silver and gold were not very scarce 
 Coining in the first ages of the French mon- 
 money. archy ; but they passed more by 
 weight than by tale. A lax and ignorant 
 government, which had not learned the lu- 
 crative mysteries of a royal mint, was not 
 particularly solicitous to give its subjects 
 the security of a known stamp in their 
 exchanges.* In some cities of France, 
 money appears to have been coined by 
 private authority before the time of Char- 
 lemagne ; at least one of his capitularies 
 forbids the circulation of any that had 
 not been stamped in the royal mint. His 
 successors indulged some of their vassals 
 with the privilege of coining money for 
 the use of their own territories, but not 
 without the royal stamp. About the be- 
 ginning of the tenth century, however, 
 the lords, among their other assumptions 
 of independence, issued money with no 
 marks but their own.f At the accession 
 of Hugh Capet, as many as a hundred 
 and fifty are said to have exercised this 
 power. Even under St. Louis, it was pos- 
 sessed by about eighty ; who, excluding, 
 as far as possible, the royal coin from 
 
 * The practice of keeping fine gold and silver 
 uncoined prevailed among private persons, as well 
 as in the treasury, down to the time of Philip the 
 Fair. Nothing is more common than to find, in the 
 instruments of earlier times, payments or fines 
 stipulated by weight of gold or silver. Le Blanc 
 therefore thinks that little money was coined in 
 France, and that only for small payments. Trait6 
 des Monnoyes. It is curious, that though there 
 are many gold coins extant of the first race of 
 kings, yet few or none are preserved of the second 
 or third, before the reign of Philip the Fair. Du 
 Cange, v. Moneta. 
 
 t Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., p. 110. 
 Rec. des Historiens, t. xi., pref., p. 180. Du Cange, 
 v. Moneta. 
 
 circulation, enriched themselves at their 
 subjects' expense by high duties (seign- 
 iorages), which they imposed upon every 
 new coinage, as well as by debasing its 
 standard.* In 1185, Philip Augustus re- 
 quests the Abbot of Corvey, who had de- 
 sisted from using his own mint, to let the 
 royal money of Paris circulate through 
 his territories ; promising that, when it 
 should please the abbot to coin money 
 afresh for himself, the king would not 
 oppose its circulation.! 
 
 Several regulations were made by Lou- 
 is IX. to limit, as far as lay in his power, 
 the exercise of this baronial privilege; 
 and, in particular, by enacting that the 
 royal money should circulate in the do- 
 mains of those barons who had mints, 
 concurrently with their own ; and ex- 
 clusively within the territories of those 
 who did not enjoy that right. Philip the 
 Fair established royal officers of inspec- 
 tion in every private mint. It was as- 
 serted in his reign, as a general truth, 
 that no subject might coin silver money.J 
 In fact, the adulteration practised in those 
 baronial mints had reduced their pretend- 
 ed silver to a sort of black metal, as it 
 was called (moneta nigra), into which 
 little entered but copper. Silver, howev- 
 er, and even gold, were coined by the 
 dukes of Britany so long as that fief con- 
 tinued to exist. No subjects ever enjoy- 
 ed the right of coining silver in England 
 without the royal stamp and superintend- 
 ence : a remarkable proof of the restraint 
 in which the feudal aristocracy was al- 
 ways held in this country. 
 
 II. The passion of revenge, always 
 among the most ungovernable Right of 
 in human nature, acts with such P v te war. 
 violence upon barbarians, that it is utterly 
 beyond the control of their imperfect ar- 
 rangements of polity. It seems to them 
 
 * Le Blanc, Traite des Monnoyes, p. 91. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Moneta. Velly, Hist, de France, 
 t. ii., p. 93. Villaret, t. xiv., p. 200. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Moneta. The right of debasing 
 the coin was also claimed by this prince as a choice 
 flower of his crown. Item, abaisser et amenuser la 
 monnoye, est privilege especial au roy de son droit 
 royal, si que a luy appartient, et non a autre, et en- 
 core en un seul cas, c'est a scavoir en necessite", et 
 lors ne vient pas le ganeg ne convertit en son pro- 
 fit especial, mais en profit, et en la defence du com- 
 mun. This was in a process commenced by the 
 king's procureur-general against the Comte de Nev- 
 ers for defacing his coin. Le Blanc, TraitS des 
 Monnoyes, p. 92. In many places the lord took a 
 sum from his tenants every three years, under the 
 name of monetagium or focagium, in lieu of deba- 
 sing his money. This was finally abolished in 1380. 
 Du Cange, v. Monetagium. 
 
 I do not extend this to the fact ; for in the an- 
 archy of Stephen's reign, both bishops and barons 
 coined money for themselves. Hoveden, p. 490. 
 
94 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 no part of the social compact, to sacrifice 
 the privilege which nature has placed in 
 the arm of valour. Gradually, however, 
 these fiercer feelings are blunted, and an- 
 other passion, hardly less powerful than 
 resentment, is brought to play in a contra- 
 ry direction. The earlier object accord- 
 ingly of jurisprudence is to establish a 
 fixed atonement for injuries, as much for 
 the preservation of tranquillity as the pre- 
 vention of crime. Such were the were- 
 gilds of the barbaric codes, which, for a dif- 
 ferent purpose, I have already mention- 
 ed.* But whether it were that the kindred 
 did not always accept, or the criminal 
 offer, the legal composition, or that other 
 causes of quarrel occurred, private feuds 
 (faida) were perpetually breaking out, and 
 many of Charlemagne's capitularies are 
 directed against them. After his time, 
 all hope of restraining so inveterate a 
 practice was at an end ; and every man 
 who owned a castle to shelter him in case 
 of defeat, and a sufficient number of de- 
 pendants to take the field, was at liberty 
 to retaliate upon his neighbours whenev- 
 er he thought himself injured. It must 
 be kept in mind, that there was frequent- 
 ly either no jurisdiction to which he 
 could appeal, or no power to enforce its 
 awards ; so that we may consider the 
 higher nobility of France as in a state of 
 nature with respect to each other, and en- 
 titled to avail themselves of all legitimate 
 grounds of hostility. The right of waging 
 private war was moderated by Louis IX., 
 checked by Philip IV., suppressed by 
 Charles VI., but a few vestiges of its 
 practice may be found still later, f 
 
 III. In the modern condition of gov- 
 Immunity ernments, taxation is a chief en- 
 fromtax- gine of the well-compacted ma- 
 chinery which regulates the sys- 
 
 ation. 
 
 * The antiquity of compositions for murder is il- 
 lustrated by Iliad 2. 498, where, in the descrip- 
 tion of the shield of Achilles, two disputants are 
 represented wrangling before the judge for the wer- 
 eglld, Or price Of blood ; IIVSKU TTOIVTIS avSpos arro0- 
 faftttt. 
 
 t The subject of private warfare is treated so ex- 
 actly and perspicuously by Robertson, that I should 
 only waste the reader's time by dwelling so long 
 upon it as its extent and importance would other- 
 wise demand. See Hist, of Charles V., vol. i., note 
 21. Few leading passages in the monuments of the 
 middle ages, relative to this subject, have escaped 
 the penetrating eye of that historian ; and they are 
 arranged so well as to form a comprehensive trea- 
 tise in small compass. I know not that I could 
 add any much worthy of notice, unless it be the 
 following. In the treaty between Philip Augustus 
 and Richard Coeur de Lion (1194), the latter re- 
 fused to admit the insertion of an article, that none 
 of the barons of either party should molest the oth- 
 er ; lest he should infringe the customs of Poitou 
 and his other dominions, in quibus consuetum erat 
 ab antique, ut magnates causas proprias invicem 
 
 tern. The payments, the prohi- Revenues 
 bitions, the licenses, the watch- of Kings 
 fulness of collection, the evasions of France - 
 of fraud, the penalties and forfeitures, that 
 attend a fiscal code of laws, present con- 
 tinually to the mind of the most remote 
 and humble individual, the notion of a 
 supreme, vigilant, and coercive authority. 
 But the early European kingdoms knew 
 neither the necessities nor the ingenuity 
 of modern finance. From their demesne 
 lands, the kings of France and Lombardy 
 supplied the common expenses of a bar- 
 barous co^rt. Even Charlemagne regu- 
 lated the economy of his farms with the 
 minuteness of a steward, and a large pro- 
 portion of his capitularies are directed to 
 this object. Their actual revenue was 
 chiefly derived from free gifts made, ac- 
 cording to an ancient German custom, at 
 the annual assemblies* of the nation, 
 from amercements paid by allodial propri- 
 etors for default of military service, and 
 from the freda, or fines accruing to the 
 judge out of compositions for murder.f 
 These amounted to one third of the whole 
 weregild ; one third of this was paid over 
 by the count to the royal exchequer. 
 After the feudal government prevailed in 
 France, and neither the heribannum nor 
 the weregild continued in use, there 
 seems to have been hardly any source 
 of regular revenue besides the domanial 
 estates of the crown : unless we may 
 reckon as such, that during a journey, 
 the king had a prescriptive right to be 
 supplied with necessaries by the towns 
 and abbeys through which he passed ; 
 commuted sometimes into petty regular 
 payments, called droits de giste et de 
 chevauche. J Hugh Capet was nearly in- 
 digent as King of France ; though, as 
 Count of Paris and Orleans, he might 
 take the feudal aids and reliefs of his vas- 
 sals. Several other small emoluments 
 of himself and his successors, whatever 
 they may since have been considered, 
 were in that age rather seigniorial than 
 royal. The rights of toll, of customs, of 
 alienage (aubaine), generally even the re- 
 gale, or enjoyment of the temporalities 
 
 gladiis allegarent. -Hoveden, p. 741 (in Saville, 
 Script. Anglic.). 
 
 * Du Cange, Dissertation quatrieme sur Join- 
 ville. 
 
 t Mably, 1. i., c. 2, note 3. Du Cange, voc. He- 
 ribannum, Fredum. 
 
 t Velly, t. ii., p. 329. Villaret, t. xiv., p. 174- 
 195. Recueil des Historiens, t. xiv., preface, p. 
 37. The last is a perspicuous account of the royal 
 revenue in the twelfth century. But far the most 
 luminous view of that subject, for the three next 
 ages, is displayed by M. de Pastoret, in his prefa- 
 ces to the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes of the 
 Ordonnances des Rois. 
 

 PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 95 
 
 of vacant episcopal sees and other ec- 
 clesiastical benefices,* were possessed 
 within their own domains by the great 
 feudatories of the crown. They, I ap- 
 prehend, contributed nothing to their sov- 
 ereign; not even those aids which the 
 feudal customs enjoined.f 
 
 The history of the royal revenue in 
 Exactions France is however too important 
 from the to be slightly passed over. As 
 Jews. ^e necessities of government in- 
 creased, partly through the love of mag- 
 nificence and pageantry, introduced by 
 the crusades and the temper of chivalry, 
 partly in consequence of employing hired 
 troops instead of the feudal militia, it be- 
 came impossible to defray its expenses 
 by the ordinary means. Several devices, 
 therefore, were tried, in order to replen- 
 ish the exchequer. One of these was by 
 extorting money from the Jews. It is 
 almost incredible to what a length this 
 was carried. Usury, forbidden by law 
 and superstition to Christians, was con- 
 fined to this industrious and covetous peo- 
 ple. | It is now no secret, that all reg- 
 ulations interfering with the interest of 
 money render its terms more rigorous 
 and burdensome. The children of Israel 
 grew rich in despite of insult and oppres- 
 sion, and retaliated upon their Christian 
 debtors. If an historian of Philip Au- 
 gustus may be believed, they possessed 
 almost one half of Paris. Unquestion- 
 ably they must have had support both at 
 the court and in the halls of justice. The 
 policy of the kings of France was to em- 
 ploy them as a sponge to suck their sub- 
 jects' money, which they might after- 
 ward express with less odium than direct 
 taxation would incur. Philip Augustus 
 released all Christians in his dominions 
 from their debts to the Jews, reserving a 
 fifth part to himself. He afterward ex- 
 pelled the whole nation from France. 
 But they appear to have returned again ; 
 whether by stealth, or, as is more proba- 
 ble, by purchasing permission. St. Louis 
 twice banished and twice recalled the 
 
 * The Duke of Burgundy and Count of Cham- 
 pagne did not possess the regale. But it was en- 
 joyed by all the other peers ; by the dukes of Nor- 
 mandy, Guienne, and Britany ; the counts of Tou- 
 louse, Poitou, and Flanders. Mably, 1. hi., c. 4. 
 Recueil des Historiens, t. ii., p. 229, and t. xiv., p. 
 53. Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 621. 
 
 1 1 have never met with any instance of a relief, 
 aid, or other feudal contribution paid by the vassals 
 of the French crown ; but in this negative propo- 
 sition it is possible that I may be deceived. 
 
 t The Jews were celebrated for usury as early 
 as the sixth century. Greg. Turon., 1. iv., c. 12, 
 and 1. vii., c. 23. 
 
 $ Rigord, in Du Chesne, Hist. Franc. Script., t. 
 iii., p. 8. 
 
 Jews. A series of alternate persecution 
 and tolerance was borne by this extraordi- 
 nary people with an invincible perseve- 
 rance, and a talent of accumulating rich- 
 es which kept pace with their plunderers ; 
 till new schemes of finance supplying the 
 turn, they were finally expelled under 
 Charles VI., and never afterward obtain- 
 ed any legal establishment in France.* 
 
 A much more extensive plan of rapine 
 was carried on by lowering the Debasement 
 standard of coin. Originally the of the coin, 
 pound, a money of account, was equiv- 
 alent to twenty ounces of silver; and 
 divided into twenty pieces of coin (sous), 
 each equal consequently to nearly three 
 shillings arid fourpence of our new Eng- 
 lish money. f At the revolution, the 
 money of France had been depreciated in 
 the proportion of seventy-three to one, 
 and the sol was about equal to an English 
 half-penny. This was the effect of a 
 long continuance of fraudulent and arbi- 
 trary government. The abuse began un- 
 der Philip I., in 1103, who alloyed his sil- 
 ver coin with a third of copper. So good 
 an example was not lost upon subse- 
 quent princes ; till under St. Louis, the 
 mark-weight of silver, or eight ounces, 
 was equivalent to fifty sous of the deba- 
 sed coin. Nevertheless these changes 
 seem hitherto to have produced no dis- 
 content ; whether it were that a people, 
 neither commercial nor enlightened, did 
 not readily perceive their tendency ; or, 
 as has been ingeniously conjectured, that 
 these successive diminutions of the stand- 
 ard were nearly counterbalanced by an 
 augmentation in the value of silver, oc- 
 casioned by the drain of money during 
 the crusades, with which they were about 
 contemporaneous.;]; But the rapacity of 
 Philip the Fair kept no measures with the 
 public ; and the mark in his reign had be- 
 come equal to eight livres, or a hundred 
 and sixty sous of money. Dissatisfac- 
 tion, and even tumults, arose in conse- 
 quence, and he was compelled to restore 
 the coin to its standard under St. Louis. 
 
 * Villaret, t. ix., p. 433. Metz contained, and 
 I suppose still contains, a great many Jews ; but 
 Metz was not part of the ancient kingdom. 
 
 f Besides this silver coin, there was a golden sol, 
 worth forty pence. Le Blanc thinks the solidi of 
 the Salique-law and capitularies mean the latter 
 piece of money. The denarius, or penny, was 
 worth two sous six deniers of modern French coin. 
 Villaret, t. xiv., p. 198. The price of commod- 
 ities, he asserts, did not rise till the time of St. 
 Louis. If this be said on good authority, it is a re- 
 markable fact ; but in England we know very little 
 of prices before that period, and I doubt if their his- 
 tory has been better traced in France. 
 
 $ It is curious, and not perhaps unimportant, to 
 leam the course pursued in adjusting payments 
 
96 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 His successors practised the same arts 
 of enriching their treasury ; under Philip 
 of Valois, the mark was again worth eight 
 livres. But the film had no w dropped from 
 the eyes of the people ; and these adul- 
 terations of money, rendered more vexa- 
 tious by continued recoinages of the cur- 
 rent pieces, upon which a fee was extort- 
 ed by the moneyers, showed in their true 
 light as mingled fraud and robbery.* 
 
 These resources of government, how- 
 Direct tax- ever, by no means superseded 
 ation. the necessity of more direct 
 taxation. The kings of France exacted 
 money from the roturiers, and particular- 
 ly the inhabitants of towns within their 
 domains. In this they only acted as pro- 
 prietors, or suzerains; and the barons 
 took the same course in their own lands. 
 Philip Augustus first ventured upon a 
 stretch of prerogative, which, in the words 
 of his biographer, disturbed all France. 
 He deprived by force, says Rigord, both 
 his own vassals, who had been accustom- 
 ed to boast of their immunities, and their 
 feudal tenants, of a third part of their 
 goods. f Such arbitrary taxation of the 
 nobility, who deemed that their military 
 service discharged them from all pecu- 
 niary burdens, France was far too aris- 
 tocratical a country to bear. It seems 
 not to have been repeated ; and his suc- 
 cessors generally pursued more legiti- 
 mate courses. Upon obtaining any con- 
 tribution, it was usual to grant letters 
 patent, declaring that it had been freely 
 given, and should not be turned into pre- 
 cedent in time to come. Several of these 
 letters patent of Philip the Fair are ex- 
 
 Tn the restoration of good coin, which happen- 
 pretty frequently in the fourteenth century, 
 when the States-General, or popular clamour, for- 
 ced the court to retract its fraudulent policy. Le 
 Blanc has published several ordinances nearly to 
 the same effect. One of Charles VI. explains the 
 method adopted rather more fully than the rest. 
 All debts incurred since the depreciated coin began 
 to circulate were to be paid in that coin, or accord- 
 ing to its value. Those incurred previously to its 
 commencement were to be paid according to the 
 value of the money circulating at the time of the 
 contract. Item, que tous les vrais emprunts faits 
 en deniers sans fraude, se payeront en telle mon- 
 noye comme Ton aura emprunte, si elle a plein cours 
 au temps du payement, et sinon, ils payeront en 
 monnoye coursable lors selon la valeur et le prix du 
 marc d'or ou d'argent, p. 32. 
 
 * Continuator Gul. de Nangis in Spicilegio, t. 
 iii. For the successive changes in the value- of 
 French coins, the reader may consult Le Blanc's 
 treatise, or the Ordonnances des Rois ; or he may 
 find a summary view of them in Du Cange, v. Mo- 
 neta. The bad consequences of these innovations 
 are well treated by M. de Pastoret, in his elaborate 
 preface to the sixteenth volume of the Ordonnances 
 des Rois, p. 40. 
 t Du Chesne, t. v., p. 43. 
 
 tant, and published in the general collec- 
 tion of ordinances.* But in the reign of 
 this monarch, a great innovation took 
 place in the French constitution, which, 
 though it principally affected the method 
 of levying money, may seem to fall more 
 naturally under the next head of consid- 
 eration. 
 
 IV. There is no part of the French 
 feudal policy so remarkable as Wailtof 
 the entire absence of all su- supreme le- 
 preme legislation. We find it gisiative 
 difficult to conceive the exist- ai 
 ence of a political society, nominally one 
 kingdom, and under one head, in which, 
 for more than three hundred years, there 
 was wanting the most essential attribute 
 of government. It will be requisite, 
 however, to take this up a little higher, 
 and inquire what was the original legis- 
 lature of the French monarchy. 
 
 Arbitrary rule, at least in theory, was 
 uncongenial to the character of Ori 
 the northern nations. Neither legifiaTive 
 the power of making laws, nor assemblies 
 that of applying them to the cir- 0| 
 cumstances of particular cases, was left 
 at the discretion of the sovereign. The 
 Lombard kings held assemblies every 
 year at Pavia, where the chief officers 
 of the crown and proprietors of lands 
 deliberated upon all legislative meas- 
 ures, in the presence, and, nominally at 
 least, with the consent, of the multitude. f 
 Frequent mention is made. of similar pub- 
 lic meetings in France by the historians 
 of the Merovingian kings, and still more 
 unequivocally by their statutes. J These 
 assemblies have been called parliaments 
 
 * Fasons scavoir et recognoissons que la derni- 
 ere subvention que ils nous ont faite (les barons, 
 vassaux et nobles d'Auvergne) de pure grace sans 
 ce que ils y fussent tenus que de grace ; et voulons 
 et leur octroyons que les autres subventions que 
 ils nous ont faites ne leur facent nul prejudice, es 
 choses esquelles ils n'etoient tenus, ne par ce nul 
 nouveau droit ne nous soit acquis ne amenuisie". 
 Ordonnance de 1304, apud Mably, 1. iv., c. 3, note 5. 
 See other authorities in the same place. 
 
 t Luitprand, king of the Lombards, says that 
 his laws sibi placuisse una cum omnibus judicibus 
 de Austriae et Neustriae partibus, et de Tusciae fin- 
 ibus, cum reliquis fidelibus meis Langobardis, et 
 omni populo assistente. Muratori, Dissert. 22. 
 
 | Mably, 1. i., c. 1, note 1. Lindebrog., Codex 
 Legum Antiquarum, p. 363, 369. The following 
 passage, quoted by Mably (c. ii.,n. 6) from the pre- 
 amble of the revised Salique law under Clotaire II. 
 is explicit. Temporibus Clotairii regis una cum 
 principibus suis, id est 33 episcopis et 34 ducibus 
 et 79 comitibus, vel csetero populo constituta est. 
 A remarkable instance of the use of vel instead of 
 et, which was not uncommon, and is noted by Du 
 Cange under the word Vel. Another proof of it 
 occurs in the very next quotation of Mably from 
 the edict of 615, cum pontificibus, vel cum magma 
 viris optimatibuB. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 97 
 
 of the Champ de Mars, having originally 
 been held in the month of March. We 
 know very little of their constituent mem 
 bers ; but it is probable that every allo 
 dial proprietor had a legal right to assis 
 in their deliberations ; and at least equal- 
 ly so, that the efficient power was nearly 
 confined to the leading aristocracy. Such 
 indeed, is the impression conveyed by a 
 remarkable passage of Hincmar, arch- 
 bishop of Rheims, during the time of 
 Charles the Bald, who has preserved, on 
 the authority of a writer contemporary 
 with Charlemagne, a sketch of the Prank- 
 ish government under that great prince. 
 Two assemblies (placita) were annually 
 Assemblies h ? ld ' In the first, all regulations 
 held by of importance to the public wea] 
 charie- for the ensuing year were en- 
 acted ; and to this, he says, the 
 whole body of clergy and laity repaired ; 
 the greater, to deliberate upon what was 
 fitting to be done ; and the less, to con- 
 firm by their voluntary assent, not through 
 deference to power, or sometimes even 
 to discuss, the resolutions of their superi- 
 ors.* In the second annual assembly, 
 the chief men and officers of state were 
 alone admitted to consult upon the most 
 urgent affairs of government. They de- 
 bated, in each of these, upon certain ca- 
 pitularies, or short proposals, laid before 
 them by the king. The clergy and nobles 
 met in separate chambers, though some- 
 times united for the purposes of delibera- 
 tion. In these assemblies, principally, 
 I presume, in the more numerous of the 
 two annually summoned, that extensive 
 body of laws, the capitularies of Charle- 
 magne, were enacted. And though it 
 would contradict the testimony just ad- 
 duced from Hincmar, to suppose that the 
 lesser freeholders took a vey effective 
 share in public counsels, yet their pres- 
 ence, and the usage of requiring their 
 assent, indicate the liberal principles 
 upon which the system of Charlemagne 
 was founded. It is continually expressed 
 in his capitularies, and those of his family, 
 that they were enacted by general con- 
 
 * Consuetude tune temporis tails erat, ut non 
 saepius, sed bis in anno placita duo tenerentur. 
 Unum, quando ordinabatur status totius regni ad 
 anni vertentis spatium ; quod ordinatum nullus 
 eventus rerum, nisi summa necessitas, quae simili- 
 ter toti regno incumbebat, mytabat. In quo placito 
 generalitas universorurn majorum, tarn clericorum 
 quam laicorum, conveniebat ; seniores, propter con- 
 silium ordinandum ; minores, propter idem consil- 
 ium suspiciendum, et interdum pariter tractandum, 
 et non ex potestate, sed ex proprio mentis in- 
 tellectu vel sententia, confirmandum. Hincmar, 
 Epist. 5, de ordine palatii. I have not translated 
 the word majorum in the above quotation, not ap- 
 prehending its sense. 
 
 sent.* In one of Louis the Debonair, we 
 even trace the first germe of represent- 
 ative legislation. Every count is direct- 
 ed to bring with him to the general as- 
 sembly twelve Scabini, if there should be 
 so many in his county ; or, if not, should 
 fill up the number out of the most re- 
 spectable persons resident. These Sca- 
 bini were judicial assessors of the count, 
 chosen by the allodial proprietors.! 
 
 The circumstances, however, of the 
 French empire for several subsequent 
 ages were exceedingly adverse to such 
 enlarged schemes of polity. The nobles 
 contemned the imbecile descendants of 
 Charlemagne ; and the people, or lesser 
 freeholders, if they escaped absolute vil- 
 lanage, lost their immediate relation to 
 the supreme government in the subor- 
 dination to their lord established by the 
 feudal law. Yet we may trace the shadow 
 of ancient popular rights in one constitu- 
 tional function of high importance, the 
 choice of a sovereign. Historians who 
 relate the election of an emperor or king 
 of France, seldom omit to specify the 
 consent of the multitude, as well as of the 
 temporal and spiritual aristocracy ; and 
 even in solemn instruments that record 
 such transactions, we find a sort of im- 
 portance attached to the popular suf- 
 frage. J It is surely less probable that a 
 
 * Capitula quae praeterito anno legi Salicae cum 
 omnium consensu addenda esse censuimus. (A. 
 D. 801.) Ut populus interrogetur de capitulis quss 
 in lege noviter addita sunt, et postquam omnes con- 
 senserint, subscriptiones et manutirmationes suas 
 in ipsis capitulis faciant. (A. D. 813.) Capitularia 
 patris nostri quae Franci pro lege tenenda judica- 
 verunt. (A. D. 837.) I have borrowed these quo- 
 tations from Mably, who remarks that the word 
 populus is never used in the earlier laws. See too 
 Du Cange, vv. Lex, Mallum, Pactum. 
 
 t Vult dominus Imperator ut in tale placitum 
 quale ille nunc jusserit, venial unusquisque comes, 
 et adducat secum duodecim scabinos si tanti fu- 
 erint ; sin autem, de melioribus hominibus illius 
 comitatus suppleat numerum duodenarium. Ma- 
 bly, 1. ii., c. ii. 
 
 t It has been intimated in another place, p. 67, 
 that the French monarchy seems not to have been 
 strictly hereditary under the later kings of the Me- 
 rovingian race : at least expressions indicating a 
 formal election are frequently employed by histo- 
 rians. Pepin of course came in by the choice of 
 the nation. At his death he requested the consent 
 of the counts and prelates to the succession of his 
 
 s (Baluzii Capitularia, p. 187) ; though they had 
 
 ind themselves by oath at his consecration never 
 to elect a king out of another family. Ut nun- 
 quam de alterius lumbis regern eligere praesumant. 
 (Formula Consecrationis Pippini in Recueil des 
 tfistoriens, t. v.) In the instrument of partition 
 >y Charlemagne among his descendants, he pro- 
 vides for their immediate succession in absolute 
 terms, without any mention of consent. But in the 
 event of the decease of one of his sons leaving a child 
 whom the people shall choose, the other princes were 
 to permit him to reign. Baluze, p. 440. This is 
 
98 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. H. 
 
 recognition of this elective right should 
 have been introduced as a mere ceremo- 
 ny, than that the form should have sur- 
 vived after length of time and revolutions 
 of government had almost obliterated the 
 recollection of its meaning. 
 
 It must, however, be impossible to as- 
 certain even the theoretical privileges of 
 the subjects of Charlemagne, much more 
 to decide how far they were substantial or 
 illusory. We can only assert in general, 
 that there continued to be some mixture 
 of democracy in the French constitution 
 during the reign of Charlemagne and his 
 first successors. The primeval German 
 institutions were not eradicated. In the 
 Capitularies, the consent of the people is 
 frequently expressed. Fifty years after 
 Charlemagne, his grandson, Charles the 
 Bald, succinctly expresses the theory of 
 legislative power. A law, he says, is 
 made by the people's consent and the 
 king's enactment.* It would hardly be 
 
 repeated more perspicuously in the partition made 
 by Louis I., in 817. Si quis eorum decedens le- 
 gitimos filios reliquerit, non inter eos potestas ipsa 
 dividatur, sed potius populus pariter conveniens, 
 unum ex iis, quern dominus voluerit, eligat, et 
 hunc senior frater in loco fratris et filii recipiat. 
 Baluze, p. 577. Proofs of popular consent given 
 to the succession of kings during the two next cen- 
 turies are frequent, but of less importance on ac- 
 count of the irregular condition of government. 
 Even after Hugh Capet's accession, hereditary 
 right was far from being established. The first six 
 kings of this dynasty procured the co-optation of 
 their sons, by having them crowned during their 
 own lives. And this was done without the con- 
 sent of the chief vassals. (Recueil des Hist., t. xi., 
 p. 133. ) In the reign of Robert it was a great ques- 
 tion whether the elder son should be thus designa- 
 ted as heir in preference to his younger brother, 
 whom the queen, Constance, was anxious to place 
 upon the throne. Odolric, bishop of Orleans, writes 
 to Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, in terms which lead 
 one to think that neither hereditary succession 
 nor primogeniture was settled on any fixed prin- 
 ciple. (Id., t. x., p. 504.) And a writer in the same 
 collection, about the year 1000, expresses himself 
 in the following manner : Melius est election! 
 principis non subscribere, quam post subscription- 
 em electum contemnere ; in altero enim libertatis 
 amor laudatur, in altero servilis contumacia probro 
 datur. Tres namque generates electiones novimus ; 
 quarum una est regis vel imperatoris, altera ponti- 
 ficis, altera abbatis. Et primam quidem facit con- 
 cordia totius regni ; secundam verp unanimitas 
 civium et cleri ; tertiam sanius consilium crenobi- 
 ticae congregationis. (Id., p. 626.) At the corona- 
 tion of Philip I., in 1059, the nobility and people 
 (milites et popuh tam majores quam minores) tes- 
 tified their consent by crying, Laudamus, volumus, 
 fiat, t. xi., p. 33. I suppose, if search were made, 
 that similar testimonies might he found still later ; 
 and perhaps hereditary succession cannot be con- 
 sidered as a fundamental law till the reign of Philip 
 Augustus, the era of many changes in the French 
 constitution. 
 
 * Lex consensu populi fit, constitutione regis, 
 Recueil des Hist, t. vii., p. 656. 
 
 warranted by analogy or precedent, to 
 interpret the word people so very nar- 
 rowly as to exclude any allodial proprie- 
 tors, among whom, however unequal in 
 opulence, no legal inequality of rank is 
 supposed to have yet arisen. 
 
 But by whatever authority laws were 
 enacted, whoever were the constituent 
 members of national assemblies, they 
 ceased to be held in about seventy years 
 from the death of Charlemagne. The 
 latest capitularies are of Carloman, in 
 882.* From this time there ensues a long 
 blank in the history of French legislation. 
 The kingdom was as a great fief, or rath- 
 er as a bundle of fiefs, and the king little 
 more than one of a number of feudal no- 
 bles, differing rather in dignity than in 
 power from some of the rest. The royal 
 council was composed only of barons, or 
 tenants in chief, prelates, and household 
 officers. These now probably delibera- 
 ted in private, as we hear no more of the 
 consenting multitude. Political functions 
 were not in that age so clearly separated 
 as we are taught to fancy they should be ; 
 this council advised the king R oya i council 
 in matters of government, con- of the third 
 firmed and consented to his race< 
 grants, and judged in all civil and crimi- 
 nal cases, where any peers of their court 
 were concerned.! The great vassals of 
 the crown acted for themselves in their 
 own territories, with the assistance of 
 councils similar to that of the king. 
 Such indeed was the symmetry of feudal 
 customs, that the manerial court of every 
 vavassor represented in miniature that of 
 his sovereign.! 
 
 But, notwithstanding the want of any 
 permanent legislation during so long a 
 
 * It is generally said, that the capitularies cease 
 with Charles the Simple, who died in 921. But 
 Baluze has published only two under the name of 
 that prince ; the first, a declaration of his queen's 
 jointure; the second, an arbitration of disputes in 
 the church of Tongres ; neither surely deserving 
 the appellation of a law. 
 
 t Regali potential in nullo abuti volentes, says 
 Hugh Capet, omnia negotia reipublicae in consulta- 
 tions et sententia fidelium nostrorum disponimus. 
 Recueil des Hist., t. x., p. 392. The subscrip- 
 tions of these royal counsellors were necessary for 
 the confirmation, or, at least, the authentication of 
 charters, as was also the case in England, Spain, 
 and Italy. This practice continued in England till 
 the reign of John. 
 
 The Curia regis seems to have differed only in 
 name from the Concilium regium. It is also called 
 Curia parixim, from the equality of the barons who 
 composed it, standing in the same feudal degree of 
 relation to the sovereign. But we are not yet ar- 
 rived at the subject of jurisdiction, which it is very 
 difficult to keep distinct from what is immediately 
 before us. 
 
 $ Recueil des Hist., t. xi.,p. 300, and preface, p. 
 179. Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. u., p. 508. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 99 
 
 period, instances occur, in which the 
 kings of France appear to have acted 
 with the concurrence of an assembly, 
 
 Occasional more numerous and more par- 
 assemblies ticularly summoned than the 
 of barons. rova i council. At such a con- 
 ress, held in 1146, the crusade of Louis 
 We find also an 
 prince in some 
 
 v : 
 
 II. was undertaken.* 
 ordinance of the same 
 
 collections, reciting that he had convoked 
 a general assembly at Soissons, wher 
 many prelates and barons then presen 
 had consented and requested that privat 
 wars might cease for the term of te 
 years. f The famous Saladine tithe wa 
 imposed upon lay as well as ecclesiastica 
 revenues by a similar convention in 1 188. 
 And when Innocent IV., during his con 
 test with the Emperor Frederick, request 
 ed an asylum in France, St. Louis, thoug 
 much inclined to favour him, venturec 
 only to give a conditional permission, pro 
 vided it were agreeable to his barons 
 whom, he said, a king of France wa 
 bound to consult in such circumstances 
 Accordingly he assembled the Frenc] 
 barons, who unanimously refused thei 
 consent.^ 
 
 It was the ancient custom of the kings 
 of France as well as of England, and in 
 Cours Pi6- deed of all those vassals who af 
 nieres. fected a kind of sovereignty, to 
 hold general meetings of their barons 
 called Cours Plenieres or Parliaments, a 
 the great festivals of the year. These 
 assemblies were principally intended to 
 make a display of magnificence, and to 
 keep the feudal tenants in good-humour 
 nor is it easy to discover that they passec 
 in any thing but pageantry. || Some re- 
 spectable antiquaries have however been 
 of opinion, that affairs of state were oc- 
 casionally discussed in them ; and this is 
 
 * Velly, t. iii., p. 119. This, he observes, is the 
 first instance in which the word parliament is used 
 for a deliberative assembly. 
 
 t Ego Ludovicus Dei gratia Francorum rex, ad 
 reprimendum fervorem malignantium, et compe- 
 scendum violentas praedorum manus, postulationi- 
 bns cleri et assensu baronias, toti regno pacem con- 
 stituimus. Ea causa, anno Incarnati Verbi 1155, 
 iv idus Jun. Suessionense concilium celebre ad- 
 unavimus, et affuerunt archiepiscopi Remensis, 
 Senonensis et eqrum suffraganei ; item barones, 
 comes Flandrensis, Trecensis, et Nivemensis et 
 quamplures alii, et dux Burgundiae. Ex quorum 
 beneplacito ordinavimus a veniente Pascha ad 
 decem annos, ut omnes ecclesiae regni et omnes 
 
 agricolae etc. pacem habeant et securitatem 
 
 In pacem istam juraverunt Dux Burgundiae, Comes 
 Flandrise, et reliqui barones quiaderant. 
 
 This ordinance is published in Du Chesne, 
 Script. Rerum. Gallicarum, t. iv., and in Recueil 
 des Histor., t. xiv., p. 387 ; but not in the general 
 collection. 
 
 t Velly, t. iii., p. 315. $ Ibid., t. iv., p. 306. 
 
 !! Du Cange, Dissert. 5, sur Joinville. 
 G2 
 
 certainly by no means inconsistent with 
 probability, though not sufficiently estab- 
 lished by evidence.* 
 
 Excepting a few instances, most of 
 which have been mentioned, it does not 
 appear that the kings of the house of 
 Capet acted according to the advice and 
 deliberation of any national assembly, 
 such as assisted the Norman sovereigns 
 of England; nor was any consent re- 
 quired for tlie validity of their edicts, ex- 
 cept that of the ordinary council, chiefly 
 formed of their household officers and 
 less powerful vassals. This is at first 
 sight very remarkable. For there can 
 be no doubt that the government of Hen- 
 ry I. or Henry II. was incomparably 
 stronger than that of Louis VI. or Louis 
 VII. But this apparent absoluteness of 
 the latter was the result of their real 
 weakness and the disorganization of the 
 monarchy. The peers of France were 
 infrequent in their attendance upon the 
 king's council, because they denied its 
 coercive authority. It was a Limitations 
 fundamental principle, that ev- of royal 
 ery feudal tenant was so far P?y er in Ie - 
 
 sovereign within the limits of 
 his fief, that he could not be bound by 
 any law without his consent. The king, 
 says St. Louis in his Establishments, 
 cannot make proclamation, that is, de- 
 clare any new law, in the territory of a 
 baron without his consent, nor can the 
 baron do so in that of a vavassor.f Thus, 
 if legislative power be essential to sover- 
 eignty, we cannot in strictness assert 
 the King of France to have been sover- 
 eign beyond the extent of his domanial 
 ;erritory. Nothing can more strikingly 
 illustrate the dissimilitude of the French 
 and English constitutions of government, 
 than the sentence above cited from the 
 code of St. Louis. 
 
 Upon occasions, when the necessity of 
 common deliberation, or of giv- substitutes 
 ng to new provisions more ex- for iegi*ia- 
 ensive scope than the limits of jjj e author " 
 a single fief, was too glaring to ' 
 >e overlooked, congresses of neighbour- 
 ng lords met in order to agree upon reso- 
 utions, which each of them undertook to 
 execute within his own domains. The 
 ting was sometimes a contracting party, 
 >ut without any coercive authority over 
 hie rest. Thus we have what is called 
 n ordinance, but, in reality, an agree- 
 
 * Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscript., t. xli. Recueil 
 es Hist., t. xi., preface, p. 155. 
 
 t Ne li Rois ne puet mettre ban en la terre au 
 aron sans son assentment, ne li Bers [Baronl ne 
 uet mettre ban en la terre au vavasor. Ordorx- 
 ances dee Rois, 1. 1., p. 126. 
 
100 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 ment, between the king (Philip Angus- of St. Louis, about 1269 ; and their ill- 
 tus), the Countess of Troyes or Cham- judged confidence in this feudal privilege 
 pagne, and the Lord of Dampierre (Count still led them to absent themselves from 
 of Flanders), relating to the Jews in their | the royal council. It seems impossible to 
 domains ; which agreement or ordinance, 
 it is said, should endure " until ourselves, 
 and the Countess of Troyes, and Guy de 
 Dampierre, who make this contract, shall 
 dissolve it with the consent of such of our 
 barons as we shall summon for that pur- 
 pose."* 
 
 Ecclesiastical councils were another 
 substitute for a regular legislature; and 
 this defect in the political constitution 
 rendered their encroachments less ob- 
 noxious, and almost unavoidable. That 
 of Troyes in 878, composed perhaps in 
 part of laymen, imposed a fine upon the 
 invaders of church property.! And the 
 council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohibited 
 the erection of any new fortresses, or the 
 entering into any leagues, except against 
 the enemies of religion; and ordained 
 that judges should administer justice gra- 
 tuitously, and publish the decrees of the 
 council four times in the year.J 
 
 The first unequivocal attempt, for il 
 First meas- wa f nothing more, at general 
 uresofgen- legislation, was under Louis 
 
 VII . L ' ' m . 1223 ' in an ordinance, 
 
 which, like several of that age, 
 relates to the condition and usurious deal- 
 ings of the Jews. It is declared in the 
 preamble to have been enacted, per as- 
 sensum archiepiscoporum, episeopomm, 
 comitum, baronum, et militum regni 
 Franciae, qui Judaeos habent, etqui Judaeos 
 non habent. This recital is probably un- 
 true, and intended to cloak the bold inno- 
 vation contained in the last clause of the 
 following provision : Sciendum, quod nos 
 et barones nostri statuimus et ordinavi- 
 mus de statu Judaeorum quod nullus nos- 
 trtim alterius Judaeos recipere potest vel 
 retinere ; et hoc intelligendum est tarn de his 
 qui stalilimentum juraverint, quam de illis 
 qui non juraverint.^ This was renewed 
 with some alteration in 1230, de communi 
 consilio baronum nostrorum.|| 
 
 But whatever obedience the vassals of 
 the crown might pay to this ordinance, 
 their original exemption from legislative 
 control remained, as we have seen, un- 
 impaired at the date of the Establishments 
 
 * Quousque nos, et comitissa Trecensis, et 
 Guide de Domna petra, qui hoc facimus, per nos, 
 et illos de baronibus nostris, quos ad hoc vocare vo- 
 lumus, illud diffaciamus. Ordonnances des Rois, 
 t. i., p. 39. This ordinance bears no date, but it 
 was probably between 1218 and 1223, the year of 
 Philip's death! 
 
 t Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., p. 6. 
 
 t Velly, t. iv., p. 132. 
 
 $ Ordonn. des Rois, t. i., p. 47. || Id., p. 53. 
 
 doubt that the barons of France might 
 have asserted the same right, which 
 those of England had obtained, that of 
 being duly summoned by special writ, 
 and thus have rendered their consent 
 necessary to every measure of legisla- 
 tion. But the fortunes of France were 
 different. The Establishments of St. 
 Louis are declared to be made "par 
 grand conseil de sages hommes et de 
 bons clers," but no mention is made of 
 any consent given by the barons; nor 
 does it often, if ever, occur in subsequent 
 ordinances of the French kings. 
 
 The nobility did not long continue safe 
 in their immunity from the king's Legislative 
 legislative power. In the en- power of 
 suing reign of Philip the Bold, 
 Beaumanoir lays it down, though 
 in very moderate and doubtful terms, 
 that " when the king makes any ordi- 
 nance specially for his own domains, 
 the barons do not cease to act in their 
 territories according to the ancient usage ; 
 but, when the ordinance is general, it 
 ought to run through the whole kingdom, 
 and we ought to believe that it is made 
 with good advice, and for the common 
 benefit."* In another place he says with 
 more positiveness, that "the king is 
 sovereign above all, and has of right the 
 general custody of the realm, for which 
 cause he may make what ordinances he 
 pleases for the common good, and what 
 he ordains ought to be observed ; nor is 
 there any one so great but may be drawn 
 into the king's court for default of right 
 or for false judgment, or in matters that 
 affect the sovereign."! These latter 
 words give us a clew to the solution of 
 the problem, by what means an absolute 
 monarchy was established in Causes of 
 France. For though the barons this - 
 would have been little influenced by the 
 authority of a lawyer like Beaumanoir, 
 they were much less able to resist the 
 coercive logic of a judicious tribunal. It 
 was in vain for them to deny the obliga- 
 tion of royal ordinances within their own 
 domains, when they were compelled to 
 acknowledge the jurisdiction of the par- 
 liament of Paris, which took a very dif- 
 ferent view of their privileges. This 
 progress of the royal jurisdiction will 
 fall under the next topic of inquiry, and 
 is only now hinted at, as the probable 
 means of confirming the absolute legisla- 
 tive power of the French crown. 
 
 Coutumes de Beauvoisis, c. 48. f C. 34 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 101 
 
 The ultimate source, however, of this 
 increased authority, will be found in the 
 commanding attitude assumed by the 
 kings of France from the reign of Philip 
 Augustus, and particularly in the annex- 
 ation of the two great fiefs of Normandy 
 and Toulouse. Though the chatelains 
 and vavassors who had depended upon 
 those fiefs before their reunion were, 
 agreeably to the text of St. Louis's ordi- 
 nance, fully sovereign, in respect of le- 
 gislation, within their territories, yet they 
 were little competent, and perhaps little 
 disposed, to offer any opposition to the 
 royal edicts ; and the same relative su- 
 periority of force, which had given the 
 first kings of the house of Capet a tolera- 
 bly effective control over the vassals de- 
 pendant on Paris and Orleans, while they 
 hardly pretended to any over Normandy 
 and Toulouse, was now extended to the 
 greater part of the kingdom. St. Louis, 
 in his scrupulous moderation, forbore to 
 avail himself of all the advantages pre- 
 sented by the circumstances of his reign ; 
 and his Establishments bear testimony to 
 a state of political society, which, even 
 at the moment of their promulgation, 
 was passing away. The next thirty 
 years after his death, with no marked 
 crisis, and with little disturbance, silently 
 demolished the feudal system, such as 
 had been established in France during 
 the dark confusion of the tenth century. 
 Philip the Fair, by help of his lawyers 
 and his financiers, found himself, at the 
 
 * It is almost unanimously agreed among French 
 writers, that Philip the Fair first introduced a rep- 
 resentation of the towns into his national assembly 
 of States General. Nevertheless, the Chronicles 
 of St. Denis, and other historians of rather a late 
 date, assert that the deputies of towns were pres- 
 ent at a parliament in 1241, to advise the king what 
 should be done in consequence of the Count of An- 
 gouleme's refusal of homage. Boulainvilliers, Hist, 
 de 1'Ancien Gouvernement de France, t. ii., p. 20. 
 Villaret, t. ix., p. 125. The latter pretends even 
 that they may be traced a century farther back : 
 on voit deja les gens de bonnes villes assister aux 
 etats de 1145, ibid. But he quotes no authority 
 for this ; and his vague language does not justify 
 us in supposing that any representation of the 
 three estates, properly so understood, did, or in- 
 deed could, take place in 1145, while the power of 
 the aristocracy was unbroken, and very few towns 
 had been incorporated. If it be true that the depu- 
 ties of some royal towns were summoned to the 
 parliament of 1241, the conclusion must not be in- 
 ferred, that they possessed any consenting voice, 
 nor perhaps that they formed, strictly speaking, an 
 integrant portion of the assembly. There is reason 
 to believe, that deputies from the royal burghs of 
 Scotland occasionally appeared at the bar of par- 
 liament long before they had any deliberative voice. 
 Pinkertpn's Hist, of Scotland, vol. i., p. 371. 
 
 An ordinance of St. Louis, quoted in a very re- 
 spectable book, Vaissette's History of Languedoc, 
 t. iii., p. 480, but not published in the Recueil des 
 
 beginning of tbe fourteenth conttuy, the 
 real master^ pf ;lfi$ ^subjects. 
 
 There was however one essential priv- 
 ilege which he-co'iM 'no} liope, Con\oation 
 to overturn by force, thelmtau-*^^* 68 
 nity from taxation enjoyed by phSiJuhe 7 
 his barons. This, it will be re- fair. 
 membered, embraced the whole extent 
 of their fiefs, and their tenantry of every 
 description; the king having no more 
 right to impose a tallage upon the de- 
 mesne towns of his vassals, than upon 
 themselves. Thus his resources, in point 
 of taxation, were limited to his own do- 
 mains ; including certainly, under Philip 
 the Fair, many of the noblest cities in 
 France, but by no means sufficient to 
 meet his increasing necessities. We 
 have seen already the expedients em- 
 ployed by this rapacious monarch; a 
 shameless depreciation of the coin, and, 
 what was much more justifiable, the 
 levying taxes within the territories of 
 his vassals by their consent. Of these 
 measures, the first was odious, the sec- 
 ond slow and imperfect. Confiding in 
 his sovereign authority, though recently, 
 yet almost completely established, and 
 little apprehensive of the feudal princi- 
 ples, already grown obsolete and dis- 
 countenanced, he was bold enough to 
 make an extraordinary innovation in the 
 French constitution. This was the con- 
 vocation of the States General, a repre- 
 sentative body, composed of the three 
 orders of the nation.* They were first 
 
 Ordonnances, not only shows the existence, in one 
 instance, of a provincial legislative assembly, but is 
 the earliest proof perhaps of the tiers etat appear- 
 ing as a constituent part of it. This relates to the 
 seneschaussee, or county, of Beaucaire in Langue- 
 doc, and bears date in 1254. It provides, that if the 
 seneschal shall think fit to prohibit the export of 
 merchandise, he shall summon some of the pre- 
 lates, barons, knights, and inhabitants of the chief 
 towns, by whose advice he shall issue such prohi- 
 bition, and not recall it, when made, without like 
 advice. But though it is interesting to see the pro- 
 gressive importance of the citizens of towns, yet 
 this temporary and insulated ordinance is not of 
 itself sufficient to establish a constitutional right. 
 Neither do we find therein any evidence of repre- 
 sentation; it rather appears that the persons as- 
 sisting in this assembly were notables, selected by 
 the seneschal. 
 
 I am not aware of any instance of regular pro- 
 vincial estates being summoned with such full 
 powers, although it was very common in the four- 
 teenth century to ask their consent to grants of 
 money, when the court was unwilling to convoke 
 the States General. Yet there is a passage in a 
 book of considerable credit, the Grand Customary, 
 or Somme Rurale of Bouteiller, which seems to 
 render general the particular case of the seneschaus- 
 see of Beaucaire. Bouteiller wrote about the end 
 of the fourteenth century. The great courts sum- 
 moned from time to time by the baillis and senes- 
 chals were called assizes. Their usual function 
 
102 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 convened in 1302, in order to 'give more 
 weight to tlie king's catlike, t in his great 
 quarrel with Boniface VIII. ; but their 
 earliest grant, of a subsidy is in 1314. 
 Thus the nobility surrendered to the 
 crown their last privilege of territorial 
 independence ; and having first submit- 
 ted to its appellant jurisdiction over their 
 tribunals, next to its legislative suprem- 
 acy, now suffering their own dependants 
 to become, as it were, immediate, and a 
 third estate to rise up almost co-ordinate 
 with themselves, endowed with new fran- 
 chises, and bearing a new relation to the 
 monarchy. 
 
 It is impossible not to perceive the mo- 
 tives of Philip in imbodying the deputies 
 of towns as a separate estate in the na- 
 tional representation. He might, no ques- 
 tion, have convoked a parliament of his 
 barons, and obtained a pecuniary contri- 
 bution, which they would have levied 
 upon their burgesses and other tenants. 
 But besides the ulterior policy of dimin- 
 ishing the control of the barons over 
 their dependants, he had good reason to 
 expect more liberal aid from the immedi- 
 ate representatives of the people, than 
 through the concession of a dissatisfied 
 aristocracy. He must be blind indeed, 
 says Pasquier, who does not see that the 
 roturier was expressly summoned to this 
 assembly, contrary to the ancient insti- 
 tutions of France, for no other reason 
 than that, inasmuch as the burden was 
 intended to fall principally upon him, he 
 might engage himself so far by promise, 
 that he could not afterward murmur or 
 become refractory.* Nor would I deny 
 the influence of more generous princi- 
 ples ; the example of neighbouring coun- 
 tries, the respect due to the progressive 
 civilization and opulence of the towns, 
 
 was to administer justice, especially by way of ap- 
 peal, and perhaps to redress abuses of inferior offi- 
 cers. But he seems to give them a more extended 
 authority. En assise, he says, appel!6s les sages 
 et seigneurs du pais, peuvent estre mises sus nou- 
 velles constitutions, et ordonnances sur le pais et 
 destruites autre que seront grevables, et un autre 
 temps now, et doivent etre publiees, afin que mil ne 
 les pueust ignorer, et lors ne les peut ne doit ja- 
 mais nul redarguer. Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscrip- 
 tions, t. XXK., p. 606, 
 
 The taille was assessed by respectable persons 
 chosen by the advice of the parish priests and oth- 
 ers, which gave the people a sort of share in the 
 repartition, to use a French term, of public burdens ; 
 a matter of no small importance, where a tax is 
 levied on visible property. Ordonnances des Rois, 
 p. 291. Beaumanoir, p. 269. This however con- 
 tinued, I believe, to be the practice in later times ; 
 I know it is so in the present system of France ; 
 and is perfectly distinguishable from a popular con- 
 sent to taxation. 
 
 * Rechercb.es de la France, 1. ii., c. 7. 
 
 and the application of that ancient maxim 
 of the northern monarchies, that who- 
 ever was elevated to the perfect dignity 
 of a freeman, acquired a claim to partici- 
 pate in the imposition of public tributes. 
 It is very difficult to ascertain the con- 
 stitutional rights of the States 
 General, claimed or admitted, the states 
 during forty years after their General as 
 first convocation. If indeed we totaxati n- 
 could implicitly confide in an historian of 
 the sixteenth century, who asserts that 
 Louis Hutin bound himself and his suc- 
 cessors not to levy any tax without the 
 consent of the three estates, the problem 
 would find its solution.* This ample 
 charter does not appear in the French ar- 
 chives ; and though by no means to be 
 rejected on that account, when we con- 
 sider the strong motives for its destruc- 
 tion, cannot fairly be adduced as an au- 
 thentic fact. Nor can we altogether in- 
 fer, perhaps, from the collection of ordi- 
 nances, that the crown had ever inten- 
 tionally divested itself of the right to im- 
 pose tallages on its domanial tenants. 
 All others, however, were certainly ex- 
 empted from that prerogative ; and there 
 seems to have been a general sentiment, 
 that no tax whatever could be levied with- 
 out free consent of the estates. f Louis 
 Hutin, in a charter granted to the nobles 
 and burgesses of Picardy, promises to 
 abolish the unjust taxes (maltotes) impo- 
 sed by his father ;J and in another instru- 
 ment, called the charter of Normandy, 
 declares that he renounces for himself 
 and his successors all undue tallages and 
 exactions, except in case of evident util- 
 ity. This exception is doubtless of per- 
 ilous ambiguity ; yet, as the charter was 
 literally wrested from the king by an in- 
 surrectionary league, it might be expect- 
 ed that the same spirit would rebel against 
 his royal interpretation of state-necessi- 
 ty. His successor, Philip the Long, tried 
 the experiment of a gabelle, or excise 
 upon salt. But it produced so much dis- 
 content, that he was compelled to assem- 
 ble the States General, and to publish an 
 ordinance declaring that the impost was 
 not designed to be perpetual, and that, if 
 
 * Boulainvilliers (Hist, de 1'Anc. Gouvernement, 
 t. ii., p. 128) refers for this to Nicholas Gilles, a 
 chronicler of no great repute. 
 
 f Mably (Observat. sur 1'Hist. de France, 1. v., 
 c, 1) is positive against the right of Philip the Fair 
 and his successors to impose taxes. Montlosier 
 (Monarchic Franchise, t. L, p. 202) is of the same 
 opinion. In fact, there is reason to believe, that 
 the kings in general did not claim that prerogative 
 absolutely, whatever pretexts they might set up for 
 occasional stretches of power. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 566. 
 
 I Idem, t. i., p. 589. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 103 
 
 a sufficient supply for the existing war 
 could be found elsewhere, it should in- 
 stantly determine.* Whether this was 
 done, I do not discover ; nor do I con- 
 ceive that any of the sons of Philip the 
 Fair, inheriting much of his rapacity and 
 ambition, abstained from extorting money 
 without consent. Philip of Valois renew- 
 ed and augmented the duties on salt by 
 his own prerogative, nor had the abuse 
 of debasing the current coin been ever 
 carried to such a height as during his 
 reign, and the first years of his successor. 
 These exactions, aggravated by the smart 
 of a hostile invasion, produced a very re- 
 markable concussion in the government 
 of France. 
 
 I have been obliged to advert, in an- 
 statesGen- otner place, to the memorable 
 erai of 1355 resistance made by the Estates 
 and 1356.. General of 1355 and 1356 to the 
 royal authority, on account of its insep- 
 arable connexion with the civil history 
 of France.f I n the present chapter, the 
 assumption of political influence by those 
 assemblies deserves particular notice. 
 Not that they pretended to restore the 
 ancient constitution of the northern na- 
 tions, still flourishing in Spain and Eng- 
 land, the participation of legislative pow- 
 er with the crown. Five hundred years 
 of anarchy and ignorance had swept away 
 all remembrance of those general diets, 
 in which the capitularies of the Carlovin- 
 gian dynasty had been established by 
 common consent. Charlemagne himself 
 was hardly known to the French of the 
 fourteenth century, except as the hero 
 of some silly romance or ballad. The 
 States General remonstrated, indeed, 
 against abuses, and especially the most 
 flagrant of all, the adulteration of money ; 
 but the ordinance granting redress ema- 
 nated altogether from the king, and with- 
 out the least reference to their consent, 
 which sometimes appears to be studiously 
 omitted.J But the privilege upon which 
 the states under John solely relied for 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 679. 
 
 * Chap, i., p. 42. 
 
 J The proceedings of States General held under 
 Philip IV. and his sons have left no trace in the 
 French statute-book. Two ordinances alone, out 
 of some hundred enacted by Philip of Valois, ap- 
 pear to have been founded upon their suggestions. 
 
 It is absolutely certain that the States General 
 of France had at no period, and in no instance, a 
 co-ordinate legislative authority with the crown, 
 or even a consenting voice. Mably, Boulainvil- 
 liers, and Montlosier, are as decisive on this sub- 
 ject as the most courtly writers of that country. 
 It follows as a just consequence, that France never 
 possessed a free constitution ; nor had the monar- 
 chy any limitations in respect of enacting laws, 
 save those which, until the reign of Philip the Fair, 
 the feudal principles had imposed. 
 
 securing the redress of grievances, was 
 that of granting money, and of regulating 
 its collection. The latter, indeed, though 
 for convenience it maybe devolved upon 
 the executive government, appears to be 
 incident to every assembly in which the 
 right of taxation resides. That, accord- 
 ingly, which met in 1355 nominated a 
 committee, chosen out of the three or- 
 ders, which was to sit after their separa- 
 tion, and which the king bound himself 
 to consult, not only as to the internal ar- 
 rangements of his administration, but 
 upon every proposition of peace or armi- 
 stice with England. Deputies were de- 
 spatched into each district, to superintend 
 the collection, and receive the produce 
 of the subsidy granted by the states.* 
 These assumptions of power would not 
 long, we may be certain, have left the 
 sole authority of legislation in the king, 
 and might perhaps be censured as usurpa- 
 tion, if the peculiar emergency in which 
 France was then placed did not furnish 
 their defence. But, if it be true that the 
 kingdom was reduced to the utmost dan- 
 ger and exhaustion, as much by malver- 
 sation of its government as by the ar- 
 mies of Edward III., who shall deny to 
 its representatives the rights of ultimate 
 sovereignty, and of suspending at least 
 the royal prerogatives, by the abuse of 
 which they were falling into destruc- 
 tion ?f I confess that it is exceedingly 
 difficult, or perhaps impracticable, with 
 such information as we possess, to de- 
 cide upon the motives and conduct of the 
 States General, in their several meetings 
 before and after the battle of Poitiers. 
 Arbitrary power prevailed ; and its op- 
 ponents became, of course, the theme of 
 obloquy with modern historians. Frois- 
 sart, however, does not seem to impute 
 any fault to these famous assemblies of 
 the States General ; and still less a more 
 contemporary historian, the anonymous 
 continuator of Nangis. Their notices, 
 however, are very slight ; and our chief 
 knowledge of the parliamentary history 
 of France, if I may employ the expres- 
 sion, must be collected from the royal 
 ordinances made upon these occasions, 
 or from unpublished accounts of their 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. hi., p. 21 , and preface, 
 p. 42. This preface by M. Secousse, the editor, 
 gives a very clear view of the general and provin- 
 cial assemblies held in the reign of John. Boulain- 
 villiers, Hist, de 1'Anc. Gouvernement de France, 
 t. ii., or Villaret, t. ix.,may be perused with advan- 
 tage. 
 
 f The second continuator of Nangis in the Spi- 
 cilegium dwells on the heavy taxes, diminution of 
 money, and general oppressiveness of government 
 in this age, t. iii., p. 108. 
 
104 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 transactions. Some of these, which are 
 quoted by the later French historians, are 
 of course inaccessible to a writer in this 
 country. But a manuscript in the British 
 Museum, containing the early proceed- 
 ings of that assembly which met in Octo- 
 ber, 1356, immediately after the battle of 
 Poitiers, by no means leads to an unfa- 
 vourable estimate of its intentions.* The 
 tone of their representations to the Duke 
 of Normandy (Charles V., not then call- 
 ed dauphin) is full of loyal respect ; their 
 complaints of bad administration, though 
 bold and pointed, not outrageous ; their 
 offers of subsidy liberal. The necessity 
 of restoring the coin is strongly repre- 
 sented, as the grand condition upon which 
 they consented to tax the people, who 
 had been long defrauded by the base 
 money of Philip the Fair and his succes- 
 sors.! 
 
 * Cotton MSS. Titus, t. xii., fol. 58-74. This 
 manuscript is noticed, as an important document, 
 in the preface to the third volume of Ordonnances, 
 p. 48, by M. Secousse, who had found it mention- 
 ed in the Bibliotheque Historique of Le Long, No. 
 11,242. No French antiquary appears, at least be- 
 fore that time, to have seen it ; but Boulainvilliers 
 conjectured that it related to the assembly of states 
 in February, 1356 (1357), and M. Secousse suppo- 
 sed it rather to be the original journal of the pre- 
 ceding meeting in October, 1356, from which a 
 copy, found among the manuscripts of Dupuy, and 
 frequently referred to by Secousse himself in his 
 preface, had been taken. M. Secousse was per- 
 fectly right in supposing the manuscript in ques- 
 tion to relate to the proceedings of October, and not 
 of February ; but it is not an original instrument. 
 It forms part of a small volume written on vellum, 
 and containing several other treatises. It seems, 
 however, as far as I can judge, to be another copy 
 of the account which Dupuy possessed, and which 
 Secousse so often quotes, under the name of Pro- 
 ces-verbal. 
 
 f Et estoit et est 1'entente de ceulx qui a la ditte 
 convocation estoient que quelconque ottroy ou ayde 
 qu'ils feissent, ils eussent bonne monnoye et esta- 
 ble selon 1'advis des trois estats et que les char- 
 tres et lettres faites pour les reformations du roy- 
 aume par le roy Philippe le bel, et toutes celles 
 qui furent faites par le roy notre seigneur qui est a 
 present fussent confirmees enterinees tenues et 
 gardees de point en point ; et toutes les aides quel- 
 conques qui faites soient fussent recues et distri- 
 butes par ceulx qui soient a ce commis par les trois 
 estats, et autorisees par M. le Due et sur certaines 
 autres conditions et modifications justes et raisson- 
 ables et prouffitables et semble que ceste aide eust 
 6te moult grant et moult prouffitable, et trop plus 
 que aides de fait de monnoye. Car elle se feroit 
 de volonte du peuple et consentement commun 
 selon Dieu et selon conscience : Et le prouffit que 
 on prent et veult on prendre sur le fait de la mon- 
 noye duquel on veult faire le fait de la guerre, et 
 ce soil a la destruction et a este au temps passe du 
 roy et du royaume et des subjets ; Et si se destruit 
 le billon tant par fontures et blanchis comme autre- 
 ment, ne le fait ne peuet durer longuement qu'il ne 
 vienne & destruction si on continue longuement ; 
 Et si est tout certain que les gens d'armes ne 
 vouldroient estre contens de leurs gaiges par foible 
 monnoye, &c. 
 
 But whatever opportunity might now 
 be afforded for establishing a just Troubles 
 and free constitution in France *" Paris, 
 was entirely lost. [A. D. 1357.] Charles, 
 inexperienced and surrounded by evil 
 counsellors, thought the States General 
 inclined to encroach upon his rights, of 
 which, in the best part of his life, he was 
 always abundantly careful. He dismiss- 
 ed therefore the assembly, and had re- 
 course to the easy but ruinous expedient 
 of debasing the coin. This led to sedi- 
 tions at Paris, by which his authority and 
 even his life were endangered. In Feb- 
 ruary, 1357, three months after the last 
 meeting had been dissolved, he was 
 obliged to convoke the states again, and 
 to enact an ordinance conformable to the 
 petitions tendered by the former assem- 
 bly.* This contained many excellent 
 provisions, both for the redress of abuses, 
 and the vigorous prosecution of the war 
 against Edward ; and it is difficult to con- 
 ceive, that men who advised measures so 
 conducive to the public weal, could have 
 been the blind instruments of the King 
 of Navarre. But this, as I have already 
 observed, is a problem in history that 
 we cannot hope to resolve. It appears, 
 however, that in a few weeks after the 
 promulgation of this ordinance, the pro- 
 ceedings of the reformers fell into dis- 
 credit, and their commission of thirty-six, 
 to whom the collection of the new sub- 
 sidy, the redress of grievances, and, in 
 fact, the whole administration of govern- 
 ment, had been intrusted, became unpop- 
 ular. The subsidy produced much less 
 than they had led the people to expect ; 
 briefly, the usual consequence of demo- 
 cratical emotions in a monarchy took 
 place. Disappointed by the failure of 
 hopes unreasonably entertained, and im- 
 providently encouraged, and disgusted by 
 the excesses of the violent demagogues, 
 the nation, especially its privileged class- 
 es, who seem to have concurred in the 
 original proceedings of the States Gen- 
 eral, attached themselves to the party of 
 Charles, and enabled him to quell oppo- 
 sition by force. f Marcel, provost of the 
 traders, a municipal magistrate of Paris, 
 detected in the overt execution of a trai- 
 torous conspiracy with the King of Na- 
 varre, was put to death by a private hand. 
 Whatever there had been of real patriot- 
 ism in the States General, artfully con- 
 founded, according to the practice of 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. hi., p. 121. 
 
 f Discordia mota, illi tres status ab incepto prp- 
 posito cessaverunt. Ex tune enim regni negotia 
 male ire, &c. Continuator Gul. de Nangis in Spi- 
 cilegio, t. iii., p. 115. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 105 
 
 courts, with these schemes of disaffected 
 men, shared in the common obloquy; 
 whatever substantial reforms had been 
 projected, the government threw aside as 
 seditious innovations. Charles, who had 
 assumed the title of regent, found in the 
 States General assembled at Paris in 
 1359, a very different disposition from 
 that which their predecessors had dis- 
 played, and publicly restored all counsel- 
 lors whom in the former troubles he had 
 been compelled to discard. Thus the 
 monarchy resettled itself on its ancient 
 basis ; or, more properly, acquired addi- 
 tional stability.* 
 
 Both John, after the peace of Bre- 
 Taxes im- ^ m > anc * Charles V. imposed 
 posed by taxes without consent of the 
 John and States General.f The latter in- 
 ' deed hardly ever convoked that 
 assembly. [A. D. 1380.] Upon his death 
 Remedial ^ e contention between the 
 ordinance of crown and representative body 
 Charles vi. was re newed, and in the first 
 meeting held after the accession of 
 Charles VI. the government was com- 
 pelled to revoke all taxes illegally im- 
 posed since the reign of Philip IV. This 
 is the most remedial ordinance, perhaps, 
 in the history of French legislation. " We 
 will, ordain, and grant," says the king, 
 " that the aids, subsidies, and impositions, 
 of whatever kind, and however imposed, 
 that have had course in the realm since 
 the reign of our predecessor Philip the 
 Fair, shall be repealed and abolished ; 
 and we will and decree, that by the course 
 which the said impositions have had, we 
 or our successors shall not have acquired 
 any right, nor shall any prejudice be 
 wrought to our people, nor to their privi- 
 leges and liberties, which shall be re- 
 established in as full a manner as they 
 enjoyed them in the reign of Philip the 
 Fair, or at any time since ; and we will 
 and decree, that if any thing has been 
 done contrary to them since that time 
 to the present hour, neither we nor our 
 successors shall take any advantage 
 therefrom. "J If circumstances had turn- 
 
 * A very full account of these transactions is 
 given by Secousse, in his History of Charles the 
 Bad, p. 107, and in his preface to the third volume 
 of the Ordonn. des Rois. The reader must make 
 allowance for the usual partialities of a French his- 
 torian, where an opposition to the reigning prince 
 is his subject. A contrary bias is manifested by 
 Boulainvilliers and Mably, whom, however, it is 
 well worth while to hear. 
 
 t Mably, 1. v., c. 5, note 5. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, t. Ti., p. 564. The 
 ordinance is long, containing frequent repetitions, 
 and a great redundance of words, intended to give 
 more force, or at least solemnity. 
 
 ed out favourably for the cause of liberty, 
 this ordinance might have been the basis 
 of a free constitution, in respect at least 
 of immunity from arbitrary taxation. 
 But the coercive measures of the court 
 and tumultuous spirit of the Parisians 
 produced an open quarrel, in which the 
 popular party met with a decisive failure. 
 
 It seems indeed impossible, that a 
 number of deputies, elected merely for 
 the purpose of granting money, can pos- 
 sess that weight, or be invested in the 
 eyes of their constituents with that 
 awfulness of station, which is required 
 to withstand the royal authority. The 
 States General had no right of redressing 
 abuses, except by petition ; no share in 
 the exercise of sovereignty, which is 
 inseparable from the legislative power. 
 Hence, even in their proper department 
 of imposing taxes, they were supposed 
 incapable of binding their constituents 
 without their specific assent. Whether 
 it were the timidity of the deputies, or 
 false notions of freedom, which produced 
 this doctrine, it was evidently repugnant 
 to the stability and dignity of a represent- 
 ative assembly. Nor was it less ruin- 
 ous in practice than mistaken in theory. 
 For as the necessary subsidies, after be- 
 ing provisionally granted by the states, 
 were often rejected by their electors, the 
 king found a reasonable pretence for dis- 
 pensing with the concurrence of his sub- 
 jects when he levied contributions upon 
 them. 
 
 The States General were convoked but 
 rarely under Charles VI. and States General 
 
 VII., both Of Whom levied under Charles 
 
 money without their concur- VII- 
 rence. Yet there are remarkable testi- 
 monies under the latter of these princes, 
 that the sanction of national representa- 
 tives was still esteemed strictly requisite 
 to any ordinance imposing a general tax, 
 however the emergency of circumstances 
 might excuse a more arbitrary procedure. 
 Thus Charles VII., in 1436, declares that 
 he has set up again the aids which had 
 been previously abolished by the consent 
 of the three estates.* And in the important 
 edict establishing the companies of or- 
 donnance, which is recited to be done by 
 the advice and counsel of the States Gen- 
 eral assembled at Orleans, the forty-first 
 section appears to bear a necessary con- 
 struction, that no tallage could lawfully 
 be imposed without such consent. f It is 
 maintained indeed by some writers, that 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. xiii., p. 211. 
 
 f Ibid., p. 312. Boulainvilliers mentions other 
 instances, where the states granted money during 
 this reign, t. iii., p. 70. 
 
106 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 the perpetual tattle established about thi 
 same time was actually granted by these 
 states of 1439, though it does not so ap 
 pear upon the face of any ordinance.* 
 And certainly this is consonant to the 
 real and recognised constitution of tha 
 age? 
 
 But the crafty advisers of courts in the 
 Provincial fifteenth century, enlightened by 
 states. experience of past dangers, were 
 averse to encountering these great polit- 
 ical masses, from which there were, even 
 in peaceful times, some disquieting inter- 
 ferences, some testimonies of public spirit 
 and recollections of liberty to apprehend. 
 The kings of France, indeed, had a re- 
 source, which generally enabled them to 
 avoid a convocation of the States Gen- 
 eral, without violating the national fran- 
 chises. From provincial assemblies, co m- 
 posed of the three orders, they usually 
 obtained more money than they could 
 have extracted from the common repre- 
 sentatives of the nation, and heard less 
 of remonstrance and demand.f Langue- 
 doc in particular had her own assembly 
 of states, and was rarely called upon to 
 send deputies to the general body, or 
 representatives of what was called the 
 Languedoil. But Auvergne, Normandy, 
 and other provinces belonging to the lat- 
 ter division, had frequent convocations of 
 their respective estates, during the inter- 
 vals of the States General ; intervals, 
 which by this means were protracted far 
 beyond that duration to which the exi- 
 gences of the crown would otherwise 
 have confined them.J This was one of 
 the essential differences between the 
 constitutions of France and England, and 
 arose out of the original disease of the 
 former monarchy, the distraction and 
 want of unity consequent upon the de- 
 cline of Charlemagne's family, which 
 separated the different provinces in re- 
 spect of their interests and domestic gov- 
 ernment from each other. 
 
 But the formality of consent, whether 
 by general or provincial states, now ceas- 
 ed to be reckoned indispensable. The 
 lawyers had rarely seconded any efforts 
 to restrain arbitrary power : in their ha- 
 tred of feudal principles, especially those 
 of territorial jurisdiction, every generous 
 sentiment of freedom was proscribed; or 
 if they admitted that absolute prerogative 
 might require some checks, it was such 
 only as themselves, not the national rep- 
 resentatives, should impose. Charles 
 
 * Brequigny, preface au treizieme tome des Or- 
 donnances. Boulainvilliers, t. iii., p. 108. 
 t Villaret, t. xi., p. 270. 
 j Ordonnances des Rois, t. iii., preface. 
 
 VII. levied money by his own authority. 
 Louis XI. carried this encroach- Taxes of 
 ment to the highest pitch, of ex- ^^ XI - 
 action. It was the boast of courtiers, 
 that he first released the kings of France 
 from dependance (hors de page) ; or, in 
 other words, that he effectually demol- 
 ished those barriers, which, however im- 
 perfect and ill-placed, had imposed some 
 impediment to the establishment of des- 
 potism.* 
 
 The exactions of Louis, however, 
 though borne with patience, did not pass 
 for legal with those upon whom they 
 pressed. Men still remembered their an- 
 cient privileges, which they might see 
 with mortification well preserved in Eng- 
 land. " There is no monarch or lord 
 upon earth (says Philip de Comines, him- 
 self bred in courts), who can raise a far- 
 thing upon his subjects, beyond his own 
 domains, without their free concession, 
 xcept through tyranny and violence. l 
 maybe objected that in some cases there 
 may not be time to assemble them, and 
 that war will bear no delay ; but I reply (he 
 Droceeds), that such haste ought not to 
 
 made, and there will be time enough ; 
 and I tell you that princes are more pow- 
 erful, and more dreaded by their enemies, 
 when they undertake any thing with the 
 onsent of their subje'cts."f 
 The States General met but twice du- 
 ring the reign of Louis XL, and states Gene- 
 on neither occasion for the pur- ral f Tours 
 )ose of granting money. But in 
 an assembly in the first year of Charles 
 III., the States of Tours, in 1484, is too 
 mportant to be overlooked, as it marks 
 he last struggle of the French nation by 
 ts legal representatives for immunity 
 rom arbitrary taxation. 
 
 A warm contention arose for the re- 
 gency upon the accession of Charles 
 VIII. , between his aunt, Anne de Beaujeu, 
 whom the late king had appointed by tes- 
 ament, and the princes of the blood, at 
 he head of whom stood the Duke of 
 Orleans, afterward Louis XII. The lat- 
 er combined to demand a convocation 
 
 * The preface to the sixteenth volume of Ordon- 
 ances, before quoted, displays a lamentable pic- 
 ure of the internal situation of France in conse- 
 jience of excessive taxation, and other abuses. 
 These evils, in a less aggravated degree, continued 
 ver since to retard the improvement, and diminish 
 he intrinsic prosperity, of a country so extraordi- 
 larily endowed with natural advantages. Philip 
 le Comines was forcibly struck with the different 
 ituation of England and the Netherlands. And 
 sir John Fortescue has a remarkable passage on 
 he poverty and servitude of the French commons, 
 Contrasted with English freemen. Difference of 
 imited and absolute monarchy, p. 17. 
 
 f Mem. de Comines, 1. iv,, c. 19. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 107 
 
 of the States General, which accordingly 
 took place. The king's minority and the 
 factions at court seemed no unfavourable 
 omens for liberty. But a scheme was 
 artfully contrived, which had the most 
 direct tendency to break the force of a 
 popular assembly. The deputies were 
 classed in six nations, who debated in 
 separate chambers, and consulted each 
 other only upon the result of their re- 
 spective deliberations. It was easy for 
 the court to foment the jealousies natural 
 to such a partition. Two nations, the 
 Norman and Burgundian, asserted that 
 the right of providing for the regency de- 
 volved, in the king's minority, upon the 
 States General; a claim of great bold- 
 ness, and certainly not much founded 
 upon precedents. In virtue of this, they 
 proposed to form a council, not only of 
 the princes, but of certain deputies, to be 
 elected by the six nations who composed 
 the states. But the other four, those of 
 Paris, Aquitaine, Languedoc, and Lan- 
 guedoil (which last comprised the cen- 
 tral provinces), rejected this plan, from 
 which the two former ultimately desisted, 
 and the choice of counsellors was left to 
 the princes. 
 
 A firmer and more unanimous spirit 
 was displayed upon the subject of public 
 reformation. The tyranny of Louis XI. 
 had been so unbounded, that all ranks 
 agreed in calling for redress, and the new 
 governors were desirous, at least by pun- 
 ishing his favourites, to show their incli- 
 nation towards a change of system. 
 They were very far, however, from ap- 
 proving the propositions of the States 
 General. These went to points which 
 no court can bear to feel touched, though 
 there is seldom any other mode of re- 
 dressing public abuses ; the profuse ex- 
 pense of the royal household, the num- 
 ber of pensions and improvident grants, 
 the excessive establishment of troops. 
 The states explicitly demanded that the 
 taille and all other arbitrary imposts 
 should be abolished ; and that from 
 thenceforward, " according to the natural 
 liberty of France," no tax should be lev- 
 ied in the kingdom without the consent 
 of the states. It was with great difficul- 
 ty, and through the skilful management 
 of the court, that they consented to the 
 collection of the taxes payable in the time 
 of Charles VII., with the addition of one 
 fourth, as a gift to the king upon his ac- 
 cession. This subsidy they declare to be 
 granted " by way of gift and concession, 
 and not otherwise, and so as no one 
 should from thenceforward call it a tax, 
 but a gift and concession." And this 
 
 was only to be in force for two years, 
 after which they stipulated that another 
 meeting should be convoked. But it was 
 little likely that the government would 
 encounter such a risk ; and the princes, 
 whose factious views the states had by 
 no means seconded, felt no temptation to 
 urge again their convocation. No as- 
 sembly in the annals of France seems, 
 notwithstanding some party selfishness 
 arising out of the division into nations, to 
 have conducted itself with so much pub- 
 lic spirit and moderation; nor had that 
 country perhaps ever so fair a prospect 
 of establishing a legitimate constitution.* 
 V. The right of jurisdiction has under- 
 gone changes in France and in successive 
 the adjacent countries, still more 
 remarkable than those of the 
 legislative power; and passed France, 
 through three very distinct stages, as the 
 popular, aristocratic, or regal influence 
 predominated in the political system. 
 The Franks, Lombards, and original 
 Saxons seem alike to have been scheme of 
 jealous of judicial authority, J urisdl " tlon - 
 and averse to surrendering what con- 
 cerned every man's private right, out of 
 the hands of his neighbours and his 
 equals. Every ten families are supposed 
 to have had a magistrate of their own 
 election : the tithing-man of England, the 
 decanus of France and Lombardy.f Next 
 in order was the centenarius or hundred- 
 ary, whose name expresses the extent 
 of his jurisdiction, and who, like the de- 
 canus, was chosen by those subject to 
 it.| But the authority of these petty 
 magistrates was gradually confined to the 
 less important subjects of legal inquiry. 
 No man, by a capitulary of Charlemagne, 
 could be empleaded for his life, or liberty, 
 or lands, or servants, in the hundred 
 court. In such weighty matters, or by 
 
 * I am altogether indebted to Gamier for the 
 proceedings of the States of Tours. His account, 
 Hist, de France, t. xviii., p. 154-348, is extremely 
 copious, and derived from a manuscript journal. 
 Comines alludes to them sometimes, but with little 
 particularity. 
 
 t The decanus is mentioned by a writer of the 
 ninth age as the lowest species of judge, immedi- 
 ately under the centenarius. The latter is com- 
 pared to the plebanus, or priest of a church, where 
 baptism was performed, and the former to an in- 
 ferior presbyter. Du Cange, v. Decanus; and 
 Muratori, Antiq. Ital., Dissert, x. 
 
 t It is evident from the Capitularies of Charle- 
 magne, Baluze, t. i., p. 426 and 466, that the cen- 
 tenarii were elected by the people ; that is, I sup- 
 pose, the freeholders. 
 
 Ut nullus homo in placito centenarii neque ad 
 mortem, neque ad libertatem suam amittendam, aut 
 ad res reddendas vel mancipia judicetur. Sed ista 
 aut in praesentia comitis vel missorum nostrorum 
 judicentur. Capit., A. D. 812. Baluz., p. 497. 
 
108 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 way of appeal from the lower jurisdic- 
 tions, the count of the. district was judge. 
 He indeed was appointed by the sover- 
 eign ; but his power was checked by as- 
 sessors, called Scabini, who held their 
 office by the election, or at least the con- 
 currence, of the people.* These Scabini 
 may be considered as a sort of jury, 
 though bearing a closer analogy to the 
 Judices Selecti, who sat with the pretor 
 in the tribunals of Rome. An ultimate ap- 
 peal seems to have lain to the count pal- 
 atine, an officer of the royal household ; 
 and sometimes causes were decided by 
 the sovereign himself.f Such was the 
 original model of judicature ; but as com- 
 plaints of injustice and neglect were fre- 
 quently made against the counts, Charle- 
 magne, desirous on every account to 
 control them, appointed special judges, 
 called Missi Regii, who held as-sizes from 
 place to place, inquired into abuses and 
 maladministration of justice, enforced 
 its execution, and expelled inferior judges 
 from their offices for misconduct. J 
 
 This judicial system was gradually su- 
 perseded by one founded upon totally op- 
 posite principles, those of feudal privi- 
 Territoriai lege. It is difficult to ascertain 
 jurisdiction. tne progress of territorial juris- 
 diction. In many early charters of the 
 French kings, beginning with one of 
 Dagobert I., in 630, we find inserted in 
 their grants of land an immunity from the 
 
 * Baluzii Capitularia, p. 466. Muratori, Dissert. 
 10. Du Cange. v. Scabini. These Scabini may be 
 traced by the light of charters down to the eleventh 
 century. Recueildes Historiens, t. vi., preface, p. 
 186. There is, in particular, a decisive proof of 
 their existence in 918, in a record which I have al- 
 ready had occasion to quote. Vaissette, Hist, de 
 Languedoc, t. ii., Appendix, p. 56. Du Cange, 
 Baluze, and other antiquaries, have confounded the 
 Scabini with the Rachimburgii, of whom we read 
 in the oldest laws. But M. Guizot has proved the 
 latter were landowners, acting in the county 
 courts as judges under the presidency of the count, 
 but wholly independent of him. The Scabini in 
 Charlemagne's age superseded them. Essai sur 
 PHistoire de France, p. 259, 272. 
 
 t Du Cange, Dissertation 14, sur Joinville ; and 
 Glossary, v. Comites Palatini; Mem. de 1'Acad. 
 des Inscript., t. xxx., p. 590. Louis the Debonair 
 gave one day in every week for hearing causes ; 
 but his subjects were required not to have recourse 
 to him, unless where the Missi or the counts had 
 not done justice. Baluze, t. i., p. 668. Charles 
 the Bald expressly reserves an appeal to himself 
 from the inferior tribunals. Capit. 869, t. ii., p. 2] 5. 
 In his reign, there was at least a claim to sover- 
 eignty preserved. 
 
 t For the jurisdiction of the Missi Regii, besides 
 the Capitularies themselves, see Muratori's eighth 
 Dissertation. They went their circuits four times 
 a year. Capitul., A. D. 812. A. D. 823. A ves- 
 tige of this institution long continued in the prov- 
 ince of Auvergne, under the name of Grands Jours 
 d'Auvergne ; which Louis XI. revived in 1479. 
 Gamier, Hist, de France, t. xviii., p. 458. 
 
 entrance of the ordinary judges, either to 
 hear causes, or to exact certain dues ac- 
 cruing to the king and to themselves. 
 These charters indeed relate to church 
 lands, which, as it seems implied by a law 
 of Charlemagne, universally possessed 
 an exemption from ordinary jurisdiction. 
 A precedent, however, in Marculfus, leads 
 us to infer a similar immunity to have 
 been usually in gifts to private persons.* 
 These rights of justice in the beneficiary 
 tenants of the crown are attested in sev- 
 eral passages of the capitularies. And a 
 charter of Louis I. to a private individual 
 contains a full and exclusive concession 
 of jurisdiction over all persons resident 
 within the territory, though subject to the 
 appellant control of the royal tribunals.! 
 It is obvious, indeed, that an exemption 
 from the regular judicial authorities im- 
 plied or naturally led to a right of admin- 
 istering justice in their place. But this 
 could at first hardly extend beyond the 
 tributaries or villeins who cultivated their 
 master's soil, or, at most, to free persons 
 without property, resident in the terri- 
 tory. To determine their quarrels, or 
 chastise their offences, was no very illus- 
 trious privilege. An allodial freeholder 
 could own no jurisdiction but that of the 
 king. It was the general prevalence of 
 sub-infeudation which gave importance to 
 the territorial jurisdictions of the nobility. 
 For now the military tenants, instead of 
 repairing to the county-court, sought 
 justice in that of their immediate lord ; 
 or rather the count himself, become the 
 suzerain instead of the governor of his 
 district, altered the form of his tribunal 
 upon the feudal model. J A system of 
 procedure so congenial to the spirit of the 
 age spread universally over France and 
 
 * Marculfi Formulae, 1. i., c. 17. 
 
 f Et nullus comes, nee vicarius, nee juniores 
 eorum, nee ullus judex publicus illorum homines, 
 qui super illorum aprisione habitant, aut in illorum 
 proprio, distringere nee judicare praBsumant ; sed 
 Johannes et filii sui, et posteritas illorum, illi eos 
 judicent et distringant. Et quicquid per legem 
 judicaverint, stabilis permaneat. Et si extra legem 
 fecerint, per legem emendent. Baluzii Capitularia, 
 t. ii., p. 1405. 
 
 This appellant control was preserved by. the 
 capitulary of Charles the Bald, quoted already, 
 over the territorial, as well as royal tribunals. Si 
 aliquis episcopus, vel comes ac vassus noster suo 
 homini contra rectum et justitiam fecerit, et si inde 
 ad nos reclamaverit, sciat quia, sicut ratio et lex 
 est, hoc emendare faciemus. 
 
 J We may perhaps infer, from a capitulary of 
 Charlemagne in 809, that the feudal tenants were 
 already employed as assessors in the administra- 
 tion of justice, concurrently with the Scabini men- 
 tioned above. Ut nullus ad placitum venire coga- 
 tur, nisi qui causam habet ad quajrendum, exceptis 
 scabinis et vassallis comitum. Baluz., Capitularia, 
 t. i.,p. 465. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 109 
 
 Germany. The tribunals of the king 
 were forgotten like his laws ; the one re- 
 taining as little authority to correct, as 
 the other to regulate, the decisions of a 
 territorial judge. The rules of evidence 
 were superseded by that monstrous birth 
 of ferocity and superstition, the judicial 
 combat, and the maxims of law reduced 
 to a few capricious customs, which varied 
 in almost every barony. 
 
 These rights of administering justice 
 were possessed by the owners of fiefs in 
 very different degrees ; and, in -France, 
 its divisions, were divided into the high, the 
 ' middle, and the low jurisdic- 
 tion.* The first species alone (la haute 
 justice) conveyed the power of life and 
 death ; it was inherent in the baron and 
 the chatelain, and sometimes enjoyed by 
 the simple vavassor. The lower jurisdic- 
 tions were not competent to judge in 
 capital cases, and consequently forced to 
 send such criminals to the court of the 
 superior. But in some places, a thief 
 taken in the fact might be punished with 
 death by a lord who had only the low ju- 
 risdiction. In England, this privilege was 
 known by the uncouth terms of Infangthef 
 and Outfangthef. The high jurisdiction, 
 however, was not very common in this 
 country, except in the chartered towns. f 
 
 Several customs rendered these rights 
 its adminis- of jurisdiction far less instru- 
 tration. mental to tyranny than we might 
 infer from their extent. While the counts 
 were yet officers of the crown, they fre- 
 quently appointed a deputy, or viscount, to 
 administer justice. Ecclesiastical lords, 
 who were prohibited by the canons from 
 inflicting capital punishment, and sup- 
 posed to be unacquainted with the law 
 followed in civil courts, or unable to en- 
 force it, had an officer by name of advo- 
 cate or vidame, whose tenure was often 
 feudal and hereditary. The viguiers (vi- 
 carii), bailiffs, provosts, and seneschals of 
 
 * Velly, t. vi., p. 131. Denisart, Houard, and 
 other law-books. 
 
 t A strangely cruel privilege was possessed in 
 Aragon by the lords who had not the higher juris- 
 diction, and consequently could not publicly exe- 
 cute a criminal ; that of starving him to death in 
 prison. This was established by law in 1247. Si 
 vassallus dpmini non habentis merum nee mixtum 
 imperium, in loco occiderit vassallum, dominus loci 
 potest eum occidere fame, frigore et siti. Etquili- 
 bet dominus loci habet hanc jurisdictionem necandi 
 fame, frigore et siti in suo loco, licet nullam aliam 
 jurisdictionem criminalem habeat. Du Cange, 
 voc. Fame necare. 
 
 It is remarkable, that the Neapolitan barons had 
 no criminal jurisdiction, at least of the higher kind, 
 till the reign of Alfonso, in 1443, who sold this de- 
 structive privilege, at a time when it was almost 
 abolished in other kingdoms. Giannone, 1. xxii., c. 
 5, and 1. xxvi., c. 6. 
 
 lay lords were similar ministers, though 
 not in general of so permanent a right in 
 their offices, or of such eminent station, as 
 the advocates of monasteries. It seems 
 to have been an established maxim, at 
 least in later times, that the lord could 
 not sit personally in judgment, but must 
 intrust that function to his bailiff and vas- 
 sals.* According to the feudal rules, the 
 lord's vassals or peers of his court were 
 to assist at all its proceedings. " There 
 are some places," says Beaumanoir, 
 "where the plaintiff decides in judgment, 
 and others, where the vassals of the lord 
 decide. But even where the bailiff is the 
 judge, he ought to advise with the most 
 prudent, and determine by their advice ; 
 since thus he shall be most secure if an 
 appeal is made from his judgment."! 
 And indeed the presence of these asses- 
 sors was so essential^ to all territorial 
 jurisdiction, that no lord, to whatever 
 rights of justice his fief might entitle him, 
 was qualified to exercise them, unless he 
 had at least two vassals to sit as peers 
 in his court.J 
 
 These courts of a feudal barony or 
 manor required neither the knowledge of 
 positive law, nor the dictates of natural 
 sagacity. In all doubtful cases, and es- 
 pecially where a crime not capable of 
 notorious proof was charged, the Trial by 
 combat was awarded; and God, as combat, 
 they deemed, was the judge. $ The no- 
 
 * Boutillier, in his Somme Rurale, written near 
 the end of the fourteenth century, asserts this pos- 
 itively. II convient quilz facent jugier par aultre 
 que par eulx, cest a savoir par leurs hommes feu- 
 daulx a leur semonce et conjurt [7] on de leur bailiff 
 ou lieutenant, et ont ressort a leur souverain, fol. 3. 
 
 t Coutumes de Beauvoisis, p. 11. 
 
 j It was lawful, in such case, to borrow the vas- 
 sals of the superior lord. Thaumassiere sur Beau- 
 manoir, p. 375. See Du Cange, v. Pares ; an ex- 
 cellent article, and Placitum. 
 
 In England a manor is extinguished, at least as 
 to jurisdiction, when there are not two freeholders 
 subject to escheat left as suiters to the court-baron. 
 Their tenancy must therefore have been created 
 before the statute of Quia emptores, 18 Edw. I. 
 (1290), since which no new estate in fee simple can 
 be held of the lord, nor, consequently, be liable to 
 escheat to him. 
 
 $ Trial by combat does not seem to have estab- 
 
 approved. The former species of decision may, 
 however, be met with under the first Merovingian 
 kings (Greg. Turon., 1. vii., c. 19 ; 1. x., c. 10), and 
 seems to have prevailed in Burgundy. It is estab- 
 lished by the laws of the Alemanni or Swabians. 
 Baluz., t. i., p. 80. It was always popular in Lom- 
 bardy. Luitprand, king of the Lombards, says in 
 one of his laws : Incerti sumus de judicio Dei, et 
 quosdam audivimus per pugnam sine justa causa 
 suam causam perdere. Sed propter consuetudinem 
 gentis nostrae Langobardorum legem impiam vetare 
 
110 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 bleman fought on horseback, with all his 
 arms of attack and defence ; the plebeian 
 on foot, with his club and target. The 
 same were the weapons of the champi- 
 ons, to whom women and ecclesiastics 
 were permitted to intrust their rights.* 
 If the combat was intended to ascertain 
 a civil right, the vanquished party of 
 course forfeited his claim, and paid a fine. 
 If he fought by proxy, the champion was 
 liable to have his hand struck off; a reg- 
 ulation necessary perhaps to obviate the 
 corruption of these hired defenders. In 
 criminal cases, the appellant suffered, in 
 the event of defeat, the same punishment 
 which the law awarded to the offence of 
 which he accused his adversary.! Even 
 where the cause was more peaceably 
 tried, and brought to a regular adjudica- 
 tion by the court, an appeal for false 
 judgment might indeed be made to the 
 suzerain, but it could only be tried by bat- 
 tle.:}: And in this, the appellant, if he 
 would impeach the concurrent judgment 
 of the court below, was compelled to 
 meet successively in combat every one 
 of its members; unless he should van- 
 quish them all within the day, his life, if 
 he escaped from so many hazards, was 
 forfeited to the law. If fortune or mira- 
 cle should make him conqueror in every 
 contest, the judges were equally subject 
 to death, and their court forfeited their ju- 
 risdiction for ever. A less perilous mode 
 of appeal was to call the first judge who 
 pronounced a hostile sentence into the 
 field. If the appellant came off victorious 
 in this challenge, the decision was re- 
 versed, but the court was not impeached. 
 But for denial of justice, that is, for a re- 
 fusal to try his suit, the plaintiff repaired 
 to the court of the next superior lord, and 
 supported his appeal by testimony. || Yet, 
 
 non possumus. Muratori, Script. Rerum Italica- 
 rum, t. ii., p. 65. Otho II. established it in all dis- 
 putes concerning real property ; and there is a fa- 
 mous case, where the right of representation, or 
 E reference of the son of a deceased elder child to 
 is uncle in succession to his grandfather's estate, 
 was settled by this test. 
 
 * For the ceremonies of trial by combat, see 
 Houard, Anciennes Loix Francoises, t. i., p. 264. 
 "Velly, t. vi., p. 106. Recueil des Historiens, t. xi., 
 preface, p. 189. Du Cange, v. Duellum. The 
 great original authorities are the Assises de Jeru- 
 salem, c. 104, and Beaumanoir, c. 31. 
 
 t Beaumanoir, p. 315. 
 
 j Idem, c. 61. In England the appeal for false 
 judgment to the king's court was not tried by battle. 
 Glanvil, 1. xii., c. 7. 
 
 $ Idem, c. 61. 
 
 II Id., p. 315. The practice was to challenge the 
 second witness, since the testimony of one was in- 
 sufficient. But this must be done before he com- 
 pletes his oath, says Beaumanoir, for after he has 
 been sworn, he must be heard and believed, p. 316. 
 
 even here, the witnesses might be defied, 
 and the pure stream of justice turned at 
 once into the torrent of barbarous con- 
 test.* 
 
 Such was the judicial system of France, 
 when St. Louis enacted that great Estabiish- 
 code which bears the name of his ments of 
 Establishments. The rules of St> L< 
 civil and criminal procedure, as well as 
 the principles of legal decisions, are there 
 laid down with much detail. But that 
 incomparable prince, unable to overthrow 
 the judicial combat, confined himself to 
 discouraging it by the example of a wiser 
 jurisprudence. It was abolished through- 
 out the royal domains. The bailiffs and 
 seneschals who rendered justice to the 
 king's immediate subjects, were bound to 
 follow his own laws. He not only re- 
 ceived appeals from their sentences in 
 his own court of peers, but listened to 
 all complaints with a kind of patriarchal 
 simplicity. " Many times," says Joinville, 
 " I have seen the good saint, after hearing 
 mass in the summer season, lay himself 
 at the foot of an oak in the wood of 
 Vincennes, and make us all sit round 
 him; when those who would came and 
 spake to him, without let of any officer, 
 
 No one was bound, as we may well believe, to be 
 a witness for another, in cases where such an ap- 
 peal might be made from his testimony. 
 
 * Mably is certainly mistaken in his opinion, that 
 appeals for denial of justice were not older than 
 the reign of Philip Augustus. (Observations sur 
 1'Hist. de F., 1. iii., c. 3.) Before this time the vas- 
 sal's remedy, he thinks, was to make war upon his 
 lord. And this may probably have been frequently 
 practised. Indeed it is permitted, as we have seen, 
 by the code of St. Louis. But those who were not 
 strong enough to adopt this dangerous means of 
 redress, would surely avail themselves of the as- 
 sistance of the suzerain, which in general would be 
 readily afforded. We find several instances of the 
 king's interference for the redress of injuries, in 
 Suger's life of Louis VI. That active and spirited 
 prince, with the assistance of his illustrious biogra- 
 pher, recovered a great part of the royal authority, 
 which had been reduced to the lowest ebb in the 
 long and slothful reign of his father, Philip I. One 
 passage, especially, contains a clear evidence of 
 the appeal for denial of justice, and consequently 
 refutes Mably 's opinion. In 1105, the inhabitants 
 of St. Severe, in Berri, complain of their lord 
 Humbald, and request the king aut ad exequendam 
 justitiam cogere, aut jure pro injuria castrum lege 
 Salica amittere. I quote from the preface; to the 
 fourteenth volume of the Recueil des Historiens, p. 
 44. It may be noticed by the way, that lex Salica 
 is here used for the feudal customs; in which 
 sense I believe it not unfrequently occurs. Many 
 proofs might be brought of the interposition of both 
 Louis VI. and VII. in the disputes between their 
 barons and arriere vassals. Thus the war between 
 the latter and Henry II. of England, in 1166, was 
 occasioned by his entertaining a complaint from the 
 Count of Auvergne, without waiting for the decis- 
 ion of Henry, as Duke of Guienne. Velly, t. iii., p. 
 190. Lyttleton's Henry II., vol. ii., p. 448. Recu- 
 eil des Historiens, ubi supra, p. 49. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Ill 
 
 and he would ask aloud if there were any 
 present who had suits; and when they 
 appeared, would bid two of his bailiffs 
 determine their cause upon the spot."* 
 
 The influence of this new jurisprudence 
 established by St. Louis, combined with 
 the great enhancements of the royal pre- 
 rogatives in every other respect, produ- 
 ced a rapid change in the legal adminis- 
 tration of France. Though trial by com- 
 bat occupies a considerable space in the 
 work of Beaumanoir, written under Phil- 
 ip the Bold, it was already much limited. 
 Appeals for false judgment might some- 
 times be tried, as he expresses it, par erre- 
 mens de plait, that is, I presume, where 
 the alleged error of the court below was 
 in matter of law. For wager of battle 
 was chiefly intended to ascertain contro- 
 verted facts. f So where the suzerain 
 saw clearly that the judgment of the in- 
 ferior court was right, he ought not to 
 permit the combat. Or if the plaintiff, 
 even in the first instance, could produce 
 a record or a written obligation ; or if the 
 fact before the court was notorious, there 
 was no room for battle.^ It would be a 
 hard thing, says Beaumanoir, that if one 
 had killed my near relation in open day, 
 before many credible persons, I should be 
 compelled to fight in order to prove his 
 death. This reflection is the dictate of 
 common sense, and shows that the pre- 
 judice in favour of judicial combat was 
 dying away. In the Assises de Jerusa- 
 lem, a monument of customs two hun- 
 dred years earlier than the age of Beau- 
 manoir, we find little mention of any 
 other mode of decision. The compiler 
 of that book thinks it would be very in- 
 jurious, if no wager of battle were to be 
 allowed against witnesses in causes af- 
 fecting succession; since otherwise ev- 
 ery right heir might be disinherited, as it 
 would be easy to find two persons who 
 would perjure themselves for money, if 
 they had no fear of being challenged for 
 their testimony.^ This passage indicates 
 the real cause of preserving the judicial 
 combat ; systematic perjury in witness- 
 es, and want of legal discrimination in 
 judges. 
 
 It was, in all civil suits, at the discre- 
 tion of the litigant parties, to adopt the 
 law of the Establishments instead of re- 
 sorting to combat. || As gentler manners 
 prevailed, especially among those who 
 did not make arms their profession, the 
 wisdom and equity of the new code were 
 naturally preferred. The superstition 
 
 * Collection des Memoires, t. i., p. 25. 
 
 t Beaumanoir, p. 22. t Id., p. 314. 
 
 $ C. 167. II Beaumanoir, p. 309. 
 
 | which had originally led to the latter lost 
 its weight through experience and the 
 uniform opposition of the clergy. The 
 same superiority of just and settled rules 
 over fortune and violence, which had for- 
 warded the encroachments of the eccle- 
 siastical courts, was now manifested in 
 those of the king. Philip Augustus, by a 
 famous ordinance in 1190, first establish- 
 ed royal courts of justice, held by the 
 officers called bailiffs or seneschals, who 
 acted as the king's lieutenants in his do- 
 mains.* Every barony, as it became re- 
 united to the crown, was subjected to the 
 jurisdiction of one of these officers, and 
 took the name of a bailliage or a senes- 
 chaussee ; the former name prevailing 
 most in the northern, the latter in the 
 southern provinces. The vassals whose 
 lands depended upon, or, in feudal lan- 
 guage, moved from the superiority of this 
 fief, were obliged to submit to the ressort 
 or supreme appellant jurisdiction of the 
 royal court established in it.f This be- 
 gan rapidly to encroach upon the feudal 
 rights of justice. In a variety of cases, 
 termed royal, the territorial court was 
 pronounced incompetent ; they were re- 
 served for the judges of the 
 crown ; and, in every case, un- J2j a J 1 S ibu 
 less the defendant excepted to progress of 
 the jurisdiction, the royal court Jjjj i uri8 ~ 
 might take cognizance of a suit, 
 and decide it in exclusion of the feudal 
 judicature. I The nature of cases reserv- 
 ed under the name of royal was kept in 
 studied ambiguity, under cover of which 
 the judges of the crown perpetually strove 
 to multiply them. Louis X., when re- 
 quested by the barons of Champagne to 
 explain what was meant by royal causes, 
 gave this mysterious definition: Every 
 thing which by right or custom ought ex- 
 clusively to come under the cognizance 
 of a sovereign prince. Vassals were 
 permitted to complain in the first instance 
 to the king's court, of injuries committed 
 by their lords. These rapid and violent 
 encroachments left the nobility no alter- 
 native but armed combinations to support 
 their remonstrances. Philip the Fair be- 
 queathed to his successor the task of ap- 
 peasing a storm which his own adminis- 
 tration had excited. Leagues were form- 
 ed in most of the northern provinces for 
 the redress of grievances, in which the 
 third estate, oppressed by taxation, uni- 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 18. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Ballivi. Mem. de 1'Acad. des In- 
 scriptions, t. xxx., p. 603. Mably, 1. iv., c. 4. Bou- 
 lainvilliers, t. ii., p. 22. 
 
 t Mably, Boulainvilliers. Montlosier, t. i., p. 104. 
 
 Ordonnances des Rois, p. 606. 
 
112 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [GHAP. II. 
 
 ted with the vassals, whose feudal privi- 
 leges had been infringed. Separate char- 
 ters were granted to each of these con- 
 federacies by Louis Hutin, which con- 
 tain many remedial provisions against 
 the grosser violations of ancient rights, 
 though the crown persisted in restrain- 
 ing territorial jurisdictions.* Appeals be- 
 came more common for false judgment, 
 as well as denial of right ; and in neither 
 was the combat permitted. It was still, 
 however, preserved in accusations of hei- 
 nous crimes, unsupported by any testi- 
 mony but that of the prosecutor, and was 
 never abolished by any positive law, ei- 
 ther in France or England. But instan- 
 ces of its occurrence are not frequent 
 even in the fourteenth century ; and one 
 of these, rather remarkable in its circum- 
 stances, must have had a tendency to ex- 
 plode the remaining superstition which 
 had preserved this mode of decision.! 
 
 The supreme council, or court of peers, 
 Royal coun- to whose deliberative functions 
 eii, or court I have already adverted, was 
 ofpeers. a j so fa e g rea t judicial tribu- 
 nal of the French crown from the acces- 
 sion of Hugh Capet. By this alone the 
 barons of France, or tenants in chief of 
 the king, could be judged. To this court 
 appeals for denials of justice were refer- 
 red. It was originally composed, as has 
 been observed, of the feudal vassals, co- 
 equals of those who were to be tried by 
 it; and also of the household officers, 
 whose right of concurrence, however 
 anomalous, was extremely ancient. J But 
 after the business of the court came to 
 
 * Hoc perpetuo prohibemus edicto, ne subditi, 
 seu justiciaries praelatorum aut baronum nostro- 
 rum aut aliorum subjectorum nostrorum, trahan- 
 tur in causam coram nostris officialibus, nee eorum 
 causae, nisi in casu ressorti, in nostris curiis audian- 
 tur, vel in alio casu ad nos pertinent!. Ordonnan- 
 ces des Rois, t. i., p. 362. This ordinance is of 
 Philip the Fair, in 1302 ; but those passed under 
 Louis Hutin are to the same effect. They may be 
 read at length in the Ordonnances des Rois; or 
 abridged by Boulainvilliers, t. ii., p. 94. 
 
 t Philip IV. restricted trial by combat to cases 
 where four conditions were united. The crime 
 must be capital : Its commission certain : The ac- 
 cused greatly suspected : And no proof to be ob- 
 tained by witnesses. Under these limitations, or 
 at least some of them, for it appears that they were 
 not all regarded, instances occur for some cen- 
 turies. 
 
 See the singular story of Carouges and Le Gris, 
 to which 1 allude in the text. Villaret, t. xi., p. 412. 
 Trial by combat was allowed in Scotland exactly 
 under the same conditions as in France. Pinker- 
 ton's Hist, of Scotl. v vol. i., p. 66. 
 
 t This court had always, it must be owned, a 
 pretty considerable authority over some of the 
 royal vassals. Even in Robert's reign, the Count 
 of Anjou and another nobleman of less importance 
 were summoned before it. Recueil des Historiens, 
 t. x.. p. 473. 4719. 
 
 increase through the multiplicity of ap- 
 peals, especially from the bailiffs estab- 
 lished by Philip Augustus in the royal 
 domains, the barons found neither leisure 
 nor capacity for the ordinary administra- 
 tion of justice, and reserved their attend- 
 ance for occasions where some of their 
 own orders were implicated in a criminal 
 process. St Louis, anxious for regular- 
 ity and enlightened decisions, cours po- 
 made a considerable alteration nieres. 
 by introducing some counsellors of infe- 
 rior rank, chiefly ecclesiastics, as advi- 
 sers of the court, though, as is supposed, 
 without any decisive suffrage. The court 
 now became known by the name of par- 
 liament. Registers of its proceedings 
 were kept, of which the earliest extant 
 are of the year 1254. It was still per- 
 haps in some degree ambulatory ; but by 
 far the greater part of its sessions in the 
 thirteenth century were at Paris. The 
 counsellors nominated by the king, some 
 of them clerks, others of noble rank, but 
 not peers of the ancient baronage, ac- 
 quired insensibly a right of suffrage.* 
 
 An ordinance of Philip the Fair in 1302 
 is generally supposed to have parliament 
 fixed the seat of parliament at f Paris. 
 Paris, as well as altered its constituent 
 parts. f Perhaps a series of progressive 
 changes has been referred to a single 
 epoch. But whether by virtue of this 
 ordinance, or of more gradual events, the 
 character of the whole feudal court was 
 nearly obliterated in that of the parlia- 
 ment of Paris. A systematic tribunal 
 took the place of a loose aristocratic as- 
 sembly. It was to hold two sittings in 
 the year, each of two months' duration ; 
 it was composed of two prelates, two 
 counts, thirteen clerks, and as many lay- 
 men. Great changes were made after- 
 ward in this constitution. The nobility, 
 who originally sat there, grew weary of 
 an attendance which detained them from 
 war and from their favourite pursuits at 
 lome. The bishops were dismissed to 
 ;heir necessary residence upon obligations 
 their sees. | As they withdrew, of a vassal, 
 that class of regular lawyers, original- 
 
 * Boulainvilliers, t. ii., p. 29, 44. Mably, 1. iv., 
 c. 2. Encyclopedic, Art. Parlement. Mem. de 
 'A cad. des Inscript., t. xxx., p. 603. The great 
 difficulty I have found in this investigation will 
 >lead my excuse if errors are detected. 
 
 t Pasquier (Recherch.es de la France, 1. ii., c. 3) 
 iublished this ordinance, which, indeed, as the ed- 
 tor of Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 547, observes, 
 is no ordinance, but a regulation for the execution 
 of one previously made ; nor doe's it establish the 
 residence of the Parliament of Paris. 
 
 t Velly, Hist, de France, t. vii., p. 303, and En- 
 cyclopedic, Art. Parlement, are the best authorities 
 I have found. There may very possibly be supe- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 113 
 
 ly employed, as it appears, in the pre- 
 paratory business without any decisive 
 voice, came forward to the higher places, 
 and established a complicated and tedi- 
 ous system of procedure, which was al- 
 ways characteristic of French jurispru- 
 dence. They introduced at the same 
 time a new theory of absolute power 
 and unlimited obedience. All feudal 
 Decline of privileges were treated as en- 
 the feudal croachments on the imprescrip- 
 tible rights of monarchy. With 
 the natural bias of lawyers in favour of 
 prerogative conspired that of the clergy, 
 who fled to the king for refuge against 
 the tyranny of the barons. In the civil 
 and canon laws a system of political 
 maxims was found, very uncongenial to 
 the feudal customs. The French law- 
 yers of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies frequently gave their king the title 
 of emperor, and treated disobedience to 
 him as sacrilege.* 
 
 But among these lawyers, although the 
 general tenants of the crown by barony 
 ceased to appear, there still continued to 
 sit a more eminent body, the lay and 
 Peers of spiritual peers of France, repre- 
 France. se ntatives, as it were, of that an- 
 cient baronial aristocracy. It is a very con- 
 troverted question at what time this exclu- 
 sive dignity of peerage, a word obviously 
 applicable by the feudal law to all persons 
 coequal in degree of tenure, was reserv- 
 ed to twelve vassals. At the coronation 
 of Philip Augustus, in 1179, we first per- 
 ceive the six great feudatories, dukes of 
 Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, counts of 
 Toulouse, Flanders, Champagne, distin- 
 guished by the offices they performed in 
 that ceremony. It was natural indeed 
 that, by their princely splendour and im- 
 portance, they should eclipse such petty 
 lords as Bourbon and Coucy, however 
 equal in quality of tenure. During the 
 reign of Philip Augustus, six ecclesiasti- 
 cal peers, the duke-bishops of Rheims, 
 Laon, and Langres, the count-bishops of 
 Beauvais, Chalons, and Noyon, were 
 added, as a sort of parallel or counter- 
 poise, f Their precedence does not, how- 
 ever, appear to have carried with it any 
 other privilege, at least in judicature, 
 than other barons enjoyed. But their 
 pre-eminence being fully confirmed, Phil- 
 ip the Fair set the precedent of augment- 
 ing their original number,^: by conferring 
 the dignity of peerage on the Duke of 
 
 rior works on this branch of the French constitu- 
 tion, which have not fallen into my hands. 
 
 * Mably, 1. iv., c. 2, note 10. 
 
 t Velly, t. ii, p. 287 ; t. lii., p. 221 ; t. iv., p. 41. 
 
 J Ibid., t. vii., p. 97. 
 H 
 
 Britany and the Count of Artois. Oth- 
 er creations took place subsequently; but 
 they were confined, during the period 
 comprised in this work, to princes of the 
 royal blood. The peers were constant 
 members of the parliament, from which 
 other vassals holding in chief were nev- 
 er perhaps excluded by law, but their at- 
 tendance was rare in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, and soon afterward ceased altogeth- 
 er.* 
 
 A judicial body composed of the great- 
 est nobles in France, as well as Pro regg of 
 of learned and eminent law- thejurisdic- 
 yers, must naturally have soon tio " . of the 
 become politically important. p 
 Notwithstanding their disposition to en- 
 hance every royal prerogative, as op- 
 posed to feudal privileges, the parliament 
 was not disinclined to see its own pro- 
 tection invoked by the subject. It ap- 
 pears by an ordinance of Charles V., in 
 1371, that the nobility of Languedoc had 
 appealed to the parliament of Paris 
 against a tax imposed by the king's au- 
 thority; and this, at a time when the 
 French constitution did not recognise the 
 levying of money without consent of the 
 States General, must have been a just 
 ground of appeal, though the present ordi- 
 nance annuls and overturns it.f During 
 the tempests of Charles VI. 's unhappy 
 reign, the parliament acquired a more 
 decided authority, and held, in some de- 
 gree, the balance between the contending 
 factions of Orleans and Burgundy. This 
 influence was partly owing to one re- 
 markable function attributed to the par- 
 liament, which raised it much above the 
 level of a merely political tribunal, and 
 has at various times wrought striking 
 effects in the French monarchy. 
 
 The few ordinances enacted by kings 
 of France in the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries were gen- 
 erally by the advice of their 
 royal council, in which prob- ment> 
 ably they were solemnly declared as well 
 as agreed upon. But after the gradual 
 revolution of government, which took 
 away from the feudal aristocracy all con- 
 trol over the king's edicts, and substi- 
 tuted a new magistracy for the ancient 
 baronial court, these legislative ordi- 
 nances were commonly drawn up by the 
 interior council, or what we may call the 
 ministry. They were in some instances 
 promulgated by the king in parliament. 
 Others were sent thither for registration, 
 or entry upon their records. This for- 
 mality was by degrees, if not from the 
 
 * Encyclopedic, Art. Parlement, p. 6. 
 t Mably, 1. v., c. 5, note 5. 
 
114 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP, II. 
 
 beginning, deemed essential to render 
 them authentic and notorious, and there- 
 fore indirectly gave them the sanction 
 and validity of a law.* Such, at least, 
 appears to have been the received doc- 
 trine before the end of the fourteenth 
 century. It has been contended by 
 Mably among other writers, that at so 
 early an epoch, the parliament of Paris 
 did not enjoy, nor even claim to itself, that 
 anomalous right of judging the expedi- 
 ency of edicts proceeding from the king, 
 which afterward so remarkably modified 
 the absoluteness of his power. In the 
 fifteenth century, however, it certainly 
 manifested pretensions of this nature : 
 first, by registering ordinances in such a 
 manner as to testify its own unwilling- 
 ness and disapprobation, of which one in- 
 stance occurs as early as 1418, and an- 
 other in 1443 ; and, afterward, by remon- 
 strating against, and delaying the regis- 
 tration of laws, which it deemed inimical 
 to the public interest. A conspicuous 
 proof of this spirit was given in their op- 
 position to Louis, XL when repealing the 
 Pragmatic Sanction of his father ; an or- 
 dinance essential, in their opinion, to the 
 liberties of the Gallican church. In this 
 instance they ultimately yielded ; but at 
 another time they persisted in a refusal 
 to enregister letters containing an aliena- 
 tion of the royal domain. f 
 
 The counsellors of parliament were 
 Counsellors of originally appointed by the 
 
 P 2ntHbr &P ~ kin ; alld tne 7 were even 
 
 life and by changed according to circum- 
 eiection. stances. Charles V. made 
 the first alteration, by permitting them to 
 fill up vacancies by election ; which usage 
 continued during the next reign. Charles 
 VII. resumed the nomination of fresh 
 members upon vacancies. Louis XI. 
 even displaced actual counsellors. But 
 in 1468, from whatever motive, he pub- 
 lished a most important ordinance, de- 
 claring the presidents and counsellors of 
 parliament immoveable, except in case 
 of legal forfeiture. | This extraordinary 
 measure of conferring independence on 
 a body, which had already displayed a 
 consciousness of its eminent privilege 
 by opposing the registration of his edicts, 
 is perhaps to be deemed a proof of that 
 short-sightedness as to points of substan- 
 tial interest so usually found in crafty 
 men. But, be this as it may, there was 
 formed in the parliament of Paris an in- 
 
 * Encyclopedic, Art. Parlement. 
 
 t Mably, 1. vi., c. 5, note 19 and 21. Gamier, 
 Hist, de France, t. xvii., p. 219, 380. 
 
 t Villaret, t. xiv., p. 231. Encyclopedic, Art. 
 Parlement. 
 
 dependent power not emanating from the 
 royal wil), nor liable, except through 
 force, to be destroyed by it; which, in 
 later times, became almost the sole de- 
 positary, if not of what we should call 
 the love of freedom, yet of public spirit 
 and attachment to justice. France, so 
 fertile of great men in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, might better spare, 
 perhaps, from her annals any class and 
 description of them than her lawyers. 
 Doubtless the parliament of Paris, with 
 its prejudices and narrow views, its high 
 notions of loyal obedience, so strangely 
 mixed up with remonstrances and resist- 
 ance, its anomalous privilege of objecting 
 to edicts, hardly approved by the nation 
 who did not participate in it, and over- 
 turned with facility by the king, when- 
 ever he thought fit to exert the sinews of 
 his prerogative, was but an inadequate 
 substitute for that co-ordinate sover- 
 eignty, that equal concurrence of natural 
 representatives in legislation, which has 
 long been the exclusive pride of our gov- 
 ernment, and to which the States Gen- , 
 eral of France, in their best days, had " 
 never aspired. No man of sane under- 
 standing would desire to revive institu- 
 tions both uncongenial to modern opin- 
 ions and to the natural order of society. 
 Yet the name of the parliament of Paris 
 must ever be respectable. It exhibited, 
 upon various occasions, virtues from 
 which human esteem is as inseparable as 
 the shadow from the substance ; a severe 
 adherence to principles, an unaccommo- 
 dating sincerity, individual disinterested- 
 ness and consistency. Whether indeed 
 these qualities have been so generally 
 characteristic of the French people as to 
 afford no peculiar commendation to the 
 parliament of Paris, it is rather for the 
 observer of the present day than the his- 
 torians of past times to decide.* 
 
 * The province of Languedoc, with its depend- 
 ances of Quercy and Rouergue, having belonged 
 almost in full sovereignty to the counts of Tou- 
 louse, was not perhaps subject to the feudal resort, 
 or appellant jurisdiction of any tribunal at Paris. 
 Philip the Bold, after its reunion to the crown, es- 
 tablished the parliament of Toulouse, a tribunal 
 without appeal, in 1280. This was however sus- 
 pended from 1291 to 1443, during which interval 
 the parliament of Paris exercised an appellant 
 jurisdiction over Languedoc. Vaissette, Hist, de 
 Lang., t. iv., p. 60, 71, 524. Sovereign courts or 
 parliaments were established by Charles VII. at 
 Grenoble for Dauphine, and by Louis XI. at Bor- 
 deaux and Dijon for Guienne and Burgundy. The 
 parliament of Rouen is not so ancient. These in- 
 stitutions rather diminished the resort of the par- 
 liament of Paris, which had extended over Bur- 
 gundy, and, in time of peace, over Guienne. 
 
 A work has appeared within a very few years, 
 which throws an abundant light on the judicial 
 system, and indeed on the whole civil policy of 
 
PART I!.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 115 
 
 The principal causes that operated in 
 f subverting the feudal system 
 
 Oft uses ot ., 1111 
 
 the decline may be comprehended under 
 of the feu- three distinct heads; the in- 
 "' creasing power of the crown, 
 the elevation of the lower ranks, and the 
 decay of the feudal principle. 
 
 It has been my object in the last pages 
 Acquisi- to P omt out the acquisitions of 
 tions of" power by the crown of France 
 power by j n respect of legislative and ju- 
 "' dicial authority. The principal 
 augmentations of its domain have been 
 Augments- historically mentioned in the 
 tionofthe last chapter; but the subject 
 domain. may here require further notice. 
 The French kings naturally acted upon a 
 system, in order to recover those pos- 
 sessions which the improvidence or ne- 
 cessities of the Carlovingian race had 
 suffered almost to fall away from the 
 monarchy. This course, pursued with 
 tolerable steadiness for two or three cen- 
 turies, restored their effective power. 
 By escheat or forfeiture, by bequest or 
 succession, a number of fiefs were mer- 
 ged in their increasing domain.* It was 
 
 France, as well as other countries, during the mid- 
 dle ages. I allude to L'Esprit, Origine et Progres 
 des Institutions judiciaires des principaux Pays de 
 1'Europe, by M. Meyer, of Amsterdam; especially 
 the first and third volumes. It would have been 
 fortunate had its publication preceded that of the 
 first edition of the present work ; as I might have 
 rendered this chapter on the feudal system in many 
 respects more perspicuous and correct. As it is, 
 without availing myself of M. Meyer's learning and 
 acuteness to illustrate the obscurity of these re- 
 searches, or discussing the few questions upon 
 which I might venture, with deference, to adhere 
 to another opinion, neither of which could con- 
 veniently be done on the present occasion, I shall 
 content myself with this general reference to a per- 
 formance of singular diligence and ability, which 
 no student of these antiquities should neglect. In 
 all essential points I am happy not to perceive that 
 M. Meyer's views of the middle ages are far differ- 
 ent from my own. Note to the fourth edit. 
 
 * The word domain is calculated, by a seeming 
 ambiguity, to perplex the reader of French history. 
 In its primary sense, the domain or demesne (do- 
 minicum) of any proprietor was confined to the 
 lands in his immediate occupation ; excluding 
 those of which his tenants, whether in fief or vil- 
 lanage, whether for a certain estate or at will, had 
 an actual possession, or, in our law-language, per- 
 nancy of the profits. Thus the compilers of 
 Domesday-Book distinguish, in every manor, the 
 lands held by the lord in demesne from those occu- 
 pied by his villeins or other tenants. And in Eng- 
 land, the word, if not technically, yet in use is still 
 confined to this sense. But in a secondary accep- 
 tation, more usual in France, the domain compre- 
 hended all lands for which rent was paid (censives), 
 and which contributed to the regular annual rev- 
 enue of the proprietor. The great distinction was 
 between lands in demesne and those in fief. A 
 grant of territory, whether by the king or another 
 lord, comprising as well domanial estates and tribu- 
 tary towns as feudal superiorities, was expressed | 
 
 part of their policy to obtain possession 
 of arriere-fiefs, and thus to become ten- 
 ants of their own barons. In such cases 
 the king was obliged, by the feudal du- 
 ties, to perform homage, by proxy, to his 
 subjects, and engage himself to the ser- 
 vice of his fief. But, for every political 
 purpose, it is evident that the lord could 
 have no command over so formidable a 
 vassal.* 
 
 The reunion of so many fiefs was at- 
 tempted to be secured by a legal princi- 
 ple, that the domain was inalienable and 
 imprescriptible. This became at length a 
 fundamental maxim in the law of France. 
 But it does not seem to be much older 
 than the reign of Philip V., who, in 1318, 
 revoked the alienations of his predeces- 
 sors, nor was it thoroughly established, 
 even in theory, till the fifteenth century, f 
 Alienations, however, were certainly very 
 repugnant to the policy of Philip Augus- 
 tus and St. Louis. But there was one 
 species of infeudation, so consonant to 
 ancient usage and prejudice, that it could 
 not be avoided upon any suggestions of 
 policy ; this was the investiture of young- 
 er princes of the blood with considera- 
 ble territorial appanages. It is remarka- 
 ble that the epoch of appanages on so 
 great a scale was the reign of St. Louis, 
 whose efforts were constantly directed 
 against feudal independence. Yet he in- 
 vested his brothers with the counties of 
 Poitou, Anjou, and Artois, and his sons 
 with those of Clermont and Alen9on. 
 
 to convey " in dominico quod est in dominico, et in 
 "eodo quod est in feodo." Since, therefore, fiefs, 
 even those of the vavassors or inferior tenantry, 
 were not part of the lord's domain, there is, as I 
 said, an apparent ambiguity in the language of his- 
 ;orians who speak of the reunion of provinces to 
 ;he royal domain. This ambiguity, however, is 
 rather apparent than real. When the dutchy of 
 Normandy, for example, is said to have been uni- 
 ted by Philip Augustus to his domain, we are not, 
 of course, to suppose that the soil of that province 
 became the private estate of the crown. It con- 
 inued, as before, in the possession of the Norman 
 barons and their sub-vassals, who had held their 
 estates of the dukes. But it is meant only that 
 he King of France stood exactly in the place of 
 he Duke of Normandy, with the same rights of 
 possession over lands absolutely in demesne, of 
 ents and customary payments from the burgesses 
 of towns and tenants in roture or villanage, and of 
 feudal services from the military vassals. The im- 
 mediate superiority, and the immediate resort or 
 urisdiction over these, devolved to the crown ; 
 and thus the dutchy of Normandy, considered as 
 a fief, was reunited, or, more properly, merged in 
 ;he royal domain, though a very small part of the 
 territory might become truly domanial. 
 
 * See a memorial on the acquisition of arriere- 
 fiefs by the kings of France, in Me"m. de 1'Acad. 
 des Inscript., t. 1, by M. Dacier. 
 
 f Preface au 15me tome des Ordonnances, par 
 M. de Pastoret. 
 
116 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. 1L 
 
 This practice, in later times, produced 
 very mischievous consequences. 
 
 Under a second class of events that 
 contributed to destroy the spirit of the 
 feudal system, we may reckon the aboli- 
 tion of villanage ; the increase of com- 
 merce, and consequent opulence of mer- 
 chants and artisans ; and especially the 
 institutions of free cities and boroughs. 
 This is one of the most important and 
 interesting steps in the progress of soci- 
 ety during the middle ages, and deserves 
 particular consideration. 
 
 The provincial cities under the Roman 
 Free and empire enjoyed, as is well known, 
 chartered a municipal magistracy and the 
 towns, rig^ O f internal regulation. It 
 would not have been repugnant, perhaps, 
 to the spirit of the Frank and Gothic con- 
 querors, to have left them in possession 
 of these privileges. But there seems no 
 satisfactory proof that they were pre- 
 served either in France or in Italy ;* or, 
 if they existed at all, they were swept 
 away, in the former country, during the 
 confusion of the ninth century, which 
 ended in the establishment of the feudal 
 system. Every town, except within the 
 royal domains, was subject to some lord. 
 In episcopal cities the bishop possessed 
 a considerable authority; and in many 
 there was a class of resident nobility. 
 It is probable that the proportion of free- 
 men was always greater than in the 
 country; some sort of retail trade, and 
 even of manufacture, must have existed 
 in the rudest of the middle ages, and con- 
 sequently some little capital was required 
 for their exercise. Nor was it so easy to 
 oppress a collected body, as the scatter- 
 ed and dispirited cultivators of the soil. 
 Probably therefore the condition of the 
 towns was at all times by far the more 
 tolerable servitude ; and they might en- 
 joy several immunities by usage, before 
 the date of those charters which gave 
 them sanction. In Provence, where the 
 feudal star shone with a less powerful 
 ray, the cities, though not independently 
 governed, were more flourishing than the 
 French.f Marseilles, in the beginning of 
 
 * M. de Brequigny says that Lyons and Rheims 
 can trace their own municipal government some 
 centuries higher than the establishment of com- 
 munes by Louis VI. The former city, which indeed 
 was not French at that time, never had a charter 
 of incorporation. Ordonnances des Rois, t. xi., 
 preface, p. 4. This preface contains an excellent 
 account of the origin and privileges of chartered 
 towns in France. 
 
 t There were more freemen in Provence, says 
 an historian of the country, than in any other part 
 of France ; and the revolutions of the monarchy 
 being less felt than elsewhere, our towns naturally 
 
 the twelfth age, was able to equip pow- 
 erful navies, and to share in the wars of 
 Genoa and Pisa against the Saracens of 
 Sardinia. 
 
 The earliest charters of community 
 granted to towns in France have Earliest 
 been commonly referred to the charters, 
 time of Louis the Sixth ; though it is not 
 improbable that some cities in the south 
 had a municipal government by custom, if 
 not by grant, at an earlier period.* Noyon, 
 St. Quentin, Laon, and Amiens appeared 
 to have been the first that received eman- 
 cipation at the hands of this prince. f The 
 
 preserved their municipal government. I have 
 borrowed this quotation from Heeren, Essai sur 
 I'lnfluence des Croisades, p. 122, to whom I am in- 
 debted for other assistance. Vaissette also thinks 
 that the inhabitants of towns in Languedoc were 
 personally free in the tenth century ; though those 
 of the country were in servitude. Hist, de Lan- 
 guedoc, t. ii., p. 111. 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, ubi supra, p. 7. These 
 charters are as old as 1110, but the precise date is 
 unknown. 
 
 t The Benedictine historians of Languedoc are 
 of opinion that the city of Nismes had municipal 
 magistrates even in the middle of the tenth centu- J 
 ry, t. ii., p. 111. However this maybe, the citizens 
 of Narbonne are expressly mentioned in 1080. Ap- 
 pendix, p. 208. The burgesses of Carcassone appear 
 by name in a charter of 1107, p. 515. In one of 
 1131, the consuls of Beziers are mentioned; they 
 existed therefore previously, p. 409, and Appen- 
 dix, p. 959. The magistrates of St. Antonin en 
 Rouergue are named in 1136 ; those of Montpelier 
 in 1142 ; of Narbonne in 1148 ; and of St. Gilles in 
 1149, pp. 515, 432, 442, 464. The capitouls of 
 Toulouse pretend to an extravagant antiquity ; but 
 were in fact established by Alfonso, count of Tou- 
 louse, who died in 1148. In 1152, Raymond V. con- 
 firmed the regulations made by the common coun- 
 cil of Toulouse, which became the foundation of 
 the customs of that city, p. 472. 
 
 If we may trust altogether to the Assises de Je- 
 rusalem in their present shape, the court of bur- 
 gesses having jurisdiction over persons of that rank 
 was instituted by Godfrey of Bouillon, who died 
 1100. Ass. de Jerus., c. 2. This would be even ear- 
 lier than the charter of London, granted by Henry 
 I. Lord Lyttleton goes so far as to call it " certain, 
 that in England many cities and towns were bod- 
 ies corporate and communities long before the alter- 
 ation introduced into France by the charters of 
 Louis le Gros.'V-Hist. of Henry II., vol. iv., p. 29. 
 But this position, as I shall more particularly show 
 in another place, is not borne out by any good 
 authority, if it extends to any internal jurisdiction, 
 and management of their own police ; whereof, 
 except in the instance of London, we have no 
 proof before the reign of Henry II. 
 
 But the incorporation of communities seems to 
 have been decidedly earlier in Spain than in any 
 other country. Alfonso V., in 1020, granted a char- 
 ter to Leon, which is said to mention the common 
 council of that city in terms that show it to be an 
 established institution. During the latter part of 
 the eleventh century, as well as in subsequent 
 times, such charters are very frequent. Marina, 
 Ensayo Historico-Critico sobre las siete partidas. 
 In several instances, we rind concessions of smaller 
 privileges to towns without any political power. 
 Thus Berenger, count of Barcelona, in 1025 con- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 117 
 
 chief towns in the royal domains were 
 successively admitted to the same privi- 
 leges during the reigns of Louis VI., Louis 
 VII., and Philip Augustus. This exam- 
 ple was gradually followed by the peers 
 and other barons ; so that by the end of 
 the thirteenth century, the custom had 
 causes of prevailed over all France. It 
 fhem'not to s ^ een sometimes imagined, 
 be found in that the crusades had a mate- 
 the crusades, rial influence in promoting the 
 erection of communities. Those expedi- 
 tions would have repaid Europe for the 
 prodigality of crimes and miseries which 
 attended them, if this notion were found- 
 ed in reality. But I confess that in this, 
 as in most other respects, their beneficial 
 consequences appear to me very much 
 exaggerated. The cities of Italy obtain- 
 ed their internal liberties by gradual en- 
 croachments, and by the concessions of 
 the Franconian emperors. Those upon 
 the Rhine owed many of their privile- 
 ges to the same monarchs, whose cause 
 they had espoused in the rebellions of 
 Germany. In France, the charters grant- 
 ed by Louis the Fat could hardly be con- 
 nected with the first crusade, in which 
 the crown had taken no part, and were 
 long prior to the second. It was not 
 till fifty years afterward that the barons 
 seem to have trod in his steps by granting 
 charters to their vassals, and these do 
 not appear to have been particularly re- 
 lated in time to any of the crusades. 
 Still less can the corporations, erected 
 by Henry II. in England, be ascribed to 
 these holy wars, in which our country 
 had hitherto taken no considerable share. 
 The establishment of chartered towns 
 nor in deiib- m France has also been ascri- 
 erate poi- bed to deliberate policy. " Lou- 
 ic y- is the Gross," says Robertson, 
 
 firms to the inhabitants of that city all the franchi- 
 ses which they already possess. These seem how- 
 ever to be confined to exemption from paying rent, 
 and from any jurisdiction below that of an officer de- 
 puted by the count. De Marca, Marca Hispanica, 
 p. 1038. Another grant occurs in the same volume, 
 p. 909, from the Bishop of Barcelona in favour of 
 a town of his diocess. By some inattention, Rob- 
 ertson has quoted these charters as granted to " two 
 villages in the county of Rousillon." Hist. Charles 
 V., note 16. The charters of Tortosa and Lerida 
 in 1149 do not contain any grant of jurisdiction, p. 
 1303. 
 
 The corporate towns in France and England 
 always enjoyed fuller privileges than these Cata- 
 lonian charters impart. The essential character- 
 istics of a commune, according to M. Brequigny, 
 were : an association confirmed by charter ; a 
 code of fixed sanctioned customs ; and a set of 
 privileges, always including municipal or elective 
 government. Ordonnances, ubi supra, p. 3. A 
 distinction ought however to be pointed out, which 
 is rather liable to elude observation, between com- 
 
 " in order to create some power that 
 I might counterbalance those potent vas- 
 sals who controlled or gave law to the 
 crown, first adopted the plan of confer- 
 ring new privileges on the towns situa- 
 ted within his own domain." Yet one 
 does not immediately perceive what 
 strength the king could acquire by grant- 
 ing these extensive privileges within his 
 own domains, if the great vassals were 
 only weakened, as he asserts afterward, 
 by following his example. In what 
 sense, besides, can it be meant, that 
 Noyon or Amiens, by obtaining certain 
 franchises, became a power that could 
 counterbalance the Duke of Normandy 
 or Count of Champagne? It is more 
 natural to impute this measure, both in 
 the king and his barons, to their pecunia- 
 ry exigencies ; for we could hardly doubt 
 that their concessions were sold at the 
 highest price, even if the existing char- 
 ters did not exhibit the fullest proof of 
 it.* It is obvious, however, that the 
 coarser methods of rapine must have 
 grown obsolete, and the rights of the in- 
 habitants of towns to property establish- 
 ed, before they could enter into any com- 
 pact with their lord for the purchase of 
 liberty. Guibert, abbot of St. No- circum- 
 gent, near Laon, relates the estab- stances 
 lishment of a community in that Jfg'jSj 
 city with circumstances that, in the treaty of 
 main, might probably occur in any Laon - 
 other place. Continual acts of violence 
 and robbery having been committed, 
 which there was no police adequate to 
 prevent, the clergy and principal inhabi- 
 tants agreed to enfranchise the populace 
 for a sum of money, and to bind the 
 whole society by regulations for general 
 security. These conditions were gladly 
 accepted ; the money was paid, and the 
 leading men swore to maintain the priv- 
 
 munes, or corporate towns, and boroughs (bourge- 
 oisies). The main difference was, that in the lat- 
 ter there was no elective government, the magis- 
 trates being appointed by the king or other supe- 
 rior. In the possession of fixed privileges and ex- 
 emptions, in the personal liberty of their inhabitants, 
 and in the certainty of their legal usages, there 
 was no distinction between corporate towns and 
 mere boroughs ; and indeed it is agreed that every 
 corporate town was a borough, though every bor- 
 ough was not a corporation. f The French anti- 
 quary quoted above does not trace these inferior 
 communities or boroughs higher than the charters 
 of Louis VI. But we find the name, and a good 
 deal of the substance, in England under William 
 the Conqueror, as is manifest from Domesday-Book. 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, t. xi., preface, p. 18 et 50. 
 
 t The preface to the twelfth volume of Ordonnances des 
 Rois contains a full account of bourgeoisies, as that to 
 the eleventh does of communes. A great part of it, how- 
 ever, is applicable to both species, or rather to the genua 
 and the species. See too that to the fourteenth volume of 
 Recueil des Historiens, p. 74. 
 
118 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II, 
 
 ileges of the inferior freemen. The 
 Bishop of Laon, who happened to be ab- 
 sent, at first opposed this new institution, 
 but was ultimately induced by money to 
 take a similar oath ; and the community 
 was confirme by the king. Unluckily 
 for himself, the bishop afterward annull- 
 ed the charter; when the inhabitants, in 
 despair at seeing themselves reduced to 
 servitude, rose and murdered him. This 
 was in 1112 ; and Guibert's narrative cer- 
 tainly does not support the opinion that 
 charters of community proceeded from 
 the policy of government. He seems to 
 have looked upon them with the jealousy 
 of a feudal abbot, and blames the Bishop 
 of Amiens for consenting to such an es- 
 tablishment in his city, from which, ac- 
 cording to Guibert, many evils resulted. 
 In his sermons, we are told, this abbot 
 used to descant on " those execrable com- 
 munities, where serfs, against law and 
 justice, withdraw themselves from the 
 power of their lords."* 
 
 In some cases they were indebted for 
 success to their own courage and love of 
 liberty. Oppressed by the exactions of 
 their superiors, they had recourse to 
 *rms, and united themselves in a com- 
 mon league confirmed by oath, for the 
 sake of redress. One of these associa- 
 tions took place at Mans as early as 
 1067, and, though it did not produce any 
 charter of privileges, is a proof of the 
 spirit to which ultimately the superior 
 classes were obliged to submit.f Sev- 
 eral charters bear witness that this spir- 
 it of resistance was justified by oppres- 
 sion. Louis VII. frequently declares 
 the tyranny exercised over the towns to 
 be his motive for enfranchising them. 
 Thus the charter of Mantes in 1150 is 
 said to be given pro nimia oppressione 
 pauperum: that of Compiegne in 1153, 
 propter enormitates clericorum : that of 
 Dourlens, granted by the Count of Pon- 
 thieu in 1202, propter injurias et moles- 
 tias a potentibus terrae burgensibus fre- 
 quenter illatas.J 
 
 The privileges which these towns of 
 The extent France derived from their char- 
 of their ters were surprisingly exten- 
 prmieges. s j v e ; especially if we do not 
 suspect some of them to be merely in 
 confirmation of previous usages. They 
 were made capable of possessing com- 
 mon property, and authorized to use a 
 common seal as the symbol of their in- 
 corporation. The more oppressive and 
 
 * Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. x., 448. Du 
 Cange, voc. Communia. 
 
 t Recueil des Historians, t. xiv., preface, p. 66. 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, t. xi., preface, p. 17. 
 
 ignominious tokens of subjection, such as 
 the fine paid to the lord for permission 
 to marry their children, were abolished. 
 Their payments of rent or tribute were 
 limited both in amount and as to the oc- 
 casions when they might be demanded : 
 and these were levied by assessors of 
 their own electing. Some obtained an 
 exemption from assisting their lord in 
 war ; others were only bound to follow 
 him when he personally commanded; 
 and almost all limited their service to 
 one, or at the utmost very few days. If 
 they were persuaded to extend its dura- 
 tion, it was, like that of feudal tenants, at 
 the cost of their superior. Their cus- 
 toms, as to succession and other matters 
 of private right, were reduced to certain- 
 ty, and, for the most part, laid down in 
 the charter of incorporation. And the 
 observation of these was secured by the 
 most valuable privilege which the char- 
 tered towns obtained : that of exemption 
 from the jurisdiction, as well of the roy- 
 al as the territorial judges. They were 
 subject only to that of magistrates, either 
 wholly elected by themselves, or in some 
 places, with a greater or less participa- 
 tion of choice in the lord. They were 
 empowered to make special rules, or, as 
 we call them, by-laws, so as not to con- 
 travene the provisions of their charter or 
 the ordinances of the king.* 
 
 It was undoubtedly far from the inten- 
 tion of tho^e barons who confer- 
 red such immunities upon their offree* 10 
 subjects to relinquish their own towns with 
 superiority and rights not ex- tl 
 pressly conceded. But a remarkable 
 change took place in the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century, which affected, in a 
 high degree, the feudal constitution of 
 France. Towns, distrustful of their lord's 
 fidelity, sometimes called in the king as 
 guarantee of his engagements. The first 
 stage of royal interference led to a more 
 extensive measure. Philip Augustus 
 granted letters of safeguard to communi- 
 ties dependant upon the barons, assuring 
 to them his own protection and patron- 
 age, f And this was followed up so quick- 
 [y by the court, if we believe some wri- 
 ters, that in the next reign, Louis VIII. 
 pretended to the injmediate sovereignty 
 Wer all chartered towns, in exclusion of 
 their original lords. J Nothing, perhaps, 
 
 * Ordonnances des Rois, prefaces aux tomes xi. 
 t xiL Du Cange, voc. Conununia, Hpstis. Car- 
 jentier, Suppl. ad Du Cange, v. Hostis. Mably, 
 Observations sur FHist. de France, 1. iii., c. 7. 
 
 f Mably, ibid. 
 
 j Reputabat civitates omnes suas esse, in quibus 
 ommuniae essent. I mention this in deference to 
 Du Cange, Mably. and others, who assume the 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 119 
 
 had so decisive an effect in subverting the 
 feudal aristocracy. The barons perceiv- 
 ed too late, that for a price long since 
 lavished in prodigal magnificence or use- 
 less warfare, they had suffered the source 
 of their wealth to be diverted, and the 
 nerves of their strength to be severed 
 The government prudently respected the 
 privileges secured by charter. Philip the 
 Long established an officer in all large 
 towns to preserve peace by an armed po- 
 lice; but, though subject to the orders 
 of the crown, he was elected by the bur- 
 gesses ; and they took a mutual oath of 
 fidelity to each other. Thus shielded un- 
 der the king's mantle, they ventured to 
 encroach upon the neighbouring lords, 
 and to retaliate for the long oppression 
 of the commonalty.* Every citizen was 
 bound by oath to stand by the common 
 cause against all aggressors, and this ob- 
 ligation was abundantly fulfilled. In or- 
 der to swell their numbers, it became the 
 practice to admit all who came to reside 
 within their walls to the rights of burgh- 
 ership, even though they were villeins, 
 appertenant to the soil of a master, from 
 whom they had escaped, f Others, hav- 
 
 fact as incontrovertible ; but the passage is only in 
 a monkish chronicler, whose authority, were it 
 even more explicit, would not weigh much in a 
 matter of law. Beaumanoir, however, sixty years 
 afterward, lays it down, that no one can erect a 
 commune without the king's consent, c. 50, p. 268. 
 And this was an unquestionable maxim in the four- 
 teenth century. Ordonnances, t. xi., p. 29. 
 
 * In the charter of Philip Augustus to the town 
 of Roye in Picardy, we read : If any stranger, 
 whether noble or villein, commits a wrong against 
 the town, the mayor shall summon him to answer 
 for it ; and, if he does not obey the summons, the 
 mayor and inhabitants may go and destroy his 
 house, in which we (the Jung) will lend them our 
 assistance, if the iiouse be too strong for the bur- 
 gesses to pull down : except the case of one of our 
 .vassals, whose house shall not be destroyed ; .but 
 he shall not be allowed to enter the town, till he 
 has made amends at the discretion of the mayor 
 and jurats. Ordonnances des Rois, t. xi., p. 228. 
 This summary process could only, as I conceive, 
 be employed, if the house was situated within the 
 jurisdiction -of the commune. See charter of 
 Crespy, id., p. 253. In other cases, the application 
 for redress was to be made in the first instance to 
 the lord of the territory wherein the delinquent re- 
 sided. But, upon his failing to enforce satisfaction, 
 the mayor and jurats might satisfy themselves ; li- 
 ceat justitiam quaerere, prout poterunt^ that is, 
 might pull down his house, provided they could. 
 Mably positively maintains the communes to have 
 had the right of levying war, 1. iii., c. 7. And Bre- 
 quigny seems to coincide with him. Ordonnances, 
 preface, p. 46. See also Hist, de Languedoc, t. 
 iii., p. 115. The territory of a .commune was call- 
 ed Pax (p. 185) ; an expressive word. 
 
 t One of the most remarkable privileges of char- 
 tered towns was that of conferring freedom on run- 
 away serfs, if they were not reclaimed by their 
 masters within a certain time. This was a pjetty 
 general law. Si quis nativus quiete per unum an- 
 
 ing obtained the same privileges, contin- 
 ued to dwell in the country; but, upon 
 any dispute with their lords, called in the 
 assistance of their community. Philip 
 the Fair, erecting certain communes in 
 Languedoc, gave to any who would de- 
 clare on oath that he was aggrieved by 
 the lord or his officers, the right of being 
 admitted a burgess of the next town, upon 
 paying one mark of silver to the king, 
 and purchasing a tenement of a definite 
 value. But the neglect of this condition, 
 and several other abuses, are enumerated 
 in an instrument of Charles V., redressing 
 the complaints made ,by the nobility and 
 rich ecclesiastics of the neighbourhood.* 
 In his reign the feudal independence had 
 so completely yielded, that the court be- 
 gan to give in to a new policy, which was 
 ever after pursued; that of maintaining 
 the dignity and privileges of the noble 
 class against those attacks which wealth 
 and liberty encouraged the plebeians to 
 make upon them. 
 
 The maritime towns of the south of 
 France entered into separate Maritime 
 alliances with foreign states ; towns pecu- 
 as Narbonne with Genoa in liarl ,y 'f^ 
 1 166, and Montpelier in the next F 
 century. At the death of Raymond VII., 
 Avignon, Aries, and Marseilles affected to 
 set up republican governments ; but they 
 were soon brought into subjection.! The 
 independent character of maritime towns 
 was not peculiar to those of the southern 
 provinces. Edward II. and Edward III. 
 negotiated, and entered into alliances 
 with the towns of Flanders, to which 
 neither their count, nor the King of 
 France were parties. J Even so late as the 
 reign of Louis XL, the Duke of Burgundy 
 did not hesitate to address the citizens of 
 Rouen, in .consequence of the capture of 
 some ships, as if they had formed an inde- 
 pendent state. This evidently arose out 
 of the ancient customs of private war- 
 fare, which, lojig after they were re- 
 pressed by a stricter police at home, con- 
 ;inued with lawless violence on the ocean, 
 and gave a character of piracy to the 
 onimercial enterprise of the middle ages. 
 
 num et unum diem in aliqua villa privilegiata man- 
 serit, ita <juod in eorum communem gyldam tan- 
 quam civis receptus fuerit, eo ipso a villenagio lib- 
 erabitur. Glanvil., 1. v.. c. 5. The cities of Lan- 
 guedoc had the same privilege. Vaissette, t. iii., 
 >. 528, 530. And the editor of the Ordonnances 
 speaks of it as general, p. 44. A similar custom 
 was established in Germany ; but the term of pre- 
 scription was, in some places at least, much longer 
 han a year and a day. Pfeffel, t. i., p. 294. 
 
 * Martenne, Thesaur. Anecd., t. i., p. 1515. 
 
 t Velly, t. iv., p. 446 ; t. v., p. 97. 
 
 t Rymer, t. iv. , passim. 
 
 <j Gamier, t. xvii., p. 396. 
 
 
120 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 Notwithstanding the forces which in 
 opposite directions assailed the feudal 
 Military system, from the enhancement 
 service of of royal prerogative, and the 
 feudal elevation of the chartered towns, 
 
 tenants . . . , j , , 
 
 oommu- its resistance would have been 
 ted for much longer but for an intrinsic 
 
 ney ' decay. No political institution 
 can endure, which does not rivet itself to 
 the hearts of men by ancient prejudice 
 or acknowledged interest. The feudal 
 compact had originally much of this 
 character. Its principle of vitality was 
 warm and active. In fulfilling the obli- 
 gations of mutual assistance and fidelity 
 by military service, the energies of friend- 
 ship were awakened, and the ties of 
 moral sympathy superadded to those of 
 positive compact. While private wars 
 were at their height, the connexion of 
 lord and vassal grew close and cordial, 
 in proportion to the keenness of their 
 enmity towards others. It was not the 
 object of a baron to disgust and empover- 
 ish his vavassors by enhancing the profits 
 of seigniory ; for there was no rent of 
 such price as blood, nor any labour so 
 serviceable as that of the sword. 
 
 But the nature of feudal obligation 
 was far better adapted to the partial 
 quarrels of neighbouring lords than to 
 the wars of kingdoms. Customs, found- 
 ed upon the poverty of the smaller gen- 
 try, had limited their martial duties to a 
 period never exceeding forty days, and 
 diminished according to the subdivisions 
 of the fief. They could undertake an ex- 
 pedition, but not a campaign ; they could 
 burn an open town, but had seldom leis- 
 ure to besiege a fortress. Hence, when 
 the kings of France and England were 
 engaged in wars, which, on our side at 
 least, might be termed national, the inef- 
 ficiency of the feudal militia became evi- 
 dent. It was not easy to employ the 
 military tenants of England upon the 
 frontiers of Normandy and the Isle of 
 France, within the limits of their term of 
 service. When, under Henry II. and 
 Richard I., the scene of war was fre- 
 quently transferred to the Garonne or the 
 Charente, this was still more impractica- 
 ble. The first remedy to which sover- 
 eigns had recourse, was to keep their 
 vassals in service after the expiration of 
 their forty days, at a stipulated rate of 
 pay.* But this was frequently neither 
 convenient to the tenant, anxious to re- 
 turn back to his household, nor to the 
 king, who could not readily defray the 
 charges of an army.f Something was 
 
 * Du Cange, et Carpentier, voc. Hostis. 
 
 f There are several instances where armies 
 
 j to be devised more adequate to the exi- 
 | gency, though less suitable to the feudal 
 spirit. By the feudal law, the fief was, 
 in strictness, forfeited by neglect of at- 
 tendance upon the lord's expedition. A 
 milder usage introduced a fine, which, 
 however, was generally rather heavy, 
 and assessed at discretion. An instance 
 of this kind has been noticed in an ear- 
 lier part of the present chapter, from the 
 muster-roll of Philip the Bold's expedi- 
 tion against the Count de Foix. The 
 first Norman kings of England made 
 these amercements very oppressive. But 
 when a pecuniary payment became the 
 regular course of redeeming personal ser- 
 vice, which, under the name of escuage, 
 may be referred to the reign of Henry II., 
 it was essential to liberty that the mili- 
 tary tenant should not lie at the mercy 
 of the crown.* Accordingly, one of the 
 most important provisions contained in 
 the Magna Charta of John, secures the 
 assessment of escuage in parliament. 
 This is not renewed in the character of 
 Henry III., but the practice during his 
 reign was conformable to its spirit. 
 
 The feudal military tenures had super- 
 seded that earlier system of public de- 
 fence, which called upon every man, and 
 especially upon every landholder, to pro- 
 tect his country.f The relations of a vas- 
 
 broke up, at the expiration of their limited term of 
 service, in 'consequence of disagreement with the 
 sovereign. Thus, at the siege of Avignon in 1226, 
 Theobald, count of Champagne, retired with his 
 troops, that he might not promote the king's de- 
 signs upon Languedoc. At that of Angers in 1230, 
 nearly the same thing occurred. M. Paris, p. 308. 
 
 * Madox, Hist, of Exchequer, c. 16, conceives 
 that escuage may have been levied by Henry I. ; 
 the earliest mention of it, however, in a record, is 
 under Henry II. in 1159. Lyttleton's Hist, of 
 Henry II., vol. iv., p. 13. 
 
 t Every citizen, however extensive may be his 
 privileges, is naturally bound to repel invasion. A 
 common rising of the people in arms, though not 
 always the most convenient mode of resistance, 
 is one to which all governments have a right to re- 
 sort. Volumus, says Charles the Bald, ut cujus- 
 cunque nostrum homo, in cujuscunque regno sit, 
 cum seniore suo in hostem, vel aliis suis utilitati- 
 bus pergat : nisi talis regni invasio,quam Lanlweri 
 dicunt (quodabsit), accident, ut omnis populus illi- 
 us regni ad earn repellendam communiter pergat. 
 Baluzii Capitularia, t. ii., p. 44. This very ancient 
 mention of the Landwehr, or insurrectional militia, 
 so signally called forth in the present age, will 
 strike the reader. The obligation of bearing arms 
 in defensive war was peculiarly incumbent on the 
 freeholder, or allodialist. It made part of the trin- 
 oda necessitas, in England, erroneously confound- 
 ed by some writers with a feudal military tenure. 
 But when these latter tenures became nearly uni- 
 versal, the original principles of public defence 
 were almost obliterated ; and I know not how far 
 allodial proprietors, where they existed, were called 
 upon for service. Kings did not, however, always 
 dispense with such aid as the lower people could 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 121 
 
 sal came in place of those of a subject 
 and a citizen. This was the revolution 
 of the ninth century. In the twelfth and 
 thirteenth, another innovation rather 
 more gradually prevailed, and marks the 
 third period in the military history of 
 Europe. Mercenary troops were substi- 
 Empioyment tuted for the feudal militia, 
 of mercenary Undoubtedly there could never 
 troops. have been a time when valour 
 was not to be purchased with money ; nor 
 could any employment of surplus wealth 
 be more natural either to the ambitious 
 or the weak; but we cannot expect to 
 find numerous testimonies of facts of 
 this description.* In public national his- 
 tory, I am aware of no instance of what 
 may be called a regular army (unless we 
 consider the Antrustions of the Merovin- 
 gian kings as such), more ancient than 
 the body-guards, or huscarles, of Canute 
 the Great. These select troops amount- 
 ed to six thousand men, on whom he 
 probably relied to ensure the subjection 
 of England. A code of martial law, com- 
 piled for their regulation, is extant in sub- 
 stance ; and they are reported to have dis- 
 played a military spirit of mutual union, 
 of which their master stood in awe.f 
 
 supply. Louis the Fat called oSk the militia of towns 
 and parishes under their priests, who marched at 
 their head, though they did not actually command 
 them in battle. In the charters of incorporation 
 which towns received, the number of troops required 
 was usually expressed. These formed the infantry 
 of the French amies, perhaps more numerous than 
 formidable to an enemy. In the war of the same 
 prince with the Emperor Henry V., all the popula- 
 tion of the frontier provinces was called out ; for 
 the militia of the counties of Rheims and Chalons 
 is said to have amounted to sixty thousand men. 
 Philip IV. summoned one foot-soldier for every 
 twenty hearths to take the field after the battle of 
 Courtrai. (Daniel, Hist, de la Milice Frangaise. 
 Velly, t. iii., p. 62 ; t. vii., p. 287.) Commissions of 
 array, either to call out the whole population, or, as 
 was more common, to select the most serviceable 
 by forced impressment, occur in English records 
 from the reign of Edward I. (Stuart's View of So- 
 ciety, p. 400.) And there are even several writs 
 directed to the bishops, enjoining them to cause all 
 ecclesiastical persons to be arrayed and armed on 
 account of an expected invasion. Rymer, t. vi., p. 
 726 (46 E. III.) ; t. vii., p. 1.62 (1 R. II.) ; and t. 
 viii., p. 270 (3 H. IV.). 
 
 * The preface to the eleventh volume of Recueil 
 des Historiens, p. 232, notices the word solidarii, 
 for hired soldiers, as early as 1030. It was proba- 
 bly unusual at that time ; though in Roger Hove- 
 den, Ordericus Vitalis, and other writers of the 
 twelfth century, it occurs not very unfrequently. 
 We may perhaps conjecture the abbots, as both the 
 richest and most defenceless, to have been the first 
 who availed themselves of mercenary valour. 
 
 t For these facts, of which I remember no men- 
 tion in English history, I am indebted to the Danish 
 collection of Langebek, Scriptores Rerum Danica- 
 rum Medii ^Evi. Though the Leges Castrenses 
 Canuti Magni, published by him, t. iii., p. 141, are 
 
 Harold II. is also said to have had Danish 
 soldiers in pay. But the most eminent 
 example in that age of a mercenary army, 
 is that by whose assistance William 
 achieved the conquest of England. His- 
 torians concur in representing this force 
 to have consisted of sixty thousand men. 
 He afterward hired soldiers from vari- 
 ous regions to resist an invasion from 
 Norway. William Rufus pursued the 
 same course. Hired troops did not, how- 
 ever, in general form a considerable por- 
 tion of armies, till the wars of Henry II. 
 and Philip Augustus. Each of these 
 monarchs took into pay large bodies of 
 mercenaries, chiefly, as we may infer 
 from their appellation of Brabanons, en- 
 listed from the Netherlands. These were 
 always disbanded on cessation of hostili- 
 ties : and unfit for any habits but of idle- 
 ness and license, oppressed the peasant- 
 ry and ravaged the country without con- 
 trol. But their soldier-like principles of 
 indiscriminate obedience, still more than 
 their courage and field-discipline, render- 
 ed them dear to kings, who dreaded the 
 free spirit of a feudal army. It w r as by 
 such a foreign force that John saw him- 
 self on the point of abrogating the Great 
 Charter, and reduced his barons to the 
 necessity of tendering his kingdom to a 
 prince of France.* 
 
 It now became manifest, that the prob- 
 abilities of war inclined to the party 
 who could take the field, with selected 
 and experienced soldiers. The command 
 of money was the command of armed 
 hirelings, more sure and steady in battle, 
 as we must confess with shame, than 
 the patriot citizen. Though the nobility 
 still composed in a great degree the 
 strength of an army, yet they served in 
 
 not in their original statutory form, they proceed 
 from the pen of Sweno, the earliest Danish histo- 
 rian, who lived under Waldemar I., less than a 
 century and a half after Canute. I apply the word 
 huscarle, familiar in Anglo-Saxon documents, to 
 these military retainers, on the authority of Lange- 
 bek in another place, t. ii., p. 454. The object of 
 Canute's institutions was to produce a uniformity 
 of discipline and conduct among his soldiers, and 
 thus to separate them more decidedly from the peo- 
 ple. They were distinguished by their dress and 
 golden ornaments. Their manners towards each 
 other were regulated ; quarrels and abusive words 
 subjected to a penalty. All disputes, even respect- 
 ing lands, were settled among themselves at their 
 general parliament. A singular story is told, which, 
 if false, may still illustrate the traditionary charac- 
 ter of these guards : that Canute having killed one 
 of their body in a fit of anger, it was debated wheth- 
 er the king should incur the legal penalty of death ; 
 and this was only compromised by his kneeling on 
 a cushion before the assembly, and awaiting their 
 permission to rise, t. iii., p. 150. 
 * Matt. Paris. 
 
122 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. H. 
 
 a new character; their animating spirit 
 was that of chivalry rather than of feu- 
 dal tenure ; their connexion with a su- 
 perior was personal rather than territo- 
 rial. The crusades had probably a ma- 
 terial tendency to effectuate this revolu- 
 tion, by substituting what was inevitable 
 in those expeditions, a voluntary stipen- 
 diary service for one of absolute obliga- 
 tion.* It is the opinion of Daniel, that 
 in the thirteenth century all feudal ten- 
 ants received pay, even during their pre- 
 scribed term of service. f This does not 
 appear consonant to the law of fiefs ; yet 
 their poverty may often have rendered 
 it impossible to defray the cost of equip- 
 ment on distant expeditions. A large 
 proportion of the expense must in all 
 cases have fallen upon the lord ; and 
 hence that perpetually increasing taxa- 
 tion, the effects whereof we have lately 
 been investigating. 
 
 A feudal army, however, composed of 
 all tenants in chief and their vassals, still 
 presented a formidable array. It is very 
 long before the paradox is generally ad- 
 mitted, that numbers do not necessarily 
 contribute to the intrinsic efficiency of 
 armies. Philip IV. assembled a great 
 force,, by publishing the arriere-ban, or 
 feudal summons, for his unhappy expe- 
 dition against the Flemings. A small 
 and more disciplined body of troops 
 would not, probably, have met with the 
 discomfiture of Courtray. Edward I. 
 and Edward II. frequently called upon 
 those who owed military service, in their 
 invasions of Scotland-! But in the French 
 wars of Edward III., the whole, I think, 
 of his army served for pay, and was rais- 
 ed by contract with men of rank and in- 
 fluence, who received wages for every 
 soldier according to his station and the 
 arms he bore. The rate of pay was so 
 remarkably high, that unless we imagine 
 a vast profit to have been intended for 
 the contractors, the private lancers and 
 even archers must have been chiefly 
 taken from the middling classes, the 
 smaller gentry, or rich yeomanry, of 
 
 * Joiuville, in several passages, intimates that 
 most of the knights serving in St. Louis's crusade 
 received pay, either from their superior lord, if he 
 were on the expedition, or from some other, into 
 whose service they entered for the time. He set 
 out himself with ten knights, whom he afterward 
 found it difficult enough to maintain. Collection 
 des M6moires, t. i., p. 49, and t. ii., p. 53. 
 
 t Hist, de la Milice Franchise, p. 84. 
 
 The use of mercenary troops prevailed much in 
 Germany during the thirteenth century. Schmidt, 
 t. iv., p. 89. In Italy, it was also very common ; 
 though its general adoption is to be referred to the 
 commencement of the succeeding age. 
 
 t Rymer, t. iii., p. 173, 189, 199, et alibi ssepius. 
 
 England.* This part of Edward's military 
 system was probably a leading cause of 
 his superiority over the French, among 
 whom the feudal tenantry were called 
 into the field, and swelled their unwieldy 
 armies at Crecy and Poitiers. Both par- 
 ties, however, in this war employed mer- 
 cenary troops. Philip had 15,000 Ital- 
 ian crossbowmen at Crecy. It had for 
 some time before become the trade of 
 soldiers of fortune, to enlist under lead- 
 ers of the same description as them- 
 selves in companies of adventure, pas- 
 sing from one service to another, uncon- 
 cerned as to the cause in which they 
 were retained. These military adven- 
 turers played a more remarkable part 
 in Italy than in France, though not a lit- 
 tle troublesome to the latter country. 
 The feudal tenures had at least furnish- 
 ed a royal native militia, whose duties, 
 though much limited in the extent, were 
 defined by usage, and enforced by princi- 
 ple. They gave place in an evil hour for 
 the people, and eventually for sovereigns, 
 to contracts with mutinous hirelings, fre- 
 quently strangers, whose valour in the 
 day of battle inadequately redeemed their 
 bad faith and vexatious rapacity. France, 
 in her calamitous period under Charles 
 VI. and Charletf VII., experienced the 
 full effects of military licentiousness. 
 At the expulsion of the English, robbery 
 and disorder were substituted for the 
 more specious plundering of Estnbiish- 
 war. Perhaps few measures menlof a 
 
 regular force 
 
 liave ever been more popular, by Charles 
 as few certainly have been VI1 - 
 more politic, than the establishment of 
 regular companies of troops by an ordi- 
 nance of Charles VII., in 1444.f These 
 may justly pass for the first example of 
 a standing army in Europe ; though some 
 Italian princes had retained troops con- 
 stantly in their pay, but prospectively to 
 Hostilities, which were seldom long inter- 
 mitted. Fifteen companies were com- 
 posed, each of a hundred men at arms, 
 
 Many proofs of this may be adduced from Ry- 
 ner's Collection. The following is from Brady's 
 history of England, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 86. The 
 wages allowed by contract, in 1346, were Tor an 
 earl, 6s. 8d. per day ; for barons and bannerets, 4s. ; 
 "or knights, 2s. ; for squires, Is. ; for archers and 
 lobelers (light cavalry), 6rf. ; for archers on foot, 
 3d. ; for Welshmen, 2d. These sums, multiplied 
 by about 24, to bring them on a level with the 
 >resent value of money, will show the pay to have 
 >een extremely high. The cavalry, of course, fur- 
 lished themselves with horses and equipments, as 
 well as arms, which were very expensive. See 
 ;oo Chap. I., p. 52 of this work. 
 
 f The estates at Orleans in 1439 had advised 
 ;his measure, as is recited in the preamble of the 
 ordinance. Ordonnances des Rois, t. xii., p. 3J2. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 
 123 
 
 or lancers ; and, in the language of that 
 age, the whole body was one thousand 
 five hundred lances. But each lancer 
 had three archers, a coutiller, or soldier 
 armed with a knife, and a page or valet 
 attached to him, all serving on horse- 
 back ; so that the fifteen companies 
 amounted to nine thousand cavalry.* 
 From these small beginnings, as they 
 must appear in modern times, arose the 
 regular army of France, which every suc- 
 ceeding king was solicitous to augment. 
 The ban was sometimes convoked, that 
 is, the possessors of fiefs were called 
 upon for military service in subsequent 
 ages ; but with more of ostentation than 
 real efficiency. 
 
 The feudal compact, thus deprived of 
 Decay of feu- its original efficacy, soon lost 
 dai principles, the respect and attachment 
 which had attended it. Homage and in- 
 vestiture became unmeaning ceremonies ; 
 the incidents of relief and aid were felt 
 as burdensome exactions. And indeed 
 the rapacity with which these were lev- 
 ied, especially by our Norman sovereigns 
 and their barons, was of itself sufficient 
 to extinguish all the generous feelings 
 of vassalage. Thus galled, as it were, 
 by the armour which he was compelled 
 to wear, but not to use, the military ten- 
 ant of England looked no longer with 
 contempt upon the owner of land in soc- 
 cage, who held his estate with almost 
 the immunities of an allodial proprietor. 
 But the profits which the crown reaped 
 from wardships, and perhaps the preju- 
 dices of lawyers, prevented the abolition 
 of military tenures, till the restoration of 
 Charles II. In France, the fiefs of no- 
 blemen were very unjustly exempted 
 from all territorial taxation ; though the 
 tailles of later times had, strictly speak- 
 ing, only superseded the aids to which 
 they had been always liable. This dis- 
 tinction, it is well known, was not an- 
 nihilated till that event which annihilated 
 all distinctions, the French revolution. 
 
 It is remarkable, that, although the 
 feudal sytem established in England upon 
 the conquest broke in very much upon 
 our ancient Saxon liberties; though it 
 was attended with harsher servitudes 
 than in any other country, particularly 
 those two intolerable burdens, wardship 
 and marriage ; yet it has in general been 
 treated with more favour by English than 
 French writers. The hardiness with 
 which the ancient barons resisted their 
 sovereign, and the noble struggles which 
 
 * Daniel, Hist, de la Milice Fran<jaise, p. 266. 
 Villaret, Hist, de France, t. xv., p. 394. 
 
 they made for civil liberty, especially in 
 that Great Charter, the basement, at 
 least, if not the foundation, of our free 
 constitution, have met with a kindred 
 sympathy in the bosoms of Englishmen ; 
 while, from an opposite feeling, the 
 French have been shocked at that aris- 
 tocratic independence, which cramped 
 the prerogatives, and obscured the lustre, 
 of their crown. Yet it is precisely to 
 this feudal policy that France is indebt- 
 ed for that which is ever dearest to her 
 children, their national splendour and 
 power. That kingdom would have been 
 irretrievably dismembered in the tenth 
 century, if the laws of feudal dependance 
 had not preserved its integrity. Empires 
 of unwieldy bulk, like that of Charle- 
 magne, have several times been dissolv- 
 ed by the usurpation of provincial gov- 
 ernors, as is recorded both in ancient 
 history and in that of the Mahometan 
 dynasties in the East. What question 
 can there be, that the powerful dukes of 
 Guienne or counts of Toulouse would 
 have thrown off all connexion with the 
 crown of France, when usurped by one 
 of their equals, if the slight dependance 
 of vassalage had not been substituted for 
 legitimate subjection to a sovereign 1 
 
 It is the previous state of society 
 under the grandchildren of Charlemagne, 
 which we must always keep in mind, if 
 we would appreciate the effects of the 
 feudal system upon the welfare of man- 
 kind. The institutions of the eleventh 
 century must be compared with those of 
 the ninth, not with the advanced civiliza- 
 tion of modern times. If the view that 
 I have taken of those dark ages is cor- 
 rect, the state of anarchy, which we usu- 
 ally term feudal, was the natural result 
 of a vast and barbarous empire feebly ad- 
 ministered, and the cause, rather than 
 effect, of the general establishment of 
 feudal tenures. These, by preserving the 
 mutual relations of the whole, kept alive 
 the feeling of a common country and 
 common duties; and settled, after the 
 lapse of ages, into the free constitution 
 of England, the firm monarchy of France, 
 and the federal union of Germany. 
 
 The utility of any form of polity may 
 be estimated, by its effect upon General es _ 
 national greatness and security, umate of 
 upon civil liberty and private tneadvau- 
 rights, upon the tranquillity and SS^Suit- 
 order of society, upon the in- ing from the 
 crease and diffusion of wealth, [^ dalsys ' 
 or upon the general tone of 
 moral sentiment and energy. The feu- 
 dal constitution was certainly, as has 
 been observed already, little adapted for 
 
124 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. II. 
 
 the defence of a mighty kingdom, far less 
 for schemes of conquest. But as it pre- 
 vailed alike in several adjacent countries, 
 none had any thing to fear from the mil- 
 itary superiority of its neighbours. It 
 was this inefficiency of the feudal militia, 
 perhaps, that saved Europe during the 
 middle ages from the danger of universal 
 monarchy. In times when princes had 
 little notion of confederacies for mutual 
 protection, it is hard to say what might 
 not have been the successes of an Otho 
 the Great, a Frederick Barbarossa, or a 
 Philip Augustus, if they could have wield- 
 ed the whole force of their subjects 
 whenever their ambition required. . If an 
 empire equally extensive with that of 
 Charlemagne, and supported by military 
 despotism, had been formed about the 
 twelfth or thirteenth centuries, the seeds 
 of commerce and liberty, just then begin- 
 ning to shoot, would have perished : and 
 Europe, reduced to a barbarous servi- 
 tude, might have fallen before the free 
 barbarians of Tartary. 
 
 If we look at the feudal polity as a 
 scheme of civil freedom, it bears a noble 
 countenance. To the feudal law it is 
 owing, that the very names of right and 
 privilege were not swept away, as in 
 Asia, by the desolating hand of power. 
 The tyranny which, on every favourable 
 moment, was breaking through all bar- 
 riers, would have rioted without control, 
 if, when the people were poor and dis- 
 united, the nobility had not been brave 
 and free. So far as the sphere of feudal- 
 ity extended, it diffused the spirit of lib- 
 erty, and the notions of private right. 
 Every one, I think, will acknowledge 
 this, who considers the limitations of the 
 services of vassalage, so cautiously mark- 
 ed in those law-books which are the 
 records of customs, the reciprocity of ob- 
 ligation between the lord and his tenant, 
 the consent required in every measure of 
 a legislative or a general nature, the se- 
 curity, above all, which every vassal 
 found in the administration of justice by 
 his peers, and even (we may in this sense 
 say) in the trial by combat. The bulk of 
 the people, it is true, were degraded by 
 servitude, but this had no connexion with 
 the feudal tenures. 
 
 The peace and good order of society 
 were not promoted by this system. 
 Though private wars did not originate in 
 the feudal customs, it is impossible to 
 doubt that they were perpetuated by so 
 convenient an institution, which indeed 
 owed its universal establishment to no 
 other cause. And as predominant hab- 
 its of warfare are totally irreconcila- 
 
 ble with those of industry, not merely 
 by the immediate works of destruction 
 which render its efforts unavailing, but 
 through that contempt of peaceful occu- 
 pations which they produce, the feudal 
 system must have been intrinsically ad- 
 verse to the accumulation of wealth, and 
 the improvement of those arts, which 
 mitigate the evils or abridge the labours 
 of mankind. 
 
 But as the school of moral discipline, 
 the feudal institutions were perhaps most 
 to be valued. Society had sunk, for sev- 
 eral centuries after the dissolution of the 
 Roman empire, into a condition of utter 
 depravity ; where, if any vices could be 
 selected as more eminently characteris- 
 tic than others, they were falsehood, 
 treachery, and ingratitude. In slowly 
 purging off the lees of this extreme cor- 
 ruption, the feudal spirit exerted its ame- 
 liorating influence. Violation of faith 
 stood first in the catalogue of crimes, 
 most repugnant to the very essence of a 
 feudal tenure, most severely and prompt- 
 ly avenged, most branded by general in- 
 famy. The feudal law-books breathe 
 throughout a spirit of honourable obliga- 
 tion. The feudal course of jurisdiction 
 promoted, what trial by peers is pecu- 
 liarly calculated to promote, a keener 
 feeling and readier perception of moral 
 as well as of leading distinctions. And 
 as the judgment and sympathy of man- 
 kind are seldom mistaken in these great 
 points of veracity and justice, except 
 through the temporary success of crimes, 
 or the want of a definite standard of right, 
 they gradually recovered themselves, 
 when law precluded the one and sup- 
 plied the other. In the reciprocal ser- 
 vices of lord and vassal, there was ample 
 scope for every magnanimous and disin- 
 terested energy. The heart of man, 
 when placed in circumstances which 
 have a tendency to excite them, will sel- 
 dom be deficient in such sentiments. No 
 occasions could be more favourable than 
 the protection of a faithful supporter, or 
 the defence of a beneficent suzerain, 
 against such powerful aggression, as left 
 little prospect except of sharing in his 
 ruin. 
 
 From these feelings, engendered by the 
 feudal relation, has sprung up the peculiar 
 sentiment of personal reverence and at- 
 tachment towards a sovereign which we 
 denominate loyalty; alike distinguisha- 
 ble from the stupid devotion of eastern 
 slaves, and from the abstract respect with 
 which free citizens regard their chief 
 magistrate. Men who had been used to 
 swear fealty, to profess subjection, to fol- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 125 
 
 low, at home and in the field, a feudal su- 
 perior and his family, easily transferred 
 the same allegiance to the monarch. It 
 was a very powerful feeling, which could 
 make the bravest men put up with slights 
 and ill treatment at the hands of their 
 sovereign ; or call forth all the energies 
 of disinterested exertion for one whom 
 they never saw, and in whose character 
 there was nothing to esteem. In ages 
 when the rights of the community were 
 unfelt, this sentiment was one great pre- 
 servative of society ; and, though collat- 
 
 eral or even subservient to more enlar 
 ged principles, it is still indispensable to 
 the tranquillity and permanence of every 
 monarchy. In a moral view, loyalty has 
 scarcely perhaps less tendency to refine 
 and elevate the heart than patriotism it- 
 self; and holds a middle place in the 
 scale of human motives, as they ascend 
 from the grosser inducements of self-in- 
 terest, to the furtherance of general hap- 
 piness and conformity to the purposes of 
 infinite Wisdom. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ITALY, FROM THE EXTINCTION OF THE CARLOVINGIAN EM- 
 PERORS TO THE INVASION OF NAPLES BY CHARLES VIII. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 State of Italy after the death of Charles the Fat 
 Coronation of Othp the Great. State of Rome. 
 Conrad II. Union of the Kingdom of Italy 
 with the Empire. Establishment of the Nor- 
 mans in Naples and Sicily. Roger Guiscard. 
 Rise of the Lombard Cities. They gradually 
 become more independent of the Empire. Their 
 Internal Wars. Frederick Barbarossa. De- 
 struction of Milan. Lombard League. Battle 
 of Legnano. Peace of Constance. Temporal 
 Principality of the Popes. Guelf and Ghibelm 
 Factions. Othp IV. Frederick II. Arrange- 
 ment of the Italian Republics. Second Lombard 
 War. Extinction of the House of Swabia. 
 Causes of the Success of Lombard Republics. 
 Their prosperity and Forms of Government. 
 Contentions between the Nobility and People. 
 Civil Wars. Story of Giovanni di Vicenza.* 
 
 AT the death of Charles the Fat in 888, 
 
 Stateof Italy J hat P art 9 f J tal y which ac l 
 
 at the end of knowledged the supremacy of 
 
 the ninth - the western empire was divi- 
 
 ury> ded, like France and Germany, 
 
 * The authorities upon which this chapter is 
 founded, and which do not always appear at the 
 foot of the page, are chiefly the following. 1. Mu- 
 ratori's Annals of Italy (twelve volumes in 4to. or 
 eighteen in 8vo.) comprehend a summary of its his- 
 tory from the beginning of the Christian era to the 
 peace of Aix la Chapelle. The volumes relating 
 to the middle ages, into which he has digested the 
 original writers contained in his great collection, 
 Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, are by much the 
 best ; and of these, the part which extends from 
 the seventh or eighth to the end of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, is the fullest and most useful. Muratori's ac- 
 curacy is in general almost implicitly to be trusted, 
 and his plain integrity speaks in all his writings ; 
 but his mind was not philosophical enough to dis- 
 criminate the wheat from the chaff, and his habits 
 of life induced him to annex an imaginary impor- 
 tance to the dates of diplomas and other inconsid- 
 erable matters. His narrative presents a mere 
 
 among a few powerful vassals, hereditary 
 governors of provinces. The principal 
 of these were the dukes of Spoleto and 
 
 skeleton devoid of juices ; and besides its intolera- 
 ble aridity, it labours under that confusion which a 
 merely chronological arrangement of concurrent 
 and independent events must always produce. 2. 
 The dissertations on Italian Antiquities, by the 
 same writer, may be considered either as one or 
 two works. In Latin, they form six volumes in 
 folio, enriched with a great number of original doc- 
 uments. In Italian, they are freely translated by 
 Muratori himself, abridged, no doubt, and without 
 most of the original instruments, but well furnish- 
 ed with quotations, and abundantly sufficient for 
 most purposes. They form three volumes in quar- 
 to. 1 have in general quoted only the number of 
 the dissertation, on account of the variance be- 
 tween the Latin and Italian works : in cases where 
 the page is referred to, I have indicated, by the 
 title, which of the two I intend to vouch. 3. St. 
 Marc, a learned and laborious Frenchman, has 
 written a chronological abridgment of Italian his- 
 tory, somewhat in the manner of H6nault, but so 
 strangely divided by several parallel columns in ev- 
 ery page, that I could hardly name a book more 
 inconvenient to the reader. His knowledge, like 
 Muratori's, lay a good deal in points of minute in- 
 quiry ; and he is chiefly to be valued in ecclesiastical 
 history. The work descends only to the thirteenth 
 century. 4. Denina's Rivoluzioni d'ltalia, origi- 
 nally published in 1769, is a perspicuous and lively 
 book, in which the principal circumstances are 
 well selected. It is not perhaps free from errors 
 in fact, and still less from those of opinion ; but, 
 till lately, I do not know from what source a gen- 
 eral acquaintance with the history of Italy could 
 have been so easily derived. 5. The publication 
 of M. Sismondi's Histoire des R^publiques Italien- 
 nes has thrown a blaze of light around the most 
 interesting, at least in many respects, of European 
 countries during the middle ages. I am happy to 
 bear witness, so far as my own studies have ena- 
 bled me, to the learning and diligence of this wri- 
 ter; qualities which the world is sometimes apt 
 not to suppose, where they perceive so much elo- 
 quence and philosophy. 1 cannot express my opin- 
 
126 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES! 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 Tuscany, the marquises of Ivrea, Susa, 
 and Friuli. The great Lombard dutchy 
 of Benevento, which had stood against 
 the arms of Charlemagne, and comprised 
 more than half the present kingdom of 
 Naples, had now fallen into decay, and 
 was straitened by the Greeks in Apulia, 
 and by the principalities of Capua and 
 Salerno, which had been severed from its 
 own territory, on the opposite coast.* 
 And m the Though princes of the Carlo vin- 
 firstpartof gian line continued to reign in 
 the tenth. F rance , their character was too 
 little distinguished to challenge the obe- 
 dience of Italy, already separated by fam- 
 ily partitions from the Transalpine na- 
 tions ; and the only contest was among 
 her native chiefs. One of these, Beren- 
 ger, originally Marquis of Friuli, or the 
 March of Treviso, reigned for thirty-six 
 years, but with continually disputed pre- 
 tensions ; and, after his death, the calam- 
 ities of Italy were sometimes aggravated 
 by tyranny, and sometimes by intestine 
 
 ion of M. Sismondi in this respect more strongly 
 than by saying that his work has almost superseded 
 the annals of Muratori ; I mean from the twelfth 
 century, before which period his labour hardly be- 
 
 S'ns. Though doubtless not more accurate than 
 uratori, he has consulted a much more extensive 
 list of authors; and, considered as a register of 
 facts alone, his history is incomparably more use- 
 ful. These are combined in so skilful a manner, 
 as to diminish, in a great degree, that inevitable 
 confusion which arises from frequency of transi- 
 tion and want of general unity. It is much to be 
 regretted, that from too redundant details of unne- 
 cessary circumstances, and sometimes, if I may 
 take the liberty of saying so, from unnecessary re- 
 flections, M . Sismondi has run into a prolixity which 
 will probably intimidate the languid students of our 
 age. It is the more to be regretted, because the 
 History of Italian Republics is calculated to pro- 
 duce a good far more important than storing the 
 memory with historical facts, that of communica- 
 ting to the reader's bosom some sparks of the dig- 
 nified philosophy, the love for truth and virtue, 
 which live along its eloquent pages. 6. To Mu- 
 ratori's collection of original writers, the Scriptores 
 Rerum Italicarum, in twenty -four volumes in folio, 
 I have paid considerable attention ; perhaps there 
 is no volume of it which I have not more or less 
 consulted. But, after the annals of the same wri- 
 ter, and the work of M. Sismondi, I have not 
 thought myself bound to repeat a laborious search 
 into all the authorities upon which those writers 
 depend. The utility, for the most part, of perusing 
 original and contemporary authors, consists less 
 in ascertaining mere facts, than in acquiring that 
 insight into the spirit and temper of their times, 
 which it is utterly impracticable for any compiler 
 to impart. It would be impossible for me to dis- 
 tinguish what information I have derived from 
 these higher sources ; in cases, therefore, where 
 no particular authority is named, I would refer to 
 the writings of Muratori and Sismondi, especial- 
 ly the latter, as the substratum of the following 
 chapter.. 
 
 * Giannone, Istoria Civile di Napoli, 1. vii. Sis- 
 mondi, Hist, des Republiques Italiennes, t. i., p. 
 244. 
 
 war. The Hungarians desolated Lom- 
 bardy ; the southern coasts were infested 
 by the Saracens, now "masters of Sicily. 
 Plunged in an abyss, from which she saw 
 no other means of extricating herself, 
 Italy lost sight of her favourite independ- 
 ence, and called in the assistance of Otho 
 the First, king of Germany. Little op- 
 position was made to this powerful mon- 
 arch. Berenger II., the reigning sover- 
 eign of Italy, submitted to hold the king- 
 dom of him as a fief.* But some years 
 afterward, new disturbances ari- othothe 
 sing, Otho descended from the Great - 
 Alps a second time [A. D. 961], deposed 
 Berenger, and received at the hands of 
 Pope John XII. the imperial dignity, 
 which had been suspended for nearly for- 
 ty years. 
 
 Every ancient prejudice, every recol- 
 lection, whether of Augustus or of Char- 
 lemagne, had led the Italians to annex 
 the notion of sovereignty to the name 
 of Roman emperor ; nor were Otho, or 
 his two immediate descendants, by any 
 means inclined to waive these supposed 
 prerogatives, which they were well able 
 to enforce. Most of the Lombard princes 
 acquiesced without apparent repugnance 
 in the new German government, which 
 was conducted by Otho the Great with 
 much prudence and vigour, and occasion- 
 ally with severity. The citizens of Lom- 
 bardy were still better satisfied with a 
 change, that ensured a more tranquil and 
 regular administration than they had ex- 
 perienced under the preceding kings. 
 But in one, and that the chief of Italian 
 cities, very different sentiments were 
 prevalent. We find, indeed, a con- internal 
 siderable obscurity spread over the state of 
 internal history of Rome, during Rome> 
 the long period from the recovery of Italy 
 by Belisarius to the end of the eleventh 
 century. The popes appear to have pos- 
 sessed some measure of temporal power, 
 even while the city was professedly gov- 
 erned by the exarchs of Ravenna, in the 
 name of the eastern empire. This power 
 became more extensive after her separa- 
 tion from Constantinople. It was, how- 
 ever, subordinate to the undeniable sover- 
 eignty of the new imperial family, who 
 were supposed to enter upon all the rights 
 of their predecessors. There was al- 
 ways an imperial officer, or prefect, in 
 that city, to render criminal justice ; an 
 oath of allegiance to the emperor was 
 taken by the people ; and upon any irreg- 
 ular election of a pope, a circumstance 
 by no means unusual, the emperors held 
 
 * Muratori, A. D. 951. Denina, Rivoluzioni 
 d'ltalia, 1. iz., c. 6. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 127 
 
 themselves entitled to interpose. But the 
 spirit and even the institutions of the 
 Romans were republican. Amid the 
 darkness of the tenth century, which no 
 contemporary historian dissipates, we 
 faintly distinguish the awful names of 
 senate, consuls, and tribunes, the domes- 
 tic magistracy of Rome. These shadows 
 of past glory strike us at first with sur- 
 prise; yet there is no improbability in 
 the supposition, that a city so renowned 
 and populous, and so happily sheltered 
 from the usurpation of the Lombards, 
 might have preserved, or might afterward 
 establish, a kind of municipal govern- 
 ment, which it would be natural to dig- 
 nify with those august titles of antiquity.* 
 During that anarchy which ensued upon 
 the fall of the Carlovingian dynasty, the 
 Romans acquired an independence which 
 they did not deserve. The city became 
 a prey to the most terrible disorders ; the 
 papal chair was sought for at best by 
 bribery, or controlling influence, often by 
 violence and assassination ; it was filled 
 by such men as naturally rise by such 
 means, whose sway was precarious, and 
 generally ended either in their murder or 
 degradation. For many years the su- 
 preme pontiffs were forced upon the 
 church by two women of high rank, but 
 infamous reputation, Theodora and her 
 daughter Marozia. The kings of Italy, 
 whose election in a diet of Lombard 
 princes and bishops at Roncaglia Avas not 
 conceived to convey any pretension to the 
 sovereignty of Rome, could never obtain 
 any decided influence in papal elections, 
 which were the object of struggling fac- 
 tions among the resident nobility. In 
 this temper of the Romans, they were ill 
 disposed to resume habits of obedience 
 to a foreign sovereign. The next year 
 after Otho's coronation [A. D. 972], they 
 rebelled, the pope at their head ; but were 
 of course subdued without difficulty. 
 The same republican spirit broke out 
 whenever the emperors were absent in 
 Germany, especially during the minority 
 of Otho III., and directed itself against 
 the temporal superiority of the pope. 
 But when that emperor attained man- 
 hood, he besieged and took the city, 
 crushing all resistance by measures of 
 severity; and especially by the execu- 
 tion of the consul Crescentius, a leader 
 of the popular faction, to whose instiga- 
 tion the tumultuous license of Rome was 
 principally ascribed. f 
 
 * Muratori, A. D. 967, 987, 1015, 1087. Sis- 
 mondi, t. i., p. 155. 
 
 t Sismondi, t. i., p. 164, makes a patriot hero ol 
 Crescentius. But we know so little of the man 
 
 At the death of Otho III. without chil- 
 dren, in 1002, the compact be- Henry 11. 
 tween Italy and the emperors nd Ardoin. 
 of the house of Saxony was determined. 
 Her engagement of fidelity was certainly 
 not applicable to every sovereign whom 
 the princes of Germany might raise to 
 their throne. Accordingly Ardoin, mar- 
 quis of Ivrea, was elected king of Italy. 
 But a German party existed among the 
 Lombard princes and bishops, to which 
 his insolent demeanour soon gave a pre- 
 text for inviting Henry II., the new king 
 Of Germany, collaterally related to their 
 late sovereign. Ardoin was deserted by 
 most of the Italians, but retained his for- 
 mer subjects in Piedmont, and disputed 
 the crown for many years with Henry, 
 who passed very little time in Italy. Du- 
 ring this period there was hardly any 
 recognised government; and the Lom- 
 bards became more and more accustom- 
 ed, through necessity, to protect them- 
 selves, and to provide for their own inter- 
 nal police. Meanwhile the German na- 
 tion had become odious to the Italians. 
 The rude soldiery, insolent and addicted 
 to intoxication, were engaged in frequent 
 disputes with the citizens, wherein the 
 latter, as is usual in similar cases, were 
 exposed first to the summary vengeance 
 of the troops, and afterward to penal 
 chastisement for sedition.* In one of 
 these tumults, at the entry of Henry II., 
 in 1004, the city of Pavia was burnt to 
 the ground, which inspired its inhabitants 
 wit%a constant animosity against that 
 emperor. Upon his death in 1024, the 
 Italians were disposed to break once 
 more their connexion with Germany, 
 which had elected as sovereign Conrad, 
 duke of Franconia. They offered their 
 crown to Robert, king of France, and to 
 William, duke of Guienne; but neither 
 of them was imprudent enough to involve 
 himself in the difficult and faithless pol- 
 itics j3f Italy. It may surprise us that no 
 candidate appeared from among her na-^ 
 tive princes. But it had been the dex-" 
 terous policy of the Othos to weaken the 
 great Italian fiefs, which were still rather 
 considered as hereditary governments 
 than as absolute patrimonies, by separa- 
 ting districts from their jurisdiction, under 
 inferior marquises and rural counts.f 
 The bishops were incapable of becoming 
 competitors, and generally attached to 
 
 or the times, that it seems better to follow the 
 common tenour of history, without vouching for 
 the accuracy of its representations. 
 
 * Muratori, A. D. 1027, 1037. 
 
 t Denina, 1. ix., c. 11. Muratori, Antiq. Ital , 
 Dissert. 8. Annali d'ltalia, A. D. 989. 
 
128 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 the German party. The cities already 
 possessed material influence, but were 
 disunited by mutual jealousies. [A. D. 
 1024.] Since ancient prejudices, there- 
 Election of fore, precluded a federate league 
 Conrad ii. o f independent principalities and 
 republics, for which perhaps the actual 
 condition of Italy unfitted her, Eribert, 
 archbishop of Milan, accompanied by 
 some other chief men of Lombardy, re- 
 paired to Constance, and tendered the 
 crown to Conrad, which he was already 
 disposed to claim as a sort of dependance 
 upon Germany. It does not appear that 
 either Conrad or his successors were 
 ever regularly elected to reign over It- 
 aly;* but whether this ceremony took 
 place or not, we may certainly date from 
 that time the subjection of Italy to the 
 Germanic body. It became an unques- 
 tionable maxim, that the votes of a few 
 German princes conferred a right to the 
 sovereignty of a country which had never 
 been conquered, and which had never for- 
 mally recognised this superiority.! But 
 it was an equally fundamental rule, that 
 the elected king of Germany ould not 
 assume the title of Roman emperor, until 
 his coronation by the pope. The middle 
 appellation of King of the Romans was 
 invented as a sort of approximation to the 
 imperial dignity. But it was not till the 
 reign of Maximilian that the actual coro- 
 nation at Rome was dispensed with, and 
 the title of emperor taken immediately 
 after the election. 
 
 The period between Conrad of Uran- 
 conia and Frederick Barbarossa, or from 
 about the middle of the eleventh to that 
 of the twelfth century, is marked by 
 three great events in Italian history ; the 
 struggle between the empire and the pa- 
 pacy for ecclesiastical investitures, the 
 establishment of the Norman kingdom in 
 Naples, and the formation of distinct and 
 nearly independent republic^ among the 
 v 
 
 * Muratori, A. D. 1026. It is said afterward, p. 
 367, that he was a Romanis ad Imperatorem elec- 
 tus. The people of Rome therefore preserved 
 their nominal right of concurring in the election of 
 an emperor. Muratori, in another place, A. D. 
 1040, supposes that Henry III. was chosen king of 
 Italy, though he allows that no proof of it exists ; 
 and there seems no reason for the supposition. 
 
 t Gunther, the poet of Frederick Barbarossa, ex- 
 presses this not inelegantly : 
 
 Romani gloria regni 
 
 Nos penes est ; quemcunque sibi Germania regem 
 Praeficit, hunc dives submisso vertice Roma 
 Accipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus. 
 
 Gunther, Ligurinus ap. Struvium Corpus Hist. 
 
 German., p. 266. 
 
 Yet it appears from Otho of Frisingen, an unques- 
 tionable authority, that some Italian nobles con- 
 curred, or at least were present and assisting, in 
 the election of Frederick himself, 1. ii., c. i. 
 
 cities of Lombardy. The first of these 
 will find a more appropriate place in a 
 subsequent chapter, where I shall trace 
 the progress of ecclesiastical power. But 
 it produced a long and almost incessant 
 state of disturbance in Italy ; and should 
 be mentioned at present as one of the 
 main causes which excited in that coun- 
 try a systematic opposition to the im- 
 perial authority. 
 
 The southern provinces of Italy, in the 
 beginning of the eleventh cen- 
 tury, were chiefly subject to toe,f 
 the Greek empire, which had southern 
 latterly recovered part of its II 
 losses, and exhibited some ambition and 
 enterprise, though without any intrinsic 
 vigour. They were governed by a lieu- 
 tenant, styled Catapan,* who resided at 
 Bari in Apulia. On the Mediterranean 
 coast, three dutchies, or rather republics, 
 of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, had for 
 several ages preserved their connexion 
 with the Greek empire, and acknowl- 
 edged its nominal sovereignty. The 
 Lombard principalities of Benevento, 
 Salerno, and Capua, had much declined 
 from their ancient splendour. The Greeks 
 were, however, not likely to attempt any 
 further conquests : the court of Constan- 
 tinople had relapsed into its usual indo- 
 lence ; nor had they much right to boast 
 of successes, rather due to the Saracen 
 auxiliaries, whom they hired from Sicily. 
 No momentous revolution apparently 
 threatened the south of Italy, and least 
 of all could it be anticipated from what 
 quarter the storm was about to gather. 
 
 The followers of Rollo, who rested 
 from plunder and piracy in the BtAQmtmt 
 quiet possession of Normandy, oftheNor- 
 became devout professors of the mans t 
 Christian faith, and particularly * 
 addicted to the custom of pilgrimage, 
 which gratified their curiosity and spirit 
 of adventure. In small bodies, well 
 armed, on account of the lawless charac- 
 ter of the countries through which they 
 passed, the Norman pilgrims visited the 
 shrines of Italy and even the Holy Land. 
 Some of these, very early in the eleventh 
 century, were engaged by a Lombard 
 prince of Salerno against the Saracens, 
 who had invaded his territory ; and 
 through that superiority of valour, and 
 perhaps of corporal strength, which this 
 singular people seem to have possess- 
 ed above all other Europeans, they 
 made surprising havoc among the ene- 
 my, f This exploit led to fresh engage- 
 
 * Catapanus, from Kara wav, one employed in the 
 general administration of affairs, 
 t Giannone, t. ii., p. 7 [edit. 1753]. I should ob- 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 129 
 
 ments, and these engagements drew new 
 adventurers from Normandy ; they found- 
 ed the little city of Aversa near Capua, 
 and were employed by the Greeks against 
 the Saracens of Sicily. But, though per- 
 forming splendid services in this war, 
 they were ill repaid by their ungrateful 
 employers ; and being by no means of a 
 temper to bear with injury, they revenged 
 themselves by a sudden invasion of Apu- 
 lia. This province was speedily sub- 
 dued, and divided among twelve Norman 
 Conquests counts [A. D. 1042]; but soon af- 
 of Robert terward Robert Guiscard, one of 
 Guisoard. twe j ve brothers, many of whom 
 were renowned in these Italian wars, 
 acquired the sovereignty ; and adding 
 Calabria to his conquests [A. D. 1057], 
 put an end to the long dominion of the 
 Eastern emperors in Italy.* He reduced 
 the principalities of Salerno and Bene- 
 vento, in the latter instance sharing the 
 spoil with the pope, who took the city to 
 himself, while Robert retained the terri- 
 tory. His conquests in Greece, which 
 he invaded with the magnificent design 
 of overthrowing the Eastern empire, 
 were at least equally splendid, though 
 less durable. [A. D. 1061.] Roger, his 
 younger brother, undertook meanwhile 
 the romantic enterprise, as it appeared, 
 of conquering the Island of Sicily, with 
 a small body of Norman volunteers. 
 But the Saracens were broken into petty 
 states, and discouraged by the bad suc- 
 cess of their brethren in Spain and Sar- 
 dinia. After many years of war, Roger 
 became sole master of Sicily, and took 
 the title of count. The son of this prince, 
 upon the extinction of Robert Guiscard's 
 posterity, united the two Norman sover- 
 eignties, and subjugating the free repub- 
 lics of Naples and Amalfi, and the princi- 
 pality of Capua [A. D. 1127], established 
 a boundary which has hardly been changed 
 since his time.f 
 
 The first successes of these Norman 
 Papal inves- leaders were viewed unfavoura- 
 tituresof bly by the popes. Leo IX. 
 Naples. marched in person against Rob- 
 ert Guiscard with an army of German 
 
 serve, that St. Marc, a more critical writer in ex- 
 amination of facts than Giannone, treats this first 
 adventure of the Normans as unauthenticated. 
 Abrege Chronologique, p. 990. 
 
 * The final blow was given to the Greek domi- 
 nation over Italy by the capture of Ban, in 1071, 
 after a siege of four years. It had for some time 
 been confined to this single city. Muratori, St. 
 Marc. 
 
 t M. Sismondi has excelled himself in descri- 
 bing the conquest of Amalfi and Naples by Roger 
 Guiscajd (t. i., c. 4) ; warming his imagination 
 with visions of liberty and virtue in those obscure 
 republics, which no real history survives to dispel. 
 
 mercenaries, but was beaten and made 
 prisoner in this unwise enterprise, the 
 scandal of which nothing but good for- 
 tune could have lightened. He fell, how- 
 ever, into the hands of a devout people, 
 who implored his absolution for the 
 crime of defending themselves ; and 
 whether through gratitude, or as the 
 price of his liberation, invested them 
 with their recent conquests in Apulia as 
 fiefs of the Holy See. This investiture 
 was repeated and enlarged, as the popes, 
 especially in their contention with Henry 
 IV. and Henry V., found the advantage 
 of using the Normans as faithful auxilia- 
 ries. Finally, Innocent II. , in 1139, con- 
 ferred upon Roger the title of King of 
 Sicily. It is difficult to understand by 
 what pretence these countries could be 
 claimed by the see of Rome in sover- 
 eignty, unless by virtue of the pretended 
 donation of Constantine, or that of Louis 
 the Debonair, which is hardly less suspi- 
 cious ;* and, least of all, how Innocent 
 II. could surrender the liberties of the 
 city of Naples, whether that was consid- 
 ered as an independent republic, or as a 
 portion of the Greek empire. But the 
 Normans, who had no title but their 
 swords, were naturally glad to give an 
 appearance of legitimacy to their con- 
 quest ; and the kingdom of Naples, even 
 in the hands of the most powerful princes 
 in Europe, never ceased to pay a feudal 
 acknowledgment to the chair of St. Peter. 
 The revolutions which time brought 
 forth on the opposite side of Italy were 
 still more interesting. Under the Lom- 
 bard and French princes, every p rogress O f 
 city with its adjacent district was the Lom- 
 subject to the government and bard Clties - 
 jurisdiction of a count, who was himself 
 subordinate to the duke or marquis of 
 the province. From these counties it 
 was the practice of the first German em- 
 perors to dismember particular towns or 
 tracts of country, granting them upon a 
 feudal tenure to rural lords, by many of 
 whom also the same title was assumed. 
 Thus by degrees the authority of the ori- 
 ginal officers was confined almost to the 
 walls of their own cities ; and in many 
 cases the bishops obtained a grant of the 
 temporal government,! and exercised the 
 functions which had belonged to the count. 
 
 e Muratori presumes to suppose, that the inter- 
 polated, if not spurious, grants of Louis the Debo- 
 nair, Otho I., and Henry 'II., to the ee of Rome, 
 were promulgated about the time of the first con- 
 cessions to the Normans, in order to give the popes 
 a colourable pretext to dispose of the southern 
 provinces of Italy. A. D 1059. 
 
 t Muratori, Antiquit. Italiae, Dissert. 8. Annali 
 d'ltalia, A. D. 989. Antichita Eetensi, p. 26 
 
130 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. 111. 
 
 ' It is impossible to ascertain the time at 
 which the cities of Lombardy began to 
 assume a republican form of government, 
 or to trace with precision the gradations 
 of their progress. The last historian of 
 Italy asserts, that Otho the First erected 
 them into municipal communities, and 
 permitted the election of their magis- 
 trates ; but of this he produces no evi- 
 dence ; and Muratori, from whose author- 
 ity it is rash to depart without strong 
 reasons, is not only silent about any 
 charters, but discovers no express une- 
 quivocal testimonies of a popular govern- 
 ment for the whole eleventh century.* 
 The first appearance of the citizens act- 
 ing for themselves, is in a tumult at Mi- 
 lan, in 991, when the archbishop was ex- 
 pelled from the city.f But this was a 
 transitory ebullition, and we must descend 
 lower for more specific proofs. It is pos- 
 sible that the disputed succession of Ar- 
 doih and Henry, at the beginning of the 
 eleventh age, and the kind of interregnum 
 which then took place, gave the inhabi- 
 tants an opportunity of choosing magis- 
 trates, and of sharing in public delibera- 
 tions. A similar relaxation indeed of gov- 
 ernment in France, had exposed the peo- 
 ple to greater servitude, and established 
 a feudal aristocracy. But the feudal te- 
 nures seem not to have produced in Italy 
 that systematic and regular subordination 
 which existed in France during the same 
 period; nor were the mutual duties of 
 the relation between lord and vassal so 
 well understood or observed. Hence we 
 find not only disputes, but actual civil 
 war between the lesser gentry or vavas- 
 sors, and the higher nobility, their imme- 
 diate superiors. These differences were 
 adjusted by Conrad the Salic, who pub- 
 lished a remarkable edict in 1037, by 
 which the feudal law of Italy was re- 
 duced to more certainty. \ From this 
 disunion among the members of the feu- 
 dal confederacy, it was more easy for the 
 citizens to render themselves secure 
 against its dominion. The cities, too, of 
 Lombardy, were far more populous and 
 better defended than those of France; 
 they had learned to stand sieges in the 
 Hungarian invasions of the tenth century, 
 , and had acquired the right of protect- 
 ing themselves by strong fortifications. 
 Those which had been placed under the 
 temporal government of their bishops 
 had peculiar advantages in struggling for 
 
 ' emancipation.* This circumstance in the 
 | state of Lombardy I consider as highly 
 I important towards explaining the subse- 
 ' quent revolution. Notwithstanding sev- 
 eral exceptions, a churchman was less 
 likely to be bold and active in command 
 than a soldier; and the sort of election 
 which was always necessary, and some- 
 times more than nominal, on a vacancy 
 of the see, kept up among the citizens a 
 notion that the authority of their bishop 
 and chief magistrate emanated in some 
 degree from themselves. In many in- 
 stances, especially in the church of Milan, 
 the earliest, perhaps, and certainly the 
 most famous of Lombard republics, there 
 occurred a disputed election ; two, or 
 even three competitors, claimed the 
 archiepiscopal functions, and were com- 
 pelled, in the absence of the emperors, 
 to obtain the exercise of them by means 
 of their own faction among the citizens. f 
 These were the general causes, which, 
 operating at various times during the 
 eleventh century, seem gradually to have 
 
 * Sismondi, t. i., p. 97, 384. Muratori, Disaert. 
 9. 
 
 t Muratori, Annali d'ltali*. 
 $ Ibid. St. Marc. 
 
 * The bishops seem to have become counts, 
 or temporal governors of their sees, about the 
 end of the tenth, or before the middle of the elev- 
 enth century. Muratori, Dis. 8. Denina, 1. ix., 
 c. 11. St. Marc, A. D. 1041, 1047, 1070. In Ar- 
 nulf s History of Milan, written before the close of 
 the latter age, we have a contemporary evidence. 
 And from the perusal of that work 1 should infer, 
 that the archbishop was, in the middle of the llth 
 century, the chief magistrate of the city. But, at 
 the same time, it appears highly probable, that an 
 assembly of the citizens, or at least a part of the 
 citizens, partook in the administration of public af- 
 fairs. Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, t. 
 iv., p. 16, 22, 23, and particularly the last. In most 
 cities to the eastward of the Tesino, the bishops 
 lost their temporal authority in the twelfth centu- 
 ry, though the archbishop of Milan had no small 
 prerogatives while that city was governed as a re- 
 public. But in Piedmont they continued longer in 
 the enjoyment of power. Vercelli and even Turin 
 were almost subject to their respective prelates till 
 the thirteenth century. For this reason among 
 others, the Piedmontese cities are hardly to be 
 reckoned among the republics of Lombardy. De- 
 nina, Istoria dell'Italia Occidentale, t. i., p. 191. 
 
 t Muratori, A. D. 1345. Sometimes the inhab- 
 itants of a city refused to acknowledge a bishop 
 named by the emperor, as happened at Pavia and 
 Asti about 1057. Arnulf, p. 22. This was, in oth- 
 er words, setting up themselves as republics. But 
 the most remark able instance of this kind occurred 
 in 1070, when the Milanese absolutely rejected 
 Godfrey, appointed by Henry IV., and after a re- 
 sistance of several years, obliged the emperor to 
 fix upon another person. The city had been pre- 
 viously involved in long and violent tumults, which, 
 though rather belonging to ecclesiastical than civil 
 history, as they arose out of the endeavours made 
 to .re form the conduct and enforce the celibacy of 
 the clergy, had a considerable tendency to diminish 
 the archbishop's authority, and to give a republican 
 character to the inhabitants. These proceedings are 
 told at great length by St. Marc, t. iii., A. D. 1056- 
 1077. 4rnulf and Landulf are the original sources. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY, 
 
 131 
 
 'produced a republican form of govern- 
 ment in the Italian cities. But this part 
 of history is very obscure* The archives 
 of all cities before the reign of Frederick 
 Barbarossa have perished. For many 
 years there is a great deficiency of con- 
 temporary Lombard historians, and those 
 of a later age, who endeavoured to search 
 into the antiquities of their country, have 
 found only some barren and insulated 
 events to record. We perceive, howev- 
 er, throughout the eleventh century, that 
 the cities were continually in warfare 
 with each other. This, indeed, was ac- 
 cording to the manners of that age, and 
 no inference can absolutely be drawn 
 from it as to their internal freedom. But 
 it is observable, that their chronicles 
 speak, in recording these transactions, 
 of the people, and not of their leaders, 
 which is the true republican tone of his- 
 tory. Thus, in the Annals of Pisa, we 
 read under the years 1002 and 1004, of 
 victories gained by the Pisaijg over the 
 people of Lucca ; in 1006, that the Pisans 
 and Genoese conquered Sardinia.* These 
 annals indeed are not by a contemporary 
 writer, nor perhaps of much authority. 
 But we have an original account of a 
 war that broke out in 1057, between Pa- 
 via and Milan, in which the citizens are 
 said to have raised armies, made allian- 
 ces, hired foreign troops, and in every 
 respect acted like independent states. f 
 There was, in fact, no power left in the 
 empire to control them. The two Hen- 
 rys IV. and V. were so - much embar- 
 rassed during the quarrel concerning in- 
 vestitures, and the continual troubles of 
 Germany, that they were less likely to 
 interfere with the rising freedom of the 
 Italian cities, than to purchase their as- 
 sistance by larg<e concessions. Henry 
 IV. granted a charter to Pisa, in 1081, 
 full of the most important privileges, 
 promising even not to name any mar- 
 quis of Tuscany without the people's 
 consent;^ and it is possible, that al- 
 though the instruments have perished, 
 other places might obtain similar ad- 
 vantages. However this may be, it is 
 certain that, before the death of Henry 
 
 * Murat., Diss. 45. Arnulfus, the historian of 
 Milan, makes no mention of any temporal counts, 
 which seems to be a proof that there were none in 
 any authority. He speaks always of Mediolanen- 
 ses, Papienseg, Ravenates, &.c. This history was 
 written about 1085, but relates to the earlier part 
 of that century. That of Landulfus corroborates 
 this supposition, which indeed is capable of proof 
 as to Milan and several other cities in which the 
 temporal government had been legally vested in 
 the bishops. 
 
 t Murat., Dies. 45. Arnulf,, Hist. Medjc}an.,p. 22. 
 
 J Murat., Pissdrt. 45. 
 12 
 
 V 4 , in 1125, almost all ihe cities of Lorn- 
 bardy, and many among those of Tusca- 
 ny, were accustomed to elect their own 
 magistrates,* and to act as independent 
 communities, in waging war and in do- 
 mestic government.* 
 
 The territory subjected originally to 
 the count or bishop of these Their acquit 
 cities had been reduced, as I siuons of 
 mentioned above, by numerous territor y- 
 concessions to the rural nobility* But 
 the new republics, deeming themselves 
 entitled to all which their former gov- 
 ernors had once possessed, began to 
 attack their nearest "neighbours, and to 
 recover the sovereignty of all their an- 
 cient territory, They besieged the cas- 
 tles of the rural counts, and successively 
 reduced them into subjection. They 
 suppressed some minor communities, 
 which had been formed, in imitation of 
 themselves, by little towns belonging 
 to their district. Sometimes they pur- 
 chased feudaj superiorities or territorial 
 jurisdictions, and, according to a policy 
 not unusual with the stronger party, con- 
 verted the rights of property into those 
 of government.! Hence, at the middle 
 of the twelfth century, we are assured 
 by a contemporary writer, that hardly 
 any nobleman could be found except the 
 Marquis of Montferrat, who had not sub- 
 mitted to some city.J We may except 
 
 j also, I should presume, the families of 
 Este and Malaspina, as well as that of 
 
 j Savoy. Muratori produces many charters 
 
 | of mutual compact between the nobles 
 and the neighbouring cities ; whereof 
 
 1 one invariable article is, that the former 
 should reside within the walls a certain 
 number of months in the year.$ .The 
 rural nobility, thus deprived of the inde- 
 pendence which had endeared their cas- 
 tles, imbibed a new ambition of directing 
 the municipal government of the cities, 
 which, during the first period of the re- 
 publics, was chiefly in the hands of the 
 superior families. It was the sagacious 
 policy of the Lombards to invite settlers 
 by throwing open to them the privileges 
 of citizenship, and sometimes they even 
 bestowed them by compulsion. Some- 
 
 * Murat., Annali d'ltal., A. D. 1107. 
 
 f Ildominioutile delle citta e de' villaggi era tal- 
 volta diviso fra due o piu padroni, ossia che s'as- 
 segnassero a ciascuno diversi quartieri, o si divi- 
 dessero i proventi della gabelle, ovvero che 1'uno 
 signore godesse d'una spezie della giurisdizione, 
 e 1'altro d'un' altra. Denina, 1. xii., c. 3. This 
 produced a vast intricacy of titles, which was of 
 course advantageous to those who wanted a pre- 
 text for robbing their neighbours. 
 
 t Otho Frisingena, I, ii., c. 13. 
 
 $ Murat,, Diss. 49. 
 
132 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 times a city, imitating the wisdom of 
 ancient Rome, granted these privileges 
 to all the inhabitants of another.* Thus 
 the principal cities, and especially Milan, 
 reached, before the middle of the twelfth 
 century, a degree of population very far 
 beyond that of the capitals of the great 
 kingdoms. Within their strong walls and 
 deep trenches, and in the midst of their 
 well-peopled streets, the industrious dwelt 
 secure from the license of armed pilla- 
 gers and the oppression of feudal tyrants. 
 Artisans, whom the military landholders 
 contemned, acquired and deserved the 
 right of bearing arms for their own and 
 the public defence.f Their occupations 
 became liberal, because they were the 
 foundation of their political franchises; 
 the citizens were classed in companies 
 according to their respective crafts ; each 
 of which had its tribune or standard-bearer 
 (gonfalonier), at whose command, when 
 any tumult arose or enemy threatened, 
 they rushed in arms to muster in the 
 market-place. 
 
 But, unhappily, we cannot extend the 
 Their mutual sympathy, which institutions 
 animosities. so f u n o f liberty create, to the 
 national conduct of these little republics. 
 Their love of freedom was alloyed by 
 that restless spirit, from which a democ- 
 racy is seldom exempt, of tyrannising 
 over weaker neighbours. They played 
 over again the tragedy of ancient Greece, 
 with all its circumstances of inveterate 
 hatred, unjust ambition, and atrocious 
 retaliation, though with less consummate 
 actors upon the scene. Among all the 
 Lombard cities, Milan was the most con- 
 spicuous, as well for power and popula- 
 tion, as for the abuse of those resour- 
 ces by arbitrary and ambitious conduct. 
 Thus, in 1111, they razed the town of 
 Lodi to the ground, distributing the in- 
 habitants among six villages, and sub- 
 jecting them to an unrelenting despo- 
 tism. J Thus, in 1118, they commenced 
 
 * Murat, Diss. 49. 
 
 t Otho Frisingensis ap. Murat. Scr. Rer. ItaL, 
 t. vi., p. 708. Ut etiam ad comprimendos vicinos 
 materia non careant, inferioris ordinis juvenes, vel 
 quoslibet contemptibilium etiam mechanicarum ar- 
 tium opifices, quos caeterae gentes ab honestioribus 
 et liberioribus studiis tanquam pestem propellunt, 
 ad militiae cingulum, vel dignitatum gradus assu- 
 mere non dedignantur. Ex quo facturn est, ut 
 caeteris orbis civitatibus, divitiis et potentia prae- 
 emineant. 
 
 J The animosity between Milan and Lodi was of 
 very old standing. It originated, according to Ar- 
 nulf, in the resistance made by the inhabitants of 
 the latter city to an attempt made by Archbishop 
 Eribert to force a bishop of his own nomination 
 upon them. The bloodshed, plunder, and confla 
 grations which had ensued, would, he says, fill i 
 volume, if they were related at length. Scriptoree 
 
 a war of ten years' duration with the 
 little city of Como ; but the surprising 
 Derseverance of its inhabitants procured 
 or them better terms of capitulation, 
 though they lost their original independ- 
 ence. The Cremonese treated so harsh- 
 y the town of Crema, that it revolted 
 rom them, and put itself under the pro- 
 tection of Milan. Cities of more equal 
 brces carried on interminable hostilities 
 )y wasting each other's territory, de- 
 stroying the harvests, and burning the vil- 
 ages. 
 
 The sovereignty of the emperors, 
 meanwhile, though not very ef- sovereignty 
 fective, was in theory always of the em- 
 admitted. Their name was perors - 
 ased in public acts, and appeared upon 
 the coin. When they came into Italy, 
 they had certain customary supplies of 
 provisions called fodrum regale, at the 
 expense of the city where they resided ; 
 during their presence, all inferior magis- 
 tracies were suspended, and the right of 
 urisdiction devolved upon them alone. 
 But such was the jealousy of the Lom- 
 bards, that they built the royal palaces 
 without their gates; a precaution to 
 which the emperors were compelled to 
 submit. This was at a very early time 
 a subject of contention between the in- 
 habitants of Pavia and Conrad II., whose 
 palace, seated in the heart of the city, they 
 had demolished in a sedition, and were 
 unwilling to rebuild in that situation.* 
 
 Such was the condition of Italy when 
 Frederick Barbarossa, duke of Frederick 
 Swabia, and nephew of the last Barbarossa. 
 emperor, Conrad III., ascended the throne 
 of Germany. His accession forms the 
 commencement of a new period, the du- 
 ration of which is about one hundred 
 years, and which is terminated by the 
 death of Conrad IV., the last emperor of 
 the house of Swabia. It is characteri- 
 zed, like the former, by three distinguish- 
 ing features in Italian history; the vic- 
 torious struggle of the Lombard and oth- 
 er cities for independence, the final es- 
 tablishment of a temporal sovereignty 
 over the middle provinces by the popes, 
 and the union of the kingdom of Naples 
 to the dominions of the house of Swabia. 
 In Frederick Barbarossa the Italians 
 found a very different sovereign from 
 the two last emperors, Lothaire and Con- 
 rad III., who had seldom appeared in 
 
 Rerum Italic., t. iv., p. 16. And this is the testi- 
 mony of a writer who did not live beyond 1085. 
 Seventy years more, either of hostility or servitude, 
 elapsed, before Lodi was permitted to respire. 
 
 * Otho Frisingensis, p. 710. Muratori, A. D. 
 1027. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 133 
 
 Italy, and with forces quite inadequate 
 to control such insubordinate subjects. 
 The distinguished valour and ability of 
 this prince rendered a severe and arbi- 
 trary temper, and a haughty conceit of 
 his imperial rights, more formidable. He 
 believed, or professed to believe, the 
 magnificent absurdity, that, as successor 
 of Augustus, he inherited the kingdoms 
 of the world. In the same right he 
 more powerfully, if not more rationally, 
 laid claim to the entire prerogatives of 
 the RbWan emperors over their own sub- 
 jects ; and in this the professors of the 
 civil law, which was now diligently stud- 
 ied, lent him their aid with the utmost 
 servility. To such a disposition the self- 
 government of the Lombard cities ap- 
 peared mere rebellion. Milan, especial- 
 ly, the most renowned of them all, drew 
 down upon herself his inveterate re- 
 sentment. He found, unfortunately, too 
 good a pretence in her behaviour towards 
 Lodi. Two natives of that ruined city* 
 threw themselves at the emperor's feet, 
 imploring him, as the ultimate source of 
 justice, to redress the wrongs of their 
 country. It is a striking proof of the 
 terror inspired by Milan, that the consuls 
 of Lodi disavowed the complaints of their 
 countrymen, and the inhabitants trembled 
 at the danger of provoking a summary 
 vengeance, against which the imperial 
 arms seemed no protection.* The Mi- 
 lanese, however, abstained from attack- 
 ing the people of Lodi, though they treat- 
 ed with contempt the emperor's order to 
 leave them at liberty. Frederick, mean- 
 while, came into Italy, and held a diet at 
 Roncaglia, where complaints poured in 
 from many quarters against the Milanese. 
 Pa via and Cremona, their ancient ene- 
 mies, were impatient to renew hostilities 
 under the imperial auspices. Brescia, 
 Tortona, and Crema were allies, or rath- 
 er dependants, of Milan. Frederick soon 
 took occasion to attack the latter confed- 
 eracy. Tortona was compelled to surren- 
 der, and levelled to the ground. But a 
 feudal army was soon dissolved ; the 
 emperor had much to demand his atten- 
 tion at Rome, where he was on ill terms 
 with Adrian IV. ; and when the imperial 
 troops were withdrawn from Lombardy, 
 the Milanese rebuilt Tortona, and expell- 
 ed the citizens of Lodi from their dwel- 
 lings. Frederick assembled a fresh army, 
 
 * See an interesting account of these circum- 
 stances in the narrative of Otho Morena, a citizen 
 of Lodi. Script. Rer. Ital., t. vi., p. 966. M. Sis- 
 mondi, who reproaches Morena for partiality to- 
 wards Frederick in the Milanese war, should have 
 remembered the provocations of Lodi. Hist, des 
 Republ. Ital., t. ii.,p. 102. 
 
 to which almost every city of Lombard)', 
 willingly or by force, contributed its mi- 
 litia. It is said to have exceeded a hun- 
 dred thousand men. The Milanese shut 
 themselves up within their walls; and 
 perhaps might have defied the imperial 
 forces, if their immense population, which 
 gave them confidence in arms, had not 
 exposed them to a different enemy. Mi- 
 lan was obliged by hunger to capitulate, 
 upon conditions not very severe, if a van- 
 quished people could ever safely rely 
 upon the convention that testifies their 
 submission. 
 
 [A. D. 1158.] Frederick, after the sur- 
 render of Milan, held a diet at Ron- Diet of 
 caglia, where the effect of his vie- Rncagiia. 
 tories was fatally perceived. The bishops, 
 the higher nobility, the lawyers, vied with 
 one another in exalting his prerogatives. 
 He defined the regalian rights, as they 
 were called, in such a manner as to ex- 
 clude the cities and private proprietors 
 from coining money, and from tolls or ter- 
 ritorial dues, which they had for many 
 years possessed. These, however, he per- 
 mitted them to retain for a pecuniary stip- 
 ulation. A more important innovation 
 was the appointment of magistrates, with 
 the title of podesta, to administer justice, 
 concurrently with the consuls; but he 
 soon proceeded to abolish the latter of- 
 fice in many cities, and to throw the 
 whole government into the hands of his 
 own magistrates. He prohibited the cit- 
 ies from levying war against each other. 
 It may be presumed, that he showed no 
 favour to Milan. The capitulation was 
 set at naught in its most express provis- 
 ions ; a podesta was sent to supersede the 
 consuls, and part of the territory taken 
 away. Whatever might be the risk of 
 resistance, and the Milanese had experi- 
 enced enough not to undervalue it, they 
 were determined rather to see their liber- 
 ties at once overthrown, than gradually 
 destroyed by a faithless tyrant. They 
 availed themselves of the absence of his 
 army to renew the war. Its issue was 
 more calamitous than that of the last. 
 Almost all Lombardy lay patient under 
 subjection. The email town of Crema, 
 always the faithful ally of Milan, stood a 
 memorable siege against the imperial 
 army ; but the inhabitants were ultimate- 
 ly compelled to capitulate for their lives, 
 and the vindictive Cremonese razed their 
 dwellings to the ground.* But all smaller 
 
 * The siege of Crema is told at great length by 
 Otto Morena ; it is interesting, not only as a display 
 of extraordinary, though unsuccessful, perseve- 
 rance and intrepidity, but as the most detailed ac- 
 count of the methods used in the attack and de- 
 
134 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 capture and calamities were forgotten, when | 
 destruction the great city of Milan, worn j 
 of Milan. ou ^ by f amnie rather than sub- 
 dued by force, was reduced to surrender 
 at discretion. Lombardy stood in anx- 
 ious suspense to know the determination 
 of Frederick respecting this ancient me- 
 tropolis, the seat of the early Christian 
 emperors, and second only to Rome in 
 the hierarchy of the Latin church. A 
 delay of three weeks excited fallacious 
 hopes ; but, at 'the end of that time, an 
 order was given to the Milanese to evac- 
 uate their habitations. The deserted 
 streets were instantly occupied by the 
 imperial army ; the people of Pavia and 
 Cremona, of Lodi and Como, were com- 
 missioned to revenge themselves on the 
 respective quarters of the city assigned 
 to them ; and in a few days the pillaged 
 churches stood alone amid the ruins of 
 what had been Milan. 
 
 [A. D. 1162.] There was now little left 
 of that freedom to which Lombardy had 
 aspired: it was gone like a pleasant 
 dream, and she awoke to the fears and 
 miseries of servitude. Frederick obeyed 
 the dictates of his vindictive temper, and 
 of the policy usual among statesmen. 
 He abrogated the consular regimen in 
 some even of the cities which had sup- 
 ported him, and established his podesta 
 in their place. This magistrate was al- 
 ways a stranger, frequently not even an 
 Italian ; and he came to his office with 
 all those prejudices against the people he 
 was to govern, which cut off every hope 
 of justice and humanity. The citizens of [ 
 Lombardy, especially the Milanese, who 
 had been dispersed in the villages ad- 
 joining their ruined capital, were unable 
 to meet the perpetual demands of tribute. 
 In some parts, it is said, two thirds of the 
 produce of their lands, the only wealth 
 that remained, were extorted from them 
 by the imperial officers. It was in vain 
 that they prostrated themselves at the 
 feet of Frederick. He gave at the best 
 only vague promises of redress; they 
 were in his eyes rebels, his delegates had 
 acted as faithful officers, whom, even if 
 they had gone a little beyond his inten- 
 tions, he could not be expected to punish. 
 
 But there still remained, at the heart 
 of Lombardy, the strong principle of na- 
 tional liberty, imperishable among the 
 perishable armies of her patriots, incon- 
 sumable in the conflagration of her cities.* 
 
 fence of fortified places, before the introduction of 
 artillery. ^Scrip. Rer. Ital., t. vi., p. 1032-1052. 
 * Quae neque Dardaniis campis potuere perire, 
 Jec cum capta capi, uec cum combusta cremari. 
 
 Ennius. 
 
 Those whom private animosities had led 
 to assist the German conqueror, blushed 
 at the degradation of their country, and 
 at the share they had taken in it. [A. D. 
 1167.] A league was secretly League of 
 formed, in winch Cremona, one Lombardy 
 of the chief cities on the imperi- J? a j" 8 * . 
 al side, took a prominent part. ' 
 Those beyond the Adige, hitherto not 
 much engaged in the disputes of central 
 Lombardy, had already formed a separate 
 confederacy, to secure themselres from 
 encroachments, which appeared^Rhnore 
 unjust as they had never borne arms 
 against the emperor. [A. D. 1164.] Their 
 first successes corresponded to the jus- 
 tice of their cause ; Frederick was re- 
 pulsed from the territory of Verona, a 
 fortunate augury for the rest of Lombar- 
 dy. These two clusters of cities, on the 
 east and west of the Adige, now uni- 
 ted themselves into the famous Lombard 
 League, the terms of which were settled 
 'in a general diet. Their alliance was to 
 last twenty years; during which they 
 pledged themselves to mutual assistance 
 against any one who should exact more 
 from them than they had been used to 
 perform from the time of Henry, to the 
 first coming of Frederick into Italy ; im- 
 plying in this the recovery of their elect- 
 ive magistracies, their rights of war and 
 peace, and those lucrative privileges, 
 which, under the name of regalian, had 
 been wrested from them in the diet of 
 Roncaglia.* 
 
 This union of the Lombard cities was 
 formed at a very favourable juncture. 
 Frederick had, almost ever since his ac- 
 cession, been engaged in open hostility 
 with the see of Rome, and was pursuing 
 the fruitless policy of Henry IV., who 
 had endeavoured to substitute an anti- 
 pope of his own faction for the legitimate 
 pontiff. In the prosecution of this scheme, 
 he had besieged Rome with a great army, 
 which, the citizens resisting longer than 
 he expected, fell a prey to the autumnal 
 pestilence that visits the neighbourhood 
 
 * For the nature and conditions of the Lombard 
 league, besides the usual authorities, see Muratori's 
 48th dissertation. The words, a tempore- Hen- 
 rid Regis usque ad introitum imperatoris Frederi. 
 ci, leave it ambiguous which of the Henries was in- 
 tended. Muratori thinks it was Henry IV., be- 
 cause the cities then began to be independent. It 
 seems, however, natural, when a king is mention, 
 ed without any numerical designation, to interpret 
 it of the last bearing that name ; as we say King 
 William for William the Third. And certainly 
 the liberties of Lombardy were more perfect under 
 Henry V. than his father ; besides which, the one 
 reign might still be remembered, and the other 
 rested in tradition. The question, however, is of 
 little moment, 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 135 
 
 of that capital. The flower of German 
 nobility was cut off by this calamity^ and 
 the emperor recrossed the Alps, entirely 
 unable for the present to withstand the 
 Lombard confederacy. Their first overt 
 act of insurrection was the rebuilding of 
 Milan ; the confederate troops all joined 
 in this undertaking; and the Milanese, 
 still numerous, though dispersed and per- 
 secuted, revived as a powerful republic. 
 Lodi was compelled to enter into the 
 league ; Pavia alone continued on the im- 
 perial side. As a check to Pavia, and to 
 the Marquis of Montferrat, the most po- 
 tent of the independent nobility, the Lom- 
 bards planned the erection of a new city 
 between the confines of these two ene- 
 mies, in a rich plain to the south of the 
 Po, and bestowed upon it, in compliment 
 to the pope, Alexander III., the name of 
 Alessandria. Though, from its hasty 
 construction, Alessandria was, even in 
 that age, deemed rude in appearance, it 
 rapidly became a thriving and populous 
 city.* The intrinsic energy and resour- 
 ces of Lombardy were now made mani- 
 fest. Frederick, who had triumphed by 
 their disunion, was unequal to contend 
 against their league. After several years 
 of indecisive war, the emperor invaded 
 the Milanese territory, but the confeder- 
 ates gave him battle, and gained a com- 
 Battie of plete victory at Legnano. [A. D. 
 Legnano. H76.] Frederick escaped alone 
 and disguised from the field, with little 
 hope of raising a fresh army, though still 
 reluctant from shame to acquiesce in the 
 freedom of Lombardy. He was at length 
 persuaded, through the mediation of the 
 republic of Venice, to consent to a truce 
 of six years, the provisional terms of 
 which were all favourable to the league. 
 It was weakened, however, by the de- 
 fection of some of its own members; 
 Cremona, which had never cordially uni- 
 ted with her ancient enemies, made sep- 
 arate conditions with Frederick, and suf- 
 fered herself to be named among the cit- 
 ies on the imperial side in the armistice. 
 Tortona, and even Alessandria, followed 
 the same course during the six years of 
 its duration ; a fatal testimony of unsub- 
 dued animosities, and omen of the calam- 
 ities of Italy. At the expiration of the 
 truce, Frederick's anxiety to secure the 
 crown for his son overcame his pride, 
 
 * Alessandria was surnamed, in derision, della 
 paglia: from the thatch with which the houses 
 were covered. Frederick was very desirous to 
 change its name to Caesarea, as it is actually call- 
 ed in the peace of Constance, being at that time 
 on the imperial side But it soon recovered its 
 former appellation. 
 
 and the famous peace of Con- Peace or 
 stance [A. D. 1183] established Constance 
 the Lombard republics in real independ- 
 ence, v, 
 By the treaty of Constance, the cities 
 were maintained in the enjoyment of all 
 the regalian rights, whether within their 
 walls or in their district, which they 
 could claim by usage. Those of levying 
 war, of erecting fortifications, and of 
 administering civil and criminal justice, 
 were specially mentioned. The nomina- 
 tion of their consuls, or other magistrates, 
 was left absolutely to the citizens ; but 
 they were to receive the investiture of 
 their office from an imperial legate. The 
 customary tributes of provision during 
 the emperor's residence in Italy were 
 preserved ; and he was authorized to ap- 
 point in every city a judge of appeal in 
 civil causes. The Lombard league was 
 confirmed, and the cities were permitted 
 to renew it at their own discretion ; but 
 they were to take every ten years an 
 oath of fidelity to the emperor. This just 
 compact preserved, along with every se- 
 curity for the liberties and welfare of the 
 cities, as much of the imperial preroga- 
 tives as could be exercised by a foreign 
 
 & 
 
 sovereign, consistently with the people's 
 happiness.* 
 
 The successful insurrection oT Lom- 
 bardy is a memorable refutation of that 
 system of policy to which its advocates 
 gave the appellation of vigorous, and 
 which they perpetually hold forth as the 
 only means through which a disaffected 
 people are to be restrained. By a certain 
 class of statesmen, and by all men of harsh 
 and violent disposition, measures of con- 
 ciliation, adherence to the spirit of trea- 
 ties, regard to ancient privileges, or to 
 those rules of moral justice which are 
 paramount to all positive right, are al- 
 ways treated with derision. Terror is 
 their only specific, and the physical ina- 
 bility to rebel their only security for alle 
 giance. But if the razing of cities, the 
 abrogation of privileges, the empoverish- 
 ment and oppression of a nation, could 
 assure its constant submission, Frederick 
 Barbarossa would never have seen the 
 militia of Lombardy arrayed against him 
 at Legnano. Whatever may be the pres- "\ 
 sure upon a conquered people, there will 
 come a moment of their recoil. Nor is 
 it material to allege, in answer to the 
 present instance, that the accidental de- 
 struction of Frederick's army by disease 
 enabled the cities of Lombardy to suc- 
 ceed in their resistance. The fact may 
 
 * Muratori, Antiquitates Italiea, Dise, 5CK 
 
136 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 well be disputed ; since Lombardy, when 
 united, appears to have been more than 
 equal to a contest with any German force 
 that could have been brought against her ; 
 but, even if we admit the effect of this 
 circumstance, it only exhibits the preca- 
 riousness of a policy, which collateral 
 events are always liable to disturb. Prov- 
 idence reserves to itself various means, 
 by which the bonds of the oppressor may 
 be broken ; and it is not for human saga- 
 city to anticipate, whether the army of a 
 conqueror shall moulder in the unwhole- 
 some marshes of Rome, or stiffen with 
 frost in a Russian winter. 
 
 The peace of Constance presented a 
 noble opportunity to the Lombards of 
 establishing a permanent federal union 
 of small republics ; a form of government 
 congenial from the earliest ages to Italy, 
 and that, perhaps, under which she is 
 again destined one day to flourish. They 
 were entitled by the provisions of that 
 treaty to preserve their league, the basis 
 of a more perfect confederacy, which the 
 course of events would have emancipated 
 from every kind of subjection to Germa- 
 ny.* But dark, long-cherished hatreds, 
 and that implacable vindictiveness which, 
 at least in former ages, distinguished the 
 private ^manners of Italy, deformed her 
 nationaWharacter, which can only be the 
 aggregate of individual passions. For 
 revenge she threw away the pearl of 
 great price, and sacrificed even the rec- 
 ollection of that liberty, which had 
 stalked like a majestic spirit among the 
 ruins of Milan. f It passed away, that 
 high disdain of absolute power, that stead- 
 iness and self-devotion, which raised the 
 half-civilized Lombards of the twelfth 
 century to the level of those ancient re- 
 publics, from whose history our first no- 
 tions of freedom and virtue are derived. 
 The victim by turns of selfish and san- 
 guinary factions, of petty tyrants, and of 
 foreign invaders, Italy has fallen like a 
 
 * Though there was no permanent diet of the 
 Lombard league, the consuls and podestas of the 
 respective cities composing it occasionally met in 
 congress, to deliberate upon measures of general 
 safety. Thus assembled, they were called Rec- 
 tores Societatis Lombardiae. It is evident that, if 
 Lombardy had continued in any degree to preserve 
 the spirit of union, this congress might readily 
 have become a permanent body, like the Helvetic 
 diet, with as extensive powers as are necessary in 
 a federal constitution. Muratori, Antichita Ital- 
 iane, t. iii., p. 126, Dissert. 50, Sismondi, t. ii., 
 p. 189. 
 
 f Anzi girar la liberta mirai, 
 E baciar lieta ogni ruina, e dire, 
 Ruine si, ma servitu non mai. 
 
 Gaetana Passerini (ossia piuttoslo Giovan Bat- 
 tista Pastorini) in Mathias, Componimenti 
 Lirici, vol. iii., p. 331. 
 
 star from its place in heaven ; she has 
 seen her harvests trodden down by the 
 horses of the stranger, and the blood of 
 her children wasted in quarrels not their 
 own; Conquering or conquered, in the in- 
 dignant language of her poet, still alike a 
 slave,* a long retribution for the tyranny 
 of Rome. 
 
 Frederick did not attempt to molest 
 the .cities of Lombardy in the en- Affairs of 
 joyment of those privileges con- Sicilv - 
 ceded by the treaty of Constance. His 
 ambition was diverted to a new scheme 
 for aggrandizing the house of Swabia, by 
 the marriage of his eldest son, Henry, 
 with Constance, the aunt and heiress of 
 William II., king of Sicily. That king- 
 dom, which the first monarch, Roger, 
 had elevated to a high pitch of renown 
 and power, fell into decay through the 
 misconduct of his son William, surnamed 
 the Bad, and did not recover much of its 
 lustre under the second William, though 
 styled the Good. His death without 
 issue was apparently no remote event, 
 and Constance was the sole legitimate 
 surviver of the royal family. It is a cu- 
 rious circumstance, that no hereditary 
 kingdom appears absolutely to have ex- 
 cluded females from its throne, except 
 that which, from its magnitude, was of 
 all the most secure from falling into the 
 condition of a province. The Sicilians 
 felt too late the defect of their constitu- 
 tion, which permitted an independent 
 people to be transferred, as the dowry of 
 a woman, to a foreign prince, by whose 
 ministers they might justly expect to be 
 insulted and oppressed. Henry, whose 
 marriage with Constance took place in 
 1186, and who succeeded in her right to 
 the throne of Sicily three years afterward, 
 was exasperated by a courageous, but un- 
 successful effort of the Norman barons, 
 to preserve the crown for an illegitimate 
 branch of the royal family ; and his reign 
 is disgraced by a series of atrocious cru- 
 elties. The power of the house of Swa- 
 bia was now at its zenith on each side 
 of the Alps ; Henry received the Impe- 
 rial crown the year after his father's 
 death in the third crusade, and even pre- 
 vailed upon the princes of Germany to 
 elect his infant son Frederick as his suc- 
 cessor. But his own premature decease 
 clouded the prospects of his family : Con- 
 stance survived him but a year; and a 
 child of four years old was left with the 
 inheritance of a kingdom, which his fa- 
 ther's severity had rendered disaffected, 
 
 * Per servir sempre, o vincitrice o vinta. Fili- 
 caja. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 137 
 
 and which the leaders of German merce- 
 naries in his service desolated and dispu- 
 ted. 
 
 During the minority of Frederick II., 
 innocent from 1198 to 1216, the papal chair 
 
 i. was filled by Innocent III. ; a 
 name second only, and hardly second, to 
 that of Gregory VII. Young, noble, and 
 intrepid, he united with the accustomed 
 spirit of ecclesiastical usurpation, which 
 no one had ever carried to so high a 
 point, the more worldly ambition of con- 
 solidating a separate principality for the 
 Holy See in the centre of Italy. .The 
 real or spurious donations of Constantine, 
 Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis, had given 
 rise to a perpetual claim, on the part of 
 the popes, to very extensive dominions : 
 but little of this had been effectuated, and 
 in Rome itself they were thwarted by 
 the prefect, an officer who swore fidelity 
 to the emperor, and by the insubordinate 
 spirit of the people. In the very neigh- 
 bourhood, the small cities owned no sub- 
 jection to the capital, and were probably 
 as much self-governed as those of Lom- 
 bardy. One is transported back to the 
 earliest times of the republic, in reading 
 of the desperate wars between Rome 
 arid Tibur or Tusculum, neither of which 
 was subjugated till the latter part of the 
 twelfth century. At a further distance 
 were the dutchy of Spoleto, the march 
 of Ancona, and what had been the exar- 
 chate of Ravenna, to all of which the 
 popes had more or less grounded pre- 
 tensions. Early in the last-mentioned 
 age, the famous Countess Matilda, to 
 whose zealous protection Gregory VII. 
 had been eminently indebted during his 
 long dispute with the emperor, granted 
 the reversion of all her possessions to' 
 the Holy See, first in the lifetime of 
 Gregory, and again under the pontificate 
 Bequest of of Paschal III. These were 
 the countess very extensive, and held by dif- 
 ferent titles. Of her vast impe- 
 rial fiefs, Mantua, Modena, and Tus- 
 cany, she certainly could not dispose. 
 The dutchy of Spoleto and march of An- 
 cona were supposed to rest upon a differ- 
 ent footing. I confess myself not dis- 
 tinctly to comprehend the nature of this 
 part of her succession. These had been 
 formerly among the great fiefs of the 
 kingdom of Italy. But if I understand it 
 rightly, they had tacitly ceased to be sub- 
 ject to the emperors, some years before 
 they were seized by Godfrey of Lorraine, 
 father-in-law and stepfather of Matilda. 
 To his son, her husband, she succeeded 
 in the possession of those countries. 
 They are commonly considered as her 
 
 allodial or patrimonial property ; yet it 
 is not easy to see how, being herself a 
 subject of the empire, she could transfer 
 even her allodial estates from its sover- 
 eignty. Nor, on the other hand, can it 
 apparently be maintained, that she was 
 lawful sovereign of countries which had 
 not long since been imperial fiefs, and 
 the suzerainty over which had never 
 been renounced. The original title of 
 the Holy See, therefore, does not seem 
 incontestable, even as to this part of Ma- 
 tilda's donation. But I state with hesita- 
 tion a difficulty, to which the authors I 
 have consulted do not advert.* It is cer- 
 tain, however, that the emperors kept 
 possession of the whole during the 
 twelfth century ; and treated both Spole- 
 to and Ancona as parts of the empire, 
 notwithstanding continual remonstrances 
 from the Roman pontiffs. Frederick Bar- 
 barossa, at the negotiations of Venice in 
 1177, promised to restore the patrimony 
 of Matilda in fifteen years ; but, at the 
 close of that period, Henry VI. was not 
 disposed to execute this arrangement, 
 and granted the county in fief to some 
 of his German followers. Upon his 
 death, the circumstances were favourable 
 to Innocent III. The infant king of Si- 
 cily had been intrusted by Constance to 
 his guardianship. A double election of 
 Philip, brother of Henry VI., and of Otho, 
 duke of Brunswick, engaged the princes 
 of Germany, who had entirely overlooked 
 the claims of young Frederick, in a doubt- 
 ful civil war. Neither party was in a 
 condition to enter Italy ; and the impe- 
 rial dignity was vacant for several years, 
 till, the death of Philip removing one 
 competitor, Otho IV., whom the pope 
 had constantly favoured, was crowned 
 emperor. During this interval, the Ital- 
 ians had no superior ; and Innocent 
 availed himself of it to maintain the pre- 
 tensions of the see. These he backed 
 by the production of rather a questiona- 
 ble document, the will of Henry VI., said 
 to have been found among the baggage 
 of Marquard, one of the German soldiers, 
 who had been invested with fiefs 
 by the late emperor. The cit- gJ-J; 
 les of what we now call the ec- reduced by 
 clesiastical state had in the innocent 
 twelfth century their own muni- 
 
 * It is almost hopeless to look for explicit infor- 
 mation upon the rights and pretensions of the Ro- 
 man see in Italian writers even of the eighteenth 
 century. Muratpri, the most learned, and, upon 
 the whole, the fairest of them all, moves cautiously 
 over this ground ; except when the claims of 
 Rome happen to clash with those of the house of 
 Este. But I have not been able to satisfy myself 
 
138 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. HI. 
 
 cipal government, like those of Lombar- 
 dy ; but they were far less able to assert 
 a complete independence. They gladly, 
 therefore, put themselves under the pro- 
 tection of the Holy See, which held out 
 some prospect of securing them from 
 Marquard, and other rapacious partisans, 
 without disturbing their internal regula- 
 tions. Thus the dutchy of Spoleto and 
 march of Ancona submitted to Innocent 
 III. ; but he was not strong enough to 
 keep constant possession of such exten- 
 sive territories, and some years after- 
 ward adopted the prudent course of 
 granting Ancona in fief to the Marquis of 
 Este. He did not, as may be supposed, 
 neglect his authority at home ; the pre- 
 fect of Rome was now compelled to 
 swear allegiance to the pope, which put 
 an end to the regular imperial supremacy 
 over that city ; and the privileges of the 
 citizens were abridged. This is the 
 proper era of that temporal sovereignty 
 which the bishops of Rome possess over 
 their own city, though still prevented by 
 various causes, for nearly three centu- 
 ries, from becoming unquestioned and 
 unlimited. 
 
 The policy of Rome was now more 
 clearly defined than ever. In order to 
 preserve what she had thus suddenly 
 gained rather by opportunity than 
 strength, it was her interest to enfeeble 
 the imperial power, and consequently to 
 maintain the freedom of the Italian re- 
 League of publics. Tuscany had hitherto 
 Tuscany, been ruled by a marquis of the 
 emperor's appointment, though her cities 
 were flourishing, and, within themselves, 
 independent. In imitation of the Lom- 
 bard confederacy, and impelled by Inno- 
 cent III., they now (with the exception 
 of Pisa, which was always strongly at- 
 tached to the empire) formed a similar 
 league for the preservation of their rights. 
 In this league the influence of the pope 
 was far more strongly manifested than 
 in that of Lombardy. Although the lat- 
 ter had been in alliance with Alexander 
 III., and was formed during the height 
 of his dispute with Frederick, this eccle- 
 siastical quarrel mingled so little in their 
 struggle for liberty, that no allusion to it 
 is found in the act of their confederacy. 
 But the Tuscan union was expressly es- 
 tablished "for the honour and aggran- 
 dizement of the apostolic see." The 
 members bound themselves to defend 
 
 by the perusal of some dry and tedious disserta- 
 tions in St. Marc (Abrege Chronologique de 1'Hist. 
 de 1'Italie, t. iv.), who, with learning scarcely infe- 
 rior to that of Muratori, possessed more opportu- 
 nity and inclination to speak out. 
 
 the possessions and rights of the church ; 
 and not to acknowledge any king or em- 
 peror without the approbation of the 
 supreme pontiff.* The Tuscans, accord- 
 ingly, were more thoroughly attached to 
 the church party than the Lombards, 
 whose principle was animosity towards 
 the house of Swabia. Hence, when In- 
 nocent III., some time after, supported 
 Frederick II. against the Emperor Otho 
 IV., the Milanese and their allies were 
 arranged on the imperial side; but the 
 Tuscans continued to adhere to the pope. 
 In the wars of Frederick Barbarossa 
 against Milan and their allies, Factions of 
 we have seen the cities of Lorn- Gueifn and 
 bardy divided, and a considera- Gobelins. 
 ble number of them firmly attached to 
 the imperial interest. It does not appear, 
 I believe, from history, though it is by no 
 means improbable, that the citizens were 
 at so early a time divided among them- 
 selves, as to their line of public policy, 
 and that the adherence of a particular 
 city to the emperor, or to the Lombard 
 league, was only, as proved afterward 
 the case, that one faction or another ac- 
 quired an ascendency in its councils. 
 But jealousies long existing between the 
 different classes, and only suspended by 
 the national struggle which terminated 
 at Constance, gave rise to new modifica- 
 tions of interests, and new relations to- 
 wards the empire. About the year 1200, 
 or perhaps a little later, the two leading 
 parties which divided the cities of Lom- 
 bardy, and whose mutual animosity, hav- 
 ing no general subject of contention, re- 
 quired the association of a name to di- 
 rect as well as invigorate its prejudices, 
 became distinguished by the celebrated 
 appellations of Guelfs and Ghibelins ; the 
 former adhering to the papal side, the 
 latter to that of the emperor. These 
 names were derived from Germany, and 
 had been the rallying word of faction for 
 more than half a century in that country, 
 before they were transported to a still 
 more favourable soil. The Guelfs took 
 their name from a very illustrious family, 
 several of whom had successively been 
 dukes of Bavaria in the tenth and eleventh 
 centuries. The heiress of the last of 
 these intermarried with a younger son of 
 the house of Este, a noble family settled 
 near Padua, and possessed of great es- 
 tates on each bank of the lower Po. 
 They gave birth to a second line of 
 
 * Quod possessiones et jura sacrosanctae ecclesiae 
 bona fide defenderent ; et quod nullum in regem 
 aut imperatorem reciperent, nisi quern Romarius 
 pontifex approbaret. Muratori, Dissert. 48 (Latin, 
 t. iv., p. 320 ; Italian, t. iii., p. 112). 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 139 
 
 Guelfs, from whom the royal house of 
 Brunswick is descended. The name of 
 Ghibelin is derived from a village in 
 Franconia, whence Conrad the Salic 
 came, the progenitor, through females, 
 of the Swabian emperors. At the elec- 
 tion of Lothaire, in 1125, the Swabian 
 family were disappointed of what they 
 considered almost an hereditary posses- 
 sion ; and at this time an hostility appears 
 to have commenced between them and 
 the house of Guelf, who were nearly re- 
 lated to Lothaire. Henry the Proud, and 
 his son, Henry the Lion, representatives 
 of the latter family, were frequently per- 
 secuted by the Swabian emperors : but 
 their fortunes belong to the history of 
 Germany.* Meanwhile the elder branch, 
 though not reserved for such glorious 
 destinies as the Guelfs, continued to 
 flourish in Italy; the marquises of Este 
 were by far the most powerful nobles in 
 eastern Lombardy, and about the end of 
 the twelfth century began to be consider- 
 ed as heads of the church party in their 
 neighbourhood. They were frequently 
 chosen to the office of podesta, or chief 
 magistrate, by the cities of Romagna; 
 and in 1208, the people of Ferrara set the 
 fatal example of sacrificing their free- 
 dom for tranquillity, by electing Azzo 
 VII. , marquis of Este, as their lord or 
 sovereign.! 
 
 Otho IV. was son of Henry the Lion, 
 otho iv. an( l consequently head of the 
 Guelfs. On his obtaining the im- 
 perial crown, the prejudices of Italian 
 factions were diverted out of their usual 
 channel. He was soon engaged in a 
 quarrel with the pope, whose hostility to 
 the empire was certain, into whatever 
 hands it might fall. In Milan, however, 
 and generally in the cities which had be- 
 longed to the Lombard league against 
 Frederick I., hatred of the house of Swa- 
 bia prevailed more than jealousy of the 
 imperial prerogatives ; they adhered to 
 names rather than to principles, and sup- 
 ported a Guelf emperor even against the 
 pope. Terms of this description, having 
 no definite relation to principles which it 
 might be troublesome to learn and defend, 
 are always acceptable to mankind, and 
 have the peculiar advantage of precluding 
 altogether that spirit of compromise and 
 accommodation, by which it is sometimes 
 endeavoured to obstruct their tendency 
 
 * The German origin of these celebrated fac- 
 tions is clearly proved by a passage in Otho of 
 Frisingen, who lived half a century before we find 
 the denominations transferred to Italy. Struvius, 
 Corpus Hist. German., p. 378, and Muratori, A. D. 
 1152. t Sismondi, t, ii., p. 389. 
 
 to hate and injure each other. From this 
 time, every city, and almost every citi- 
 zen, gloried in one of these barbarous 
 denominations. In several cities the im- 
 perial party predominated through hatred 
 of their neighbours, who espoused that 
 of the church. Thus the inveterate feuds 
 between Pisa and Florence, Modena and 
 Bologna, Cremona and Milan, threw them 
 into opposite factions. But there was in 
 every one of these a strong party against 
 that which prevailed, and consequently a 
 Guelf <5ity frequently became Ghibelin, 
 or conversely, according to the fluctua- 
 tions of the time.* 
 
 The change to which we have advert- 
 ed in the politics of the Guelf party last- 
 ed only during the reign of Otho IV. 
 When the heir of the house of . .... 
 Swabia grew up to manhood, 
 Innocent, who, though his guardian, had 
 taken little care of his interests, as long 
 as he flattered himself with the hope of 
 finding a Guelf emperor obedient, placed 
 the young Frederick at the head of an 
 opposition composed of cities always at- 
 tached to his family, and of such as im- 
 plicitly followed the see of Rome. He 
 met with considerable success both in 
 Italy and Germany, and, after the death 
 of Otho, received the imperial crown. 
 But he had no longer to expect any as- 
 sistance from the pope who conferred it. 
 Innocent was dead, and Honorius III., 
 his successor, could not behold without 
 apprehension the vast power of Frede- 
 rick, supported in Lombardy by a faction 
 
 * For the Guelf and Ghibelin factions, besides 
 the historians, the 51st dissertation of Muratori 
 should be read. There is some degree of inaccu- 
 racy in his language, where he speaks of these dis- 
 tractions expiring at the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century. Quel secolo, e verp, abbondo anch' esso 
 di molte guerre, ma nulla si opero sotto nome o 
 pretesto delle fazioni suddette. Solamente riten- 
 nero esse piede in alcune private famiglie. Anti- 
 chita Italiane, t. iii., p. 148. But certainly the 
 names of Guelf and Ghibelin, as party distinctions, 
 may be traced all through the fifteenth century. 
 The former faction showed itself distinctly in the 
 insurrection of the cities suoject to Milan, upon the 
 death of Galeazzo Visconti, in 1404. It appeared 
 again in the attempt of the Milanese to re-establish 
 their republic in 1447. Sismondi, t. ix., p. 334. So 
 in 1477, Ludovico Sforza made use of Ghibelin 
 prejudices to exclude the regent Bonne of Savoy as 
 a Guelf. Sismondi, t. xi., p. 79. In the ecclesias- 
 tical state, the same distinctions appear to have 
 been preserved still later. Stefano Infessura, in 
 1487, speaks familiarly of them. Script. Rer. Ital., 
 t. iii., p. 1221. And even in the conquest of Milan 
 by Louis XII., in 1500, the Guelfs of that city are 
 represented as attached to the French party, while 
 the Ghibelins abetted Ludovico Sforza and Maxi- 
 milian. Guicciardini, p. 399. Other passages in 
 the same historian show these factions to have been 
 alive in various parts of Italy. 
 
140 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 which balanced that of the church, and 
 menacing the ecclesiastical territories on 
 the other side by the possession of Naples 
 and Sicily. This kingdom, feudatory to 
 Rome, and long her firmest ally, was now, 
 by a fatal connexion which she had not 
 been able to prevent, thrown into the 
 scale of her most dangerous enemy. 
 Hence the temporal dominion which In- 
 nocent III. had taken so much pains to 
 establish, became a very precarious pos- 
 session, exposed on each side to the at- 
 tacks of a power that had legitimate pre- 
 tensions to almost every province com- 
 posing it. The life of Frederick II. was 
 wasted in an unceasing contention with 
 the church, and with his Italian subjects, 
 whom she excited to rebellions against 
 him. Without inveighing, like the popish 
 writers, against this prince, certainly an 
 encourager of letters, and endowed with 
 many eminent qualities, we may lay to 
 his charge a good deal of dissimulation ; 
 I will not add ambition, because I am not 
 aware of any period in the reign of Fred- 
 erick when he was not obliged to act on 
 his defence against the aggression of oth- 
 ers. But if he had been a model of vir- 
 tues, such men as Honorius III., Gregory 
 IX., and Innocent IV., the popes with 
 whom he had successively to contend, 
 would not have given him respite, while 
 he remained master of Naples, as well as 
 the empire.* 
 
 It was the custom of every pope to 
 urge princes into a crusade, which the 
 condition of Palestine rendered indispen- 
 sable, or, more properly, desperate. But 
 this great piece of supererogatory devo- 
 tion had never yet been raised into an ab- 
 solute duty of their station, nor had even 
 private persons been ever required to 
 take up the cross by compulsion. Ho- 
 norius III., however, exacted a vow from 
 Frederick, before he conferred upon him 
 the imperial crown, that he would under- 
 take a crusade for the deliverance of Je- 
 rusalem. Frederick submitted to this en- 
 
 * The rancour of bigoted Catholics against 
 Frederick has hardly subsided at the present day. 
 A very moderate-commendation of him in Tirabos- 
 chi, vol. iv., t. 7, was not suffered to pass uncon- 
 tradicted by the Roman editor. And though Mu- 
 ratori shows quite enough prejudice against that 
 emperor's character, a fierce Roman bigot, whose 
 animadversions are printed in the 17th volume of 
 his annals (8vo edition), flies into paroxysms of fury 
 at every syllable that looks like moderation. It is 
 well known that, although the public policy of 
 Rome has long displayed the pacific temper of 
 weakness, the thermometer of ecclesiastical senti- 
 ment in that city stands very nearly as high as in 
 the thirteenth century. Giannone, who suffered 
 for his boldness, has drawn Frederick II. very fa- 
 vourably, perhaps too favourably, in the 16th and 
 17th books of the Istoria Civile di Napoli. 
 
 gagement, which perhaps he never de- 
 signed to keep, and certainly endeavour- 
 ed afterward to evade. Though he be- 
 came by marriage nominal king of Jeru- 
 salem,* his excellent understanding was 
 not captivated with so barren a prospect, 
 and at length his delays in the perform- 
 ance of his vow provoked Gregory IX. 
 to issue against him a sentence of ex- 
 communication. Such a thunderbolt was 
 not to be lightly regarded ; and Frederick 
 sailed the next year for Palestine. But 
 having disdained to solicit absolution for 
 what he considered as no crime, the 
 court of Rome was excited to still fiercer 
 indignation against this profanation of a 
 crusade by an excommunicated sovereign. 
 Upon his arrival in Palestine, he receiv- 
 ed intelligence that the papal troops had 
 broken into the kingdom of Naples. No 
 one could rationally have blamed Freder- 
 ick if he had quitted the Holy Land as 
 he found it ; but he made a treaty with 
 the Saracens, which, though by no means 
 so disadvantageous as under all the cir- 
 cumstances might have been expected, 
 served as a pretext for new calumnies 
 against him in Europe. The charge of 
 irreligion, eagerly and successfully prop- 
 agated, he repelled by persecuting edicts 
 against heresy, that do no great honour 
 to his memory, and availed him little at 
 the time. Over his Neapolitan dominions 
 he exercised a rigorous government, ren- 
 dered perhaps necessary by the levity 
 and insubordination characteristic of the 
 inhabitants, but which tended, through the 
 artful representations of Honorius and 
 Gregory, to alarm and alienate the Italian 
 republics. 
 
 A new generation had risen up in Lom- 
 bardy since the peace of Con- H iswars 
 stance, and the prerogatives re- with the 
 served by that treaty to the em- Lombards - 
 
 * The second wife of Frederick was lolante, or 
 Violante, daughter of John, count of Brienne, By 
 Maria, eldest daughter and heiress of Isabella, wife 
 of Conrad, marquis 'of Montferrat. This Isabella 
 was the youngest daughter of Almaric or Amaury, 
 king of Jerusalem, and by the deaths of her broth- 
 er Baldwin IV., of her eldest sister Sibilla, wife of 
 Guy de Lusignan, and that sister's child Baldwin V., 
 succeeded to a claim upon Jerusalem, which, since 
 the victories of Saladin, was not very profitable. It 
 is said that the kings of Naples deduce their title 
 to that sounding inheritance from this marriage of 
 Frederick (Giannone,!. xvi., c. 2), but the extinc- 
 tion of Frederick's posterity must have, strictly 
 speaking, put an end to any right derived from 
 him ; and Giannone himself indicates a better title 
 by the cession of Maria, a princess of Antioch, and 
 legitimate heiress of Jerusalem, to Charles of An- 
 jou, in 1272. Ifow far indeed this may have been 
 regularly transmitted to the present King of Naples 
 I do not know, and am sure that it is not worth 
 while to inquire. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 141 
 
 pire were so seldom called into action, 
 that few cities were disposed to recol- 
 lect their existence. They denominated 
 themselves Guelfs or Ghibelins, accord- 
 ing to habit, and out of their mutual op- 
 position, but without much reference to 
 the empire. Those however of the for- 
 mer party, and especially Milan, retained 
 their antipathy to the house of Swabia. 
 Though Frederick II. was entitled, as far 
 as established usage can create a right, to 
 the sovereignty of Italy, the Milanese 
 would never acknowledge him, nor per- 
 mit his coronation at Monza, according 
 to ancient ceremony, with the iron crown 
 of the Lombard kings. The pope foment- 
 ed, to the utmost of his power, this dis- 
 affected spirit, and encouraged the Lom- 
 bard cities to renew their former league. 
 This, although conformable to a provis- 
 ion in the treaty of Constance, was man- 
 ifestly hostile to Frederick, and may be 
 considered as the commencement of a 
 second contest between the republican 
 cities of Lombardy and the empire. But 
 there was a striking difference between 
 this and the former confederacy against 
 Frederick Barbarossa. In the league of 
 1167, almost every city, forgetting all 
 smaller animosities in the great cause of 
 defending the national privileges, contrib- 
 uted its share of exertion to sustain that 
 perilous conflict ; and this transient una- 
 nimity in the people so distracted by in- 
 ternal faction as the Lombards, is the su- 
 rest witness to the justice of their under- 
 taking. Sixty years afterward, their war 
 against the second Frederick had less of 
 provocation and less of public spirit. It 
 was in fact a party struggle of Guelf -and 
 Ghibelin cities, to which the names of the 
 church and the empire gave more of dig- 
 nity and consistence. 
 
 The republics of Italy in the thirteenth 
 
 century were so numerous and 
 mento?" independent, and their revolutions 
 Lombard so frequent, that it is a difficult 
 
 matter to avoid -confusion in fol- 
 lowing their history. It will give more 
 arrangement to our ideas, and at the same 
 time illustrate the changes that took place 
 in these little states, if we consider them 
 as divided into four clusters or constella- 
 tions, not indeed unconnected one with 
 another, yet each having its own centre 
 of motion, and its own boundaries. The 
 first of these we may suppose formed of 
 the cities in central Lombardy, between 
 the Sessia and the Adige, the Alps and 
 the Ligurian mountains ; it comprehends 
 Milan, Cremona, Pavia, Brescia, Berga- 
 mo, Parma, Piacenza, Mantua, Lodi, 
 Alessandria, and several others less dis- 
 
 tinguished. These were the original seats 
 of Italian liberty, the great movers in the 
 wars of the elder Frederick. Milan was 
 at the head of this cluster of cities, and 
 her influence gave an ascendency to the 
 Guelf party ; she had, since the treaty of 
 Constance, rendered Lodi and Pavia al- 
 most her subjects, and was in strict 
 union with Brescia and Piacenza. Par- 
 ma, however, and Cremona, were unsha- 
 ken defenders of the empire. In the sec- 
 ond class we may place the cities of the 
 March of Verona, between the Adige and 
 the frontiers of Germany. Of these there 
 were but four worth mentioning : Vero- 
 na, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso. The 
 citizens of all the four were inclined to 
 the Guelf interests ; but a powerful body 
 of rural nobility, who had never been 
 compelled, like those upon the upper Po, 
 to quit their fortresses in the hilly coun- 
 try, or reside within the walls, attached 
 themselves to the opposite denomina- 
 tion.* SomejDf them obtained very great 
 authority in the civil feuds of these four 
 republics; and especially two brothers, 
 Eccelin and Alberic da Romano, of a rich 
 and distinguished family, known for its 
 devotion to the empire. By extraordina- 
 ry vigour and decision of character, by 
 dissimulation and breach of oaths, by the 
 intimidating effects of almost, unparalleled 
 cruelty, Eccelin da Romano became after 
 some years the absolute master of three 
 cities, Padua, Verona, and Vicenza ; and 
 the Guelf party, in consequence, was en- 
 tirely subverted beyond the Adige during 
 the continuance of his tyranny. f An- 
 other cluster was composed of the cities 
 in Romagna; Bologna, Imola, Faenza, 
 Ferrara, and several others. Of these 
 Bologna was far the most powerful, and, 
 as no city was more steadily for the in- 
 terests of the church, the Guelfs usually 
 predominated in this class ; to which also 
 the influence of the house of Este not a 
 little contributed. Modena, though not 
 geographically within the limits of this 
 division, may be classed along with it, 
 from her constant wars with Bologna. 
 
 * Sismondi, t. ii., p. 222. 
 
 t The cruelties of Eccelin excited universal hor- 
 ror, in an age when inhumanity towards enemies 
 was as common as fear and revenge could make it. 
 It was a usual trick of beggars, all over Italy, to 
 pretend that they had been deprived of their eyes 
 or limbs by the Veronese tyrant. There is hardly 
 an instance in European history of so sanguinary 
 a government subsisting for more than twenty 
 years. The crimes of Eccelin are remarkably well 
 authenticated by the testimony of several contem- 
 porary writers, who enter into great details. Most 
 of these are found in the seventh volume of Scrip- 
 tores Rerum Italicarum. Sismondi, t. iii., p. 33,, 
 111, 203, is more full than any of the moderns. 
 
142 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP, lit 
 
 A fourth class will comprehend the whole 
 of Tuscany, separated almost entirely 
 from the politics of Lombardy and Ro- 
 magna. Florence headed the Guelf cit- 
 ies in this province, Pisa the Ghibelin. 
 The Tuscan union was formed, as has 
 been said above, by Innocent III., and 
 was strongly inclined to the popes ; but 
 gradually the Ghibelin party acquired its 
 share of influence ; and the cities of Sie- 
 na, Arezzo, and Lucca, shifted their poli- 
 cy, according to external circumstances 
 or the fluctuations of their internal fac- 
 tions. The petty cities in the region of 
 Spoleto and Ancona hardly perhaps de- 
 serve the name of republics ; and Genoa 
 does not readily fall into any of our four 
 classes, unless her wars with Pisa may 
 be thought to connect her with Tuscany.* 
 
 After several years of transient hostil- 
 ity and precarious truce, the Guelf cities 
 of Lombardy engaged in a regular and 
 protracted war with Frederick II., or, 
 more properly, with their Ghibelin adver- 
 saries. Few events of this contest de- 
 serve particular notice. Neither party 
 ever obtained such decisive advantages 
 as had alternately belonged to Frederick 
 Barbarossa and the Lombard confedera- 
 cy, during the war of the preceding cen- 
 tury. A defeat of the Milanese by the 
 emperor, at Corte Nuova, in 1237, was 
 balanced by his unsuccessful siege of 
 Brescia the next year. The Pisans as- 
 sisted Frederick to gain a great naval vic- 
 tory over the Genoese fleet in 1241 ; but 
 he was obliged to rise from the blockade 
 of Parma, which had left the standard of 
 Ghibelinism in 1248. Ultimately, how- 
 ever, the strength of the house of Swabia 
 was exhausted by so tedious a struggle ; 
 the Ghibelins of Italy had their vicissi- 
 tudes of success ; but their country, and 
 even themselves, lost more and more of 
 the ancient connexion with Germany. 
 
 In this resistance to Frederick II., the 
 Lombards were much indebted to the 
 
 * I have taken no notice of Piedmont in this divis- 
 ion. The history of that country is far less eluci- 
 dated by ancient or modern writers than that of 
 other parts of Italy. It was at this time divided 
 between the counts of Savoy and marquises of 
 Montferrat. But Asti, Chieri, and Turin, especial- 
 ly the two former, appear to have had a republican 
 form of government. They were however not ab- 
 solutely independent. The only Piedmontese city 
 that can properly be considered as a separate state, 
 in the thirteenth century, was Vercelli ; and even 
 there the bishop seems to have possessed a sort of 
 temporal sovereignty. Denina, author of the Ri- 
 voluzioni d'ltalia, first printed in 1769, lived to pub- 
 lish in his old age a history of western Italy, or 
 Piedmont, from which I have gleaned a few facts. 
 Istoria dell' Italia Occidentale ; Torino, 1809, 6 
 vola. 8vo. 
 
 constant support of Gregory IX. and his 
 successor, Innocent IV. ; and the Guelf, 
 or the church party, were used as sy- 
 nonymous terms. These pontiffs bore 
 an unquenchable hatred to the house of 
 Swabia. No concessions mitigated their 
 animosity ; no reconciliation was sincere. 
 Whatever faults may be imputed to Fred- 
 erick, it is impossible for any one, not 
 blindly devoted to the court of Rome, to 
 deny, that he was iniquitously proscribed 
 by her unprincipled ambition. His real 
 crime was the inheritance of his ances- 
 tors, and the name of the house of Swa- 
 bia. In 1239, he was excommunicated 
 by Gregory IX. To this he was tolera- 
 bly accustomed by former experience ; 
 but the sentence was attended by an ab- 
 solution of his subjects from their alle- 
 giance, and a formal deposition. These 
 sentences were not very effective upon 
 men of vigorous minds, or upon those 
 whose passions were engaged in their 
 cause ; but they influenced both those 
 who feared the threatenings of the cler- 
 gy, and those who wavered already as 
 to their line of political conduct. In the 
 fluctuating state of Lombardy, the ex- 
 communication of Frederick undermined 
 his interests even in cities, like Parma, 
 that had been friendly, and seemed to 
 identify the cause of his enemies with 
 that of religion ; a prejudice, artfully fo- 
 mented by means of calumnies propaga- 
 ted against himself, and which the con- 
 duct of such leading Ghibelins as Ecce- 
 lin, who lived in an open defiance of God 
 and man, did not contribute to lessen. 
 In 1240, Gregory proceeded to publish a 
 crusade against Frederick, as if he had 
 been an open enemy to religion ; which 
 he revenged by putting to death all the 
 prisoners he made who wore the cross. 
 There was one thing wanting to make 
 the expulsion of the emperor from the 
 Christian commonwealth more complete. 
 Gregory IX. accordingly projected, and 
 Innocent IV. carried into effect, the con- 
 vocation of a general council, council of 
 This was held at Lyons [A. D. Lyons. 
 1245], an imperial city, but over which 
 Frederick could no longer retain his su- 
 premacy. In this assembly, where one 
 hundred and forty prelates appeared, the 
 question whether Frederick ought to be 
 deposed was solemnly discussed ; he sub- 
 mitted to defend himself by his advo- 
 cates; and the pope, in the presence, 
 though without formally collecting the 
 suffrages of the council, pronounced a 
 sentence, by which Frederick's excom- 
 munication was renewed, the empire 
 and all his kingdoms taken away, and 
 
PART I.J 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 143 
 
 his subjects absolved from their fidelity. 
 This is the most pompous act of usurpa- 1 
 tion in all the records of the church of ' 
 Rome ; and the tacit approbation of a 
 general council seemed to incorporate 
 the pretended right of deposing kings, 
 which might have passed as a mad vaunt 
 of Gregory VII. and his successors, with 
 the established faith of Christendom. 
 Upon the death of Frederick II., in 
 
 Conrad iv 1250 ' ne ^ e ^ to ms son Conrad 
 a contest to maintain for every 
 part of his inheritance, as well as for the 
 imperial crown. But the vigour of the 
 house of Swabia was gone ; Conrad was 
 reduced to fight for the kingdom of Na- , 
 pies, the only succession which he 
 could hope to secure against the troops 
 of Innocent IV., who still pursued his 
 family with implacable hatred, and claim- 
 ed that kingdom as forfeited to its feudal 
 superior, the Holy See. After Conrad's 
 premature death, which happened in 1254, 
 the throne was filled by his legitimate 
 brother Manfred, who retained it by his 
 bravery and address, in despite of the 
 popes, till they were compelled to call 
 in the assistance of a more powerful 
 arm. 
 
 The death of Conrad brings to a ter- 
 mination that period in Italian history 
 which we have described as nearly co- 
 extensive with the greatness of the house 
 of Swabia. It is perhaps upon the whole 
 the most honourable to Italy; that in 
 which she displayed the most of national 
 energy and patriotism. A Florentine or 
 Venetian may dwell with pleasure upon 
 later times ; but a Lombard will cast back 
 his eye across the desert of centuries, till 
 it reposes on the field of Legnano. Great 
 changes followed in the foreign and in- 
 ternal policy, in the moral and military 
 character of Italy. But before we de- 
 scend to the next period, it will be neces- 
 sary to remark some material circum- 
 stances in that which has just passed 
 under our review. 
 
 The successful resistance of the Lom- 
 causesofthe bard r u ities *o such princes as 
 success of both the Fredericks, must as- 
 Lombardy. tonish a reader who brings to 
 the story of these middle ages notions 
 derived from modern times. But when 
 we consider not only the ineffectual con- 
 trol which could be exerted over a feu- 
 dal army, bound only to a short term of 
 service, and reluctantly kept in the field 
 at its own cost, but the peculiar distrust 
 and disaffection with which many Ger- 
 man princes regarded the house of Swa- 
 bia, less reason will appear for surprise. 
 Nor did the kingdom of Naples, almost 
 
 always in agitation, yield any material 
 aid to the second Frederick. The main 
 cause, however, of that triumph which 
 attended Lombardy was the intrinsic en- 
 ergy of a free government. From the 
 eleventh century, when the cities be- 
 came virtually republican, they put out 
 those vigorous shoots which are the 
 growth of freedom alone. Their domes- 
 tic feuds, their mutual wars, the fierce as- 
 saults of their national enemies, checked 
 not their strength, their wealth, or their 
 population ; but rather, as the limbs are 
 nerved by labour and hardship, the re- 
 publics of Italy grew in vigour and cour- 
 age through the conflicts they sustained. 
 If we but remember what savage license 
 prevailed during the ages that preceded 
 their rise, the rapine of public robbers, 
 or of feudal nobles little differing from 
 robbers, the contempt of industrious arts, 
 the inadequacy of penal laws, and the im- 
 possibility of carrying them into effect, 
 we shall form some notion of the change 
 which was wrought in the condition of 
 Italy by the growth of its cities. In 
 comparison with the blessings of indus- 
 try protected, injustice controlled, emu- 
 lation awakened, the disorders which 
 ruffled their surface appear slight and 
 momentary. I speak only of this first 
 stage of their independence, and chiefly 
 of the twelfth century, before those civil 
 dissensions had reached their height, by 
 which the glory and prosperity of Lom- 
 bardy were soon to be subverted. 
 
 We have few authentic testimonies as 
 to the domestic improvement of the free 
 Italian cities, while they still deserved the 
 name. But we may perceive by history, 
 that their power and population, accord- 
 ing to their extent of territory, were al- 
 most incredible. In Galvaneus Flamma, 
 a Milanese writer, we find a curious sta- 
 tistical account of that city in 1288, which, 
 though of a date about thirty years after 
 its liberties had been overthrown by 
 usurpation, must be considered as imply- 
 ing a high degree of previous advance- 
 ment, even if we make allowance, as 
 probably we should, for some exaggera- 
 tion. The inhabitants are reckoned at 
 200,000; the private houses 13,000; the 
 nobility alone dwelt in sixty streets; 
 6000 gentlemen, or heavy cavalry (mili- 
 tes) might be mustered from the city and 
 its district, and 240^000 men capable of 
 arms; a force sufficient, the writer ob- 
 serves, to crush all the Saracens. There 
 were in Milan six hundred notaries, two 
 hundred physicians, eighty schoolmas- 
 ters, and fifty transcribers of manuscripts. 
 In the district were one hundred and fifty 
 
144 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 castles, with adjoining villages. Such was 
 the state of Milan, Flamma concludes, in 
 1288 ; it is not for me to say whether it 
 has gained or lost ground since that time.* 
 At this period, the territory of Milan was 
 not perhaps more extensive than the 
 county of Surrey; it was bounded at a 
 little distance, on almost every side, by 
 Lodi, or Pavia, or Bergamo, or Como. 
 It is possible, however, that Flamma may 
 have meant to include some of these as 
 dependances of Milan, though not strictly 
 united with it. How flourishing must the 
 state of cultivation have been in such a 
 country, which not only -drew no sup- 
 plies from any foreign land, but exported 
 part of her own produce ! It was in the 
 best age of their liberties, immediately 
 after the battle of Legnano, that the Mi- 
 lanese commenced the great canal which 
 conducts the waters of the Tesino to 
 their capital, a work very extraordinary 
 for that time. During the same period 
 the cities gave proofs of internal pros- 
 perity that in many instances have de- 
 scended to our own observation, in the 
 solidity and magnificence of their archi- 
 tecture. Ecclesiastical structures were 
 perhaps more splendid in France and 
 England ; but neither country could pre- 
 tend to match the palaces and public 
 buildings, the streets flagged with stone, 
 the bridges of the same material, or the 
 commodious private houses of Italy. f 
 
 The courage of these cities was 
 wrought sometimes to a tone of insolent 
 defiance, through the security inspired 
 by their means of defence. From the 
 time of the Romans to that when the 
 use of gunpowder came to prevail, little 
 change was made, or perhaps could be 
 made, in that part of military science 
 which relates to the attack and defence 
 of fortified places. We find precisely 
 
 * Muratori, Script. Rerum Italic., t. xi. This 
 expression of Flamma may seem to intimate that 
 Milan had declined in his time, which was about 
 1340. Yet, as she had been continually advancing 
 in power, and had not yet experienced any tyran- 
 nical government, I cannot imagine this to have 
 been the case ; and the same Flamma, who is a 
 great flatterer of the Visconti, and has dedicated a 
 particular work to the praises of Azzo, asserts 
 therein that he had greatly improved the beauty 
 and convenience of the city ; though Brescia, Cre- 
 mona, and other places had declined. Azarins, 
 too, a writer of the same age, makes a similar rep- 
 resentation. Script. Rer. Ital., t. xvi., p. 314 and 
 317. Of Luchino Visconti he says : Statum Me- 
 diolani reintegravit in tantum, quod non civitas, 
 sed prpvincia videbatur. 
 
 t Sismondi, t. iv., p. 176. Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 
 426. See also the observations of Denina on the 
 population and agriculture of Italy, 1. xiv., c. 9, 
 10, chiefly indeed applicable to a period rather later 
 than that of her free republics. 
 
 the same engines of offence ; the cum- 
 brous towers, from which arrows were 
 shot at the besieged, the machines from 
 which stones were discharged, the bat- 
 tering-rams which assailed the walls, and 
 the basket-work covering (the vinea or 
 testudo of the ancients, and the gattus or 
 chatchateil of the middle ages) under 
 which those who pushed the battering 
 engines were protected from the enemy. 
 On the other hand, a city was fortified 
 with a strong wall of brick or marble, 
 with towers raised upon it at intervals, 
 and a deep moat in front. Sometimes 
 the ante-mural or barbacan was added ; 
 a rampart of less height, which impeded 
 the approach of the hostile engines. The 
 gates were guarded with a portcullis ; an 
 invention which, as well as the barbacan, 
 was borrowed from the Saracens.* With 
 such advantages for defence, a numerous 
 and intrepid body of burghers might not 
 unreasonably stand at bay against a pow- 
 erful army ; and as the consequences of 
 capture were most terrible, while resist- 
 ance was seldom hopeless, we cannot 
 wonder at the desperate bravery of so 
 many besieged towns. Indeed, it seldom 
 happened that one of considerable size 
 was taken, except by famine or treach- 
 ery. Tortona did not submit to Freder- 
 ick Barbarossa till the besiegers had 
 corrupted with sulphur the only fountain 
 that supplied the citizens ; nor Crema, till 
 tier walls were overtopped by the batter- 
 ing engines. Ancona held out a noble 
 
 xample of sustaining the pressure of 
 extreme famine. Brescia tried all the 
 resources of a skilful engineer against 
 the second Frederick ; and swerved not 
 from her steadiness, when that prince, 
 mitating an atrocious precedent of his 
 grandfather at the siege of Crema, ex- 
 posed his prisoners upon his battering 
 
 ngines to the stones that were hurled by 
 their fellow-citizens upon the walls.f 
 
 Of the government which existed in 
 the republics of Italy during the ^^ 5nter . 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, nai govern- 
 no definite sketch can be traced. ment - 
 The chroniclers of those times are few 
 and jejune ; and, as is usual with contem- 
 aoraries, rather intimate than describe 
 ;he civil polity of their respective coun- 
 tries. It would indeed be a weary task, 
 if it were even possible, to delineate the 
 constitutions of thirty or forty little states 
 which were in perpetual fluctuation. The 
 
 * Muratori, Antiquit. Ital., Dissert. 26. 
 
 f See these sieges in the second and third vol- 
 umes of Sismondi. That of Ancona, t. ii., p. 145- 
 206, is told with remarkable elegance, and several 
 interesting circumstances. 
 
PART 
 
 s 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 145 
 
 magistrates elected in almost all of them, 
 when they first began to shake off the 
 jurisdiction of their count or bishop, were 
 styled consuls; a word very expressive 
 to an Italian ear, since, in the darkest 
 ages, tradition must have preserved some 
 acquaintance with the republican govern- 
 ment of Rome.* The consuls were al- 
 ways annual; and their office compre- 
 hended the command of the national mili- 
 tia in war, as well as the administration 
 of justice, and preservation of public or- 
 der ; but their number was various ; two, 
 four, six, or even twelve. In their legis- 
 lative and deliberative councils, the Lom- 
 bards still copied the Roman constitution, 
 or perhaps fell naturally into the form 
 most calculated to unite sound discretion 
 with the exercise of popular sovereignty. 
 A council of trust and secrecy (della cre- 
 denza) was composed of a small number 
 of persons, who took the management 
 of public affairs, and may be called the 
 ministers of the state. But the decision 
 upon matters of general importance, trea- 
 ties of alliance or declarations of war, 
 the choice of consuls or ambassadors, 
 belonged to the general council. This 
 appears not to have been uniformly con- 
 stituted in every city; and, according to 
 its composition, the government was 
 more or less democratical. An ultimate 
 sovereignty, however, was reserved to 
 the mass of the people ; and a parliament 
 or general assembly was held to deliber- 
 ate on any change in the form of consti- 
 tution.! 
 
 About the end of the twelfth century, 
 a new and singular species of magistracy 
 was introduced into the Lombard cities. 
 During the tyranny of Frederick I. he 
 had appointed officers of his own, called 
 podestas, instead of the elective consuls. 
 It is remarkable that this memorial of 
 despotic power should not have excited 
 insuperable alarm and disgust in the free 
 republics. But, on the contrary, they al- 
 most universally, after the peace of Con- 
 stance, revived an office which had been 
 abrogated when they first rose in rebell- 
 ion against Frederick. From experi- 
 ence, as we must presume, of the partial- 
 ity which their domestic factions carried 
 into the administration of justice, it be- 
 came a general practice to elect, by the 
 name of podesta, a citizen of some neigh- 
 
 * Landulf the younger, whose history of Milan 
 extends from 1094 to 1133, calls himself publico- 
 rum officiorum particeps et consulum epistolarum 
 dictator. Script. Rer. Ital., t. v., p. 488. This is, 
 I believe, the earliest mention of those magistrates. 
 Muratori, Annali d'ltalia, A. D. 1107. 
 
 t Muratori, Dissert. 46 and 52. Sismondi, t. i., 
 p. 385. 
 
 K 
 
 bouring state, as their general, their crim- 
 inal judge, and preserver of the peace. 
 The last duty was frequently arduous, 
 and required a vigorous as well as an Up- 
 right magistrate. Offences against the 
 laws and security of the commonwealth 
 were during the middle ages as often, 
 perhaps more often, committed by the 
 rich and powerful, than by the inferior 
 class of society. Rude and licentious 
 manners, family feuds and private re- 
 venge, or the mere insolence of strength, 
 rendered the execution of criminal jus- 
 tice, practically and in every day's expe- 
 rience, what it is now in theory, a neces- 
 sary protection to the poor against op- 
 pression. The sentence of a magistrate 
 against a powerful offender was not pro- 
 nounced without danger of tumult ; it was 
 seldom executed without force. A con- 
 victed criminal was not, as at present, the 
 stricken deer of society, whose disgrace 
 his kindred shrink from participating, and 
 whose memory they strive to forget. Im- 
 puting his sentence to iniquity, or glory- 
 ing in an act which the laws of his fel- 
 low-citizens, but not their sentiments, 
 condemned, he stood upon his defence 
 amid a circle of friends. The law was to 
 be enforced not against an individual, but 
 a family ; not against a family, but a fac- 
 tion ; not perhaps against a local faction, 
 but the whole Guelf or Ghibelin name, 
 which might become interested in the 
 quarrel. The podesta was to arm the 
 republic against the refractory citizen; 
 his house was to be besieged and razed 
 to the ground, his defenders to be quelled 
 by violence : and thus the people, become 
 familiar with outrage and homicide under 
 the command of their magistrates, were 
 more disposed to repeat such scenes at 
 the instigation of their passions.* 
 
 The podesta was sometimes chosen in 
 a general assembly, sometimes by a 
 select number of citizens. His office 
 was annual, though prolonged in peculiar 
 emergencies. He was invariably a man 
 of noble family, even in those cities which 
 excluded their own nobility from any 
 share in the government. He received 
 a fixed salary, and was compelled to re- 
 main in the city, after the expiration of 
 his office, for the purpose of answering 
 such charges as might be adduced against 
 his conduct. He could neither marry a 
 native of the city, nor have any relation 
 resident within the district, nor even, so 
 great was their jealousy, eat or drink in 
 
 h Sismondi, t. hi., p. 258, from whom the sub- 
 stance of these observations is borrowed. They 
 may be copiously illustrated by Villani's history 
 of Florence, and Stella's annals of Genoa, 
 
146 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 the house of any citizen. The authority 
 of these foreign magistrates was not by 
 any means alike in all cities. In some 
 he seems to have superseded the consuls, 
 and commanded the armies in war. In 
 others, as Milan and Florence, his authori- 
 ty was merely judicial. We find, in some 
 of the old annals, the years headed by the 
 names of the podestas, as by those of the 
 consuls in the history of Rome.* 
 
 The effects of the evil spirit of discord, 
 Anddissen- that had so fatally breathed 
 Bions. upon the republics of Lombar- 
 dy, were by no means confined to nation- 
 al interests, or to the grand distinction of 
 Guelf and Ghibelin. Dissensions glowed 
 in the heart of every city, and as the dan- 
 ger of foreign war became distant, these 
 grew more fierce and unappeasable. The 
 feudal system had been established upon 
 the principle of territorial aristocracy ; it 
 maintained the authority, it encouraged 
 the pride of rank. Hence, when the ru- 
 ral nobility were compelled to take up 
 their residence in cities, they preserved 
 the ascendency of birth and riches. From 
 the natural respect which is shown to 
 these advantages, all offices of trust and 
 command were shared among them; it 
 is not material whether this were by pos- 
 itive right or continual usage. A limited 
 aristocracy of this description, where the 
 inferior citizens possess the right of se- 
 lecting their magistrates by free suffrage 
 from a numerous body of nobles, is not 
 among the worst forms of government, 
 and affords no contemptible security 
 against oppression and anarchy. This re- 
 gimen appears to have prevailed in most 
 of the Lombard cities during the eleventh 
 and twelfth centuries ; though, in so great 
 a deficiency of authentic materials, it 
 would be too peremptory to assert this 1 
 as an unequivocal truth. There is one 
 very early instance, in the year 1041, of 
 a civil war at Milan between the capita- 
 nei, or vassals of the empire, and the 
 plebeian burgesses, which was appeased 
 by the mediation of Henry III. This is 
 ascribed to the ill treatment which the 
 latter experienced ; as was usual indeed 
 in all parts of Europe, but which was en- 
 dured with inevitable submission every- 
 where else. In this civil war, which 
 lasted three years, the nobility were obli- 
 ged to leave Milan, and carry on the con- 
 test in the adjacent plains ;f and one of 
 their class, by name Lanzon, whether 
 moved by ambition or by virtuous indig- 
 
 * Muratori, Dissert. 46. 
 
 j- Landulfus, Hist. Mediolan. in Script. Rerum 
 Ital., t. iv., p. 86. Muratori, Dissert. 52. Annali 
 dltalia, A. D. 1041. St. Marc, t. iu., p. 94. 
 
 nation against tyranny, put himself at the 
 head of the people. 
 
 From this time we scarcely find any 
 mention of dissensions among the two 
 orders, till after the peace of Constance ; 
 a proof, however defective the contem- 
 porary annals may be, that such disturb- 
 ances had neither been frequent nor seri- 
 ous. A schism between the nobles and 
 people is noticed to have occurred at Fa- 
 enza in 1185. A serious civil war of 
 some duration broke out between them 
 at Brescia in 1200. From this time mu- 
 tual jealousies interrupted the domestic 
 tranquillity of other cities, but it is about 
 1220 that they appear to have taken a de- 
 cided aspect of civil war; within a few 
 years of that epoch, the question of aris- 
 tocratical or popular command was tried 
 by arms in Milan, Piacenza, Modena, Cre- 
 mona, and Bologna.* 
 
 It would be vain to enter upon the mer- 
 its of these feuds, which the meager his- 
 torians of the time are seldom much dis- 
 posed to elucidate, and which they saw 
 with their own prejudices. A writer of 
 the present age would show little philos- 
 ophy, if he were to heat his passions by 
 the reflection, as it were, of those forgot- 
 ten animosities, and aggravate, like a par- 
 tial contemporary, the failings of one or 
 another faction. We have no need of 
 positive testimony to acquaint us with 
 the general tenour of their history. We 
 know that a nobility is always insolent, 
 that a populace is always intemperate; 
 and may safely presume that the former 
 began as the latter ended, by injustice 
 and abuse of power. At one time the 
 aristocracy, not content with seeing the 
 annual magistrates selected from their 
 body, would endeavour by usurpation to 
 exclude the bulk of the citizens from suf- 
 frage. At another, the merchants, grown 
 proud by riches, and confident of their 
 strength, would aim at obtaining the hon- 
 ours of the state, which had been reserv- 
 ed to the nobility. This is the inevitable 
 consequence of commercial wealth, and 
 indeed of freedom and social order, which 
 are the parents of wealth. There is in 
 the progress of civilization a term at 
 which exclusive privileges must be relax- 
 ed, or the possessors must perish along 
 with them. In one or two cities a tem- 
 porary compromise was made through 
 the intervention of the pope, whereby of- 
 fices of public trust, from the highest to 
 the lowest, were divided, in equal propor- 
 tions or otherwise, between the nobles 
 and the people. This also is no bad ex- 
 
 * Sismondi, t. ii., p. 444. Muratori, Annali d'lta- 
 lia, A. D. 1185, &c. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 147 
 
 pedient, and proved singularly efficacious 
 in appeasing the dissensions of Rome. 
 
 There is, however, a natural prepon- 
 derance in the popular scale, which, in a 
 fair trial, invariably gains on that of the 
 less numerous class. The artisans, who 
 composed the bulk of the population, were 
 arranged in companies according to their 
 occupations. Sometimes, as at Milan, 
 they formed separate associations, with 
 rules for their internal government. 
 The clubs, called at Milan la Motta and 
 la Credenza, obtained a degree of weight 
 not at all surprising to those who consid- 
 er the spirit of mutual attachment which 
 belongs to such fraternities ; and we shall 
 see a more striking instance of this here- 
 after in the republic of Florence. To so 
 formidable and organized a democracy, 
 the nobles opposed their numerous fam- 
 ilies, the generous spirit that belongs to 
 high birth, the influence of wealth and 
 established name. The members of each 
 distinguished family appear to have lived 
 in the same street ; their houses were 
 fortified with square massive towers of 
 commanding height, and wore the sem- 
 blance of castles within the walls of a 
 city. Brancaleon, the famous senator of 
 Rome, destroyed one hundred and forty 
 of these domestic intrenchments, which 
 were constantly serving the purpose of 
 civil broils and outrage. Expelled, as fre- 
 quently happened, from the city, it was 
 in the power of the nobles to avail them- 
 selves of their superiority in the use of 
 cavalry, and to lay waste the district, till 
 weariness of an unprofitable contention 
 .reduced the citizens to terms of com- 
 promise. But, when all these resources 
 were ineffectual, they were tempted or 
 forced to sacrifice the public liberty to 
 their own welfare, and lent their aid to a 
 foreign master or a domestic usurper. 
 
 In all these scenes of turbulence, wheth- 
 er the contest was between the nobles 
 and people, or the Guelf and Ghibelin 
 factions,, no mercy was shown by the 
 conquerors. The vanquished lost their 
 homes and fortunes, and, retiring to other 
 cities of their own party, waited for the 
 opportunity of revenge. In a popular 
 tumult the houses of the beaten side were 
 frequently levelled to the ground; not 
 perhaps from a sort of senseless fury 
 which Muratori inveighs against, but on 
 account of the injury which these forti- 
 fied houses inflicted upon the lower citi- 
 zens. The most deadly hatred is that 
 which men, exasperated by proscription 
 and forfeiture, bear to their country ; nor 
 
 * Muratori, Disiert. 52. Sismondi, t. iii., p. 262. 
 K8 
 
 have we need to ask any other cause for 
 the calamities of Italy, than the bitterness 
 with which an unsuccessful faction was 
 thus pursued into banishment. When 
 the Ghibelins were returning to Flor- 
 ence, after a defeat given to the prevail- 
 ing party in 1260, it was proposed among 
 them to demolish the city itself which 
 had cast them out ; and, but for the per- 
 suasion of one man, Farinata degl' Uberti, 
 their revenge would have thus extinguish- 
 ed all patriotism.* It is to this that we 
 must ascribe their proneness to call in 
 assistance from every side, and to invite 
 any servitude for the sake of retaliating 
 upon their adversaries. The simple love 
 of public liberty is in general, I fear, too 
 abstract a passion to glow warmly in the 
 human breast ; and, though often invigo- 
 rated as well as determined by personal 
 animosities and predilections, is as fre- 
 quently extinguished by the same cause. 
 Independently of the two leading differ- 
 ences which embattled the citizens of an 
 Italian state,, their form of government 
 and their relation to the empire, there 
 were others more contemptible, though 
 not less mischievous. In every city the 
 quarrels of private families became the 
 foundation of general schism, sedition, 
 and proscription. Sometimes these blend- 
 ed themselves with the grand distinctions 
 of Guelf and Ghibelin; sometimes they 
 were more nakedly conspicuous. This 
 may be illustrated by one or two promi- 
 nent examples. Imilda de Lambertazzi, 
 a noble young lady at Bologna, was sur- 
 prised by her brothers in a secret inter- 
 view with Boniface Gieremei, whose fam- 
 ly had long been separated by the most 
 nveterate enmity from her own. She 
 lad just time to escape : while the Lam- 
 bertazzi despatched her lover with their 
 Doisoned daggers. On her return she 
 'ound his body still warm, and a faint 
 hope suggested the remedy of sucking the 
 venom from his wounds. But it only 
 communicated itself to her own veins ; 
 and they were found by her attendants 
 stretched lifeless by each other's side. 
 So cruel an outrage wrought the Giere- 
 mei to madness; they formed alliances 
 with some neighbouring republics; the 
 Lambertazzi took the same measures ; 
 and after a fight in the streets of Bologna 
 of forty days' duration, the latter were 
 driven out of the city, with all the Ghibe- 
 
 G. Villani, 1. vi., c. 82. Sismondi. I cannot 
 forgive Dante for placing this patriot tra 1'anime 
 
 )iu nere, in one of the worst regions of his Inferno. 
 The conversation of the poet with Farinata, cant. 
 
 0, is very fine, and illustrative of Florentine his- 
 
 ory. 
 
148 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 lins, their political associates. Twelve 
 thousand citizens were condemned to 
 banishment ; their houses razed, and their 
 estates confiscated.* Florence was at 
 rest till, in 1215, the assassination of an 
 individual produced a mortal feud between 
 the families Boundelmonti and Uberti, in 
 which all the city took a part. An out- 
 rage committed at Pistoja, in 1300, split 
 the inhabitants into the parties of Bian- 
 chi and Neri ; and these, spreading to 
 Florence, created one of the most virulent 
 divisions which annoyed that republic. 
 In one of the changes which attended 
 this little ramification of faction, Florence 
 expelled a young citizen who had borne 
 offices of magistracy, and espoused the 
 cause of the Bianchi. Dante Alighieri 
 retired to the courts of some Ghibelin 
 princes, where his sublime and inventive 
 mind, in the gloom of exile, completed 
 that original combination of vast and ex- 
 travagant conceptions with keen political 
 satire, which has given immortality to 
 his name, and even lustre to the petty 
 contests of his time.f 
 
 In the earlier stages of the Lombard 
 republics, their differences, as well mu- 
 tual as domestic, had been frequently ap- 
 peased by the mediation of the emperors : 
 and the loss of this salutary influence 
 may be considered as no slight evil at- 
 tached to that absolute emancipation 
 which Italy attained in the thirteenth 
 century. The popes sometimes endeav- 
 oured to interpose an authority, which, 
 though not quite so direct, was held in 
 greater veneration; and, if their own 
 tempers had been always pure from the 
 selfish and vindictive passions of those 
 whom they influenced, might have pro- 
 duced more general and permanent good. 
 But they considered the Ghibelins as 
 their own peculiar enemies, and the tri- 
 umph of the opposite faction as* the 
 church's best security. Gregory X. and 
 Nicholas III., whether from benevolent 
 motives, or because their jealousy of 
 Charles of Anjou, while at the head of 
 the Guelfs, suggested the revival of a 
 Ghibelin party as a counterpoise to his 
 power, distinguished their pontificate by 
 enforcing measures of reconciliation in 
 all Italian cities ; but their successors re- 
 turned to the ancient policy and prejudi- 
 ces of Rome. 
 
 The singular history of an individual 
 
 * Sismondi, t. iii., p. 442. This story may sug- 
 gest that of Romeo and Juliet, itself founded upon 
 an Italian novel, and not an unnatural picture of 
 manners. 
 
 t Dino Compagni, in Scr. Rer. Ital., t. ix. Vil- 
 lani, 1st, Fiorent., 1. viii. Dante, passim 
 
 far less elevated in station than Giovanni di 
 popes or emperors, Fra Giovan- Vicenza. 
 ni di Vicenza, belongs to these times and 
 to this subject. This Dominican friar 
 began his career at Bologna, in 1233, 
 preaching the cessation of war and for- 
 giveness of injuries. He repaired from 
 thence to Padua, to Verona, and the 
 neighbouring cities. At his command 
 men laid down their instruments of war, 
 and embraced their enemies. With that 
 susceptibility of transient impulse nat- 
 ural to popular governments, several re- 
 publics implored him to reform their laws 
 and to settle their differences. A gen- 
 eral meeting was summoned in the plain 
 of Paquara, upon the banks of the Adige. 
 The Lombards poured themselves forth 
 from Romagna and the cities of the 
 March ; Guelfs and Ghibelins, nobles 
 and burghers, free citizens and tenantry 
 of feudal lords, marshalled around their 
 carroccios, caught from the lips of the 
 preacher the illusive promise of universal 
 peace. They submitted to agreements 
 dictated by Fra Giovanni, which contain 
 little else than a mutual amnesty ; wheth- 
 er it were that their quarrels had been 
 really without object, or that he had dex- 
 terously avoided to determine the real 
 point of contention. But power and rep- 
 utation suddenly acquired are transitory. 
 Not satisfied with being the legislator 
 and arbiter of Italian cities, he aimed at 
 becoming their master; and abused the 
 enthusiasm of Vicenza and Verona, to 
 obtain a grant of absolute sovereignty. 
 Changed from an apostle to an usurper, 
 the fate of Fra Giovanni might be pre- 
 dicted ; and he speedily gave place to 
 those who, though they made a worse 
 use of their power, had, in the eyes of 
 mankind, more natural pretensions to 
 possess it.* 
 
 PART II. 
 
 State of Italy after the Extinction of the House of 
 Swabia. Conquest of Naples by Charles of 
 Anjou. The Lombard Republics become sever- 
 ally subject to Princes or Usurpers. The Vis- 
 conti ofMilan their Aggrandizement. Decline 
 of the Imperial Authority over Italy. Internal 
 State of Rome. Rienzi. Florence her forms 
 of Government historically traced to the end of 
 the fourteenth Century. Conquest of Pisa. 
 Pisa its Commerce, Naval Wars with Genoa, 
 and Decay. Genoa her Contentions with Ven- 
 
 ' Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iv., p. 
 214 (a verv well-written account). Sismondi, t, 
 ii., p. 484. 
 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 149 
 
 ice, War of Chioggia. Government of Genoa. 
 Venice her Origin and Prosperity. Vene- 
 tian Government its Vices. Territorial Con- 
 quests of Venice. Military System of Italy. 
 Companies 5 - of Adventure. 1. foreign; Guarni- 
 eri, Hawkwood and 2. native ; Braccio, Sforza. 
 Improvements in Military Service. Arms, offen- 
 sive and defensive. Invention of Gunpowder. 
 Naples. First Line of Anjou. Joanna I. La- 
 dislaus. Joanna II. Francis Sforza becomes 
 Duke of Milan. Alfonso, king of Naples. 
 State of Italy during the fifteenth Century. 
 Florence. Rise of the Medici, and Ruin of their 
 Adversaries. Pretensions of Charles VIII. to 
 Naples. 
 
 FROM the death of Frederick II., in 1250, 
 to the invasion of Charles VIII., in 1494, 
 a long and undistinguished period occurs, 
 which it is impossible to break into any 
 natural divisions. It is an age in many 
 respects highly brilliant ; the age of poe- 
 try and letters, of art, and of continual 
 improvement. Italy displayed an intel- 
 lectual superiority in this period over the 
 Transalpine nations, which certainly had 
 not appeared since the destruction of the 
 Roman empire. But her political history 
 presents a labyrinth of petty facts, so ob- 
 scure and of so little influence as not to 
 arrest the attention ; so intricate and in- 
 capable of classification as to leave only 
 confusion in the memory. The general 
 events that are worthy of notice, and 
 give a character to this long period, are 
 the establishment of small tyrannies upon 
 the ruins of republican government in 
 most of the cities, the gradual rise of 
 three considerable states, Milan, Flor- 
 ence, and Venice, the naval and commer- 
 cial rivalry between the last city and 
 Genoa, the final acquisition by the popes 
 of their present territorial sovereignty, 
 and the revolutions in the kingdom of 
 Naples under the lines of Anjou and Ar- 
 agon. 
 
 After the death of Frederick II., the 
 distinctions of Guelf and Ghibelin became 
 destitute of all rational meaning. The 
 most odious crimes were constantly per- 
 petrated, and the utmost miseries endur- 
 ed, for an echo and a shade, that mocked 
 the deluded enthusiasts of faction. None 
 of the Guelfs denied the nominal, but in- 
 definite sovereignty of the empire ; and 
 beyond a name the" Ghibelins themselves 
 would have been little disposed to carry 
 it. But the virulent hatreds attached to 
 these words grew continually more im- 
 placable, till ages of ignominy and tyran- 
 nical government had extinguished every 
 energetic passion in the bosoms of a de- 
 graded people. 
 
 In the fall of the house of Swabia, 
 Rome appeared to have consummated her 
 triumph ; and although the Ghibelin party 
 
 was for a little time able to maintain 
 itself, and even to gain ground in the 
 north of Italy, yet two events that oc- 
 curred not long afterward restored the 
 ascendency of their adversaries. The 
 first of these was the fall of Eccelin da 
 Romano [A. D. 1259], whose rapid suc- 
 cesses in Lombardy appeared to threaten 
 the establishment of a tremendous des- 
 potism, and induced a temporary union 
 of Guelf and Ghibelin states, by which 
 he was overthrown. The next 1 , and 
 far more important, was the change of 
 dynasty in Naples. This king- Affairs of 
 dom had been occupied, after the Na P le s- 
 death of Conrad, by his illegitimate broth- ' 
 er, Manfred, in the behalf, as he at first 
 pretended, of young Conradin the heir, 
 but in fact as his own acquisition. [A. 
 D. 1254.] He was a prince of an active 
 and firm mind, well fitted for his difficult 
 post, to whom the Ghibelins looked up 
 as their head, and as the representative 
 of his father. It was a natural object 
 with the popes, independently of their ill- 
 will towards a son of Frederick II., to 
 see a sovereign on whom they could 
 better rely placed upon so neighbouring 
 a throne. Charles, count of An- Charles of 
 jou. brother of St. Louis, was An J u - 
 tempted by them to lead a crusade (for 
 as such all wars for the interest of 
 Rome were now considered) against the 
 Neapolitan usurper. [A. D. 1266.] The 
 chance of a battle decided the fate of 
 Naples, and had a striking influence upon 
 the history of Europe for several centu- 
 ries. Manfred was killed in the field; 
 but there remained the legitimate heir 
 of the Fredericks, a boy of seventeen 
 years old, Conradin, son of Conrad, who 
 rashly, as we say at least after the event, 
 attempted to regain his inheritance. He 
 fell into the hands of Charles ; and the 
 voice of those rude ages, as well as of a 
 more enlightened posterity, has united 
 in branding with everlasting infamy the 
 name of that prince, who did not hesitate 
 to purchase the security of his own title 
 by the public execution of an honourable 
 competitor, or rather a rightful claimant 
 of the throne he had usurped. [A. D. 1268.] 
 With Conradin the house of Swabia was 
 extinguished; but Constance, the daugh- 
 ter of Manfred, had transported Aw right to 
 Sicily and Naples into the house of Ara- 
 gon, by her marriage with Peter III. 
 
 This success of a monarch, selected 
 by the Roman pontiffs as their Decline of 
 particular champion, turned the the GWbeiin 
 tide of faction over all Italy. P arty - 
 He expelled the Ghibelins from Florence, 
 of which they had a few years before 
 
150 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 obtained a complete command by means 
 of their memorable victory upon the river 
 Arbia. After the fall of Conradin, that 
 party was everywhere discouraged. Ger- 
 many held out small hopes of support, 
 even when the imperial throne, which 
 had long been vacant, should be filled by 
 one of her princes. The populace were, 
 in almost every city, attached to the 
 church and to the name of Guelf; the 
 kings of Naples employed their arms, and 
 the popes their excommunications, so 
 that for the remainder of the thirteenth 
 century the name of Ghibelin was a term 
 of proscription in the majority of Lom- 
 bard and Tuscan republics. Charles was 
 constituted by the pope vicar-general in 
 Tuscany. This was a new pretension 
 of the Roman pontiffs, to name the lieu- 
 tenants of the empire during its vacancy, 
 which indeed could not be completely 
 filled up without their consent. It soon, 
 however, became evident, that he aimed 
 at the sovereignty of Italy. Some of the 
 popes themselves, Gregory X. and Nich- 
 olas IV., grew jealous of their own crea- 
 ture. At the Congress of Cremona, in 
 1269, it was proposed to confer upon 
 Charles the seigniory of all the Guelf 
 cities ; but the greater part were prudent 
 enough to choose him rather as a friend 
 than a master.* 
 
 The cities of Lombardy, however, of 
 The Lom- either denomination, were no 
 bard cities longer influenced by that gen- 
 tec?5 e io S rds~ erous disdain of one man's will, 
 which is to republican govern- 
 ments what chastity is to women; a 
 conservative principle, never to be rea- 
 soned upon, or subjected to calculations 
 of utility. By force, or stratagem, or 
 free consent, almost all the Lombard re- 
 publics had already fallen under the yoke 
 of some leading citizen, who became the 
 lord (signore), or, in the Grecian sense, 
 tyrant of his country. The first instance 
 of a voluntary delegation of sovereignty 
 was that above mentioned of Ferrara, 
 which placed itself under the Lord of 
 Este. Eccelin made himself truly the 
 tyrant of the cities beyond the Adige ; 
 
 * Sismondi, t. iii., p. 417. Several, however, 
 including Milan, took an oath of fidelity to Charles 
 the same year. Ibid. In 1273, he was lord of Ales- 
 sandria and Piacenza, and received tribute from Mi- 
 lan, Bologna, and most Lombard cities. Muratori. 
 It was evidently his intention to avail himself of 
 the vacancy of the empire, and either to acquire 
 that title himself, or at least to stand in the same 
 relation as the emperors had done to the Italian 
 states ; which, according to the usage of the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, left them in possession 
 of every thing that we call independence, with the 
 reservation of a nominal allegiance. 
 
 and such experience ought naturally to 
 have inspired the Italians with more 
 universal abhorrence of despotism. But 
 every danger appeared trivial in the eyes 
 of exasperated factions, when compared 
 with the ascendency of their adversaries. 
 Weary of unceasing and useless contests, 
 in which ruin fell with an alternate but 
 equal hand upon either party, liberty 
 withdrew from a people who disgraced 
 her name ; and the tumultuous, the brave, 
 the intractable Lombards, became eager 
 to submit themselves to a master, and 
 patient under the heaviest oppression. 
 Or, if tyranny sometimes overstepped 
 the limits of forbearance, and a sedi- 
 tious rising expelled the reigning prince, 
 it was only to produce a change of hands, 
 and transfer the impotent people to a dif- 
 ferent, and perhaps a worse, despotism.* 
 In many cities, not a conspiracy was 
 planned, not a sigh was breathed in fa- 
 vour of republican government, after once 
 they had passed under the sway of a sin- 
 gle person. The progress indeed was 
 gradual, though sure, from limited to 
 absolute, from temporary to. hereditary 
 power, from a just and conciliating rule, 
 to extortion and cruelty. But, before the 
 middle of the fourteenth century, at the 
 latest, all those cities which had spurned 
 at the faintest mark of submission to the 
 emperors, lost even the recollection of 
 self-government, and were bequeathed, 
 like an undoubted patrimony, among the 
 children of their new lords. Such is 
 the progress of usurpation; and such 
 the vengeance that Heaven reserves for 
 those who waste in license and faction 
 its first of social blessings, liberty. | 
 
 See an instance of the manner in which one 
 tyrant was exchanged for another, in the fate of 
 Passerine Bonaccorsi, lord of Mantua, in 1328. 
 Luigi di Gonzaga surprised him, rode the city 
 (corse la citta) with a troop of horse, crying Viva 
 il popolo, e muoja Messer Passerino e le sue ga- 
 belle ! killed Passerino upon the spot, put his son 
 to death in cold blood, e poi si fece signore della 
 terra. Villani, 1, x., c. 99, observes, like a good 
 republican, that God had fulfilled in this the words 
 of his Gospel (query, what Gospel ?), I will slay 
 my enemy by my enemy ! abbattendo 1'uno tiranno 
 per 1'altro. 
 
 t See the observations of Sismondi, t. iv., p. 212, 
 on the conduct of the Lombard signori (I know not 
 of any English word that characterizes them, ex- 
 cept tyrant in its primitive sense), during the first 
 period of their dominion. They were generally 
 chosen in an assembly of the people, sometimes for 
 a short term, prolonged in the same manner. The 
 people was consulted upon several occasions. At 
 Milan there was a council of 900 nobles, not per- 
 manent or representative, but selected and con- 
 vened at the discretion of the government, through- 
 out the reigns of the Visconti. Corio, p. 519, 583. 
 Thus, as Sismondi remarks, they respected the 
 sovereignty of the people, while they destroyed its 
 liberty. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 151 
 
 The city most distinguished in both 
 TheTorriani wars against thehouse of S\ 
 and visconti bia, for an unconquerable at- 
 at Miiao. tachment to republican institu- 
 tions, was the first to sacrifice them in a 
 few years after the death of Frederick II. 
 Milan had for a considerable time been 
 agitated by civil dissensions between the 
 nobility and inferior citizens. These par- 
 ties were pretty equally balanced, and 
 their success was consequently alternate. 
 Each had its own podesta, as a party- 
 leader, distinct from the legitimate ma 
 gistrate of the city. At the head of the 
 nobility was their archbishop, Fra Leon 
 Perego; the people chose Martin della 
 Torre, one of a noble family which had 
 ambitiously sided with the democratic 
 faction. In consequence of the crime of 
 a nobleman, who had murdered one of 
 his creditors, the two parties took up 
 arms in 1257. A civil war of various 
 success, and interrupted by several pa- 
 cifications, which, in that unhappy temper, 
 could not be durable, was terminated in 
 about two years by the entire discomfit- 
 ure of the aristocracy, and by the elec- 
 tion of Martin della Torre as chief and 
 lord (capitano e signore) of the people. 
 Though the Milanese did not probably in- 
 tend to renounce the sovereignty resident 
 in their general assemblies, yet they soon 
 lost the republican spirit ; five in succes- 
 sion of the family Delia Torre might be 
 said to reign in Milan ; each indeed by a 
 formal election, but with an implied re- 
 cognition of a sort of hereditary title. 
 Twenty years afterward, the Visconti, a 
 family of opposite interests, supplanted 
 the Torriani at Milan; and the rivality 
 between these great houses was not at 
 an end till the final establishment of 
 Matteo Visconti, in 1313 ; but the people 
 were not otherwise considered than as 
 aiding by force the one or other party, 
 and at most deciding between the preten- 
 sions of their masters. 
 
 The vigour and concert infused into 
 the Guelf party by the successes of 
 Charles of Anjou, were not very durable. 
 That prince was soon involved in a pro- 
 tracted and unfortunate quarrel with the 
 kings of Aragon, to whose protection his 
 revolted subjects in Italy had recurred. 
 On the other hand, several men of ener- 
 Revivai of getic character retrieved the Ghi- 
 theGhibe- belin interests in Lombardy, and 
 lin party. even in the Tuscan cities. The 
 Visconti were acknowledged heads of 
 that faction. A family early established 
 as lords of Verona, the Della Scala, main- 
 tained the credit of the same denomina- 
 tion between the Adige and the Adriatic. 
 
 Castruccio Castrucani, an adventurer of 
 remarkable ability, rendered himself 
 prince of Lucca, and drew over a formi- 
 dable accession to the imperial side from 
 the heart of the church-party in Tuscany, 
 though his death restored the ancient or- 
 der of things. The inferior tyrants were 
 partly Guelf, partly Ghibelin, according 
 to local revolutions ; but, upon the whole, 
 the latter acquired a gradual ascendency. 
 Those indeed who cared for the independ- 
 ence of Italy, or for their own power, 
 had far less to fear from the phantom of 
 imperial prerogatives, long intermitted, 
 and incapable of being enforced, than 
 from the new race of foreign princes, 
 whom the church had substituted for the 
 house of Swabia. The Angevin Kinga of 
 kings of Naples were sovereigns Naples aim 
 of Provence, and from thence * f $ a I j 1 y mand 
 easily encroached upon Pied- 
 mont, and threatened the Milanese. Rob- 
 ert, the third of this line, almost openly 
 aspired, like his grandfather, Charles I., 
 to a real sovereignty over Italy. His of- 
 fers of assistance to Guelf .cities in war 
 were always coupled with a demand of 
 the sovereignty. Many yielded to his 
 ambition ; and even Florence twice be- 
 stowed upon him a temporary dictator- 
 ship. In 1314 he was acknowledged 
 lord of Lucca, Florence, Pavia, Alessan- 
 dria, Bergamo, and the cities of Romagna. 
 In 1318 the Guelfs of Genoa found no 
 other resource against the Ghibelin emi- 
 rants who were under their walls, than 
 to resign their liberties to the King of 
 Naples for the term of ten years, which 
 he procured to be renewed for six more. 
 The Avignon popes, especially John 
 XXII., out of blind hatred to the Empe- 
 ror Louis of Bavaria and the Visconti 
 family, abetted all these measures of 
 ambition. But they were rendered abor- 
 tive by Robert's death, and the subse- 
 quent disturbances of his kingdom. 
 
 At the latter end of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, there were almost as many princes 
 in the north of Italy as there had been 
 free cities in the preceding age. Their 
 equality, and the frequent domestic revo- 
 lutions which made their seat unsteady, 
 kept them for a while from encroaching 
 on each other. Gradually, however, they 
 became less numerous ; a quantity of ob- 
 scure tyrants were swept away from the 
 smaller cities ; and the people, careless 
 or hopeless of liberty, were glad to ex- 
 change the rule of despicable petty usurp- 
 ers for that of more distinguished and 
 powerful families. About the state of 
 year 1350, the central parts of ^iSmtl 
 Lombardy had fallen under the die of the 
 
152 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 fourteenth dominion of the Visconti. Four 
 ury ' other houses occupied the sec- 
 ond rank; that of Este at Ferrara and 
 Modena ; of Scala at Verona, which un- 
 der Cane and Mastino della Scala had 
 seemed likely to contest with the lords 
 of Milan the supremacy over Lombardy ; 
 of Carrara at Padua, which later than 
 any Lombard city had resigned her lib- 
 erty ; and of Gonzaga at Mantua, which, 
 without ever obtaining any material ex- 
 tension of territory, continued, probably 
 for that reason, to reign undisturbed till 
 the eighteenth century. But these uni- 
 ted were hardly a match, as they some- 
 Power of the times experienced, for the Vis- 
 visconti, conti. That family, the object 
 of every league formed in Italy for more 
 than fifty years, in constant hostility to 
 the church, and well inured to interdicts 
 and excommunications, producing no 
 one man of military talents, but fertile 
 of tyrants detested for their perfidious- 
 ness and cruelty, was nevertheless ena- 
 bled, with almost uninterrupted success, 
 to add city after city to the dominion of 
 Milan, till it absorbed all the north of 
 Italy. Under Gian Galeazzo, whose reign 
 began in 1385, the viper (their armorial 
 bearing) assumed indeed a menacing at- 
 titude :* he overturned the great family 
 of Scala, and annexed their extensive 
 possessions to his own ; no power inter- 
 vened from Vercelli in Piedmont to Fel- 
 tre and Belluno ; while the free cities of 
 Tuscany, Pisa, Siena, Perugia, and even 
 Bologna, as if by a kind of witchcraft, 
 voluntarily called in a dissembling tyrant 
 as their master. 
 
 Powerful as the Visconti were in Italy, 
 they were long in washing .out the tinge 
 of recent usurpation, which humbled 
 them before the legitimate dynasties of 
 Europe. At the siege of Genoa, in 1318, 
 Robert, king of Naples, rejected with con- 
 tempt the challenge of Marco Viscouti to 
 decide their quarrel in single combat. f 
 But the pride of sovereigns, like that of 
 private men, is easily set aside for their 
 interest. Galeazzo Visconti purchased 
 with 100,000 florins a daughter of France 
 for his son, which the French historians 
 mention as a deplorable humiliation for 
 their crown. A few years afterward, 
 
 * Allusions to heraldry are very common in the 
 Italian writers. All the historians of the fourteenth 
 century habitually use the viper, il biscione, as a 
 synonyme for the power of Milan. 
 
 t Delia qual eosa il R& molto sdegno ne prese. 
 Villani, 1. ix., c. 93. It was reckoned a misalliance, 
 as Dante tells us, in the widow of Nino di Gallu- 
 ra, a nobleman of Pisa, though a sort of prince in 
 Sardinia, to marry one of the Visconti. Purgato- 
 rio, cant. 8. 
 
 Lionel, duke of Clarence, second son of 
 Edward III., certainly not an inferior 
 match, espoused Galeazzo's daughter. 
 Both these connexions were short-lived ; 
 but the union of Valentine, daughter of 
 Gian Galeazzo, with the Duke of Orleans, 
 in 1389, produced far more important con- 
 sequences, and served to transmit a claim 
 to her descendants, Louis XII. and Fran- 
 cis I., from which the long calamities of 
 Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century were chiefly derived. Not long 
 after this marriage [A. D. 1395], the Vis- 
 conti were tacitly admitted among the 
 reigning princes, by the erection of Milan 
 into a dutchy under letters patent of the 
 Emperor Wenceslaus.* 
 
 The imperial authority over Italy was 
 almost entirely suspended after Relations of 
 the death of Frederick II. A the empire 
 long interregnum followed in wuh 
 Germany ; and when the vacancy was 
 supplied by Rodolph of Hapsburg [A. D. 
 1272], he was too prudent to dissipate 
 his moderate resources, where the great 
 house of Swabia had failed. About forty 
 years afterward [A. D. 1309], the emperor 
 Henry of Luxemburg, a prince, like Ro- 
 dolph, of small hereditary pos- Hen 
 sessions, but active and discreet, 
 availed himself of the ancient respect 
 borne to the imperial name, and the mutual 
 jealousies of the Italians, to recover for a 
 very short time a remarkable influence. 
 But, though professing neutrality, and de- 
 sire of union between the Guelfs and 
 Ghibelins, he could not succeed in re- 
 moving the distrust of the former; his 
 exigences impelled him to large demands 
 of money; and the Italians, when they 
 counted his scanty German cavalry, per- 
 ceived that obedience was altogether a 
 matter of their own choice. Henry died, 
 however, in time to save himself from 
 any decisive reverse. His successors, 
 Louis of Bavaria and Charles IV., de- 
 scended from the Alps with similar mo- 
 tives, but after some temporary good for- 
 tune were obliged to return, not without 
 discredit. Yet the Italians never broke 
 that almost invisible thread which con- 
 nected them with Germany ; the fal- 
 lacious name of Roman emperor still 
 challenged their allegiance, though con- 
 ferred by seven Teutonic electors with- 
 out their concurrence. Even Florence, 
 the most independent and high-spir- 
 ited of republics., was induced to make 
 a treaty with Charles IV. in 1355, 
 which, while it confirmed all her actual 
 
 * Corio, p. 538. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 153 
 
 liberties, not a little, by that very confirm- 
 ation, affected her sovereignty.* This 
 deference to the supposed prerogatives 
 of the empire, even while they were 
 least formidable, was partly owing to 
 jealousy of French or . Neapolitan inter- 
 ference, partly to the national hatred of 
 the popes who had seceded to Avignon, 
 and in some degree to a misplaced re- 
 spect for antiquity, to which the revival 
 of letters had given birth. The great ci- 
 vilians, and the much greater poets of 
 the fourteenth century, taught Italy to 
 consider her emperor as a dormant sov- 
 ereign, to whom her various principali- 
 ties and republics were subordinate, and 
 during whose absence alone they had le- 
 gitimate authority. 
 
 In one part, however, of that country, 
 Cession of RO- tne empire had, soon after the 
 magnate the commencement of this peri- 
 Popes. oc j ? spontaneously renounced 
 its sovereignty. From the era of Pe- 
 pin's donation, confirmed and extended 
 by many subsequent charters, the Holy 
 See had tolerably just pretensions to the 
 province entitled Romagna, or the exar- 
 chate of Ravenna. But the popes, whose 
 menaces were dreaded at the extremities 
 of Europe, were still very weak as tem- 
 poral princes. Even Innocent III. had 
 never been able to obtain possession of 
 this part of St. Peter's patrimony. The 
 circumstances of Rodolph's accession in- 
 spired Nicholas III. with more confidence. 
 That emperor granted a confirmation of 
 every thing included in the donations of 
 
 * The republic of Florence was at this time in 
 considerable peril from a coalition of the Tuscan 
 cities against her, which rendered the protection 
 of the emperor convenient. But it was very re- 
 luctantly that she acquiesced in even a nominal 
 submission to his auchonty. The Florentine en- 
 voys, in their first address, would only use the 
 words, Santa Corona, or Serenissimo Principe; 
 sanza ricordarlo itnperadore, o dimostrargli alcuna 
 reverenza di suggezzione, domandando che il com- 
 mune di Firenze volea, essendogli ubbidiente, le co- 
 tali e le cotali franchigie per mantenere il suo popplo 
 nell' usata libertade. Mat. Villani, p. 274. (Script. 
 Rer. Ital., t. xiv.) This style made Charles angry ; 
 and the city soon atoned for it by accepting his 
 privilege. In this, it must be owned, he assumes 
 a. decided tone of sovereignty. The gonfalonier 
 and priors are declared to be his vicars. The dep- 
 uties of the city did homage and swore obedience. 
 Circumstances induced the principal citizens to 
 make this submission, which they knew to be 
 merely nominal. But the high-spirited people, not 
 so indifferent about names, came into it very un- 
 willingly. The treaty was seven times proposed, 
 and as often rejected in the consiglio del popolo, 
 before their feelings were subdued. Its publica- 
 tion was received with no marks of joy. The pub- 
 lic buildings alone were illuminated : but a sad si- 
 lence indicated the wounded pride of every private 
 citizen. M. Villani, p.. 286, 290. Sismondi, t. vi., 
 p 238. 
 
 Louis I., Otho, and his other predeces- 
 sors ; but was still reluctant or ashamed 
 to renounce his imperial rights. Accord- 
 ingly, his charter is expressed to be 
 granted without diminution of the empire 
 (sine demembratione imperii) ; and his 
 chancellor received an oath of fidelity 
 from the cities of Romagna. But the 
 pope insisting firmly on his own claim, 
 Rodolph discreetly avoided involving him- 
 self in a fatal quarrel, and, in 1278, abso- 
 lutely released the imperial supremacy 
 over all the dominions already granted 
 to the Holy See.* 
 
 This is a leading epoch in the tempo- 
 ral monarchy of Rome. But she stood 
 only in the place of the emperor; and 
 her ultimate sovereignty was compatible 
 with the practical independence of the 
 free cities, or of the usurpers who had 
 risen up among them. Bologna, Faenza, 
 Rimini, and Ravenna, with many others 
 less considerable, took an oath indeed to 
 the pope, but continued to regulate both 
 their internal concerns and foreign rela- 
 tions at their own discretion. The first 
 of these cities was far pre-eminent above 
 the rest for population and renown, and, 
 though not without several intermissions, 
 preserved a republican character till the 
 end of the fourteenth century. The rest 
 were soon enslaved by petty tyrants, 
 more obscure than those of Lombardy. 
 It was not easy for the pontiffs of Avig- 
 non to reinstate themselves in a domin- 
 ion which they seemed to have abandon- 
 ed ; but they made several attempts to re- 
 cover it, sometimes with spiritual arms, 
 sometimes with the more efficacious aid 
 of mercenary troops. The annals of 
 this part of Italy are peculiarly uninter- 
 esting. 
 
 Rome itself was, throughout the middle 
 ages, very little disposed to ac- internal 
 quiesce in the government of her state of 
 bishop. His rights were indefinite, Rome- 
 and unconfirmed by positive law; the 
 emperor was long sovereign, the people 
 always meant to be free. Besides the 
 common causes of insubordination and 
 anarchy among the Italians, which appli- 
 ed equally to the capital city, other senti- 
 ments more peculiar to Rome preserved 
 a continual, though not uniform, influence 
 for many centuries. There still remain- 
 ed enough, in the wreck of that vast in- 
 heritance, to swell the bosoms of her cit- 
 izens with a consciousness of their own 
 dignity. They bore the venerable name, 
 they contemplated the monuments of art 
 and empire, and forgot, in the illusions of 
 
 * Muratori, ad ann. 1274, 1275, 1278. Sismon- 
 di, t. iii., p. 461. 
 
154 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 national pride, that the tutelar gods of the 
 buildings were departed for ever. About 
 the middle of the twelfth century, these 
 recollections were heightened by the elo- 
 quence of Arnold of Brescia, a political 
 heretic, who preached against the tem- 
 poral jurisdiction of the hierarchy. In a 
 temporary intoxication of fancy, they 
 were led to make a ridiculous show of 
 self-importance towards Frederick Barba- 
 rossa, when he came to receive the impe- 
 rial crown ; but the German sternly chi- 
 ded their ostentation, and chastised their 
 resistance.* With the popes they could 
 deal more securely. Several of them 
 were expelled from Rome during that age 
 by the seditious citizens. Lucius II. died 
 of hurts received in a tumult. The gov- 
 ernment was vested in fifty-six senators, 
 annually chosen by the people, through 
 the intervention of an electoral body, ten 
 delegates from each of the thirteen dis- 
 tricts of the city.f This constitution 
 lasted not quite fifty years. In 1192, 
 Rome imitated the prevailing fashion by 
 the appointment of an annual foreign ma- 
 gistrate. | Except in name, the senator 
 of Rome appears to have perfectly re- 
 sembled the podesta of other cities. This 
 magistrate superseded the representative 
 senate, who had proved by no means ade- 
 quate to control the most lawless aris- 
 tocracy of Italy. I shall not repeat the 
 story of Brancaleon's rigorous and inflex- 
 ible justice, which a great historian has 
 already drawn from obscurity. It illus- 
 trates not the annals of Rome alone, but 
 the general state of Italian society, the na- 
 ture of a podesta's duty, and the difficul- 
 ties of its execution. The office of sena- 
 tor survives after more than six hundred 
 years ; a foreign magistrate still resides 
 in the capitol ; but he no longer wields 
 the "iron flail" of Brancaleon, and his 
 nomination proceeds of course from the 
 supreme pontiff, not from the people. In 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the 
 senate, and the senator who succeeded 
 them, exercised one distinguishing attri- 
 
 * The impertinent address of a Roman orator to 
 Frederick, and his answer, are preserved in Otho 
 of Frisingen, 1. ii., c. 22, but so much at length 
 that we may suspect some exaggeration. Otho is 
 rather rhetorical. They may be read in Gibbon, 
 c.69. 
 
 t Sismondi, t. ii., p. 36. Besides Sismondi and 
 Muratori, I would refer for the history of Rome 
 during the middle ages to the last chapters of Gib- 
 bon's Decline and Fall. 
 
 J Sismondi, t. ii., p. 308. 
 
 $ The readers of Spenser will recollect the iron 
 flail of Talus, the attendant of Arthegal, emblemat- 
 ic of the severe justice of the lord deputy of Ire- 
 land, Sir Arthur Grey, shadowed under that alle- 
 gory. 
 
 bute of sovereignty, that of coining gold 
 and silver money. Some of their coins 
 still exist, with legends in a very repub- 
 lican tone.* Doubtless the temporal au- 
 thority of the popes varied according to 
 their personal character. Innocent III. 
 had much more than his predecessors for 
 almost a century, or than some of his suc- 
 cessors. He made the senator take an 
 oath of fealty to him, which, though not 
 very comprehensive, must have passed in 
 those times as a recognition of his supe- 
 riority, f 
 
 Though there was much less obedience 
 to any legitimate power at Rome than 
 anywhere else in Italy, even during the 
 thirteenth century, yet after the seces- 
 sion of the popes to Avignon, their own 
 city was left in a far worse condition 
 than before. Disorders of every kind, 
 tumult and robbery, prevailed in the 
 streets. The Roman nobility were en- 
 gaged in perpetual war with each other. 
 Not content with their own fortified pal- 
 aces, they turned the sacred monuments 
 of antiquity into strongholds, and con- 
 summated the destruction of time and 
 conquest. At no period has the city en- 
 dured such irreparable injuries ; nor was 
 the downfall of the western empire so 
 fatal to its capital, as the contemptible 
 feuds of the Orsini and Colonna fami- 
 lies. Whatever there was of govern- 
 ment, whether administered by a legate 
 from Avignon, or by the municipal au- 
 thorities, had lost all hold on these pow- 
 erful barons. [A. D. 1347.] In the midst 
 of this degradation and wretchedness, an 
 obscure man, Nicola di Rienzi, The Tribune 
 conceived the project of resto- Kienzi. 
 ring Rome not only to good order, but 
 even to her ancient greatness. He had 
 received an education beyond his birth, 
 and nourished his mind with the study of 
 the best writers. After many harangues 
 to the people, which the nobility, blinded 
 by their self-confidence, did not attempt 
 to repress, Rienzi suddenly excited an in- 
 surrection, and obtained complete suc- 
 cess. He was placed at the head of a 
 new government, with the title of tribune, 
 and with almost unlimited power: The 
 first effects of this revolution were won- 
 derful. All the nobles submitted, though 
 with great reluctance; the roads were 
 cleared of robbers ; tranquillity was re- 
 stored at home; some severe examples 
 of justice intimidated offenders; and the 
 tribune was regarded by all the people as 
 the destined restorer of Rome and Italy. 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. xii., p. 289. Muratori, Antiquit. 
 Hal., Dissert. 27. 
 f Sismondi, p. 309. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 155 
 
 Though the court of Avignon could not 
 approve of such a usurpation, it tempo- 
 rized enough not directly to oppose it. 
 Most of the Italian republics, and some 
 of the princes, sent ambassadors, and 
 seemed to recognise pretensions which 
 were tolerably ostentatious. The King 
 of Hungary and Queen of Naples sub- 
 mitted their quarrel to the arbitration of 
 Rienzi, who did not, however, undertake 
 to decide upon it. But this sudden exal- 
 tation intoxicated his understanding, and 
 exhibited failings entirely incompatible 
 with his elevated condition. If Rienzi 
 had lived in our own age, his talents, 
 which were really great, would have 
 found their proper orbit. For his char- 
 acter was one not unusual among litera- 
 ry politicians ; a combination of knowl- 
 edge, eloquence, and enthusiasm for ideal 
 excellence, with vanity, inexperience of 
 mankind, unsteadiness, and physical ti- 
 midity. As these latter qualities be- 
 came conspicuous, they eclipsed his vir- 
 tues, and caused his benefits to be forgot- 
 ten ; he was compelled to abdicate his 
 government, and retire into exile. After 
 several years, some of which he passed 
 in the prisons of Avignon, Rienzi was 
 brought back to Rome, with the title of 
 senator, and under the command of the 
 legate. It was supposed that the Ro- 
 mans, who had returned to their habits of 
 insubordination, would gladly submit to 
 their favourite tribune. And this proved 
 the case for a few months ; but after that 
 time they ceased altogether to respect a 
 man, who so little respected himself in 
 accepting a station where he could no 
 longer be free, and Rienzi was killed in a 
 sedition.* 
 
 Once more, not long after the death of 
 subsequent Rienzi, the freedom of Rome 
 affairs of seems to have revived in repub- 
 lican institutions, though with 
 names less calculated to inspire peculiar 
 recollections. Magistrates called ban- 
 nerets, chosen from the thirteen districts 
 of the city, w r ith a militia of three thousand 
 
 * Sismondi, t. v., c. 37; t. vi., p. 201. Gibbon, 
 c. 70. De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. ii., passim. 
 Tiraboschi, t. vi., p. 339. It is difficult to resist 
 the admiration which all the romantic circum- 
 stances of Rienzi's history tend to excite, and to 
 which Petrarch so blindly gave way. That great 
 man's characteristic excellence was not good com- 
 mon sense. He had imbibed two notions, of which 
 it is hard to say which was the more absurd; 
 that Rome had a legitimate right to all her an- 
 cient authority over the rest of the world ; and 
 that she was likely to recover this authority in con- 
 sequence of the revolution produced by Rienzi. 
 Giovanni Villani, living at Florence, and a stanch 
 republican, formed a very different estimate, which 
 weighs more than the enthusiastic panegyrics of 
 
 citizens at their command, were placed 
 at the head of this commonwealth. The 
 great object of this new organization was 
 to intimidate the Roman nobility, whose 
 outrages, in the total absence of govern- 
 ment, had grown intolerable. Several 
 of them were hanged the first year by 
 order of the bannerets. The citizens, 
 however, had no serious intention of 
 throwing off their subjection to the 
 popes. They provided for their own se- 
 curity, on account of the lamentable se- 
 cession and neglect of those who claimed 
 allegiance while they denied protection. 
 But they were ready to acknowledge 
 and welcome back their bishop as their 
 sovereign. Even without this, they sur- 
 rendered their republican constitution in 
 1362, it does not appear for what reason, 
 and permitted the legate of Innocent VI. 
 to assume the government.* We find, 
 however, the institution of bannerets re- 
 vived, and in full authority, some years 
 afterward. But the internal history of 
 Rome appears to be obscure, and I have 
 not had opportunities of examining it 
 minutely. Some degree of political free- 
 dom the city probably enjoyed during 
 the schism of the church ; but it is not 
 easy to discriminate the assertion of le- 
 gitimate privileges from the licentious 
 tumults of the barons or populace. In 
 1435, the Romans formally took away 
 the government from Eugenius IV., and 
 elected seven signiors or chief magis- 
 trates, like the priors of Florence. f But 
 this revolution was not of long continu- 
 ance. On the death of Eugenius, the cit- 
 izens deliberated upon proposing a con- 
 stitutional charter to the future pope. 
 Stephen Porcaro, a man of good family, 
 and inflamed by a strong spirit of liberty, 
 was one of their principal instigators. 
 But the people did not sufficiently par- 
 take of that spirit. No measures were 
 taken upon this occasion ; and Porcaro, 
 whose ardent imagination disguised the 
 hopelessness of his enterprise, tampering 
 in a fresh conspiracy, was put to death 
 under the pontificate of Nicholas V.J 
 The province of Tuscany continued 
 
 Petrarch. La detta impresa del tribune era un' 
 opera fantastica, e di poco durare, 1. xii., c. 90. An 
 illustrious female writer has drawn with a single 
 stroke the character of Rienzi, Crescentius, and 
 Arnold of Brescia, the fond restorers of Roman lib- 
 erty, qui ont pris lea souvenirs pour les esptrances. 
 Corinne, t. i., p. 159. Could Tacitus have excell- 
 ed this? 
 
 * Matt. Villani, p. 576, 604, 709. Sismondi, t. 
 v., p. 92. He seems to have overlooked the former 
 period of government by bannerets, and refers their 
 institution to 1375. 
 
 t Script. Rerum Italic., t. iii., pars 2, p. 1128. 
 
 t Id., p. 1131, 1134. Sismondi, t. x., p. 18. 
 
156 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 longer than Lombardy under the govern- 
 ment of an imperial lieutenant. It was 
 not till about the middle of the twelfth 
 century that the cities of Florence, 
 cities of Lucca, Pisa, Sienna, Arezzo, Pis- 
 Tuscany. toia, and several less considera- 
 e - ble, which might perhaps have al- 
 ready their own elected magistrates, be- 
 came independent republics. Their his- 
 tory is, with the exception of Pisa, very 
 scanty till the death of Frederick II. 
 The earliest fact of any importance re- 
 corded of Florence occurs in 1184, when 
 it is said that Frederick Barbarossa took 
 from her the dominion over the district 
 or county, and restored it to the rural 
 nobility, on account of her attachment 
 to the church.* This I chiefly mention 
 to illustrate the system pursued by the 
 cities, of bringing the territorial proprie- 
 tors in their neighbourhood under subjec- 
 tion. During the reign of Frederick II. 
 Florence became, as far as she was able, 
 an ally of the popes. There was indeed 
 a strong Ghibelin party, comprehending 
 many of the greatest families, which oc- 
 casionally predominated through the as- 
 sistance of the emperor. It seems, how- 
 ever, to have existed chiefly amorjg the 
 nobility; the spirit of the people was 
 thoroughly Guelf. After several revolu- 
 tions, accompanied by alternate proscrip- 
 tion and demolition of houses, the Guelf 
 party, through the assistance of Charles 
 of Anjou, obtained a final ascendency in 
 1266 ; and after one or two unavailing 
 schemes of accommodation, it was estab- 
 lished as a fundamental law in the Flor- 
 entine constitution, that ho person of 
 Ghibelin ancestry could be admitted to 
 offices of public trust ; which, in such a 
 government, was in effect an exclusion 
 from the privileges of citizenship. 
 
 The changes of internal government 
 Govern- and vicissitudes of success among 
 mem of factions were so frequent at Flor- 
 
 Florence. 
 
 time, that she is compared by her great 
 banished poet to a sick man, who, unable 
 to rest, gives himself momentary ease, 
 by continual change of posture in his 
 bed.f They did not become much less 
 numerous after the age of Dante. Yet 
 the revolutions of Florence should per- 
 haps be considered as no more than a 
 necessary price of her liberty. It was 
 lier boast and her happiness to have es- 
 
 * Villam, 1. v., c. 12. 
 
 t E se ben ti ricordi, e vedi il Inme, 
 Vedrai te somigliante a quella inferma, 
 Che non pud trovar posa in su le piume, 
 Ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma. 
 
 Purgatorio, cant. vi. 
 
 caped, except for one short period, that 
 odious rule of vile usurpers, under which 
 so many other free cities had been 
 crushed. A sketch of the constitution 
 of so famous a republic ought riot to be 
 omitted in this place. Nothing else in 
 the history of Italy after Frederick II. is 
 so worthy of our attention.* 
 
 The basis of the Florentine polity was 
 a division of the citizens exercising com- 
 merce, into their several companies or 
 arts. These were at first twelve, seven 
 called the greater arts, and five lesser; 
 but the latter were gradually increased to 
 fourteen. The seven greater arts were 
 those of lawyers and notaries, of dealers 
 in foreign cloth, called sometimes Cal- 
 imala, of bankers or money-changers, of 
 woollen-drapers, of physicians and drug- 
 gists, of dealers in silk, and of furriers. 
 The inferior arts were those of retailers 
 of cloth, butchers, smiths, shoemakers, 
 and builders. This division, so far at 
 least as regarded the greater arts, was 
 as old as the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century.f But it was fully established, 
 and rendered essential to the constitu- 
 tion, in 1266. By the provisions made in 
 that year, each of the seven greater arts 
 had a council of its own, a chief magis- 
 trate or consul, who administered justice 
 in civil causes to all members of his com- 
 pany, and a banneret (gonfaloniere) or 
 military officer, to whose standard they 
 repaired when any attempt was made to 
 disturb the peace of the city. 
 
 The administration of criminal justice 
 belonged at Florence, as at other cities, 
 to a foreign podesta, or rather to two 
 foreign magistrates, the podesta and the 
 capitano del popolo, whose jurisdiction, 
 so far as I can trace it, appears to have 
 been concurrent.^ In the first part of 
 the thirteenth century, the authority of 
 the podesta may have been more exten- 
 sive than afterward. These offices were 
 preserved till the innovations of the Med- 
 ici. The domestic magistracies under- 
 went more changes. Instead of consuls, 
 which had been the first denomination of 
 the chief magistrates of Florence, a col- 
 
 " I have found considerable difficulties in this 
 part of my task ; no author with whom I am ac- 
 quainted giving a tolerable view of the Florentine 
 government, except M. Sismondi, who is himself 
 not always satisfactory. 
 
 f Ammirato ad ann. 12Q4 et 1235. Villani inti- 
 mates, 1. vii., c. 13, that the arts existed as commer- 
 cial companies before 12P6. Machiavelli and Sis- 
 mondi express themselves rather inaccurately, as 
 if they had been erected at that time, which indeed 
 is the era of their political importance. 
 
 J Matteo Villani, p. 194. G. Villani places the 
 institution of the podesta in 1207 ; we find it how- 
 ever as early as 1184. Ammirato, 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 157 
 
 lege of twelve or fourteen persons, called 
 Anziani or Buonuomini, but varying in 
 name as well as number according to 
 revolutions of party, was established 
 about the middle of the thirteenth centu- 
 ry, to direct public affairs.* This order 
 was entirely changed in 1282, and gave 
 place to a new form of supreme magis- 
 tracy, which lasted till the extinction of 
 the republic. Six priors, elected every 
 two months, from each of the six quar- 
 ters of the city, and from each of the 
 greater arts, except that of lawyers, con- 
 stituted an executive magistracy. They 
 lived, during their continuance in office, 
 in a palace belonging to the city, and 
 were maintained at the public cost. The 
 actual priors, jointly with the chiefs and 
 councils (usually called la capitudine) of 
 the seven greater arts, and with certain 
 adjuncts (arroti) named by themselves, 
 elected by ballot their successors. Such 
 was the practice for about forty years 
 after this government was established. 
 But an innovation, begun in 1324, and 
 perfected four years afterward, gave a 
 peculiar character to the constitution of 
 Florence. A lively and ambitious peo- 
 ple, not merely jealous of their public 
 sovereignty, but deeming its exercise a 
 matter of personal enjoyment; aware, at 
 the same time, that the will of the whole 
 body could neither be immediately ex- 
 pressed on all occasions, nor even through 
 chosen representatives, without the risk 
 of violence and partiality, fell upon the 
 singular idea of admitting all citizens, 
 not unworthy by their station or conduct, 
 to offices of magistracy by rotation. 
 Lists were separately made out by the 
 priors, the twelve buonuomini, the chiefs 
 and councils of arts, the bannerets and 
 other respectable persons, of all citizens, 
 Guelfs by origin, turned of thirty years 
 of age, and, in their judgment, worthy of 
 public trust. The lists thus formed were 
 then united, and those who had composed 
 them meeting together, in number nine- 
 ty-seven, proceeded to ballot upon every 
 name. Whoever obtained sixty-eight 
 black balls was placed upon the reformed 
 list ; and all the names it contained, 
 being put on separate tickets into a bag 
 or purse (imborsati), were drawn succes- 
 sively as the magistracies were renewed. 
 As there were above fifty of these, none 
 of which could be held for more than 
 four months, several hundred citizens 
 were called in rotation to bear their share 
 in the government within two years. 
 But, at the expiration of every two years, 
 
 * G. Villani, 1. vi., c. 39. 
 
 the scrutiny was renewed, and fresh 
 names were mingled with those which 
 still continued undrawn ; so that accident 
 might deprive a man for life of his por- 
 tion of sovereignty.* 
 
 Four councils had been established by 
 the constitution of 1266, for the decision 
 of all propositions laid before them by 
 the executive magistrates, whether of a 
 legislative nature or relating to public 
 policy. These were now abrogated; and 
 in their places were substituted one of 
 300 members, all plebeians, called con- 
 siglio di popolo, and one of 250, called con- 
 siglio di commune, into which the nobles 
 might enter. These were changed by the 
 same rotation as the magistracies, every 
 four months. f A parliament, or general 
 assembly of the Florentine people, was 
 rarely convoked ; but the leading princi- 
 ple of a democratical republic, the ulti- 
 mate sovereignty of the multitude, was 
 not forgotten. This constitution of 1324 
 was fixed by the citizens at large in a 
 parliament ; and the same sanction was 
 given to those temporary delegations of 
 the signiory to a prince, which occasion- 
 ally took place. What is technically 
 called by their historians farsi popolo, 
 was the assembly of a parliament, or a 
 resolution of all derivative powers into 
 the immediate operation of the popular 
 will. 
 
 The ancient government of this repub- 
 lic appears to have been chiefly in the 
 hands of its nobility. These were very 
 numerous, and possessed large estates 
 in the district. But by the constitution 
 of 1266, which was nearly coincident 
 with the triumph of the Guelf faction, 
 the essential powers of magistracy, as 
 well as of legislation, were thrown into 
 the scale of the commons. The colleges 
 of arts, whose functions became so em- 
 inent, were altogether commercial. Many 
 indeed of the nobles enrolled themselves 
 in these companies, and were among the 
 most conspicuous merchants of Florence. 
 These were not excluded from the exec- 
 utive college of the priors, at its first in- 
 stitution in 1282. It was necessary, how- 
 ever, to belong to one or other of the 
 great arts in order to reach that magis- 
 tracy. The majority, therefore, of the 
 ancient families, saw themselves pushed 
 
 * Villani,!. ix., c. 27; 1. x., c. 110; 1. xi., c. 105. 
 Sismondi, t. v., p. 174. This species of lottery, 
 recommending itself by an apparent fairness and 
 incompatibility with undue influence, was speedily 
 adopted in all the neighbouring republics, and has 
 always continued, according to Sismondi, in Lucca, 
 and in those cities of the ecclesiastical state which 
 preserved the privilege of choosing their municipal 
 officers, p. 95. f Id. Ibid. 
 
158 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP, III. 
 
 aside from the helm, which was intrust- 
 ed to a class whom they naturally held 
 in contempt. 
 
 It does not appear that the nobility 
 made any overt opposition to these dem- 
 ocratical institutions. Confident in a 
 force beyond the law, they cared less for 
 what the law might provide against them. 
 They still retained the proud spirit of per- 
 sonal independence which had belonged 
 to their ancestors in the fastnesses of the 
 Apennines. Though the laws of Flor- 
 ence, and a change in Italian customs, 
 had transplanted their residence to the 
 city, it was in strong and lofty houses 
 that they dwelt, among their kindred, and 
 among the fellows of their rank. Not- 
 withstanding the tenour of the constitu- 
 tion, Florence was, for some years after 
 the establishment of priors, incapable of 
 resisting the violence of her nobility. 
 Her historians all attest the outrages and 
 assassinations committed by them on the 
 inferior people. It was in vain that jus- 
 tice was offered by the podesta and the 
 capitano del popolo. Witnesses dared 
 not to appear against a noble offender; 
 or if, on a complaint, the officer of jus- 
 tice arrested the accused, his family 
 made common cause to rescue their kins- 
 man, and the populace rose in defence of 
 the laws, till the city was a scene of tu- 
 mult and bloodshed. I have already al- 
 luded to this insubordination of the higher 
 classes as general in the Italian repub- 
 lics; but the Florentine writers, being 
 fuller than the rest, are our best specific 
 testimonies.* 
 
 [A. D. 1295.] The dissensions between 
 the patrician and plebeian orders ran 
 very high, when Giano della Bella, a man 
 of ancient lineage, but attached, without 
 ambitious views, so far as appears, though 
 not without passion, to the popular side, 
 introduced a series of enactments ex- 
 ceedingly disadvantageous to the ancient 
 aristocracy. The first of these was the 
 appointment of an executive officer, the 
 gonfalonier of justice ; whose duty it was 
 to enforce the sentences of the podesta 
 and capitano del popolo, in cases where 
 the ordinary officers were insufficient. A 
 thousand citizens, afterward increased 
 to four times that number, were bound 
 to obey his commands. They were dis- 
 tributed into companies, the gonfaloniers 
 or captains of which became a sort of 
 corporation or college, and a constituent 
 part of government. [A. D. 1295.] This 
 new militia seems to have superseded 
 that of the companies of arts, which 1 
 
 * Villani, 1. yii., c. 113 ; 1. viii.. c. 8. Ammirato 
 Storia Florentine, 1. iv., in cominciamento. 
 
 lave not observed to be mentioned at any 
 ater period. The gonfalonier of justice 
 was part of the signiory along with the 
 )riors, of whom he was reckoned the 
 resident, and changed like them every 
 ;wo months. He was, in fact, the first 
 magistrate of Florence.* If Giano della 
 Bella had trusted to the efficacy of this 
 lew security for justice, his fame would 
 have been beyond reproach. But he fol- 
 owed it up by harsher provisions. The 
 lobility were now made absolutely inel- 
 "gible to the office of prior. For an of- 
 ence committed by one of a noble fam- 
 ly, his relations were declared responsi- 
 ble in a penalty of 3000 pounds. And, to 
 obviate the difficulty arising from the fre- 
 quent intimidation of witnesses, it was 
 provided that common fame, attested by 
 ,wo credible persons, should be sufficient 
 'or the condemnation of a noblernan.f 
 
 These are the famous ordinances of 
 ustice, which passed at Florence for the 
 jreat charter of her democracy. They 
 lave been reprobated in later times as 
 scandalously unjust, and I have little in- 
 clination to defend them. The last, es- 
 Decially, was a violation of those eternal 
 rinciples, which forbid us, for any cal- 
 culations of advantage, to risk the sacri- 
 ice of innocent blood. But it is impos- 
 sible not to perceive that the same un- 
 ust severity has sometimes, under a like 
 pretext of necessity, been applied to the 
 weaker classes of the people, which they 
 were in this instance able to exercise 
 towards their natural superiors. 
 
 The nobility were soon aware of the 
 position in which they stood. For half 
 a century their great object was to pro- 
 ure the relaxation of the ordinances of 
 justice. But they had no success with 
 an elated enemy. In three years' time, 
 indeed, Giano della Bella, the author of 
 these institutions, was driven into exile ; 
 a conspicuous, though by no means sin- 
 gular, proof of Florentine ingratitude. J 
 
 * It is to be regretted, that the accomplished 
 biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici should have 
 taken no pains to inform himself of the most ordi- 
 nary particulars in the constitution of Florence. 
 Among many other errors, he says, vol. ii:, p. 51, 
 5th edit., that the gonfalonier of justice was sub- 
 ordinate to the delegated mechanics (a bad expres- 
 sion), or priori dell' arti, whose number too he aug- 
 ments to ten. The proper style of the republic 
 seems to run thus : I priori dell' arti e gonfaloniere 
 di giustizia, il popolo e '1 comune della citta di Fi- 
 renze. G. Villani, 1. xii., c. 109. 
 
 t Villani, 1. viii., c. 1. Ammirato, p. 188, edit. 
 1647. A magistrate, called 1' esecutor della gius- 
 tizia, was appointed with authority equal to that 
 of the podesta, for the special purpose of watching 
 over the observation of the ordinances of justice. 
 Ammirato, p. 666. 
 
 t Villani, 1. viii., c. 8. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 155 
 
 The wealth and physical strength of the 
 nobles were however untouched ; and 
 their influence must always have been 
 considerable ; in the great feuds of Bian- 
 chi and Neri, the ancient families were 
 most distinguished. No man plays a 
 greater part in the annals of Florence at 
 the beginning of the fourteenth century 
 than Corso Donati, chief of the latter fac- 
 tion, who might pass as representative 
 of the turbulent, intrepid, ambitious citi- 
 zen-noble of an Italian republic.* But 
 the laws gradually became more sure of 
 obedience ; the sort of proscription which 
 attended the ancient nobles lowered their 
 spirit ; while a new aristocracy began to 
 raise its head, the aristocracy of families 
 who, after filling the highest magistracies 
 for two or three generations, obtained an 
 hereditary importance, which answered 
 the purpose of more unequivocal nobili- 
 ty; just as in ancient Rome, plebeian 
 families, by admission to curule offices, 
 acquired the character and appellation of 
 nobility, and were only distinguishable 
 by their genealogy from the original pa- 
 tricians, f Florence had her plebeian no- 
 bles (popolani grandi) ; as well as Rome ; 
 the Peruzzi, the Ricci, the Albizi, the 
 Medici, correspond to the Catos, the 
 Pompeys, the Brutuses, and, the Anto- 
 nies. But at Rome the two orders, after 
 an equal partition of the highest offices, 
 were content to respect their mutual 
 privileges ; at Florence the commoners 
 preserved a rigorous monopoly, and the 
 distinction of high birth was, that it de- 
 barred men from political franchises and 
 civil justice.;}: 
 
 This second aristocracy did not obtain 
 much more of the popular affection than 
 that which it superseded. Public out- 
 rage and violation of law became less 
 frequent ; but the new leaders of Flor- 
 ence are accused of continual mis- 
 government at home and abroad, and 
 sometimes of peculation. There was of 
 course a strong antipathy between the 
 leading commoners and the ancient no- 
 bles; both were disliked by the people. 
 In order to keep the nobles under more 
 control, the governing party more than 
 
 * Dino Compagni. Villani. 
 
 t La nobilta civile, se bene non in baronaggi, e 
 capace di grandissimi honori, percioche esercitando 
 i supremi magistrati della sua patria, viene spesso 
 a comandare a capitani d' eserciti e ella stessa per 
 se 6 in mare, 6 in terra, molte volta i supremi ca- 
 richi adopera. E tale 6 la Fiorentina nobilta. 
 Ammirato delle Famiglie Florentine. Firenze, 
 1614, p. 25. 
 
 t Quello, che all' altre citta suolo recare splen- 
 dore, in Firenze era dannoso, o veramente vano e 
 inutile, says Ammirato of nobility. Storia Fioren- 
 tina, p. 161. 
 
 once introduced a new foreign magis- 
 trate, with the title of captain of defence 
 (della guardia), whom they invested with 
 an almost unbounded criminal jurisdic- 
 tion. [A. D. 1336-1340.] One Gabrielli, 
 of Agobbio, was twice fetched for this 
 purpose; and in each case he behaved 
 in so tyrannical a manner as to occa- 
 sion a tumult.* His office, however, 
 was of short duration, and the title at 
 least did not import a sovereign com- 
 mand. But very soon afterward Flor- 
 ence had to experience one taste of a 
 cup which her neighbours had drunk off 
 to the dregs, and to animate her magnan- 
 imous love of freedom by a knowledge 
 of the calamities of tyranny. 
 
 A war with Pisa, unsuccessfully, if 
 not unskilfully, conducted, gave rise to 
 such dissatisfaction in the city, that the 
 leading commoners had recourse to an 
 appointment something like that of Ga- 
 brielli, and from similar motives. Wai- 
 tor de Briennc, duko of Athens, was de- 
 scended from one of the French crusaders 
 who had dismembered the Grecian em- 
 pire in the preceding century; but his 
 father, defeated in battle, had lost the 
 principality along with his life, and the 
 titular duke was an adventurer in the 
 court of France. He had been, however, 
 slightly known at Florence on a former 
 occasion. There was a uniform maxim 
 among the Italian republics, that extraor- 
 dinary powers should be conferred upon 
 none but strangers. The Duke of Athens 
 was accordingly pitched upon for the 
 military command, which was united with 
 domestic jurisdiction. This appears to 
 have been promoted by the governing 
 party, in order to curb the nobility ; but 
 they were soon undeceived in their ex- 
 pectations. The first act of the Duke of 
 Athens was to bring four of the most 
 eminent commoners to capital punish- 
 ment for military offences. These sen- 
 tences, whether just or otherwise, gave 
 much pleasure to the nobles, who had 
 so frequently been exposed to similar 
 severity, and to the populace, who are 
 naturally pleased with the humiliation of 
 their superiors. Both of these were ca- 
 ressed by the duke, and both conspired, 
 with blind passion, to second his ambi- 
 tious views. It was proposed and car- 
 ried in a full parliament, or assembly of 
 the people, to bestow upon him the 
 signiory for life. [A. D. 1342.] The 
 real friends of their country, as well as 
 the oligarchy, shuddered at this measure. 
 Throughout all the vicissitudes of party, 
 
 * Villani, 1. xi., c. 39 and 117. 
 
160 
 
 E 
 
 UROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 Florence had never yet lost sight of re- 
 publican institutions. Not that she had 
 never accommodated herself to tempo- 
 rary circumstances by naming a signior. 
 Charles of Anjou had been invested with 
 that dignity for the term of ten years ; 
 Robert, king of Naples, for five ; and his 
 son, the Duke of Calabria, was at his 
 death signior of Florence. These prin- 
 ces named the podesta, if not the priors ; 
 and were certainly pretty absolute in 
 their executive powers, though bound by 
 oath not to alter the statutes of the city.* 
 But their office had always been tempo- 
 rary. Like the dictatorship of Rome, it 
 was a confessed, unavoidable evil ; a sus- 
 pension, but not extinguishment of rights. 
 Like that, too, it was a dangerous prece- 
 dent, through which crafty ambition and 
 popular rashness might ultimately sub- 
 vert the republic. If Walter de Brienne 
 had possessed the subtle prudence of a 
 Matteo Visconti, or a Cane della Scala, 
 there appears no reason to suppose that 
 Florence would have escaped the fate of 
 other cities ; and her history might have 
 become as useless a record of perfidy 
 and assassination as that of Mantua or 
 Verona.f 
 
 But, happily for Florence, the reign of 
 tyranny was very short. The Duke of 
 Athens had neither judgment nor activity 
 for so difficult a station. He launched 
 out at once into excesses, which it would 
 be desirable that arbitrary power should 
 always commit at the outset. The taxes 
 were considerably increased ; 4heir pro- 
 duce was dissipated. The honour of the 
 state was sacrificed by an inglorious 
 treaty with Pisa; her territory was di- 
 minished by some towns throwing off 
 their dependance. Severe and multiplied 
 punishments spread terror through the 
 city. The noble families, who had on 
 the duke's election destroyed the ordi- 
 nances of justice, now found themselves 
 exposed to the more partial caprice of a 
 despot. He filled the magistracies with 
 low creatures from the inferior artificers ; 
 a class which he continued to flatter.! 
 Ten months passed in this manner, when 
 three separate conspiracies, embracing 
 most of the nobility and of the great 
 commoners, were planned for the recov- 
 ery of freedom. The duke was protect- 
 ed by a strong body of hired cavalry. 
 Revolutions in an Italian city were gen- 
 erally effected by surprise. The streets 
 were so narrow and so easily secured by 
 barricades, that if a people had time to 
 stand on its defence, no cavalry was of 
 
 * Villani, 1. ix., c. 55, 60, 135, 328. 
 
 t Id., 1. xii., c. 1, 2, 3. * Id., c. 8. 
 
 any avail. On the other hand, a body of 
 lancers in plate-armour might dissipate 
 any number of a disorderly populace. 
 Accordingly, if a prince or usurper would 
 get possession by surprise, he, as it was 
 called, rode the city ; that is, galloped with 
 his cavalry along the streets, so as to 
 prevent the people from collecting to 
 erect barricades. This expression is 
 very usual with historians of the four- 
 teenth century.* The conspirators at 
 Florence were too quick for the Duke of 
 Athens. The city was barricaded in 
 every direction ; and, after a contest of 
 some duration, he consented to abdicate 
 his signiory. 
 
 Thus Florence recovered her liberty. 
 Her constitutional laws now seemed to 
 revive of themselves. But the nobility, 
 who had taken a very active part in the 
 recent liberation of their country, thought 
 it hard to be still placed under the rigor- 
 ous ordinances of justice. Many of the 
 richer commoners acquiesced in an equi- 
 table partition of magistracies, which was 
 established through the influence of the 
 bishop. But the populace of Florence, 
 with its characteristic forgetfulness of 
 benefits, w as tenacious of those prescript- 
 ive ordinances. The nobles too, elated 
 by their success, began again to strike 
 and injure the inferior citizens. A new 
 civil war in the city streets decided their 
 quarrel ; after a desperate resistance, 
 many of the principal houses were pil- 
 laged and burnt; and the perpetual ex- 
 clusion of the nobility was confirmed by 
 fresh laws. But the people, now sure 
 of their triumph, relaxed a little upon this 
 occasion the ordinances of justice ; and, 
 to make some distinction in favour of 
 merit or innocence, effaced certain fam- 
 ilies from the list of nobility. Five hun- 
 dred and thirty persons were thus ele- 
 vated, as we may call it, to the rank of 
 commoners. f As it was beyond the com- 
 petence of the republic of Florence to 
 change a man's ancestors, this nominal 
 alteration left all the real advantages of 
 birth as they w r ere, and was undoubtedly 
 an enhancement of dignity, though in 
 appearance a very singular one: Con- 
 
 * Villani, 1. x., c. 81. Castruccio .... corse 
 la citta di Pisa due volte. Sisrnondi, t. v., p. 105. 
 
 f Villani, 1. xii., c. 18-23. Sismondi says, by a 
 momentary oversight, cinq cent trente families, t. 
 v., p. 377. There were but thirty-seven noble fam- 
 ilies at Florence ; as M. Sismondi himself informs 
 us, t. iv., p. 66 ; though Villani reckons the number 
 of individuals at 1500. Nobles, or grandi, as they 
 are more strictly called, were such as had been 
 inscribed, or rather proscribed, as such in the ordi- 
 nances of justice ; at least I do not know what 
 other definition there was. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 
 161 
 
 versely, several unpopular commoners 
 were ennobled, in order to disfranchise 
 them. Nothing was more usual, in sub- 
 sequent times, than such an arbitrary- 
 change of rank, as a penalty or a benefit. 
 Those nobles who were rendered ple- 
 beian by favour, were obliged to change 
 their name and arms.f The constitution 
 now underwent some change. From six 
 the priors were increased to eight ; and 
 instead of being chosen from each of the 
 greater arts, they were taken from the 
 four quarters of the city, the lesser arti- 
 sans, as I conceive, being admissible. 
 The gonfaloniers of companies were re- 
 duced to sixteen. And these, along with 
 the signiory, and the twelve buonuomini, 
 formed the college, where every propo- 
 sition was discussed before it could be 
 offered to the councils for their legislative 
 sanction. But it could only originate, 
 strictly speaking, in the signiory, that is, 
 the gonfalonier of justice and eight 
 priors, the rest of the college having 
 merely the function of advice and assist- 
 ance. J 
 
 Several years elapsed before any ma- 
 terial disturbance arose at Florence. Her 
 contemporary historian complains in- 
 deed that mean and ignorant persons 
 obtained the office of prior, and ascribes 
 some errors in her external policy to this 
 cause. $ Besides the natural effects of 
 the established rotation, a particular law, 
 called the divieto, tended to throw the 
 better families out of public office. By 
 this law, two of the same name could 
 not be drawn for any magistracy : which, 
 as the ancient families were extremely 
 numerous, rendered it difficult for their 
 members to succeed; especially as a 
 ticket once drawn was not replaced in 
 the purse, so that an individual liable to 
 the divieto was excluded until the next 
 biennial revolution. || This created dis- 
 satisfaction among the leading families. 
 They were likewise divided by a new fac- 
 tion, entirely founded, as far as appears, 
 on personal animosity between two prom- 
 inent houses, the Albizi and the Ricci. 
 The city was however tranquil, when, in 
 1357, a spring was set in motion, which 
 
 * Messer Antonio di Baldinaccio degli Adimari, 
 tutto che fosse de piti grandi e nobili, per grazia era 
 messo tra '1 popolo. Villani, 1. xii., c. 108. 
 
 f Ammirato, p. 748. There were several ex- 
 ceptions to this rule in later times. The Pazzi 
 were made popolani, plebeians, by favour of Cosmo 
 de' Medici. Machiavelli. 
 
 t Nardi, Storia di Firenze, p. 7, edit. 1584. 
 Villani, loc. cit. 
 
 f) Matteo Villani, in Script. Rer. Italic., t. xiv., 
 p. 98-244. 
 
 I! Sismdndi, t. vi., p. 338. 
 
 gave quite a different character to the 
 domestic history of Florence. 
 
 At the time when the Guelfs, with the 
 assistance of Charles of Anjou, acquired 
 an exclusive domination in the republic, 
 the estates of the Ghibelins were confis- 
 cated. One third of these confiscations 
 was allotted to the state ; another went 
 to repair the losses of Guelf citizens ; but 
 the remainder became the property of a 
 new corporate society, denominated the 
 Guelf party (parte Guelfa) with a regular 
 internal organization. The Guelf party 
 had two councils, one of fourteen and 
 one of sixty members ; three, or after- 
 ward four, captains, elected by scrutiny 
 every two months, a treasury, and com- 
 mon seal ; a little republic within the re- 
 public of Florence. Their primary duty 
 was to watch over the Guelf interest; 
 and for this purpose they had a particular 
 officer for the accusation of suspected 
 Ghibelins.* We hear not much, how- 
 ever, of the Guelf society for near a 
 century after their establishment. The 
 Ghibelins hardly ventured to show them- 
 selves after the fall of the White Guelfs 
 in 1304, with whom they had been con- 
 nected, and confiscation had almost anni- 
 hilated that unfortunate faction. But, as 
 the oligarchy of Guelf families lost part 
 of its influence through the divieto and 
 system of lottery, some persons of Ghib- 
 elin descent crept into public offices ; and 
 this was exaggerated by the zealots of an 
 opposite party, as if the fundamental pol- 
 icy of the city was put into danger. 
 
 The Guelf society had begun, as early 
 as 1346, to manifest some disquietude at 
 the foreign artisans, who, settling at Flo- 
 rence, and becoming members of some 
 of the trading corporations, pretended to 
 superior offices. They procured accord- 
 ingly a law, excluding from public trust 
 and magistracy all persons not being na- 
 tives of the city or its territory. Next 
 year they advanced a step farther; and, 
 with the view to prevent disorder, which 
 seemed to threaten the city, a law was 
 passed, dec-laring every one, whose an- 
 cestors at any time since 1300 had been 
 known Ghibelins, or who had not the 
 reputation of sound Guelf principles, in- 
 capable of being drawn or elected to of- 
 fices, f It is manifest, from the language 
 of the historian who relates these cir- 
 cumstances, and whose testimony is more 
 remarkable from his having died several 
 ears before the politics of the Guelf cor- 
 Doration more decidedly showed them- 
 selves, that the real cause of their jeal- 
 
 * G. Villani, 1. vii., c. 16. 
 t Ibid., 1. xii., c. 72 and 79. 
 
162 
 
 Eu 
 
 ROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 Olisy was not the increase of Ghibelinism, 
 a merely plausible pretext, but the dem- 
 ocratical character which the govern- 
 ment had assumed, since the revolution 
 of 1343 ; which raised the fourteen infe- 
 rior arts to the level of those wjbich the 
 great merchants of Florence exercised. 
 In the Guelf society, the ancient nobles 
 retained a considerable influence. The 
 laws of exclusion had never been applied 
 to that corporation. Two of the captains 
 were always noble, two were common- 
 ers. The people, in debarring the nobil- 
 ity from ordinary privileges, were little 
 aware of the more dangerous channel 
 which had been left open to their ambi- 
 tion. With the nobility some of the great 
 commoners acted in concert, and espe- 
 cially the family and faction of the Albizi. 
 The introduction of obscure persons into 
 office still continued, and some measures 
 more vigorous than the law of 1347 seem- 
 ed necessary to restore the influence of 
 their aristocracy. They proposed, and, 
 notwithstanding the reluctance of the 
 priors, carried by violence, both in the 
 preliminary deliberations of the signiory, 
 and in the two councils, a law by which 
 every person accepting an office who 
 should be convicted of Ghibelinism or of 
 Ghibelin descent, upon testimony of pub- 
 lic fame, became liable to punishment, 
 capital or pecuniary, at the discretion of 
 the priors. To this law they gave a re- 
 trospective effect, and indeed it appears 
 to have been little more than a revival of 
 the provisions made in 1347, which had 
 probably been disregarded. Many citi- 
 zens, who had been magistrates within a 
 few years, were cast in heavy fines on 
 this indefinite charge. But the more usu- 
 al practice was to warn (ammonire) men 
 beforehand against undertaking public 
 trust. If they neglected this hint, they 
 were sure to be treated as convicted 
 Ghibelins. Thus a very numerous class, 
 called Ammoniti, was formed of proscri- 
 bed and discontented persons, eager to 
 throw off the intolerable yoke of the 
 Guelf society. For the imputation of 
 Ghibelin connexions was generally an 
 unfounded pretext for crushing the ene- 
 mies of the governing faction.* Men of 
 
 * Besides the effect of ancient prejudice, Ghibe- 
 linism was considered at Florence, in the four- 
 teenth century, as immediately connected with ty- 
 rannical usurpation. The Guelf party, says Mat- 
 teo Villani, is the foundation rock of liberty in Ita- 
 ly ; so that, if any Guelf becomes a tyrant, he must 
 of necessity turn to the Ghibelin side ; and of this 
 there have been many instances, p. 481. So Gio- 
 vanni Villani says of Passerino, lord of Mantua, 
 that his ancestors had been Guelfs, ma per essere 
 gnore e tiranno si fece Ghibellino, 1. *., c. 99. 
 
 approved Guelf principles and origin were 
 every day warned from their natural 
 privileges of sharing in magistracy. This 
 spread a universal alarm through the city ; 
 but the great advantage of union and se- 
 cret confederacy rendered the Guelf so- 
 ciety, who had also the law on their side, 
 irresistible by their opponents. Mean- 
 while the public honour was well sup- 
 ported abroad ; Florence had never be- 
 fore been so distinguished as during the 
 prevalence of this oligarchy.* 
 
 The Guelf society had governed with 
 more or less absoluteness for near twen- 
 ty years, when the republic became in- 
 volved, through the perfidious conduct 
 of the papal legate, in a war with the 
 Holy See. Though the Florentines were 
 by no means superstitious, this hostility 
 to the church appeared almost an ab- 
 surdity to determined Guelfs, and shock- 
 ed those prejudices' about names which 
 make up the politics of vulgar minds. 
 The Guelf society, though it could not 
 openly resist the popular indignation 
 against Gregory XL, was not heartily in- 
 clined to this war. Its management fell 
 therefore into the hands of eight commis- 
 sioners, some of them not well affected 
 to the society ; whose administration was 
 so successful and popular as to excite the 
 utmost jealousy in the Guelfs. They be- 
 gan to renew their warnings, and in eight 
 months excluded fourscore citizens. f 
 
 The tyranny of a court may endure for 
 ages ; but that of a faction is seldom per- 
 manent. In June, 137B, the gonfalonier 
 of justice was Salvestro de' Medici, a 
 man of approved patriotism, whose fam- 
 ily had been so notoriously of Guelf prin- 
 ciples that it was impossible to warn him 
 from office. He proposed to mitigate the 
 severity of the existing 1 law. His propo- 
 sition did not succeed ; but its rejection 
 provoked an insurrection, the forerunner 
 of still more alarming tumults. The pop- 
 ulace of Florence, like that of other cit- 
 ies, was terrible in the moment of sedi- 
 tion ; and a party so long dreaded shrunk 
 before ,the physical strength of the multi- 
 tude. Many leaders of the Guelf society 
 had their houses destroyed, and some 
 fled from the city. But instead of annul- 
 ling their acts, a middle course was adopt- 
 ed by the committee of magistrates who 
 had been empowered to reform the state ; 
 the Ammoniti were suspended three 
 
 And Matteo Villani of the Pepoli at Bologna ; es- 
 sendo di natura Guelfi, per la tirannia erano quasi 
 
 alienati della parte, p. 69. 
 
 * M. Villani, p. 581, 637,731. 
 chiavelli. Sismondi. 
 
 f Ammirato, p. 709. 
 
 Ammirato. Ma- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 168 
 
 years longer from office, and the Guelf 
 society preserved with some limitations. 
 This temporizing course did not satisfy 
 either the Ammoniti or the populace. 
 The greater arts were generally attached 
 to the Guelf society. Between them and 
 the lesser arts, composed of retail and 
 mechanical traders, there was a strong 
 jealousy. The latter were adverse to the 
 prevailing oligarchy, and to the Guelf so- 
 ciety, by whose influence it was main- 
 tained. They were eager to make Flo- 
 rence a democracy in fact as well as in 
 name, by participating in the executive 
 government. 
 
 But every political institution appears 
 to rest on too confined a basis, to those 
 whose point of view is from beneath it. 
 While the lesser arts were murmuring at 
 the exclusive privileges of the commer- 
 cial aristocracy, there was yet an inferior 
 class of citizens, who thought their own 
 claims to equal privileges irrefragable. 
 The arrangement of twenty-one trading 
 companies had still left several kinds of 
 artisans unincorporated, and consequent- 
 ly unprivileged. These had been attach- 
 ed to the art with which their craft had 
 most connexion, in a sort of dependant 
 relation. Thus, to the company of dra- 
 pers, the most wealthy of all the various 
 occupations instrumental in the manufac- 
 ture, as wool-combers, diers, and weav- 
 ers, were appendant.* Besides the sense 
 of political exclusion, these artisans alle- 
 ged, that they were oppressed by their 
 employers of the art, and that when they 
 complained to the consul, their judge in 
 civil matters, no redress could be procu- 
 red. A still lower order of the commu- 
 nity was the mere populace, who did not 
 practise any regular trade, or who only 
 worked for daily hire. These were call- 
 ed Ciompi, a corruption, it is said, of the 
 French compere. 
 
 " Let no one," says Machiavel in this 
 place, " who begins an innovation in a 
 state, expect that he shall stop it at his 
 pleasure, or regulate it according to his 
 intention." After about a month from 
 the first sedition, another broke out, in 
 which the ciompi, or lowest populace, 
 were alone concerned. Through the sur- 
 prise, or cowardice, or disaffection of the 
 superior citizens, this was suffered to 
 get ahead, and for three days the city was 
 in the hand of a tumultuous rabble. It 
 was vain to withstand their propositions, 
 had they even been more unreasonable 
 than they were. But they only demand- 
 
 * Before the year 1340, according to Villani's cal- 
 culation, the woollen trade occupied 30,000 per- 
 sons, 1. xi., c. 93. 
 L2 
 
 ed the establishment of two new arts for 
 the trades hitherto dependant, and one for 
 the lower people ; and that three of the 
 priors should be chosen from the greater 
 arts, three from the fourteen lesser, and 
 two from those just created. Some de- 
 lay, however, occurring to prevent the 
 sanction of these innovations by tho 
 councils, a new fury took possession of 
 the populace ; the gates of the palace be- 
 longing to the signiory were forced open, 
 the priors compelled to fly, and no ap- 
 pearance of a constitutional magistracy 
 remained to throw the veil of law over the 
 excesses of anarchy. The republic seem- 
 ed to rock from its foundation, and the 
 circumstance to which historians ascribe 
 its salvation is not the least singular in 
 this critical epoch. One Michel di Lan- 
 do, a wool-carder, half dressed and with- 
 out shoes, happened to hold the standard 
 of justice wrested from the proper offi- 
 cer when the populace burst into the pal- 
 ace. Whether he was previously con- 
 spicuous in the tumult is not recorded; 
 but the wild capricious mob, who had de- 
 stroyed what they had no conception how 
 to rebuild, suddenly cried out that Lando 
 should be gonfalonier or signior, and re- 
 form the city at his pleasure. 
 
 A choice, arising probably from wan- 
 ton folly, could not have been better 
 made by wisdom. Lando was a man of 
 courage, moderation, and integrity. He 
 gave immediate proofs of these qualities 
 by causing his office to be respected. 
 The eight commissioners of the war, 
 who, though not instigators of the sedi- 
 tion, were well pleased to see the Guelf 
 party so entirely prostrated, now fancied 
 themselves masters, and began to nomi- 
 nate priors. But Lando sent a message 
 to them that he was elected by the peo- 
 ple, and that he could dispense with their 
 assistance. He then proceeded to the 
 choice of priors. Three were taken 
 from the greater arts; three from the 
 lesser ; and three from the two new arts 
 and the lower people. This eccentric 
 college lost no time in restoring tranquil- 
 lity, and compelled the populace by threat 
 of punishment to return to their occupa- 
 tions. But the ciompi were not disposed 
 to give up the pleasures of anarchy so 
 readily. They were dissatisfied at the 
 small share allotted to them in the new 
 distribution of offices, and murmured at 
 their gonfalonier as a traitor to the popu- 
 lar cause. Lando was aware that an in- 
 surrection was projected ; he took meas- 
 ures with the most respectable citizens ; 
 the insurgents, when they showed them- 
 selves, were quelled by force, and the 
 
164 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 gonfalonier retired from office with an 
 approbation which all historians of Flo- 
 rence have agreed to perpetuate. Part 
 of this has undoubtedly been founded on 
 a consideration of the mischief which it 
 was in his power to inflict. The ciompi, 
 once checked, were soon defeated. The 
 next gonfalonier was, like Lando, a wool- 
 comber ; but, wanting the intrinsic merit 
 of Lando, his mean station excited uni- 
 versal contempt. None of the arts could 
 endure their low coadjutors; a short 
 struggle was made by the populace, but 
 they were entirely overpowered with 
 considerable slaughter, and the govern- 
 ment was divided between the seven 
 greater and sixteen lesser arts in nearly 
 equal proportions. 
 
 The party of the lesser arts, or inferior 
 tradesmen, which had begun this confu- 
 sion, were left winners when it ceased. 
 Three men of distinguished families, who 
 had instigated the revolution, became the 
 leaders of Florence ; Benedetto Alberti, 
 Tomaso Strozzi, and Georgio Scali. 
 Their government had at first to contend 
 with the ciompi, smarting under loss and 
 disappointment. But a populace which 
 is beneath the inferior mechanics may 
 with ordinary prudence be kept in sub- 
 jection by a government that has a well- 
 organized militia at its command. The 
 Guelf aristocracy was far more to be 
 dreaded. Some of them had been ban- 
 ished, some fined, some ennobled ; the usu- 
 al consequences of revolution, which they 
 had too often practised to complain. A 
 more iniquitous proceeding disgraces the 
 new administration. Under pretence of 
 conspiracy, the chief of the house of Al- 
 bizi, and several of his most eminent 
 associates, were thrown into prison. So 
 little evidence of the charge appeared, 
 that the podesta refused to condemn 
 them ; but the people were clamorous 
 for blood, and half with, half without the 
 forms of justice, these noble citizens 
 were led to execution. The part he took 
 in this murder sullies the fame of Bene- 
 detto Alberti, who, in his general conduct, 
 had been more uniformly influenced by 
 honest principles than most of his con- 
 temporaries. Those who shared with 
 him the ascendency in the existing gov- 
 ernment, Strozzi and Scali, abused their 
 power by oppression towards their ene- 
 mies and insolence towards all. Their 
 popularity was of course soon at an end. 
 Alberti, a sincere lover of freedom, sepa- 
 rated himself from men who seemed to 
 emulate the arbitrary government they 
 had overthrown. An outrage of Scali, 
 in rescuing a criminal from justice, 
 
 brought the discontent to a crisis; he 
 was arrested, and lost his head on the 
 scaffold ; while Strozzi, his colleague, 
 fled from the city. But this event was 
 instantly followed by a reaction, which 
 Alberti perhaps did not anticipate. Armed 
 men filled the streets ; the cry of Live the 
 Guelfs was heard. After a three years 
 depression, the aristocratical party re- 
 gained its ascendant. They did not re- 
 vive the severity practised towards the 
 Ammoniti ; but the two new arts, created 
 for the small trades, were abolished, and 
 the lesser arts reduced to a third part, in- 
 stead of something more than one half 
 of public offices. Several persons who 
 had favoured the plebeians were sent 
 into exile; and among these Michel de 
 Lando, whose great services in subduing 
 anarchy ought to have secured the pro- 
 tection of every government. Benedetto 
 Alberti, the enemy by turns of every fac- 
 tion, because every faction was in its turn 
 oppressive, experienced some years after- 
 ward the same fate. For half a century 
 after this time, no revolution took place 
 at Florence. The Guelf aristocracy, 
 strong in opulence and antiquity, and ren- 
 dered prudent by experience, under the 
 guidance of the Albizi family, maintained 
 a preponderating influence without much 
 departing, the times considered, from 
 moderation and respect for the laws.* 
 
 It is sufficiently manifest, from this 
 sketch of the domestic history of Flo- 
 rence, how far that famous republic was 
 from affording a perfect security for civil 
 rights or general tranquillity. They who 
 hate the name of free constitutions may 
 exult in her internal dissensions, as in 
 those of Athens or Rome. But the calm 
 philosopher will not take his standard of 
 comparison from ideal excellence, nor 
 even from that practical good which has 
 been reached in our own unequalled con- 
 stitution, and in some of the republics of 
 modern Europe. The men and the in- 
 stitutions of the fourteenth century are 
 to be measured by their contemporaries. 
 Who would not rather have been a citi- 
 zen of Florence than a subject of the 
 Visconti ? In a superficial review of his- 
 tory, we are sometimes apt to exaggerate 
 
 * For this part of Florentine history, besides 
 Ammirato, Machiavel, and Sismondi, I have read 
 an interesting narrative of the sedition of the ci- 
 ompi, by Gino Capponi, in the eighteenth volume of 
 Muratori's collection. It has an air of liveliness 
 and trutfc which is very pleasing, but it breaks off 
 rather too soon, at the instant of Lando's assuming 
 the office of banneret. Another contemporary 
 writer, Melchione de Stefani, who seems to have 
 furnished the materials of the three historians 
 above mentioned, has not fallen in my way. 
 
PART H.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 165 
 
 the vices of free states, and to lose sight 
 of those inherent in tyrannical power. 
 The bold censoriousness of republican 
 historians, and the cautious servility of 
 writers under an absolute monarchy, 
 conspire to mislead us as to the relative 
 prosperity of nations. Acts of outrage 
 and tumultuous excesses in a free state 
 are blazoned in minute detail, and de- 
 scend to posterity ; the deeds of tyranny 
 are studiously and perpetually suppressed. 
 Even those historians who have no par- 
 ticular motives for concealment turn 
 away from the monotonous and disgust- 
 ing crimes of tyrants. " Deeds of cruel- 
 ty," it is well observed by Matteo Villani, 
 after relating an action of Bernabo Vis- 
 conti, " are little worthy of remembrance ; 
 yet let me be excused for having recount- 
 ed one out of many, as an example of the 
 peril to which men are exposed under 
 the yoke of an unbounded tyranny."* 
 The reign of Bernabo afforded abundant 
 instances of a like kind. Second only to 
 Eccelin among the tyrants of Italy, he 
 rested the security of his dominion upon 
 tortures and death, and his laws them- 
 selves enact the protraction of capital 
 punishment through forty days of suffer- 
 ing, f His nephew, Giovanni Maria, is 
 said, with a madness like that of Nero or 
 Commodus, to have coursed the streets 
 of Milan by night with bloodhounds, 
 ready to chase and tear any unlucky pas- 
 senger.J Nor were other Italian princi- 
 palities free from similar tyrants, though 
 none perhaps on the whole so odious as 
 the Visconti. The private history of 
 many families, such for instance as the 
 Scala and the Gonzaga, is but a series of 
 assassinations. The ordinary vices of 
 mankind assumed a teint of portentous 
 guilt in the palaces of Italian princes. 
 Their revenge was fratricide, and their 
 lust was incest. 
 
 Though fertile and populous, the prop- 
 Acquisitions er district of Florence was by 
 of territory no means extensive. An inde- 
 e - pendent nobility occupied the 
 Tuscan Apennines with their castles. Of 
 these the most conspicuous were the 
 counts of Guidi, a numerous and power- 
 ful family, who possessed a material in- 
 fluence in the affairs of Florence and of 
 all Tuscany till the middle of the four- 
 teenth century, and some of whom pre- 
 served their independence much longer. $ 
 
 * P. 434. 
 
 t Sismondi, t. vi., p. 316. Corio, 1st. di Milano, 
 p. 486. 
 
 t Corio, p. 595. 
 
 $ G. Villani, 1. v., c. 37, 41, et alibi. The last of 
 the counts Guidi, having unwisely embarked in a 
 
 To the south, the republics of Arezzo, 
 Perugia, and Siena; to the west, those 
 of Volterra, Pisa, and Lucca ; Prato and 
 Pistoja to the north, limited the Floren- 
 tine territory. It was late before these 
 boundaries were removed. During the 
 usurpations of Uguccione at Pisa, and of 
 Castruccio at Lucca, the republic of Flo- 
 rence was always unsuccessful in the field. 
 After the death of Castruccio she began 
 to act more vigorously, and engaged in 
 several confederacies with the powers of 
 Lombardy, especially in a league with 
 Venice against Mastino della Scala. But 
 the republic made no acquisition of ter- 
 ritory till 1351, when she annexed the 
 small city of Prato, not ten miles from 
 her walls.* Pistoja, though still nomi- 
 nally independent, received a Florentine 
 garrison about the same time. Several 
 additions were made to the district, by fair 
 purchase from the nobility of the Apen- 
 nines, and a few by main force. The 
 territory was still very little proportion- 
 ed to the fame and power of Florence. 
 The latter was founded upon her vast 
 commercial opulence. Every Italian 
 state employed mercenary troops, and the 
 richest was of course the most powerful. 
 In the war against Mastino della Scala, 
 in 1336, the revenues of Florence are 
 reckoned by Villani at three hundred 
 thousand florins ; which, as he observes, 
 is more than the King of Naples or of 
 Aragon possesses. f The expenditure 
 went at that time very much beyond the 
 receipt, and was defrayed by loans from 
 the principal mercantile firms, which 
 were secured by public funds ; the earli- 
 est instance, I believe, of that financial 
 resource.J Her population was computed 
 at ninety thousand souls. Villani reck- 
 ons the district at eighty thousand men, 
 I presume those only of military age ; 
 but this calculation must have been too 
 large, even though he included, as we 
 
 confederacy against Florence, was obliged to give 
 up his ancient patrimony in 1440. 
 
 * M. Villani, p. 72. This was rather a measure 
 of usurpation ; but the republic had some reason to 
 apprehend that Prato might fall into the hands of 
 the Visconti. Their conduct towards Pistoja was 
 influenced by the same motive ; but it was still fur- 
 ther removed from absolute justice, p. 91. 
 
 t G. Villani, 1. xi., c. 90-93. These chapters 
 contain a very full and interesting statement of the 
 revenues, expenses, population, and internal con- 
 dition of Florence at that time. Part of them is 
 extracted by M. Sismondi, t. v., p. 365. The gold 
 florin was worth about ten shillings of our money. 
 The district of Florence was not then much larger 
 than Middlesex. At present the revenues of the 
 whole dutchy of Tuscany are much less than 
 150,OOOZ. sterling ; though the difference in the value 
 of money is very considerable. 
 
 t G. Villani, 1. xi., c. 49. 
 
166 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 may presume, the city in his estimate.* 
 Tuscany, though well cultivated and 
 flourishing, does not contain by any means 
 so great a number of inhabitants in that 
 space at present. 
 
 The first eminent conquest made by 
 piga Florence was that of Pisa, early in 
 the fifteenth century. Pisa had been 
 distinguished as a commercial city ever 
 since the age of the Othos. From 
 her ports, and those of Genoa, the ear- 
 liest naval armaments of the western 
 nations were fitted out against the Sara- 
 cen corsairs who infested the Mediterra- 
 nean coasts. In the eleventh century 
 she undertook, and, after a pretty long 
 struggle, completed, the important, or at 
 least the splendid conquest of Sardinia; 
 an island long subject to a Moorish chief- 
 tain. Several noble families of Pisa, who 
 
 * C. 93. Troviamo diligentemente, che in quest! 
 tempi avea in Firenze circa a 25 mila uomini da 
 portare arme da 15 in 70 anni Istamavasi avere 
 in Firenze da 90 mila bocche tra uomini e femine e 
 fanciulli, per 1' avviso del pane bisognava al contin- 
 avo alia citta. These proportions of 25,000 men 
 between fifteen and seventy, and of 90,000 souls, 
 are as nearly as possible consonant to modern cal- 
 culation, of which Villani knew nothing, which 
 confirms his accuracy ; though M. Sismondi asserts, 
 p. 369, that the city contained 150,000 inhabitants, 
 on no better authority, as far as appears, than that 
 of Boccaccio, who says that 100,000 perished in the 
 great plague of 1348, which was generally suppo- 
 sed to destroy two out of three. But surely two 
 vague suppositions are not to be combined, in or- 
 der to overthrow such a testimony as that of Vil- 
 lani, who seems to have consulted all registers and 
 other authentic documents in his reach. 
 
 What Villani says of the population of the dis- 
 trict may lead us to reckon it, perhaps, at about 
 180,000 souls, allowing the baptisms to be one in 
 thirty of the population. Ragionavasi in questi 
 tempi avere nel contado e distretto di Firenze de 
 80 rniUi uomini. Troviamo del piovano, che bat- 
 tezzava i fanciulli, imperocheper ogni maschio, che 
 battezzava in San Giovanni, per avere il novero, 
 metea una fava nera, e per ogni feminauna bianca, 
 trovo, ch' erano 1'anno in questi tempi dalle 5800 
 in sei mila, avanzando le piu volte il sesso mascu- 
 lino da 300 in 500 per anno. Baptisms could only 
 be performed in one public font, at Florence, Pisa, 
 and some other cities. The building that contain- 
 ed this font was called the baptistery. The bap- 
 tisteries of Florence and Pisa still remain, and are 
 well known. Du Cange, v. Baptisterium. But 
 there were fifty-seven parishes, and one hundred 
 and ten churches within the city. Villani, ibid. 
 Mr. Roscoe has published a manuscript, evidently 
 written after the taking of Pisa, in 1406, though, as 
 1 should guess, not long after that event, contain- 
 ing a proposition for an income tax of ten per cent, 
 throughout the Florentine dominions. Among its 
 other calculations, the population is reckoned at 
 400,000 ; assuming that to be the proportion to 
 80,000 men of military age, though certainly be- 
 yond the mark. It is singular that the district of 
 Florence, in 1343, is estimated by Villani to contain 
 as great a number, before Pisa, Volterra, or even 
 Prato and Pistoja had been annexed to it. Ros- 
 ooe's Life of Lorenzo, Appendix, No. 16. 
 
 had defrayed the chief cost of this expe- 
 dition, shared the island in districts, 
 which they held in fief of the republic.* 
 At a later period the Balearic isles were 
 subjected, but not long retained by Pisa. 
 Her naval prowess was supported by her 
 commerce. A writer of the twelfth cen- 
 tury reproaches her with the Jews, the 
 Arabians, and other "monsters of the 
 sea," who thronged in her streets. f The 
 crusades poured fresh wealth into the lap 
 of the maritime Italian cities. In some 
 of those expeditions a great portion of 
 the armament was conveyed by sea to 
 Palestine, and freighted the vessels of 
 Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. When the 
 Christians had bought with their blood 
 the seacoast of Syria, these republics 
 procured the most extensive privileges 
 in the new states that were formed out of 
 their slender conquests, and became the 
 conduits through which the produce of 
 the East flowed in upon the ruder natives 
 of Europe. Pisa maintained a large 
 share of this commerce, as well as of 
 maritime greatness, till near the end of 
 the thirteenth century. In 1282, we are 
 told by Villani, she was in great power, 
 possessing Sardinia, Corsica, and Elba ; 
 from whence the republic, as well as pri- 
 vate persons, derived large revenues ; 
 and almost ruled the sea by their ships 
 and merchandises, and beyond sea were 
 very powerful in the city of Acre, and 
 much connected with the principal citi- 
 zens of Acre.J The prosperous era of 
 the Pisans is marked by their public edi- 
 fices. She was the first Italian city that 
 took a pride in architectural magnificence. 
 Her cathedral is of the eleventh century ; 
 the baptistery, the famous inclined tower, 
 or belfry, the arcades that surround the 
 Campo Santo, or cemetery of Pisa, are of 
 the twelfth, or at latest, of the thirteenth.^ 
 It would have been no slight anomaly 
 in the annals of Italy, or, we might say, 
 of mankind, if two neighbouring cities, 
 competitors in every mercantile occupa- 
 tion and every naval enterprise, had not 
 been perpetual enemies to each other. 
 One is more surprised, if the fact be true, 
 that no war broke out between Pisa and 
 Genoa till 1119.|| From this time at least 
 
 * Sismondi, t. i., p. 345, 372. 
 t Qui pergit Pisas, videt illic monstra marina ; 
 Haec urbs Paganis, Turchis, Libycis quoque, 
 
 Parthis, 
 
 Sordida ; Chaldtei sua lustrant rmenia tetri. 
 Donizo, Vita ComitisscB Mathildis, apud Mu* 
 
 ratori, Dissert. 31. 
 J Villani, l.vi., c. 83. 
 
 Sismondi, t. iv., p. 178. Tiraboschi, t. iii., p. 
 06. 
 H Muratori, ad ann. 1119. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 167 
 
 they continually recurred. An equality 
 of forces and of courage kept the conflict 
 uncertain for the greater part of two cen- 
 turies. Their battles were numerous, 
 and sometimes, taken separately, deci- 
 sive ; but the public spirit and resources 
 of each city were called out by defeat, 
 and we generally find a new armament 
 replace the losses of an unsuccessful 
 combat. In this respect, the naval con- 
 test between Pisa and Genoa, though 
 much longer protracted, resembles that of 
 Rome and Carthage in the first Punic war. 
 But Pisa was reserved for her ^Egades. 
 In one fatal battle, off the little isle of 
 Meloria, in 1284, her whole navy was 
 destroyed. Several unfortunate and ex- 
 pensive armaments had almost exhausted 
 the state ; and this was the last effort, by 
 private sacrifices, to equip one more fleet. 
 After this defeat it was in vain to con- 
 tend for empire. Eleven thousand Pi- 
 sans languished for many years in prison ; 
 it was a current saying, that whoever 
 would see Pisa, should seek her at Ge- 
 noa. A treacherous chief, that Count 
 Ugolino, whose guilt was so terribly 
 avenged, is said to have purposely lost 
 the battle, and prevented the ransom of 
 the captives, to secure his power ; accu- 
 sations that obtain easy credit with an 
 unsuccessful people. 
 
 From the epoch of the battle of Melo- 
 ria, Pisa ceased to be a maritime power. 
 Forty years afterward she was stripped 
 of her ancient colony, the Island of Sar- 
 dinia. The four Pisan families who Ijad 
 been invested with that conquest had 
 been apt to consider it as their absolute 
 property ; their appellation of judge 
 seemed to indicate deputed power; but 
 they sometimes assumed that of king; 
 and several attempts had been made to 
 establish an immediate dependance on 
 the empire, or even on the pope. A new 
 potentate had now come forward on the 
 stage. The malecontent feudataries of 
 Sardinia made overtures to the King of 
 Aragon, who had no scruples about at- 
 tacking the indisputable possession of a 
 declining republic. Pisa made a few un- 
 availing efforts to defend Sardinia; but 
 the nominal superiority was hardly worth 
 a contest, and she surrendered her rights 
 to the crown of Aragon. Her commerce 
 now dwindled with her greatness. Du- 
 ring the fourteenth century, Pisa almost 
 renounced the ocean, and directed her 
 main attention to the politics of Tusca- 
 ny. Ghibelin by invariable predilection, 
 she was in constant opposition to the 
 Guelf cities which looked up to Flo- 
 rence. But in the fourteenth century the 
 
 names of freeman and Ghibelin were not 
 easily united ; and a city in that interest 
 stood insulated between the republics of 
 an opposite faction and the tyrants of 
 her own. Pisa fell several times under 
 the yoke of usurpers ; she was included 
 in the wide-spreading acquisitions of 
 Gian Galeazzo Visconti ; at his death 
 one of his family seized the dominion, 
 and finally, the Florentines purchased 
 for 400,000 florins a rival and once equal 
 city. The Pisans made a resistance 
 more according to what they had been 
 than what they were. 
 
 The early history of Genoa, in all her 
 foreign relations, is involved in Genoa. 
 that of Pisa. As allies against Her wars 
 the Saracens of Africa, Spain, and the 
 Mediterranean islands, as co-rivals in 
 commerce with these very Saracens, or 
 with the Christians of the East, as co-op- 
 erators in the great expeditions under the 
 banner of the cross, or as engaged in 
 deadly warfare with each other, the two 
 republics stand in continual parallel. 
 From the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, Genoa was, I think, the more 
 prominent and flourishing of the two. 
 She had conquered the Island of Corsica 
 at the same time that Pisa reduced Sar- 
 dinia; and her acquisition, though less 
 considerable, was longer preserved. Her 
 territory at home, the ancient Liguria, 
 was much more extensive, and, what 
 was most important, contained a greater 
 range of seacoast than that of Pisa. 
 But the commercial and maritime pros- 
 perity of Genoa may be dated from the 
 recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks 
 in 1261. Jealous of the Venetians, by 
 whose arms the Latin emperors had been 
 placed, and were still maintained on their 
 throne, the Genoese assisted Paloeologus 
 in overturning that usurpation. They 
 obtained in consequence the suburb of 
 Pera or Galata over against Constantino- 
 ple as an exclusive settlement, where 
 their colony was ruled by a magistrate 
 sent from home, and frequently defied 
 the Greek capital with its armed galleys 
 and intrepid seamen. From this conve- 
 nient station Genoa extended her con> 
 merce into the Black Sea, and established 
 her principal factory at CafTa, in the Cri- 
 mean peninsula. This commercial mo- 
 nopoly, for such she endeavoured to ren- 
 der it, aggravated the animosity of Ven- 
 ice. As Pisa retired from the A nd Venice, 
 field of waters, a new enemy 
 appeared upon the horizon to dispute the 
 maritime dominion of Genoa. Her first 
 war with Venice was in 1258. The sea- 
 ond was not till after the victory of Me 
 
168 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 loria had crushed her more ancient ene- 
 my. It broke out in 1293, and was pros- 
 ecuted with determined fury, and a great 
 display of naval strength on both sides. 
 One Genoese armament, as we are as- 
 sured by an historian, consisted of one 
 hundred and fifty-five galleys, each man- 
 ned with from two hundred and twenty 
 to three hundred sailors ;* a force aston- 
 ishing to those who know the slender re- 
 sources of Italy in modern times, but 
 which is rendered credible by several 
 analogous facts of good authority. It 
 was, however, beyond any other exer- 
 tion. The usual fleets of Genoa and Ven- 
 ice were of seventy to ninety galleys. 
 
 Perhaps the naval exploits of these 
 two republics may afford a more inter- 
 esting spectacle to some minds than any 
 other part of Italian history. Compared 
 with military transactions of the same 
 age, they are more sanguinary, more 
 brilliant, and exhibit full as much skill 
 and intrepidity. But maritime warfare is 
 scanty in circumstances, and the indefi- 
 niteness of its locality prevents it from 
 resting in the memory. And though the 
 wars of Genoa and Venice were not 
 always so unconnected with territorial 
 politics as those of the former city with 
 Pisa, yet, from the alternation of success 
 and equality of forces, they did not often 
 produce any decisive effect. One mem- 
 orable encounter in the Sea of Marmora, 
 where the Genoese fought and conquered 
 single-handed against the Venetians, the 
 Catalans, and the Greeks, hardly belongs 
 to Italian history. f 
 
 But the most remarkable war, and that 
 War of productive of the greatest conse- 
 Chioggia. quences, was one that commen- 
 ced in 1378, after several acts of hostility 
 in the Levant, wherein the Venetians 
 appear to have been the principal ag- 
 gressors. Genoa did not stand alone in 
 this war. A formidable confederacy was 
 exerted against Venice, who had given 
 provocation to many enemies. Of this 
 Francis Carrara, signor of Padua, and 
 the King of Hungary, were the leaders. 
 But the principal struggle was, as usual, 
 upon the waves. During the winter of 
 1378, a Genoese fleet kept the sea, and 
 ravaged the shores of Dalmatia. The 
 Venetian armament had been weakened 
 by an epidemic disease, and when Vittor 
 Pisani, their admiral, gave battle to the 
 enemy, he was compelled to fight with a 
 hasty conscription of landsmen against 
 the best sailors in the world. Entirely 
 defeated, and taking refuge at Venice 
 
 with only seven galleys, Pisani was cast 
 into prison, as if his ill fortune had been 
 his crime. Meanwhile the Genoese fleet, 
 augmented by a strong re-enforcement, 
 rode before the long natural ramparts 
 that separate the lagunes of Venice from 
 the Adriatic. Six passages intersect the 
 islands which constitute this barrier, be- 
 sides the broader outlets of Brondolo and 
 Fossone, through which the waters of 
 the Brenta and the Adige are discharged. 
 The lagune itself, as is well known, con- 
 sists of extremely shallow water, unnav- 
 igable for any vessel, except along the 
 course of artificial and intricate passages. 
 Notwithstanding the apparent difficulties 
 of such an enterprise, Pietro Doria, the 
 Genoese admiral, determined to reduce 
 the city. His first successes gave him 
 reason to hope. He forced the passage, 
 and stormed the little town of Chioggia,* 
 built upon the inside of the isle bearing 
 that name, about twenty-five miles south 
 of Venice. Nearly four thousand prison- 
 ers fell here into his hands : an augury, 
 as it seemed, of a more splendid triumph. 
 In the consternation this misfortune in- 
 spired at Venice, the first impulse was 
 to ask for peace. The ambassadors car- 
 ried with them seven Genoese prisoners, 
 as a sort of peace-offering to the admiral, 
 and were empowered to make large and 
 humiliating concessions, reserving noth- 
 ing but the liberty of Venice. Francis 
 Carrara strongly urged his allies to treat 
 for peace. But the Genoese were stim- 
 ulated by long hatred, and intoxicated by 
 this unexpected opportunity of revenge. 
 Doria, calling the ambassadors into coun- 
 cil, thus addressed them : " Ye shall 
 obtain no peace from us, I swear to you, 
 nor from the Lord of Padua, till first we 
 have put a curb in the mouths of those 
 wild horses that stand upon the place of 
 St. Mark. When they are bridled, you 
 shall have enough of peace. Take back 
 with you your Genoese captives, for I 
 am coming within a few days to release 
 both them and their companions from 
 your prisons." When this answer was 
 reported to the senate, they prepared to 
 defend themselves with the characteris- 
 tic firmness of their government. Every 
 eye was turned towards a great man 
 unjustly punished, their admiral, Vittor 
 Pisani. He was called out of prison to 
 defend his country amid general accla- 
 mations ; but, equal in magnanimity and 
 simple republican patriotism to the no- 
 blest characters of antiquity, Pisani re- 
 
 Muratori, A. D. 1295. 
 
 * Chioggia, known at Venice by the name of 
 
 Chioza, according to the usage of the Venetian 
 
 t Gibbon, c. 63. dialect, which changes the g into z. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 169 
 
 pressed the favouring voices of the mul- 
 titude, and bade them reserve their enthu- 
 siasm for St. Mark, the symbol and war- 
 cry of Venice. Under the vigorous com- 
 mand of Pisani, the canals were fortified 
 or occupied by large vessels, armed with 
 artillery ; thirty-four galleys were equip- 
 ped ; every citizen contributed according 
 to his power ; in the entire want of com- 
 mercial resources (for Venice had not a 
 merchant-ship during this war), private 
 plate was melted; and the senate held 
 out the promise of ennobling thirty fami- 
 lies, who should be most forward in this 
 strife of patriotism. 
 
 The new fleet was so ill provided with 
 seamen, that for some months the admi- 
 ral employed them only in mano3uvring 
 along the canals. From some unaccounta- 
 ble supineness, or more probably from the 
 insuperable difficulties of the undertaking, 
 the Genoese made no assault upon the 
 city. They had, indeed, fair grounds to 
 hope its reduction by famine or despair. 
 Every access to the continent was cut 
 off by the troops of Padua ; and the King 
 of Hungary had mastered almost all the 
 Venetian towns in Istria and along the 
 Dalmatian coast. The Doge Contarini, 
 taking the chief command, appeared at 
 length with his fleet near Chioggia, before 
 the Genoese were aware. They were 
 still less aware of his secret design. He 
 pushed one of the large round vessels, 
 then called cocche, into the narrow pas- 
 sage of Chioggia, which connects the 
 lagune with the sea, and mooring her 
 athwart the channel, interrupted that com- 
 munication. Attacked with fury by the 
 enemy, this vessel went down on the spot, 
 and the doge improved his advantage, by 
 sinking loads of stones, until the passage 
 became absolutely unnavigable. It was 
 still possible for the Genoese fleet to 
 follow the principal canal of the lagune 
 towards Venice and the northern passa- 
 ges, or to sail out of it by the harbour of 
 Brondolo ; but whether from confusion 
 or from miscalculating the dangers of 
 their position, they suffered the Vene- 
 tians to close the canal upon them by the 
 same means they had used at Chioggia, 
 and even to place their fleet in the en- 
 trance of Brondolo, so near to the lagune 
 that the Genoese could not form their 
 ships in line of battle. The circumstan- 
 ces of the two combatants were thus en- 
 tirely changed. But the Genoese fleet, 
 though besieged in Chioggia, was im- 
 pregnable, and their command of the 
 land secured them from famine. Ven- 
 ice, notwithstanding her unexpected suc- 
 cess, was still very far from secure ; it 
 
 was difficult for the doge to keep his 
 position through the winter ; and if the 
 enemy could appear in open sea, the risks 
 of combat were extremely hazardous. It 
 is said that the senate deliberated upon 
 transporting the seat of their liberty to 
 Candia, and that the doge had announced 
 his intention to raise the siege of Chiog- 
 gia, if expected succours did not arrive by 
 the first of January, 1380. On that very 
 day, Carlo Zeno, an admiral, who, igno- 
 rant of the dangers of his country, had 
 been supporting the honour of her flag in 
 the Levant and on the coasts of Liguria, 
 appeared with a re-enforcement of eigh- 
 teen galleys and a store of provisions. 
 From that moment the confidence of 
 Venice revived. The fleet, now superior 
 in strength to the enemy, began to attack 
 them with vivacity. After several months 
 of obstinate resistance, the Genoese, 
 whom their republic had ineffectually 
 attempted to relieve by a fresh arma- 
 ment, blocked up in the town of Chiog- 
 gia, and pressed by hunger, were obliged 
 to surrender. Nineteen galleys only out 
 of forty-eight were in good condition ; 
 and the crews were equally diminished 
 in the ten months of their occupation 
 of Chioggia. The pride of Genoa was 
 deemed to be justly humbled ; and even 
 her own historian confesses, that God 
 would not suffer so noble a city as Venice 
 to become the spoil of a conqueror.* 
 
 Each of the two republics had suffi- 
 cient reason to lament their mutual pre- 
 judices, and the selfish cupidity of their 
 merchants, which usurps in all maritime 
 countries the name of patriotism. Though 
 the capture of Chioggia did not terminate 
 the war, both parties were exhausted, 
 and willing next year to accept the me- 
 diation of the Duke of Savoy. By the 
 peace of Turin, Venice surrendered most 
 of her territorial possessions to the King 
 of Hungary. That prince, and Francis 
 Carrara, were the only gainers. Genoa 
 obtained the Isle of Tenedos, one of the 
 original subjects of dispute ; a poor in- 
 demnity for her losses. Though, upon a 
 hasty view, the result of this war appears 
 more unfavourable to Venice, yet in fact 
 it is the epoch of the decline of Genoa. 
 From this time she never commanded 
 the ocean with such navies as before; 
 her commerce gradually went into de- 
 cay ; and the fifteenth century, the most 
 
 * G. Stella, Annales Genuenses ; Gataro, Isto- 
 ria Padovana. Both these contemporary works, 
 of which the latter gives the best relation, are in 
 the seventeenth volume of Muratori's collection. 
 M. Sismondi's narrative is very clear and spirited. 
 Hist, des Republ. Ital., t. vii., p. 205-232. 
 
170 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 splendid in the annals of Venice, is, till 
 recent times, the most ignominious in 
 those of Genoa. But this was partly 
 owing to internal dissensions, by which 
 her liberty", as well as glory, was for a 
 while suspended. 
 
 At Genoa, as in other cities of Lom- 
 Govem- bardy, the principal magistrates of 
 ment of the republic were originally styled 
 Genoa. consu i Si A chronicle, drawn up 
 under the inspection of the senate, per- 
 petuates the names of these early magis- 
 trates. It appears that their number va- 
 ried from four to six, annually elected by 
 the people in their full parliament. These 
 consuls presided over the republic, and 
 commanded the forces by land and sea ; 
 while another class of magistrates, bear- 
 ing the same title, were annually elected 
 by the several companies into which the 
 people were divided, for the administra- 
 tion of civil justice.* This was the re- 
 gimen of the twelfth century ; but in the 
 next, Genoa fell into the fashion of in- 
 trusting the executive power to a foreign 
 podesta. The podesta was assisted by a 
 council of eight, chosen by the eight com- 
 panies of nobility. This institution, if in- 
 deed it were any thing more than a cus- 
 tom or usurpation, originated probably 
 not much later than the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century. It gave not only an 
 aristocratic, but almost an oligarchical 
 character to the constitution, since many 
 of the nobility were not members of these 
 eight societies. Of the senate or coun- 
 cils we hardly know more than their ex- 
 istence ; they are very little mentioned 
 by historians. Every thing of a general 
 nature, every thing that required the ex- 
 pression of public will, was reserved for 
 the entire and unrepresented sovereignty 
 of the people. In no city was the parlia- 
 ment so often convened ; for war, for 
 peace, for alliance, for change of govern- 
 ment.! These very dissonant elements 
 were not likely to harmonize. The peo- 
 ple, sufficiently accustomed to the forms 
 of democracy to imbibe its spirit, repi- 
 ned at the practical influence which was 
 thrown into the scale of the nobles. Nor 
 did some of the latter class scruple to 
 enter that path of ambition, which leads 
 to power by flattery of the populace. 
 Two or three times within the thirteenth 
 century, a highborn demagogue had near- 
 ly overturned the general liberty, like the 
 Torriani at Milan, through the pretence 
 of defending that of individuals. J Among 
 the nobility themselves, four houses were 
 distinguished beyond all the rest; the 
 
 * Sismondi, t. i., p. 353. 
 f Id., t. iii., p. 319. 
 
 Id., p. 324. 
 
 Grimaldi, the Fieschi, the Doria, the Spi- 
 nola ; the two former of Guelf politics, 
 the latter adherents of the empire.* Per- 
 haps their equality of forces, and a jeal- 
 ousy which even the families of the same 
 faction entertained of each other, pre- 
 vented any one from usurping the signio- 
 ry at Genoa. Neither the Guelf nor 
 Ghibelin party obtaining a decisive pre- 
 ponderance, continual revolutions occur- 
 red in the city. The most celebrated was 
 the expulsion of the Ghibelins under the 
 Doria and Spinola, in 1318. They had 
 recourse to the Visconti of Milan, and 
 their own resources were not unequal to 
 cope with their country. The Guelfs 
 thought it necessary to call in Robert, 
 king of Naples, always ready to give as- 
 sistance as the price of dominion, and 
 conferred upon him the temporary sover- 
 eignty of Genoa. A siege of several 
 years duration, if we believe an historian 
 of that age, produced as many remarka- 
 ble exploits as that of Troy. They have 
 not proved so interesting to posterity. 
 The Ghibelins continued for a length of 
 time excluded from the city, but in pos- 
 session of the seaport of Savona, whence 
 they traded and equipped fleets, as a rival 
 republic, and even entered into a separate 
 war with Venice. f Experience of the 
 uselessness of hostility, and the loss to 
 which they exposed their common coun- 
 try, produced a reconciliation, or rather a 
 compromise, in 1331, when the Ghibelins 
 returned to Genoa. But the people felt 
 that many years of misfortune had been 
 owing to the private enmities of four 
 overbearing families. An opportunity 
 soon offered of reducing their influence 
 within very narrow bounds. 
 
 The Ghibelin faction was at the head, 
 of affairs in 1339, a Doria and a E i ec tionof 
 Spinola being its leaders, when the first 
 the discontent of a large fleet in Doge - 
 want of pay broke out in open insurrec- 
 tion. Savona and the neighbouring towns 
 took arms avowedly against the aristo- 
 cratical tyranny ; and the capital was it- 
 self on the point of joining the insurgents. 
 There was, by the Genoese constitution, 
 a magistrate, named the abbot of the 
 people, acting as a kind of tribune for 
 their protection against the oppression 
 of the nobility. His functions are not, 
 however, in any book I have seen, very 
 clearly defined. This office had been 
 abolished by the present government, and 
 it was the first demand of the malecon- 
 tents that it should be restored. This 
 was acceded to, and twenty delegates 
 
 * Sismondi, t. iii., p. 328. 
 f Villani, 1. ix., passim. 
 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 171 
 
 were appointed to make the choice. 
 While they delayed and the populace was 
 grown weary of waiting, a nameless ar- 
 tisan called out from an elevated station 
 that he could direct them to a fit person. 
 When the people, in jest, bade him speak 
 on, he uttered the name of Simon Boc- 
 canegra. This was a man of noble birth, 
 and well esteemed, who was then present 
 among the crowd. The word was sud- 
 denly taken up; a cry was heard that 
 Boccanegra should be abbot ; he was in- 
 stantly brought forward, and the sword 
 of justice forced into his hand. As soon 
 as silence could be obtained, he modestly 
 thanked them for their favour, but decli- 
 ned an office which his nobility disquali- 
 fied him from exercising. At this, a sin- 
 gle voice out of the crowd exclaimed 
 Signior! and this title was reverberated 
 from every side. Fearful of worse con- 
 sequences, the actual magistrates urged 
 him to comply with the people, and ac- 
 cept the office of abbot. But Boccanegra, 
 addressing the assembly, declared his 
 readiness to become their abbot, signior, 
 or whatever they would. The cry of sig- 
 nior was now louder than before ; while 
 others cried out let him be duke. The 
 latter title was received with greater ap- 
 probation ; and Boccanegra was conduct- 
 ed to the palace, the first duke, or doge 
 of Genoa.* 
 
 Caprice alone, or an idea of more pomp 
 Subsequent and dignity, led the populace, 
 revolutions. W e may conjecture, to prefer 
 this title to that of signior; but it produ- 
 ced important and highly beneficial con- 
 sequences. In all neighbouring cities, an 
 arbitrary government had been already 
 established under their respective signi- 
 ors ; the name was associated with indef- 
 inite power : while that of doge had only 
 been taken by the elective and very lim- 
 ited chief magistrate of another maritime 
 republic. Neither Boccanegra nor his 
 successors ever rendered their authority 
 unlimited or hereditary. The constitu- 
 tion of Genoa, from an oppressive aris- 
 tocracy, became a mixture of the two 
 other forms, with an exclusion of the 
 nobles from power. Those four great 
 families who had domineered alternately 
 for almost a century, lost their influence 
 at home after the revolution of 1339. 
 Yet, what is remarkable enough, they 
 were still selected in preference for the 
 highest of trusts; their names are still 
 identified with the glory of Genoa ; her 
 fleets hardly sailed but under a Doria, a 
 Spinola, or a Grimaldi ; such confidence 
 
 * G. Stella, Annal. Genuenses. in Script. Rer, 
 Ital., t. xvii., p. 1072 
 
 
 could the republic bestow upon their pa- 
 triotism, or that of those whom they com- 
 manded. Meanwhile -two or three new 
 families, a plebeian oligarchy, filled their 
 place in domestic honours ; the Adorni, 
 the Fregosi, the Montalti, contended for 
 the ascendant. From their competition 
 ensued revolutions too numerous almost 
 for a separate history ; in four years, from 
 1390 to 1394, the doge was ten times chan- 
 ged ; swept away or brought back in the 
 fluctuations of popular tumult. Antoni- 
 otto Adorno, four times doge of Genoa, 
 had sought the friendship of Gian Galeaz- 
 zo Visconti ; but that crafty tyrant medi- 
 tated the subjugation of the republic, and 
 played her factions against one another to 
 render her fall secure. Adorno perceiv- 
 ed that there was no hope for ultimate in- 
 dependence, but by making a temporary 
 sacrifice of it. His own power, ambi- 
 tious as he had been, he voluntarily re- 
 signed ; and placed the republic under the 
 protection or signiory of the King of 
 France. Terms were stipulated very 
 favourable to her liberties; but with a 
 French garrison once received into the 
 city, they were not always sure of ob- 
 servance. * 
 
 While Genoa lost even her political in- 
 dependence, Venice became more . 
 conspicuous and powerful than be- 
 fore. That famous republic deduces its 
 original, and even its liberty, from an era 
 beyond the commencement of the middle 
 ages. The Venetians boast of a perpet- 
 ual emancipation from the yoke of bar- 
 barians. From that ignominious servi- 
 tude some natives, or, as their historians 
 will have it, nobles of Aquileja and 
 neighbouring towns,f fled to the small 
 cluster of islands that rise amid the 
 shoals at the mouth of the Brenta. Here 
 they built the town of Rivoalto, the mod- 
 ern Venice, in 421 ; but their chief settle- 
 ment was, till the beginning of the ninth 
 century, at Malamocco. A living writer 
 has, in a passage of remarkable eloqueilce, 
 described the sovereign republic, immove- 
 able upon the bosom of the waters, from 
 which her palaces emerge, contemplating 
 the successive tides of continental inva- 
 sion, the rise and fall of empires, the 
 change of dynasties, the whole moving 
 scene of human revolution; till, in her 
 own turn, the last surviving witness of 
 antiquity, the common link between two 
 periods of civilization, she has submitted 
 to the destroying hand of time.J Some 
 
 * Sismondi, t. yii., p. 237, 367. 
 t Ebbe principio, says Sanuto haughtily, non da 
 pastori, come ebbe Roma, ma da potenti, e nobili. 
 Sismondi, t. i., p. 309. 
 
 <* 
 
172 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 part of this renown must, on a cold- 
 blooded scrutiny, be detracted from Ven- 
 ice. Her independence was, at the best, 
 the fruit of her obscurity. Neglected 
 Her depend- u Pn their islands, a people of 
 anceouthe fishermen might without mo- 
 G ire Ck em lestation elect their own' magis- 
 trates ; a very equivocal proof 
 of sovereignty in cities much more con- 
 siderable than Venice. But both the 
 western and the eastern empire alter- 
 nately pretended to exercise dominion 
 over her ; she was conquered by Pepin, 
 son of Charlemagne, and restored by him, 
 as the Chronicles say, to the Greek em- 
 peror Nicephorus. There fe every ap- 
 pearance that the Venetians had always 
 considered themselves as subject, in a 
 large sense, not exclusive of their muni- 
 cipal self-government, to the eastern em- 
 pire.* And this connexion was not bro- 
 ken, in the early part, at least, of the 
 tenth century. But, for every essential 
 purpose, Venice might long before be 
 deemed an independent state. Her doge 
 was not confirmed at Constantinople; 
 she paid no tribute, and lent no assistance 
 in war. Her own navies, in the ninth 
 century, encountered the Normans, the 
 Saracens, and the Sclavonians in the 
 Adriatic Sea. Upon the coast of Dalma- 
 tia were several Greek cities, which the 
 empire had ceased to protect ; and which, 
 like Venice itself, became republics for 
 want of a master. Ragusa was one of 
 these, and, more fortunate than the rest, 
 conquest of survived as an independent city 
 Daimatia. till our own age. [A. D. 997.] 
 In return for the assistance of Venice, 
 these little seaports put themselves under 
 her government; the Sclavonian pirates 
 were repressed ; and after acquiring, 
 partly by consent, partly by arms, a large 
 tract of maritime territory, the doge took 
 
 * Nicephorus stipulates with Charlemagne for 
 his faithful city of Venice, Quae in devotione impe- 
 ril illibatse steterant. Danduli Chronicon, in Mu- 
 ratori, Script. Rer. Ital., t. xii., p. 156. In the 
 tenth century, Constantino Porphyrogenitus, in his 
 book De Administratione Imperil, claims the Ve- 
 netians as his subjects, though he admits that they 
 had, for peace' sake, paid tribute to Pepin and his 
 successors as kings of Italy, p. 71. I have never 
 seen the famous Squittinio della liberta Veneta, 
 which gave the republic so much offence in the 
 seventeenth century ; but a very strong case is 
 made out against their early independence in Gi- 
 annone's history, t. ii., p. 283, edit. Haia, 1753. 
 Muratori informs us, that so late as 1084, the doge 
 obtained the title of Imperialis Protosevastos from 
 the court of Constantinople ; a title which he con- 
 tinued always to use. (Annali d'ltalia, ad ann.) 
 But I should lay no stress on this circumstance. 
 The Greek, like the German emperors in modern 
 times, had a mint of specious titles, which passed 
 for ready money over Christendom. 
 
 the title of Duke of Daimatia, which is said 
 by Dandolo to have been confirmed at 
 Constantinople. Three or four centu- 
 ries, however, elapsed, before the repub- 
 lic became secure of these conquests, 
 which were frequently wrested from her 
 by rebellions of the inhabitants, or by 
 her powerful neighbour, the King of Hun- 
 gary. 
 
 A more important source of Venetian 
 greatness was commerce. In H eracqui- 
 the darkest and most barbarous sitions in 
 period, before Genoa or even theLevant - 
 Pisa had entered into mercantile pursuits, 
 Venice carried on an extensive traffic 
 both with the Greek and Saracen regions 
 of the Levant. The crusades enriched 
 and aggrandized Venice more, perhaps, 
 than any other city. Her splendour 
 may, however, be dated from the taking 
 of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. 
 In this famous enterprise, which diverted 
 a great armament destined for the recov- 
 ery of Jerusalem, the French and Vene- 
 tian nations were alone engaged; but 
 the former only as private adventurers, 
 the latter with the whole strength of 
 their republic under its doge, Henry 
 Dandolo. Three eighths of the city of 
 Constantinople, and an equal proportion 
 of the provinces, were allotted to them 
 in the partition of the spoil, and the doge 
 took the singular, but accurate title, duke 
 of three eighths of the Roman empire. 
 Their share was increased by purchases 
 from less opulent crusaders, especially 
 one of much importance, the Island of 
 Candia, which they retained till the mid- 
 dle of the seventeenth century. These 
 foreign acquisitions were generally grant- 
 ed out in fief to private Venetian nobles 
 under the supremacy of the republic.* 
 It was thus that the Ionian islands, to 
 adopt the vocabulary of our day, came 
 under the dominion of Venice, and guar- 
 antied that sovereignty which she now 
 began to affect over the Adriatic. Those 
 of the Archipelago were lost in the six- 
 teenth century. This political greatness 
 was sustained by an increasing com- 
 merce. No Christian state preserved so 
 considerable an intercourse with the 
 Mahometans. While Genoa kept the 
 keys of the Black Sea by her colonies of 
 Pera and Caffa, Venice directed her ves- 
 sels to Acre and Alexandria. These 
 connexions, as is the natural effect of 
 trade, deadened the sense of religious an- 
 tipathy ; and the Venetians were some- 
 times charged with obstructing all efforts 
 towards a new crusade, or even any par- 
 
 * Sismondi, t. ii., p. 431. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY 
 
 173 
 
 tial attacks upon the Mahometan na- 
 tions. 
 
 The earliest form of government at 
 Venetian Venice, as we collect from an 
 government, epistle of Cassiodorus in the 
 sixth century, was by twelve annual trib- 
 unes. Perhaps the union of the differ- 
 ent islanders was merely federative. 
 However, in 697, they resolved to elect 
 a chief magistrate by name of duke, or, 
 in their dialect, Doge of Venice. No 
 councils appear to have limited his pow- 
 er, or represented the national will. The 
 doge was general and judge ; he was 
 sometimes permitted to associate his son 
 with him, and thus to prepare the road 
 for hereditary power ; his government 
 had all the prerogatives, and, as far as in 
 such a state of manners was possible, 
 the pomp of a monarchy. But he acted 
 in important matters with the concur- 
 rence of a general assembly, though from 
 the want of positive restraints, his exec- 
 utive government might be considered as 
 nearly absolute. Time, however, de- 
 monstrated to the Venetians the imper- 
 fections of such a constitution. Limita- 
 tions were accordingly imposed on the 
 doge in 1032 ; he was prohibited from as- 
 sociating a son in the government, and 
 obliged to act with the consent of two 
 elected counsellors, and, on important 
 occasions, to call in some of the principal 
 citizens. No other change appears to 
 have taken place till 1172; long after 
 every other Italian city had provided for 
 its liberty by constitutional laws, more 
 or less successful, but always manifest- 
 ing a good deal of contrivance and com- 
 plication. Venice was, however, dissat- 
 isfied with her existing institutions. Gen- 
 eral assemblies were found, in practice, 
 inconvenient and unsatisfactory. Yet 
 some adequate safeguard against a ma- 
 gistrate of indefinite powers was requi- 
 red by freemen. A representative coun- 
 cil, as in other republics, justly appeared 
 the best innovation that could be intro- 
 duced.* 
 
 The great council of Venice, as estab- 
 lished in 1172, was to consist of four 
 hundred and eighty citizens, equally 
 taken from the six districts of the city, 
 and annually renewed. But the election 
 
 * Sismondi, t. iii., p. 287. As I have never met 
 with the Storia civile Veneta, by Vettor Sandi, in 
 nine vols. 4to, or even Laugier's History of Venice, 
 my reliance has chiefly been placed on M. Sismondi, 
 who has made use of Sandi, the latest and probably 
 most accurate historian. To avoid frequent refer- 
 ence, the principal passages in Sismondi relative 
 to the domestic revolutions of Venice are, t. i., p. 
 323 ; t. iii., p. 287-300; t. iv., p. 349-370. 
 
 was not made immediately by the people. 
 Two electors, called tribunes, from each of 
 the six districts, appointed the members 
 of the council by separate nomination. 
 These tribunes, at first, were themselves 
 chosen by the people ; so that the inter- 
 vention of this electoral body did not ap- 
 parently trespass upon the democratical 
 character of the constitution. But the 
 great council, principally composed of 
 men of high birth, and invested by the 
 law with the appointment of the doge and 
 of all the councils of magistracy, seem, 
 early in the thirteenth century, to have 
 assumed the right of naming their own 
 constituents. Besides appointing the 
 tribunes, they took upon themselves an- 
 other privilege ; that of confirming or re- 
 jecting their successors before they re- 
 signed their functions. These, usurpa- 
 tions rendered the annual election almost 
 nugatory ; the same members were usu- 
 ally renewed, and, though the dignity of 
 counsellor was not yet hereditary, it re- 
 mained, upon the whole, in the same fam- 
 ilies. In this transitional state the Vene- 
 tian government continued during the 
 thirteenth century ; the people actually 
 debarred of power, but an hereditary 
 aristocracy not completely or legally 
 confirmed. The right of electing, or 
 rather of re-electing, the great council, 
 was transferred in 1297 from the tribunes, 
 whose office was abolished, to the coun- 
 cil of forty ; they balloted upon the names 
 of the members who already sat ; and 
 whoever obtained twelve favouring balls 
 out of forty retained his place. The va- 
 cancies occasioned by rejection or death 
 were filled up by a supplemental list, 
 formed by three electors nominated in 
 the great council. But they were ex- 
 pressly prohibited, by laws of 1298 and 
 1300, from inserting the name of any one 
 whose paternal ancestors had not enjoy- 
 ed the same honour. Thus an exclusive 
 hereditary aristocracy was finally estab- 
 lished. And the personal rights of noble 
 descent were rendered complete in 1319, 
 by the abolition of all elective forms. By 
 the constitution of Venice, as it was then 
 settled, every descendant of a member of 
 the great council, on attaining twenty- 
 five years of age, entered as of right into 
 that body, which of course became un- 
 limited in its numbers.* 
 
 These gradual changes between 1297 and 1319 
 were first made known by Sandi, from whom M. 
 Sismondi has introduced the facts into his own his- 
 tory. I notice this because all former writers, both 
 ancient and modern, fix the complete and final es- 
 tablishment of the Venetian aristocracy in 1297. 
 Twenty-five years complete was the statutable 
 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Ilf. 
 
 But an assembly so numerous as the 
 great council, even before it was thus 
 thrown open to all the nobility, could 
 never have conducted the public affairs 
 with that secrecy and steadiness which 
 were characteristic of Venice ; and with- 
 out an intermediary power between the 
 doge and the patrician multitude, the con- 
 stitution would have gained nothing in 
 stability to compensate for the loss of 
 popular freedom. The great council had 
 proceeded, very soon after its institution, 
 to limit the ducal prerogatives. That 
 of exercising criminal justice, a trust of 
 vast importance, was transferred, in 1179, 
 to a council of forty members, annually 
 chosen. The executive government it- 
 self was thought too considerable for the 
 doge without some material limitations. 
 Instead of naming his own assistants or 
 pregadi, he was only to preside in a coun- 
 cil of sixty members, to whom the care 
 of the state in all domestic and foreign 
 relations, and the previous deliberation 
 upon proposals submitted to the great 
 council, was confided. This council of 
 pregadi, generally called in later times 
 the senate, was enlarged in the fourteenth 
 century by sixty additional members; 
 and as a great part of the magistrates had 
 also seats in it, the whole number amount- 
 ed to between two and three hundred. 
 Though the legislative power, properly 
 speaking, remained with the great coun- 
 cil, the senate used to impose taxes, and 
 had the exclusive right of making peace 
 and war. It was annually renewed, like 
 almost all other councils at Venice, by 
 the great council. But since even this 
 body was top numerous for the prelimi- 
 nary discussion of business, six counsel- 
 lors, forming, along with the doge, the 
 signiory, or visible representative of the 
 republic, were empowered to despatch 
 orders, to correspond with ambassadors, 
 to treat with foreign states, to convoke 
 and preside in the councils, and perform 
 other duties of an administration. In 
 part of these they were obliged to act 
 with the concurrence of what was term- 
 ed the college, comprising, besides them- 
 selves, certain select counsellors from 
 different constituted authorities.* 
 
 age, at which every Venetian noble had a right to 
 take his seat in the great council. But the names 
 of those who had passed the age of twenty were 
 annually put into an urn, and one fifth drawn out 
 by lot, who were thereupon admitted. On an aver- 
 age, therefore, the age of admission was about 
 twenty-three. Jannotus de Rep. Venet. Contare- 
 ni. Amelot de la Houssaye. 
 
 * The college of Savj consisted of sixteen per- 
 sons ; and it possessed the initiative in all public 
 measures that required the assent of the senate. 
 
 It might be imagined that a dignity 
 so shorn of its lustre as that of doge, 
 would not excite an overweening ambi- 
 tion. But the Venetians were still jeal- 
 ous of extinguished power; and while 
 their constitution was yet immature, the 
 great council planned new methods of 
 restricting their chief magistrate. An 
 oath was taken by the doge on his elec- 
 tion, so comprehensive as to embrace ev- 
 ery possible check upon undue influence. 
 He was bound not to correspond with 
 foreign states, or to open their letters, 
 except in the presence of the signiory ; 
 to acquire no property beyond the Vene- 
 tian dominions, and to resign what he 
 might already possess ; to interpose, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, in no judicial process, 
 and not to permit any citizen to use to- 
 kens of subjection in saluting him. As a 
 further security, they devised a remark- 
 ably complicated mode of supplying the 
 vacancy of his office. Election by open 
 suffrage is always liable to tumult or cor- 
 ruption ; nor does the method of secret 
 ballot, while it prevents the one, afford 
 in practice any adequate security against 
 the other. Election by lot incurs the 
 risk of placing incapable persons in situ- 
 ations of arduous trust. The Venetian 
 scheme was intended to combine the two 
 modes without their evils, by leaving the 
 absolute choice of their doge to electors 
 taken by lot. It was presumed that, 
 among a competent number of persons, 
 though taken promiscuously, good sense 
 and right principles would gain such an 
 ascendency as to prevent any flagrantly 
 improper nomination, if undue influence 
 could be excluded. For this purpose, 
 the ballot was rendered exceedingly com- 
 plicated, that no possible ingenuity or 
 stratagem might ascertain the electoral 
 body before the last moment. A single 
 lottery, if fairly conducted, is certainly 
 sufficient for this end. At Venice, as 
 many balls as there were members of 
 the great council present were placed in 
 an urn. Thirty of these were gilt. The 
 holders of gilt balls were reduced by a 
 second ballot to nine. The nine elected 
 forty, whom lot reduced to twelve. The 
 twelve chose twenty-five by separate nom- 
 ination.* The twenty-five were reduced 
 by lot to nine ; and each of the nine chose 
 
 For no single senator, much less any noble of the 
 great council, could propose any thing for debate. 
 The signiory had the same privilege. Thus the 
 virtual powers, even of the senate, were far more 
 limited than they appear at first sight ; and no pos- 
 sibility remained of innovation in the fundamental 
 principles of the constitution. 
 
 * Amelot de la Houssaye asserts this : but, ac- 
 cording to Contareni, the method was by ballot. 
 
PART II.} 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 175 
 
 five. These forty-five were reduced to 
 eleven, as before ; the eleven elected for- 
 ty-one, who were the ultimate voters for 
 a doge. This intricacy appears useless, 
 and consequently absurd ; but the origi- 
 nal principle of a Venetian election (for 
 something of the same kind was applied 
 to all their councils and magistrates) may 
 not always be unworthy of imitation. In 
 one of our best modern statutes, that for 
 regulating the trials of contested elections, 
 we have seen this mixture of chance and 
 selection very happily introduced. 
 
 An hereditary prince could never have 
 remained quiet in such trammels as were 
 imposed upon the Doge of Venice. But 
 early prejudice accustoms men to con- 
 sider restraint, even upon themselves, as 
 advantageous ; and the limitations of du- 
 cal power appeared to every Venetian as 
 fundamental as the great laws of the 
 English constitution do to ourselves. 
 Many doges of Venice, especially in the 
 middle ages, were considerable men ; but 
 they were content with the functions as- 
 signed to them, which, if they could avoid 
 the tantalizing comparison of sovereign 
 princes, were enough for the ambition of 
 republicans. For life the chief magis- 
 trates of their country, her noble citizens 
 for ever, they might thank her in their 
 own name for what she gave, and in that 
 of their posterity for what she withheld. 
 Once only a doge of Venice was tempted 
 to betray the freedom of the republic. 
 [A. D. 1355.] Marin Falieri, a man far ad- 
 vanced in life, engaged, from some petty 
 resentment, in a wild intrigue to overturn 
 the government. The conspiracy was 
 soon discovered, and the doge avowed his 
 guilt. An aristocracy so firm and so se- 
 vere did not hesitate to order his execu- 
 tion in the ducal palace. 
 
 For some years after what was called 
 the closing of the great council of the 
 law of 1296, which excluded all but the 
 families actually in possession, a good 
 deal of discontent showed itself among 
 the commonalty. Several commotions 
 took place about the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, with the object of 
 restoring a more popular regimen. Upon 
 the suppression of the last, in 1310, the 
 aristocracy sacrificed their own individual 
 freedom along with that of the people, 
 to the preservation of an imaginary priv- 
 ilege. They established the famous coun- 
 cil of ten, that most remarkable part of 
 the Venetian constitution. This council, 
 it should be observed, consisted in fact 
 of seventeen ; comprising the signiory, or 
 the doge and his six counsellors, as well 
 as the ten properly so called. The coun- 
 
 cil of ten had by usage, if not by right, a 
 controlling and dictatorial power over the 
 senate, and other magistrates ; rescinding 
 their decisions, and treating separately 
 with foreign princes. Their vast influ- 
 ence strengthened the executive govern- 
 ment, of which they formed a part, and 
 gave a vigour to its movements, which 
 the jealousy of the councils would possi- 
 bly have impeded. But they are chiefly 
 known as an arbitrary and inquisitorial 
 tribunal, the standing tyranny of Venice. 
 Excluding the old council of forty, a reg- 
 ular court of criminal judicature, not only 
 from the investigation of treasonable 
 charges, but of several other crimes of 
 magnitude, they inquired, they judged, 
 they punished, according to what they 
 called reason of state. The public eye 
 never penetrated the mystery of their 
 proceedings ; the accused was sometimes 
 not heard, never confronted with witnes- 
 ses ; the condemnation was secret as the 
 inquiry, the punishment undivulged like 
 both.* The terrible and odious machinery 
 of a police, the insidious spy, the sti- 
 pendiary informer, unknown to the care- 
 lessness of feudal governments, found 
 their natural soil in the republic of Venice, 
 Tumultuous assemblies were scarcely- 
 possible in so peculiar a city ; and pri- 
 vate conspiracies never failed to be de- 
 tected by the vigilance of the council of 
 ten. Compared with the Tuscan repub- 
 lics, the tranquillity of Venice is truly 
 striking. The names of Guelf and Ghib- 
 elin hardly raised any emotion in her 
 streets, though the government was con- 
 sidered in the first part of the fourteenth 
 century as rather inclined towards the 
 latter party.f But the wildest excesses 
 of faction are less dishonouring than the 
 stillness and moral degradation of servi- 
 tude. J 
 
 * Ilium etiam morem observant, ne reum, cum 
 de eo judicium laturi sunt, in collegium admittant, 
 neque cognitorem, aut oratorem quempiam, qui 
 ejus causam agat. Contareni de Rep. Venet. 
 
 t Villani several times speaks of the Venetians 
 as regular Ghibelins, 1. ix., c. 2 ; 1. x., c. 89, &c. 
 But this is put much too strongly : though their 
 government may have had a slight bias towards that 
 faction, they were in reality neutral, and far enough 
 removed from any domestic feuds upon that score, 
 
 t By the modern law of Venice, a nobleman 
 could not engage in trade without derogating from 
 his rank ; but I am not aware whether so absurd a 
 restriction existed in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries. I do not find this peculiarly observed 
 by Jannotti and Contareni, the oldest writers on 
 the Venetian government. It is noticed by Amelot 
 de la Houssaye, who tells us also, that the nobility 
 evaded the law by secret partnership with the priv- 
 ileged merchants, or cittadini, who formed a sep- 
 arate class at Venice. This was the custom u> 
 modern times. But I hava-. never understood the 
 
 i 
 
176 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Ill, 
 
 It was a very common theme with 
 political writers, till about the beginning 
 of the last century, when Venice fell al- 
 most into oblivion, to descant upon the 
 wisdom of this government. And indeed, 
 if the preservation of ancient institutions 
 be, as some appear to consider it, not a 
 means, but an end, and an end for which 
 the rights of man and laws of God may 
 at any time be set aside, we must ac- 
 knowledge that it was a wisely con- 
 structed system. Formed to compress 
 the two opposite forces from which re- 
 sistance might be expected, it kept both 
 the doge and the people in perfect sub- 
 ordination. Even the coalition of an ex- 
 ecutive magistrate with the multitude, so 
 fatal to most aristocracies, never endan- 
 gered that of Venice. It is most remark- 
 able, that a part of the constitution which 
 destroyed every man's security, and in- 
 curred general hatred, was still maintain- 
 ed by a sense of its necessity. The 
 council of ten, annually renewed, might 
 annually have been annihilated. The 
 great council had only to withhold their 
 suffrages from the new candidates, and 
 the tyranny expired of itself. This was 
 several times attempted (I speak now 
 of .more modern ages) ; but the nobles, 
 though detesting the council of ten, never 
 steadily persevered in refusing to re-elect 
 it. It was, in fact, become essential to 
 Venice. So great were the vices of her 
 constitution, that she could not endure 
 their remedies. If the council of ten had 
 been abolished at any time since the fif- 
 teenth century, if the removal of that 
 jealous despotism had given scope to the 
 corruption of a poor and debased aristoc- 
 racy, to the license of a people unworthy 
 of freedom, the republic would have soon 
 lost her territorial possessions, if not her 
 own independence. If indeed it be true, 
 as reported, that during the last hundred 
 years this formidable tribunal had sensi- 
 bly relaxed its vigilance, if the Venetian 
 government had become less tyrannical 
 through sloth, or decline of national 
 spirit, our conjecture will have acquired 
 the confirmation of experience. Expe- 
 rience has recently shown that a worse 
 calamity than domestic tyranny might 
 befall the queen of the Adriatic. In the 
 place of St. Mark, among the monuments 
 of extinguished greatness, a traveller may 
 
 principle or common sense of such a restriction, 
 especially combined with that other fundamental 
 law, which disqualified a Venetian nobleman from 
 possessing a landed estate on the terra firma of the 
 republic. The latter, however, did not extend, as I 
 have been informed, to Dalmatia or the Ionian 
 islands. 
 
 regret to think that an insolent German 
 soldiery has replaced even the senators of 
 Venice. Her ancient liberty, her bright 
 and romantic career of glory in countries 
 so dear to the imagination, her magnani- 
 mous defence in the war of Chioggia, a 
 few thinly-scattered names of illustrious 
 men, will rise upon his mind, and mingle 
 with his indignation at the treachery 
 which robbed her of her independence. 
 But if he has learned the true attributes 
 of wisdom in civil policy, he will not 
 easily prostitute that word to a constitu- 
 tion formed without reference to property 
 or to population, that vested sovereign 
 power partly in a body of empoverished 
 nobles, partly in an overruling despotism ; 
 or to a practical system of government 
 that made vice the ally of tyranny, and 
 sought impunity for its own assassina- 
 tions by encouraging dissoluteness of 
 private life. Perhaps, too, the wisdom 
 so often imputed to the senate in its for- 
 eign policy has been greatly exagger- 
 ated. The balance of power established 
 in Europe, and, above all, in Italy, main- 
 tained for the two last centuries states 
 of small intrinsic resources, without any 
 efforts of their own. In the ultimate 
 crisis, at least, of Venetian liberty, that 
 solemn mockery of statesmanship was 
 exhibited to contempt ; too blind to avert 
 danger, too cowardly to withstand it, the 
 most ancient government of Europe made 
 not an instant's resistance ; the peasants 
 of Underwald died upon their mountains ; 
 the nobles of Venice clung only to their 
 lives.* 
 
 Until almost the middle of the four- 
 
 * See in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xii., p. 379, 
 an account of a book, which is perhaps little 
 known, though interesting to the history of our 
 own age : a collection of documents illustrating 
 the fall of the republic of Venice. The article is 
 well written, and, I presume, contains a faithful 
 account of the work ; the author of which, Sig- 
 nor Barzoni, is respected as a patriotic writer in 
 Italy. 
 
 Every one who has been at Venice must have 
 been struck with the magnificent tombs of the 
 doges, most of them in the church of S. Giovanni 
 e Paolo, in which the republic seems to identify 
 herself with her chief magistrate, and to make the 
 decorations and inscriptions on his monument a 
 record of her own wealth and glory. In the church 
 of the Scalzi, on a single square stone in the pave- 
 ment, a very different epitaph from that of Lore- 
 dano or Foscari may be read, MANINI CINERES. 
 These two words mark the place of interment of 
 Manini, the last doge, whose own pusillanimity, or 
 that of those around him, joined to the calamity of 
 the times, caused him to survive his own dignity 
 and the liberties of Venice. To my feelings this 
 inscription was more striking than the famous 
 Locus Marini Falieri, pro criminibus decapitati, upon 
 a vacant canvass among the pictures of the dogea 
 in the hall of the Great Council. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 177 
 
 Territorial teeiith century, Venice had been 
 acquisitions content without any territorial 
 of Venice, possessions in Italy ; unless we 
 reckon a very narrow strip of seacoast, 
 bordering on her lagunes, called the Do- 
 gato. Neutral in the great contests be- 
 tween the church and the empire, be- 
 tween the free cities and their sovereigns, 
 she was respected by both parties, while 
 neither ventured to claim her as an ally. 
 But the rapid progress of Mastino della 
 Scala, lord of Verona, with some partic- 
 ular injuries, led the senate to form a 
 league with Florence against him. Vil- 
 lani mentions it as a singular honour for 
 his country to have become the confed- 
 erate of the Venetians, " who, for their 
 great excellence and power, had never 
 allied themselves with any state or prince, 
 except at their ancient conquest of Con- 
 stantinople and Romania."* The result 
 of this combination was to annex the dis- 
 trict of Treviso to the Venetian domin- 
 ions. But they made no further conquests 
 in that age. On the contrary, they lost 
 Treviso in the unfortunate war of Chiog- 
 gia, and did not regain it till 1389. Nor 
 did they seriously attempt to withstand 
 the progress of Gian Galeazzo Visconti ; 
 who, after overthrowing the family of 
 Scala, stretched almost to the Adriatic, 
 and altogether subverted for a time the 
 balance of power in Lombardy. 
 
 But upon the death of this prince in 
 < T m 1404, a remarkable crisis took 
 
 rnaifi 01 l-*om- , . , -. , f 
 
 bardy at the place in that country. He left 
 beginning of two sons, Giovannf Maria and 
 century. en Filippo Maria, botli young, and 
 under the care of a mother 
 who was little fitted for her situation. 
 Through her misconduct, and the selfish 
 ambition of some military leaders, who 
 had commanded Gian Galeazzo's merce- 
 naries, that extensive dominion was soon 
 broken into fragments. Bergamo, Como, 
 Lodi, Cremona, and other cities revolt- 
 ed, submitting themselves in general to 
 the families of their former princes, the 
 earlier race of usurpers, who had for 
 nearly a century been crushed by the 
 Visconti. A Guelf faction revived, after 
 the name had long been proscribed in 
 Lombardy. Francesco de Carrara, lord 
 of Padua, availed himself of this revolu- 
 tion to get possession of Verona, and 
 seemed likely to unite all the cities be- 
 yond the Adige. No family was so odi- 
 ous to the Venetians as that of Carrara. 
 Though they had seemed indifferent to 
 the more real danger in Gian Galeazzo's 
 lifetime, they took up arms against this 
 
 M 
 
 L. xi., c. 49. 
 
 inferior enemy. Both Padua and Verona 
 were reduced, and the Duke of Milan ce- 
 ding Vicenza, the republic of Venice came 
 suddenly into the possession of an exten- 
 sive territory. Francesco de Carrara, 
 who had surrendered in his capital, was 
 put to death in prison at Venice ; a cruel- 
 ty perfectly characteristic of that govern- 
 ment, and which would hardly have been 
 avowedly perpetrated, even in the fif- 
 teenth century, by any other state in Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 Notwithstanding the deranged condi- 
 tion of the Milanese, no further attempts 
 were made by the senate of Venice for 
 twenty years. They had not yet acqui- 
 red that decided love of war and con- 
 quest, which soon began to influence 
 them against all the rules of their ancient 
 policy. There were still left some wary 
 statesmen of the old school to check am- 
 bitious designs. Sanuto has preserved 
 an interesting account of the wealth and 
 commerce of Venice in those days. This 
 is thrown into the mouth, of the Doge 
 Mocenigo, whom he represents as dis- 
 suading his country, with his dying words, 
 from undertaking a war against Milan. 
 " Through peace our city has every year," 
 he said, " ten millions of ducats employ- 
 ed as mercantile capital in different parts 
 of the world ; the annual profit of our tra- 
 ders upon this sum amounts to four mill- 
 ions. Our housing is valued at 7,000,000 
 ducats; its annual rental at 500,000. 
 Three thousand merchant ships carry on 
 our trade ; forty-three galleys, and three 
 hundred smaller vessels, manned by 
 19,000 sailors, secure our naval power. 
 Our mint has coined 1,000,000 ducats with- 
 in the year. From the Milanese dominions 
 alone we draw 1,000,000 ducats in coin, 
 and the value of 900,000 more in cloths ; 
 our profit upon this traffic may be reckon- 
 ed at 600,000 ducats. Proceeding a"s you 
 have done to acquire this wealth, you will 
 become masters of all the gold in Chris- 
 tendom ; but war, and especially unjust 
 war, will lead infallibly to ruin. Already 
 you have spent 900,000 ducats in the ac- 
 quisition of Verona and Padua ; yet the 
 expense of protecting these places ab- 
 sorbs all the revenue which they yield. 
 You have many among you, men of prob- 
 ity and experience ; choose one of these 
 to succeed me ; but beware of Francesco 
 Foscari. If he is doge, you will soon 
 have war, and war will bring poverty and 
 loss of honour."* Mocenigo died, and 
 
 * Sanuto, Vite di Duchi di Venezia, in Script. 
 Rer. Ital., t. xxii., p. 958. Mocenigo's harangue is 
 very long in Sanuto : I have endeavoured to pre- 
 serve the substance. 
 
178 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Foscari became doge : the prophecies of 
 the former were neglected ; and it cannot 
 wholly be affirmed that they were fulfill- 
 ed. Yet Venice is described by a writer 
 thirty years later, as somewhat impaired 
 in opulence by her long warfare with the 
 dukes of Milan. 
 
 The latter had recovered a great part 
 Wars of of their dominions as rapidly as 
 Milan and they had lost them. Giovanni 
 Venice. jy[ ar j a) the elder brother, a mon- 
 ster of guilt even among the Visconti, 
 having been assassinated, Filippo Maria 
 assumed the government of Milan and 
 Pavia, almost his only possessions. But, 
 though weak and unwarlike himself, he 
 had the good fortune to employ Carmag- 
 nola, one of the greatest generals of that 
 military age. Most of the revolted cities 
 were tired of their new masters, and their 
 inclinations conspiring with Carmagno- 
 la's eminent talents and activity, the 
 house of Visconti reassumed its former 
 ascendency from the Sessia to the Adige. 
 Its fortunes might have been still more 
 prosperous, if Filippo Maria had not 
 rashly, as well as ungratefully, offended 
 Carmagnola. That great captain retired 
 to Venice, and inflamed a disposition to- 
 wards war which the Florentines and 
 the Duke of Savoy had already excited. 
 The Venetians had previously gained 
 some important advantages in another 
 quarter, by reducing the country of Fri- 
 uli, with part of Istria, which had for 
 many centuries depended on the tempo- 
 ral authority of a neighbouring prelate, 
 the patriarch of Aquileia. They entered 
 into this new alliance. No undertaking 
 of the republic had been more successful. 
 Carmagnola led on their armies, and in 
 about two years [A. D. 1426] Venice 
 acquired Brescia and Bergamo, and ex- 
 tended her boundary to the river Adda, 
 which she was destined never to pass. 
 
 Such conquests could only be made, 
 Change in by a city so peculiarly mari- 
 tne military time as Venice, through the 
 
 eystem. help Q f mercenar y troops. But 
 
 in employing them she merely con- 
 formed to a fashion, which states to 
 whom it was less indispensable had long 
 since established. A great revolution 
 had taken place in the system of milita- 
 ry service through most parts of Europe, 
 but especially in Italy. During the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, wheth- 
 er the Italian cities were engaged in 
 their contest with the emperors, or in 
 less arduous and general hostilities among 
 each other, they seem to have poured 
 out almost their whole population, as an 
 armed and loosely organized militia. A 
 
 single city, with its adjacent district, 
 sometimes brought twenty or thirty thou- 
 sand men into the field. Every man, 
 according to the trade he practised, or 
 quarter of the city wherein he dwelt, 
 knew his own banner, and the captain he 
 was to obey.* In battle, the carroccio 
 formed one common rallying-point, the 
 pivot of every movement. This was a 
 chariot, or rather wagon, painted with 
 vermilion, and bearing the city standard 
 elevated upon it. That of Milan required 
 four pair of oxen to drag it forward. f 
 To defend this sacred emblem of his 
 country, which Muratori compares to the 
 ark of the covenant among the Jews, 
 was the constant object, that, giving a 
 sort of concentration and uniformity to 
 the army, supplied in some degree the 
 want of more regular tactics. This mi- 
 litia was of course principally composed 
 of infantry. At the famous battle of the 
 Arbi, in 1260, the Guelf Florentines had 
 thirty thousand foot and three thousand 
 horse ;| and the usual proportion was 
 five, six, or ten, to one. Gentlemen, 
 however, were always mounted; and 
 the superiority of a heavy cavalry must 
 have been prodigiously great over an un- 
 disciplined and ill-armed populace. In 
 the thirteenth and following centuries , 
 armies seem to have been considered as 
 formidable, nearly in proportion to the 
 number of men-at-arms, or lancers. A 
 charge of cavalry was irresistible ; bat- 
 tles were continually won by inferior 
 numbers, and vast slaughter was made 
 among the fugitives.^ 
 
 As the comparative inefficiency of foot- 
 soldiers became evident, a greater pro- 
 portion of cavalry was employed, and 
 armies, though better equipped and dis- 
 ciplined, were less numerous. This we 
 find in the early part of the fourteenth 
 century. The main point for a state at 
 war was to obtain a sufficient Employment 
 force of men-at-arms. As few of foreign 
 Italian cities could muster a tro P 8 - 
 large body of cavalry from their own 
 population, the obvious resource was 
 
 * Muratori, Antiq. Ital., Diss. 26. Denina, 
 Rivoluzioni d'ltalia, 1. xii., c. 4. 
 
 f The carroccio was invented by Eribert,. a cel- 
 ebrated archbishop of Milan, about 1039. Annali 
 di Murat., Ajjtiq. Ital., Diss. 26. The carroccio of 
 Milan was taken by Frederick II., in 1237, and 
 sent to Roftie. Parma and Cremona lost their 
 carroccios t<J each other, and exchanged them 
 some years afterward with great exultation. In 
 the fourteenth century this custom had gone into 
 disuse. Id ibid. Denina, 1. xii., c. 4. 
 
 J Villanj, 1. vi., c. 79. 
 
 $ Sismondi, t. iii., p. 263, &c., has some judi- 
 cious observations on this subject. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 170 
 
 to hire mercenary troops. This had 
 been practised in some instances much 
 earlier. The city of Genoa took the 
 Count of Savoy into pay with two hun- 
 dred horse in 1225.* Florence retained 
 five hundred French lances in 1282.f 
 But it became much more general in the 
 fourteenth century, chiefly after the ex- 
 pedition of the Emperor Henry VII., in 
 1310. Many German soldiers of fortune, 
 remaining in Italy upon this occasion, 
 engaged in the service of Milan, Flor- 
 ence, or some other state. The subse- 
 quent expeditions of Louis of Bavaria in 
 1326, and of John, king of Bohemia, in 
 1331, brought a fresh accession of adven- 
 turers from the same country. Others 
 again came from France, and some from 
 Hungary. All preferred to continue in 
 the richest country and finest climate of 
 Europe, where their services were anx- 
 iously solicited and abundantly repaid. 
 An unfortunate prejudice in favour of 
 strangers prevailed among the Italians of 
 that age. They ceded to them, one 
 knows not why, certainly without having 
 been vanquished, the palm of military 
 skill and valour. The word Transalpine 
 (Oltramontani) is frequently applied to 
 hired cavalry by the two Villani, as an 
 epithet of excellence. 
 
 The experience of every fresh cam- 
 paign now told more and more against 
 the ordinary militia. It has been usual 
 for modern writers to lament the degen- 
 eracy of martial spirit among the Italians 
 of that age. But the contest was too un- 
 equal between an absolutely invulnerable 
 body of cuirassiers, and an infantry of 
 peasants or citizens. The bravest men 
 have little appetite for receiving wounds 
 and death without the hope of inflicting 
 any in return. The parochial militia of 
 France had proved equally unserviceable ; 
 though, as the life of a French peasant 
 was of much less account in the eyes of 
 his government than that of an Italian cit- 
 izen, they were still led forward like sheep 
 to the slaughter, against the disciplined 
 forces of Edward III. The cavalry had 
 
 * Muratori, Dissert. 26. 
 
 t Ammirato, Istoria Fiorent., p. 159 ; the same 
 was done in 1279, p. 200. A lance, in the technical 
 language of those ages, included the lighter caval- 
 ry attached to the man-at-arms, as well as himself. 
 In France, the full complement of a lance (lance 
 fournie) was five or six horses ; thus the 1500 
 lances, who composed the original companies of 
 ordonnance raised by Charles VII., amounted to 
 nine thousand cavalry. But in Italy, the number 
 was smaller. We read frequently of barbuti, 
 which are defined, lanze de due cavalli. Corio, p. 
 437. Lances of three horses were introduced 
 about the middle of the fourteenth century. Id , 
 p. 466. 
 
 MS 
 
 about this time laid aside the hauberk, or 
 coat of mail, their ancient distinction 
 from the unprotected populace ; which, 
 though incapable of being cut through by 
 the sabre, afforded no defence against the 
 pointed sword introduced in the thirteenth 
 century,* nor repelled the impulse of a 
 lance, or the crushing blow of a battle- 
 axe. Plate armour was substituted in its 
 place ; and the man-at-arms, cased in en- 
 tire steel, the several pieces firmly rivet- 
 ed, and proof against every stroke, his 
 charger protected on the face, chest, and 
 shoulders, or, as it was called, barded 
 with plates of steel, fought with a secu- 
 rity of success against enemies infe- 
 rior perhaps only in these adventitious 
 sources of courage to himself. f 
 
 Nor was the new system of conduct- 
 ing hostilities less inconvenient citizens ex- 
 to the citizens than the tactics cuse . d fron * 
 of a battle. Instead of rapid and servlce - 
 predatory invasions, terminated instantly 
 by a single action, and not extending 
 more than a few days' march from the 
 soldier's home, the more skilful combina- 
 tions usual in the fourteenth century fre- 
 quently protracted an indecisive contest 
 for a whole summer-! As wealth and 
 civilization made evident the advantages 
 of agricultural and mercantile industry, 
 this loss of productive labour could no 
 longer be endured. Azzo Visconti, who 
 died in 1339, dispensed with the personal 
 service of his Milanese subjects. " An- 
 other of his laws," says Galvaneo Fiam- 
 ma, " was, that the people should not go 
 to war, but remain at home for their own 
 business. For they had hitherto been 
 kept with much danger and expense ev- 
 ery year, and especially in time of har- 
 vest and vintage, when princes are wont 
 to go to war, in besieging cities, and in- 
 curred numberless losses, and chiefly on 
 account of the long time that they were 
 so detained. " This law of Azzo Vis- 
 conti, taken separately, might be ascribed 
 to the usual policy of an absolute govern- 
 
 * Muratori, ad ann. 1226. 
 
 t The earliest plate armour, engraved In Montfau- 
 con's Monumens de la Monarchic Franchise, t. ii., 
 is of the reign of Philip the Long, about 1315 ; but 
 it does not appear generally till that of Philip of 
 Valois, or even later. Before the complete harness 
 of steel was adopted, plated caps were sometimes 
 worn on the knees and elbows, and even greaves 
 on the legs. This is represented in a statue of 
 Charles I., king of Naples, who died in 1285. Pos- 
 sibly the statue may not be quite so ancient. 
 Montfaucon, passim. Daniel, Hist, de la Milice 
 Franqoise, p. 395. 
 
 J This tedious warfare <z la Fabius is called by 
 Villani guerra guereggiata, 1. viii., c. 49 ; at least 
 I can annex no other meaning to the expression. 
 
 $ Muratori, Antiquit. Ital., Dissert. 26. 
 
180 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. HI. 
 
 ment. But we find a similar innovation 
 not long afterward at Florence. In the 
 war carried on by that republic against 
 Giovanni Visconti, in 1351, the younger 
 Villani informs us that " the useless and 
 mischievous personal service of the in- 
 habitants of the district was commuted 
 into a money, payment."* This change 
 indeed was necessarily accompanied by 
 a vast increase of taxation. The Italian 
 states, republics as well as principalities, 
 levied very heavy contributions. Masti- 
 no della Scala had a revenue of 700,000 
 florins ; more, says John Villani, than the 
 king of any European country, except 
 France, possesses.! Yet this arose from 
 only nine cities of Lombardy. Consid- 
 ered with reference to economy, almost 
 any taxes must be a cheap commutation 
 for personal service. But economy may 
 be regarded too exclusively, and can nev- 
 er counterbalance that degradation of a 
 national character which proceeds from 
 intrusting the public defence to foreign- 
 ers. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that sti- 
 companies pendiary troops, chiefly compo- 
 of adven- sed of Germans, would conduct 
 themselves without insolence 
 and contempt of the effeminacy which 
 courted their services. Indifferent to the 
 cause they supported, the highest pay 
 and the richest plunder were their con- 
 stant motives. As Italy was generally 
 the theatre of war in some of her numer- 
 ous states, a soldier of fortune, with his 
 lance and charger for his inheritance, 
 passed from one service to another with- 
 out regret and without discredit. But if 
 peace happened to be pretty universal, he 
 might be thrown out of his only occupa- 
 tion, and reduced to a very inferior con- 
 dition in a cquntry of which he was not 
 a native. It naturally occurred to men 
 of their feelings, that if money and hon- 
 our could only be had while they retain- 
 ed their arms, it was their own fault if 
 they ever relinquished them. Upon this 
 principle they first acted in 1343, when 
 the republic of Pisa disbanded a large 
 body of German cavalry which had been 
 employed in a war with Florence.^ A 
 
 * Matt. Villani, p. 135. 
 
 t L. xi., c. 45. I cannot imagine why M. Sis- 
 mondi asserts, t. iv., p. 432, that the lords of cities 
 in Lombardy did not venture to augment the taxes 
 imposed while they had been free. Complaints 
 of heavy taxation are certainly often made against 
 the Visconti and other tyrants in the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 J Sismondi, t. v., p. 380. The dangerous aspect 
 which these German mercenaries might assume, 
 had appeared four years before, when Lodrisio, one 
 of the Visconti, having quarrelled with the Lord of 
 
 partisan, whom the Italians call the Duke 
 Guarnieri, engaged these dissatisfied mer- 
 cenaries to remain united under his com- 
 mand. His plan was to levy contribu- 
 tions on all countries which he entered 
 with his company, without aiming at any 
 conquests. No Italian army, he well 
 knew, could be raised to oppose him ; 
 and he trusted that other mercenaries 
 would not be ready to fight against men 
 who had devised a scheme so advantage- 
 ous to the profession. This was the first 
 of the companies of adventure, which 
 continued for many years to be the 
 scourge and disgrace of Italy. Guarnie- 
 ri, after some time, withdrew his troops, 
 saturated with plunder, into Germany ; 
 but he served in the invasion of Naples 
 by Louis, king of Hungary, in 1348, and, 
 forming a new company, ravaged the ec- 
 clesiastical state. A still more formida- 
 ble band of disciplined robbers appeared 
 in 1353, under the command of Fra Mo- 
 ri ale, and afterward of Conrad Lando. 
 This was denominated the Great Com- 
 pany, and consisted of several thousand 
 regular troops, besides a multitude of 
 half-armed ruffians, who assisted as spies, 
 pioneers, and plunderers. The rich cit- 
 ies of Tuscany and Romagna paid large 
 sums, that the great company, which was 
 perpetually in motion, might not march 
 through their territory. Florence alone 
 magnanimously resolved not to offer this 
 ignominious tribute. Upon two occa- 
 sions, once in 1358, and still more con- 
 spicuously the next year, she refused 
 either to give a passage to the company 
 or to redeem herself by money ; and in 
 each instance the German robbers were 
 compelled to retire. At this time they 
 consisted of five thousand cuirassiers, and 
 their whole body was not less than twen- 
 ty thousand men ; a terrible proof of the 
 evils which an erroneous system had en- 
 tailed upon Italy. Nor were they re- 
 pulsed on this occasion by the actual ex- 
 ertions of Florence. The courage of 
 that republic was in her councils, not in 
 her arms ; the resistance made to Lan- 
 do's demand was a burst of national feel- 
 ing, and rather against the advice of the 
 leading Florentines ;* but the army em- 
 ployed was entirely composed of merce- 
 nary troops, and probably, for the greater 
 part, of foreigners. 
 
 Milan, led a large body of troops who had just been 
 disbanded against the city. After some desperate 
 battles, the mercenaries were defeated, and Lodri- 
 sio taken, t. v., p. 278. In this instance, however, 
 they acted for another ; Guarnieri was the first who 
 taught them to preserve the impartiality of general 
 robbers. 
 
 * Matt. Villani, p. 537. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 181 
 
 None of the foreign partisans, who en- 
 sir John tered into the service of Italian 
 Hawkwood. states, acquired such renown in 
 that career as an Englishman, whom con- 
 temporary writers call Aucud or Agu- 
 tus, but to whom we may restore his 
 national appellation of Sir John Hawk- 
 wood. This very eminent man had serv 
 ed in the war of Edward III., and obtain- 
 ed his knighthood from that sovereign, 
 though originally, if we may trust com- 
 mon fame, bred to the trade of a tailor. 
 After the peace of Bretigni, France was 
 ravaged by the disbanded troops, whose 
 devastations Edward was accused, per- 
 haps unjustly, of secretly instigating. A 
 large body of these, under the name of 
 the White Company, passed into the 
 service of the Marquis of Montferrat. 
 They were some time afterward em- 
 ployed by the Pisans against Florence ; 
 and, during this latter war, Hawkwood 
 appears as their commander. For thir- 
 ty years he was continually engaged 
 in the service of the Yisconti, of the 
 pope, or of the Florentines, to whom he 
 devoted himself for the latter part of his 
 life, with more fidelity and steadiness 
 than he had shown in his first campaigns. 
 The republic testified her gratitude by 
 a public funeral, and by a monument, 
 which, I believe, is still extant. 
 
 The name of Sir John Hawkwood is 
 Want of mil- worthy to be remembered, as 
 itary science that of the first distinguished 
 time 1 " 6 his commander who had appear- 
 ed in Europe since the de- 
 struction of the Roman empire. It would 
 be absurd to suppose that any of the con- 
 stituent elements of military genius which 
 nature furnishes to energetic characters 
 were wanting to the leaders of a barbari- 
 an or feudal army ; untroubled perspica- 
 city in confusion, firm decision, rapid ex- 
 ecution, providence against attack, fertil- 
 ity of resource, and stratagem. These 
 are in quality as much required from the 
 chief of an Indian tribe as from the ac- 
 complished commander. But \ve do not 
 find them in any instance so consumma- 
 ted by habitual skill as to challenge the 
 name of generalship. No one at least 
 occurs to me previously to the middle of 
 the fourteenth century, to whom history 
 lias unequivocally assigned that character. 
 It is very rarely that we find even the order 
 of battle specially noticed. The monks, 
 indeed, our only chroniclers, were poor 
 judges of martial excellence ; yet, as war 
 is the main topic of all annals, we could 
 hardly remain ignorant of any distin- 
 guished skill in its operations. This 
 neglect of military science certainly did 
 
 not proceed from any predilection for the 
 arts of peace. It arose out of the gener- 
 al manners of society, and out of the na- 
 ture and composition of armies in the 
 middle ages. The insubordinate spirit of 
 feudal tenants, and the emulous equality 
 of chivalry, were alike hostile to that gra- 
 dation of rank, that punctual observance 
 of irksome duties, that prompt obedience 
 to a supreme command, through which a 
 single soul is infused into the active mass, 
 and the rays of individual merit converge 
 to the head of the general. 
 
 In the fourteenth century we begin to 
 perceive something of a more scientific 
 character in military proceedings, and 
 historians for the first time discover that 
 success does not entirely depend upon 
 intrepidity and physical prowess. The 
 victory of Muhldorf over the Austrian 
 princes, in 1322, that decided a civil war 
 in the empire, is ascribed to the ability 
 of the Bavarian commander.* Many dis- 
 inguished officers were formed in the 
 school of Edward III. Yet their excel- 
 lences were perhaps rather those of ac- 
 tive partisans than of experienced gener- 
 als. Their successes are still due rather 
 o daring enthusiasm than to wary and 
 calculating combination. Like inexpert 
 chess-players, they surprise us by happy 
 sallies against rule, or display their tai- 
 nts in rescuing themselves from the 
 consequence of their own mistakes. 
 Thus the admirable arrangements of the 
 Black Prince at Poitiers hardly redeem 
 he temerity which placed him in a situ- 
 ation where the egregious folly of his 
 adversary alone could have permitted 
 rim to triumph. Hawkwood therefore 
 appears to me the first real general of 
 modern times ; the earliest master, how- 
 ever imperfect, in the science of Turenne 
 and Wellington. Every contemporary 
 Italian historian speaks with admiration 
 of his skilful tactics in .battle, his strata- 
 gems, his well-conducted retreats. Praise 
 of this description, as I have observed, is 
 hardly bestowed, certainly not so contin- 
 ually, on any former captain. 
 
 Hawkwood was not only the greatest, 
 but the last of the foreign con- s choo i f 
 dottieri,or captains of mercena- Italian gen- 
 ry bands. While he was yet erals- 
 living, a new military school had been 
 formed in Italy, which not only superse- 
 ded, but eclipsed all the strangers. This 
 important reform was ascribed to Alberic 
 di Barbiano, lord of some petty territories 
 
 * Struviu-s, Corpus Historise German., p. 585 
 Schwepperman, the Bavarian general, is called 
 by a contemporary writer, clams militari scientia 
 vir. 
 
182 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 near Bologna. He formed a company 
 altogether of Italians about the year 1379. 
 It is not to be supposed that natives of 
 Italy had before been absolutely excluded 
 from service. We find several Italians, 
 such as the Malatesta family, lords of 
 Rimini, and the Rossi of Parma, com- 
 manding the armies of Florence much 
 earlier. But this was the first trading 
 company, if I may borrow the analogy, 
 the first, regular body of Italian mercena- 
 ries, attached only to their commander, 
 without any consideration of party, like 
 the Germans and English of Lando and 
 Hawkwood. Alberic di Barbiano, though 
 himself no doubt a man of military tal- 
 ents, is principally distinguished by the 
 school of great generals which the com- 
 pany of St. George under his command 
 produced, and which may be deduced, by 
 regular succession, to the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. The first in order of time, and 
 immediate contemporaries of Barbiano, 
 were Jacopo Verme, Facino Cane, and 
 Ottobon Terzo. Among an intelligent 
 and educated people, little inclined to 
 servile imitation, the military art made 
 great progress. The most eminent con- 
 dottieri being divided, in general, between 
 belligerants, each of them had his genius 
 excited and kept in tension by that of a 
 rival in glory. Every resource of science 
 as well as experience, every improve- 
 ment in tactical arrangements and the 
 use of arms, was required to obtain an 
 advantage over such equal enemies. In 
 the first year of the fifteenth century, the 
 Italians brought their newly-acquired su- 
 periority to a test. The Emperor Rob- 
 ert, in alliance with Florence, invaded 
 Gian Galeazzo's dominions with a con- 
 siderable army. From old reputation, 
 which so frequently survives the intrinsic 
 qualities upon which it was founded, 
 an impression appears to have been ex- 
 cited in Italy that the native troops were 
 still unequal to meet the charge of Ger- 
 man cuirassiers. The Duke of Milan 
 gave orders to his general, Jacopo Verme, 
 to avoid a combat. But that able leader 
 was aware of a great relative change in 
 the two armies. The Germans had neg- 
 lected to improve their discipline; their 
 arms were less easily wielded, their 
 horses less obedient to the bit. A single 
 skirmish was enough to open their eyes ; 
 they found themselves decidedly inferior; 
 and, having engaged in the war with the 
 expectation of easy success, were readily 
 disheartened.* This victory, or rather 
 this decisive proof that victory might be 
 
 * Sismondi, t. vii., p. 439. 
 
 achieved, set Italy at rest for almost a 
 century from any apprehensions on the 
 side of her ancient masters. 
 
 Whatever evils might be derived, and 
 they were not trifling, from the employ- 
 ment of foreign or native mercenaries, it 
 was impossible to discontinue the system 
 without general consent ; and too many 
 states found their own advantage in it 
 for such an agreement. The condottieri 
 were indeed all notorious for contempt of 
 engagements. Their rapacity was equal 
 to their bad faith. Besides an enormous 
 pay, for every private cuirassier received 
 much more in value than a subaltern of- 
 ficer at present, they exacted gratifica- 
 tions for every success.* But every thing 
 was endured by ambitious governments 
 who wanted their aid. Florence and 
 Venice were the two states which owed 
 most to the companies of adventure. The 
 one loved war without its perils ; the 
 other could never have obtained an inch 
 of territory with a population of sailors. 
 But they were both almost inexhaustibly 
 rich by commercial industry ; and, as the 
 surest paymasters, were best served by 
 those they employed. The Visconti might 
 perhaps have extended their conquest 
 over Lombardy with the militia of Milan , 
 but without a Jacopo del Verme or a Car- 
 magnola, the banner of St. Mark would 
 never have floated at Verona and Ber- 
 gamo. 
 
 The Italian armies of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury have been remarked for one Defensive 
 striking peculiarity. War has arms of 
 never been conducted at so little that age< 
 personal hazard to the soldier. Combats 
 frequently occur in the annals of that age, 
 wherein success, though warmly con- 
 tested, cost very few lives even to the 
 vanquished.! This innocence of blood, 
 
 * Paga doppia, e mese compiuto, of which we 
 frequently read, sometimes granted improvidently, 
 and more often demanded unreasonably. The first 
 speaks for itself; the second was the reckoning a 
 month's service as completed when it was begun, 
 in calculating their pay. Matt. Villani, p. 62. Sis- 
 mondi, t. v., p. 412. 
 
 Gian Galeazzo Visconti promised constant half- 
 pay to the condottieri whom he disbanded in 1396. 
 This perhaps is the first instance of half-pay. Sis- 
 mondi, t. vii., p. 397. 
 
 t Instances of this are very frequent. Thus, at 
 the action of Zagonara, in 1423, but three persons, 
 according to Machiavel, lost their lives, and those 
 by suffocation in the mud. 1st. Fiorent., 1. iv. At 
 that of Molinella, in 1467, he says that no one was 
 killed, 1. vii. Ammirato reproves him for this, as 
 all the authors of the time represent it to have been 
 sanguinary (t. ii., p. 102), and insinuates that Ma- 
 chiavel ridicules the inoffensiveness of those armies 
 more than it deserves, schernendo, come egli suol 
 far, quella milizia. Certainly some few battles of 
 the fifteenth century were not only obstinately con. 
 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 which some historians turn into ridicule 
 was no doubt owing in a great degree t 
 the rapacity of the companies of adven 
 ture, who, in expectation of enrichin 
 themselves by the ransom of prisoners 
 were anxious to save their lives. Muc 
 of the humanity of modern warfare wa 
 originally due to this motive. But it wa 
 rendered more practicable by the natur 
 of their arms. For once, and for one 
 only in the history of mankind, the art o 
 defence had outstripped that of destruc 
 tion. In a charge of lancers many feL 
 unhorsed by the shock, and might be suf 
 focated or bruised to death by the pres 
 sure of their own armour ; but the lance 
 point could not penetrate the breastplate 
 the sword fell harmless upon the helmet 
 the conqueror, in the first impulse of pas 
 sion, could not assail any vital part of a 
 prostrate but not exposed enemy. Stil 
 less was to be dreaded from the archers 
 or crossbowmen, who composed a larg 
 part of the infantry. The bow, indeed, as 
 drawn by an English foot-soldier, was the 
 most formidable of arms before the in 
 vention of gunpowder. That ancien 
 weapon, though not perhaps commor 
 among the Northern nations, nor for sev- 
 eral centuries after their settlement, was 
 occasionally in use before the crusades 
 William employed archers in the battle 
 of Hastings.* Intercourse with the east 
 its natural soil, during the twelfth anc 
 thirteenth ages, rendered the bow better 
 known. But the Europeans improved on 
 the eastern method of confining its use 
 to cavalry. By employing infantry as 
 archers, they gained increased size, more 
 steady position, and surer aim for the 
 bow. Much, however, depended on the 
 strength and skill of the archer. It was 
 a peculiarly English weapon, and none 
 
 tested, but attended with considerable loss. Sis- 
 mondi, t. x., p, 126, 137. But, in general, the 
 slaughter must appear very trifling. Ammirato 
 himself says, that in an action between the Neapol- 
 itan and papal troops in 1486, which lasted all day, 
 not only no one was killed, but it is not -recorded 
 that any one was wounded. Roscoe's Lorenzo de' 
 Medici, vol. ii., p. 37. Guicciardini's general testi- 
 mony to the character of these combats is unequiv- 
 ocal. He speaks of the battle of Fornova, between 
 "the confederates of Lombardy and the army of 
 Charles VIII. returning from Naples in 1495, as 
 very remarkable on account of the slaughter, which 
 amounted on the Italian side to 3000 men : perche 
 fa la prima, che da lunghissimo tempo in qua si 
 combattesse con uccisione e con sangue in Italia, 
 perche innanzi a questa morivano pochissimi uomi- 
 ni in un fatto d'arme, 1. ii., p. 175. 
 
 * Pedites in fronte locavit, sagittis armatos et 
 balistis, item pedites in ordine secundo firmiores 
 et Ipricatos, ultimo turmas equitum. Gul. Pictavi- 
 ensis (in Du Chesne), p. 201. Several archers are 
 represented in the tapestry of Bayeux. 
 
 of the other principal nations adopted it 
 so generally or so successfully. The 
 crossbow, which brought the strong and 
 weak to a level, was more in favour upon 
 the continent. This instrument is said 
 by some writers to have been introduced 
 after the first crusade, in the reign of 
 Louis the Fat.* But, if we may trust 
 William of Poitou, it was employed, as 
 well as the long bow, at the battle of 
 Hastings. Several of the popes prohib- 
 ited it as a treacherous weapon ; and the 
 restriction was so far regarded that, in 
 the time of Philip Augustus, its use is 
 said to have been unknown in France. f 
 By degrees it became more general ; and 
 crossbowmen were considered as a very 
 necessary part of a well-organized army. 
 But both the arrow and the quarrel glan- 
 ced away from plate-armour, such as it 
 became in the fifteenth century, imper- 
 vious in every point, except when the 
 visor was raised from the face, or some 
 part of the body accidentally exposed. 
 The horse indeed was less completely 
 protected. 
 
 Many disadvantages attended the secu- 
 rity against wounds for which this ar- 
 mour had been devised. The enormous 
 weight exhausted the force and crippled 
 the limbs. It rendered the heat of a 
 southern climate insupportable. In some 
 circumstances it increased the danger of 
 death, as in the passage of a river or 
 morass. It was impossible to compel an 
 nemy to fight, because the least in- 
 trenehment or natural obstacle could stop 
 uch unwieldy assailants. The troops 
 might be kept in constant alarm at night, 
 and either compelled to sleep underarms, 
 or run the risk of being surprised before 
 hey could rivet their plates of steel. | 
 Veither the Italians, however, nor the 
 Transalpines, would surrender a mode 
 f defence which they ought to have 
 deemed inglorious. But, in order to ob- 
 riate some of its military inconveniences, 
 is well as to give a concentration in at- 
 ack, which lancers impetuously charging 
 n a single line, according to the practice 
 t least of France in the middle ages, 
 id not preserve, it became usual custom of 
 or the cavalry to dismount, and cavalry dis- 
 eaving their horses at some dis- mountin g- 
 ance, to combat on foot with the lance, 
 'his practice, which must have been 
 ingularly embarrassing with tne plate- 
 rmour of the fifteenth century, was in- 
 roduced before it became so ponderous. 
 
 * Le Grand, Vie privee des Franqais, t. i.. p. 349. 
 t Du Cange, v. Balista. Muratori, Diss. 26, t. 
 p. 462. (Ital.) 
 t Sismondi, t. ix., p. 158. 
 
184 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IIL 
 
 It is mentioned by historians of the 
 twelfth century both as a German and 
 an English custom.* We find it in the 
 wars of Edward III. Hawkwood, the 
 disciple of that school, introduced it into 
 Italy.f And it was practised by the Eng- 
 lish in their second wars with France, 
 especially at the battles of Crevant and 
 Verneuil.J 
 
 Meanwhile, a discovery accidentally 
 made, perhaps in some remote age and 
 distant region, and whose importance 
 was but slowly perceived by Europe, 
 had prepared the way not only for a 
 change in her military system, but for 
 
 Invention of political effects Still more ex- 
 gunpowder, tensive. If we consider gun- 
 powder as an instrument of human de- 
 struction, incalculably more powerful 
 than any that skill had devised or acci- 1 
 dent presented before, acquiring, as ex- 
 perience shows us, a more sanguinary ' 
 dominion in every succeeding age, and 
 borrowing all the progressive resources 
 of science and civilization for the exter- 
 mination of mankind, we shall be appall- 
 ed at the future prospects of the species, 
 and feel perhaps in no other instance so 
 much difficulty in reconciling the myste- 
 rious dispensation with the benevolent 
 order of Providence. As the great se- 
 curity for established governments, the 
 surest preservation against popular tu- 
 mult, it assumes a more equivocal char- 
 acter, depending upon the solution of 
 a doubtful problem, whether the sum 
 of general happiness has lost more in 
 the last three centuries through arbi- 
 trary power, than it has gained through 
 regular police and suppression of dis- 
 order. 
 
 There seems little reason to doubt that 
 gunpowder was introduced through the 
 means of the Saracens into Europe. Its 
 use in engines of war, though they may 
 seem to have been rather like our fire- 
 works than artillery, is mentioned by an 
 Arabic writer in the Escurial collection 
 
 * The Emperor Conrad's cavalry in the second 
 crusade are said by William of Tyre to have dis- 
 mounted on one occasion, and fought on foot, de 
 equis descendentes, et facti pedites ; sicut mos est 
 Teutonicis in summis necessitatibus bellica tractare 
 negotia, 1. xvii., c. 4. And the same was done by 
 the English in their engagement with the Scotch 
 near North Allerton, commonly called the battle of 
 the Standard, in 1138. Twysden, Decem Script., 
 p. 342. 
 
 t Sismondi, t. vi., p. 429. Azarius, in Script. 
 Rer. Ital., t. xvi. Matt. Villani. 
 
 t Monstrelet, t. ii., fol. 7, 14, 76. Villaret, t. 
 xvii., p. 89. It was a Burgundian as well as Eng- 
 lish fashion. Entre les Bourguignons, says Co- 
 mines, lors estoient les plus honorez ceux que 
 descendoient avec les archers, 1. i., c. 3. 
 
 about the year L249.* It was known not 
 long afterward to our philosopher, Roger 
 Bacon, though he concealed in some de- 
 gree the secret of its composition. In 
 the first part of the fourteenth century, 
 cannon, or rather mortars, were invented, 
 and the applicability of gunpowder to 
 purposes of war was understood. Ed- 
 ward III. employed some pieces of artil- 
 lery with considerable effect at Crecy.f 
 But its use was still not very frequent ; 
 a circumstance which will surprise us 
 less, when we consider the unscientific 
 construction of artillery; the slowness 
 with which it coul^, be loaded ; its stone 
 balls of uncertain aim and imperfect 
 force, being commonly fired at a consid- 
 erable elevation ; and especially the diffi- 
 culty of removing it from place to place 
 during an action. In sieges, and in naval 
 engagements, as for example in the war 
 of Chioggia, it was more frequently em- 
 ployed.^ Gradually, however, the new 
 
 * Casiri, Bibl. Arab. Hispan., t. ii., p. 7, thus 
 renders the original description of certain missiles 
 used by the Moors. Serpunt, susurrantque scorpi- 
 ones circumligati ac pulvere nitrato incensi, unde 
 explosi fulgurant ac incendunt. Jam videre erat 
 manganum excussum veluti nubem per aera ex- 
 tend! ac tonitrus instar horrendum edere fragorem, 
 ignemque undequaque vomens, omnia dirumpere, 
 incendere, in cineres redigere. The Arabic pas- 
 sage is at the bottom of the page ; and one would 
 be glad to know whether -pulvis nitratus is a fair 
 translation. But I think there can on the whole be 
 no doubt that gunpowder is meant. Another Ara- 
 bian writer seems to describe the use of cannon in 
 the years 1312 and 1323. Id. ibid. And the chron- 
 icle of Alphonso XL, king of Castile, distinctly 
 mentions them at the siege of Algeziras in 1342. 
 But, before this, they were sufficiently known in 
 France. Gunpowder and cannon are both men- 
 tioned in registers of accounts under 1338 (Du 
 Cange, Bombarda), and in another document of 
 1345. Hist, du Languedoc, t. iv., p. 204. But the 
 strongest evidence is a passage of Petrarch, writ- 
 ten before 1344, and quoted in Muratori, Antich. 
 Ital., Dissert. 26, p. 456, where he speaks of the 
 art, nuper rara, nunc communis. 
 
 t G. Villani, 1. xii., c. 67. Gibbon has thrown 
 out a sort of objection to the certainty of this fact, 
 on account of Froissart's silence. But the posi- 
 tive testimony of Villani, who died within two years 
 afterward, and had manifestly obtained much in- 
 formation as to the great events passing in France, 
 cannot be rejected. He ascribes a material effect 
 to the cannon of Edward, colpi delle bombarde, 
 which I suspect, from his strong expressions, had 
 not been employed before, except against stone 
 walls. It seemed, he says, as if God thundered 
 con grande uccisione di genti, e sfondamento di 
 cavalli. 
 
 } Gattaro, 1st. Padovana, in Script. Rer. Ital., t. 
 xvii., p. 360. Several proofs of the employment 
 of artillery in French sieges during the reign of 
 Charles V. occur in Villaret. See the word Artil- 
 lerie in the index. 
 
 Gian Galeazzo had, according to Coria, thirty- 
 four pieces of cannon, small and great, in the Mila- 
 nese army, about 1397. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 artifice 
 French 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 of evil gained ground. The 
 made the principal improve- 
 
 185 
 
 ments. They cast their cannon smaller, 
 placed them on lighter carriages, and 
 used balls of iron.* They invented port- 
 able arms for a single soldier, which, 
 though clumsy in comparison with their 
 present state, gave an augury of a pro- 
 digious revolution in the military art. 
 John, duke of Burgundy, in 1411, had 
 4000 hand-cannons, as they were called, 
 in his army.f They are found under 
 different names, and modifications of 
 form, for which I refer the reader to pro- 
 fessed writers on tactics, in most of the 
 wars that historians of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury record, but less in Italy than beyond 
 the Alps. The Milanese, in 1449, are 
 said to have armed their militia with 
 20,000 muskets, which struck terror into 
 the old generals. ; But these muskets, 
 supported on a rest, and charged with 
 great delay, did less execution than our 
 sanguinary science would require ; and, 
 uncombined with the admirable invention 
 of the bayonet, could not in any degree 
 resist a charge of cavalry. The pike had 
 a greater tendency to subvert the military 
 system of the middle ages, and to de- 
 monstrate the efficiency of disciplined 
 infantry. Two free nations had already 
 discomfited, by the help of such infantry, 
 those arrogant knights on whom the fate 
 of battles had depended ; the Bohemians, 
 instructed in the art of war by their great 
 master, John Zisca ; and the Swiss, who, 
 after winning their independence, inch by 
 inch, from the house of Austria, had lately 
 established their renown by a splendid 
 victory over Charles of Burgundy. Louis 
 XL took a body of mercenaries from the 
 United Cantons into pay. Maximilian had 
 recourse to the same assistance. $ And 
 though the importance of infantry was 
 not perhaps decidedly established till the 
 Milanese wars of Louis XII. and Francis 
 I. in the sixteenth century, yet the last 
 years of the middle ages, according to 
 
 * Guicciardini, 1. i., p. 75, has a remarkable pas- 
 sage on the superiority of the French over the Ital- 
 ian artillery, in consequence of these improve- 
 ments. 
 
 t Villaret, t. xiii., p. 176, 310. 
 
 t Sisrnondi, t. ix., p. 341. He says that it re- 
 quired a quarter of an hour to charge and fire a 
 musket. I must confess that I very much doubt 
 the fact of so many muskets having been collected. 
 In 1432, that arm was seen for the first time in 
 Tuscany. Muratori, Dissert. 26, p. 457. 
 
 i) See Guicciardini's character of the Swiss 
 troops, p. 192. The French, he says, had no native 
 infantry ; il regno di Francia era debolissimo di 
 fanteria propria, the nobility monopolizing all war- 
 like occupations. Ibid. 
 
 our division, indicated the commence- 
 ment of that military revolution in the 
 general employment of pikemen and 
 musketeers. 
 
 Soon after the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century, to return from this di- Rivalry of 
 gression, two illustrious cap- srorzaand 
 tains, educated under Alberic di Braccio - 
 Barbiano, turned upon themselves the 
 eyes of Italy. These were Braccio di 
 Montone, a noble Perugian, and Sforza 
 Attendolo, originally a peasant in the vil- 
 lage of Cotignuola. Nearly equal in rep- 
 utation, unless perhaps Braccio may be 
 reckoned the more consummate general, 
 they were divided by a long rivalry, 
 which descended to the next generation, 
 and involved all the distinguished leaders 
 of Italy. The distractions of Naples, and 
 the anarchy of the ecclesiastical state, 
 gave scope not only to their military, but 
 political ambition. Sforza was invested 
 with extensive fiefs in the kingdom of 
 Naples, and with the office of Great Con- 
 stable. Braccio aimed at independent 
 acquisitions, and formed a sort of princi- 
 pality around Perugia. This, however, 
 was entirely dissipated at his death. 
 When Sforza and Braccio were no more, 
 their respective parties were headed by 
 the son of the former, Francesco Francesco 
 Sforza, and by Nicolas Piccini- Sforza - 
 no, who for more than twenty years 
 fought, with few exceptions, under oppo- 
 site banners. Piccinino was constantly 
 in the service of Milan. Sforza, whose 
 political talents fully equalled his milita- 
 ry skill, never lost sight of the splendid 
 prospects that opened to his ambition. 
 From Eugenius IV. he obtained the 
 March of Ancona, as a fief of the Roman 
 see. Thus rendered more independent 
 than the ordinary condottieri, he mingled 
 as a sovereign prince in the politics of It- 
 aly. He was generally in alliance with 
 Venice and Florence, thro wing his weight 
 into their scale to preserve the balance of 
 power against Milan and Naples. But 
 his ultimate designs rested upon Milan. 
 Filippo Maria, duke of that city, the last 
 of his family, had only a natural daugh- 
 ter, whose hand he sometimes offered and 
 sometimes withheld from Sforza. Even 
 after he had consented to their union, his 
 suspicious temper was incapable of ad- 
 mitting SUCh a SOll-in-law into He acquires 
 
 confidence, and he joined in a thedmchy 
 confederacy with the pope and of Mllan - 
 King of Naples to strip Sforza of the 
 March. At the death of Filippo Maria, 
 in 1447, that general had nothing left but 
 his glory, and a very disputable claim to 
 the Milanese succession. This, howev- 
 
166 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 cr, was set aside by the citizens, who re- 
 vived their republican government. A 
 republic in that part of Lombardy might, 
 with the help of Venice and Florence, 
 have withstood any domestic or foreign 
 usurpation. But Venice was hostile, and 
 Florence indifferent. Sforza became the 
 general of this new state, aware that such 
 would be the probable means of becom- 
 ing its master. No politician of that age 
 scrupled any breach of faith for his in- 
 terest. Nothing, says Machiavel, was 
 thought shameful but to fail. Sforza 
 with his army deserted to the Venetians ; 
 and the republic of Milan, being both in- 
 capable of defending itself, and distracted 
 by civil dissensions, soon fell a prey to 
 his ambition. In 1450 he was proclaim- 
 ed duke, rather by right of election or of 
 conquest than in virtue of his marriage 
 with Bianca, whose sex, as well as illegit- 
 imacy, seemed to preclude her from in- 
 heriting. 
 
 I have not alluded for some time to the 
 Affairs of domestic history of a kingdom, 
 Naples, which bore a considerable part 
 during the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- 
 ries in the general combinations of Ital- 
 ian policy, not wishing to interrupt the 
 reader's attention by too frequent tran- 
 sitions. We must return again to a more 
 remote age in order to take up the histo- 
 ry of Naples. [A. D. 1272.] Charles of 
 Anjou, after the deaths of Manfred and 
 Conradin had left him without a compet- 
 itor, might be ranked in the first class of 
 European sovereigns. Master of Pro- 
 vence and Naples, and at the head of the 
 Guelf faction in Italy, he had already 
 prepared a formidable attack on the 
 Greek empire, when a memorable revo- 
 lution in Sicily brought humiliation on 
 Rebellion of his latter years. John of Pro- 
 Sicily from cida, a Neapolitan, whose patri- 
 An^oa* f mon y nad been confiscated for 
 his adherence to the party of 
 Manfred, retained, during long years of 
 exile, an implacable resentment against 
 the house of Anjou. From the dominions 
 of Peter III., king of Aragon, who had 
 bestowed estates upon him in Valencia, he 
 kept his eye continually fixed on Naples 
 and Sicily. The former held out no fa- 
 vourable prospects ; the Ghibelin party 
 had been entirely subdued, and the prin- 
 cipal barons were of French extraction 
 or inclinations. But the island was in a 
 very different state. Unused to any 
 strong government, it was now treated as 
 a conquered country. A large party 01 
 French soldiers garrisoned the fortified 
 towns, and the systematic oppression 
 was aggravated by those insults upon 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 women, which have always been charac- 
 teristic of that people, and are most in- 
 olerable to an Italian temperament. 
 John of Procida, travelling in disguise 
 hrough the island, animated the barons 
 with a hope of deliverance. In like dis- 
 guise he repaired to the pope, Nicolas 
 II., who was jealous of the new Neapol- 
 tan destiny, and obtained his sanction to 
 ,he projected insurrection ; to the court 
 of Constantinople, from which he readi- 
 y obtained money ; and to the King of 
 Aragon, who employed that money in 
 fitting out an armament, that hovered 
 upon the coast of Africa, under pretext 
 of attacking the Moors. It is, however, 
 difficult at this time to distinguish the 
 effects of preconcerted conspiracy from 
 hose of casual resentment. Before the 
 ntrigues so skilfully conducted had taken 
 effect, yet after they were ripe for de- 
 velopment, an outrage, committed upon 
 lady at Palermo during a procession on 
 the vigil of Easter, provoked the people 
 ;o that terrible massacre of all the French 
 n their island, which has obtained Sicilian 
 he name of Sicilian Vespers. [A. vespers 
 D. 1283.] Unpremeditated as such an eb- 
 ullition of popular fury must appear, it 
 ell in, by the happiest coincidence, with 
 he previous conspiracy. The King of 
 Aragon's fleet was at hand ; the Sicilians 
 soon called in his assistance ; he sailed 
 to Palermo, and accepted the crown. 
 John of Procida is a remarkable witness 
 to a truth which the pride of governments 
 will seldom permit them to acknowledge ; 
 that an individual, obscure and apparent- 
 ly insignificant, may sometimes, by per- 
 severance and energy, shake the founda- 
 tions of established states; while the 
 perfect concealment of his intrigues 
 proves also, against a popular maxim, 
 that a political secret may be preserved 
 by a number of persons during a consid- 
 erable length of time.* 
 
 * Giannone, though he has well described the 
 schemes of John of Procida, yet, as is too often his 
 custom, or rather that of Costanzo, whom he im- 
 plicitly follows, drops or slides over leading facts ; 
 and thus, omitting entirely, or misrepresenting the 
 circumstances of the Sicilian Vespers, treats the 
 whole insurrection as the result of a deliberate con- 
 spiracy. On the other hand, Nicolas Specialis, a 
 contemporary writer, in the seventh volume of 
 Muratori's collection, represents the Sicilian Ves- 
 pers as proceeding entirely from the casual outrage 
 in the streets of Palermo. The thought of calling 
 in Peter, he asserts, did not occur to the Sicilians 
 till Charles had actually commenced the siege of 
 Messina. But this is equally removed from the 
 truth. Gibbon has made more errors than are usu- 
 al with so accurate an historian in his account of 
 this revolution, such as calling Constance, the 
 queen of Peter, sister instead of daughter of Manfred. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 187 
 
 The long war that ensued upon this rev- 
 l ut i n involved or interested 
 the greater part of civilized Eu- 
 rope. Philip III. of France ad- 
 
 hered to his uncle > and the Kin S 
 
 of Aragon was compelled to 
 fight for Sicily within his native domin- 
 ions. This indeed was the more vulnera- 
 ble point of attack. Upon the sea he was 
 lord of the ascendant. His Catalans, the 
 most intrepid of Mediterranean sailors, 
 were led to victory by a Calabrian refu- 
 gee, Roger di Loria, the most illustrious 
 and successful admiral whom Europe 
 produced till the age of Blake and De 
 Ruyter. In one of Loria's battles, the 
 eldest son of the King of Naples was 
 made prisoner, and the first years of his 
 own reign were spent in confinement. 
 But notwithstanding these advantages, it 
 was found impracticable for Aragon to 
 contend against the arms of France, and 
 latterly of Castile, sustained by the roll- 
 ing thunders of the Vatican. Peter III. 
 had bequeathed Sicily to his second son 
 James ; Alfonso, the eldest, king of Ara- 
 gon, could not fairly be expected to ruin 
 his inheritance for his brother's cause ; 
 nor were the barons of that free country 
 disposed to carry on a war without na- 
 tional objects. He made peace accord- 
 ingly in 1295, and engaged to withdraw 
 all his subjects from the Sicilian service. 
 Upon his own death, which followed very 
 soon, James succeeded to the kingdom 
 of Aragon, and ratified the renunciation 
 of Sicily. But the natives of that island 
 had received too deeply the spirit of in- 
 dependence to be thus assigned over by 
 the letter of a treaty. After solemnly 
 abjuring, by their ambassadors, their alle- 
 giance to the King of Aragon, they placed 
 the crown upon the head of his brother 
 Frederick. They maintained the war 
 against Charles II. of Naples, against 
 James of Aragon, their former king, who 
 had bound himself to enforce their sub- 
 mission, and even against the great Ro- 
 ger di Loria, who, upon some discontent 
 with Frederick, deserted their banner, 
 and entered into the Neapolitan service. 
 Peace was at length made in 1300, upon 
 condition that Frederick should retain du- 
 ring his life the kingdom, which was af- 
 terward to revert to the crown of Naples ; 
 a condition not likely to be fulfilled. 
 
 Upon the death of Charles II., king of 
 Naples, in 1305, a question arose as to 
 the succession. His eldest son, Charles 
 Martel, had been called by maternal inher- 
 itance to the throne of Hungary, and had 
 
 A good narrative of the Sicilian Vespers may be 
 found in Velly's History of France, t. vi. 
 
 left at his decease a son, Carobert, the 
 reigning sovereign of that country. Ac- 
 cording to the laws of representative suc- 
 cession, which were at this time tolerably 
 settled in private inheritance, the crown 
 of Naples ought to have regularly devolv- 
 ed upon that prince. But it was contest- 
 ed by his uncle Robert, the eld- Robert, king 
 est living son of Charles II., of Naples, 
 and the cause was pleaded by civilians 
 before Pope Clement V. at Avignon, the 
 feudal superior of the Neapolitan king- 
 dom. Reasons of public utility, rather 
 than of legal analogy, seem to have pre- 
 vailed in the decision which was made in 
 favour of Robert.* The course of his 
 reign evinced the wisdom of this deter- 
 mination. Robert, a wise and active, 
 though not personally a martial prince, 
 maintained the ascendency of the Guelf 
 faction, and the papal influence connect- 
 ed with it, against the formidable combi- 
 nation of Ghibelin usurpers in Lombardy, 
 and the two emperors Henry VII. and 
 Louis of Bavaria. No male issue survi- 
 ved Robert, whose crown descended to 
 his grand-daughter Joanna. She had 
 been espoused, while a child, to her cou- 
 sin Andrew, son of Carobert, king of 
 Hungary, who was educated with her in 
 the court of Naples. Auspiciously con- 
 trived as this union might seem to silence 
 a subsisting claim upon the kingdom, it 
 proved eventually the source of civil war 
 and calamity for a hundred and fifty years. 
 Andrew's manners were barbarous, more 
 worthy of his native country than of that 
 polished court wherein he had been bred. 
 He gave himself up to the society of Hun- 
 garians, who taught him to believe that a 
 matrimonial crown and derivative royalty 
 were derogatory to a prince who claimed 
 by a paramount hereditary right. [A. D. 
 1343.] In fact, he was pressing the court 
 of Avignon to permit his own corona- 
 tion, which would have placed in a very 
 hazardous condition the rights of the 
 queen, with whom he was living on ill 
 terms, when one night he was Joanna 
 seized, strangled, and thrown Murder of 
 
 OUt Of a Window. Public ru- her husband 
 ,, , / Andrew. 
 
 mour, in the absence of notori- 
 ous proof, imputed the guilt of this mys- 
 terious assassination to Joanna. Wheth- 
 er historians are authorized to assume 
 her participation in it so confidently as 
 they have generally done, may perhaps 
 be doubted ; though I cannot venture pos- 
 itively to rescind their sentence. The 
 circumstances of Andrew's death were 
 
 * Giannone, 1. xxii. Summonte, t. ii., p. 370 
 Some of the civilians of that age, however, appro 
 ved the decision. 
 
188 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 undoubtedly pregnant with strong suspi- 
 cion.* Louis, king of Hungary, his broth- 
 er, a just and stern prince, invaded Na- 
 ples, partly as an avenger, partly as a 
 conqueror. The queen, and her second 
 husband, Louis of Tarento, fled to Pro- 
 vence, where her acquittal, after a sol- 
 emn, if not an impartial, investigation, 
 was pronounced by Clement VI. Louis 
 meanwhile found it more difficult to re- 
 tain than to acquire the kingdom of Na- 
 ples; his own dominion required his 
 presence; and Joanna soon recovered 
 her crown. She reigned for thirty years 
 more without the attack of any enemy, 
 but not intermeddling, like her progeni- 
 tors, in the general concerns of Italy. 
 Childless by four husbands, the succes- 
 sion of Joanna began to excite ambitious 
 speculations. Of all the male descend- 
 ants of Charles I., none remained but the 
 King of Hungary, and Charles, duke of 
 Durazzo, who had married the queen's 
 niece, and was regarded by her as the 
 presumptive heir to the crown. But, of- 
 fended by her marriage with Otho of 
 Brunswick, he procured the assistance of 
 an Hungarian army to invade the king- 
 dom, and, getting the queen into his pow- 
 er, took possession of the throne. In 
 this enterprise he was seconded by Ur- 
 ban VI., against whom Joanna had unfor- 
 tunately declared in the great schism of 
 
 * The Chronicle of Dominic di Gravina (Script. 
 Rer. Ital., t. xii.) seems to be our best testimony 
 for the circumstances connected with Andrew's 
 death ; and, after reading his narrative more than 
 once, I find myself undecided as to this perplexed 
 and mysterious story. Gravina's opinion, it should 
 be observed, is extremely hostile to the qneen. 
 Nevertheless, there are not wanting presumptions, 
 that Charles, first duke of Durazzo, who had mar- 
 ried his sister, was concerned in the murder of An- 
 drew, for which in fact he was afterward put to 
 death by the King of Hungary. But, if the Duke 
 of Durazzo was guilty, it is unlikely that Joanna 
 should be so too ; because she was on very bad 
 terms with him, and indeed the chief proofs against 
 her are founded on the investigation which Duraz- 
 zo himself professed to institute. Confessions ob- 
 tained through torture are as little credible in his- 
 tory as they ought to be in judicature ; even if we 
 could be positively sure, which is not the case in 
 this instance, that such confessions were ever 
 made. However, I do not pretend to acquit Joan- 
 na, but merely to notice the uncertainty that rests 
 over her story, on account of the positiveness with 
 which all historians, except those of Naples and 
 the Abb6 de Sade, whose vindication (Vie de Pe- 
 trarque, t. ii., notes) does her more harm than good, 
 have assumed the murder of Andrew to have been 
 her own act, as if she had ordered his execution in 
 open day. 
 
 Those who believe in the innocence of Mary, 
 queen of Scots, may, besides the obvious resem- 
 blance in their stories, which has been often no- 
 ticed, find a more particular parallel between this 
 Duke of Durazzo and the Earl of Murray. 
 
 the church. She was smothered with a 
 pillow, in prison, by the order of Charles. 
 [A. D. 1378.] The name of Joan of Na- 
 ples has suffered by the lax repetition of 
 calumnies. Whatever share she may 
 have had in her husband's death, and cer- 
 tainly under circumstances of extenua- 
 tion, her subsequent life was not open to 
 any flagrant reproach. The charge of 
 dissolute manners, so frequently made, 
 is not warranted by any specific proof or 
 contemporary testimony. 
 
 In the extremity of Joanna's distress, 
 she had sought assistance from a House of 
 qtiarter too remote to afford it in Anjou. 
 time for her relief. She adopted Louis, 
 duke of Anjou, eldest uncle of the young 
 king of France, Charles VI., as her heir 
 in the kingdom of Naples and county of 
 Provence. This bequest took effect 
 without difficulty in the latter country. 
 Naples was entirely in the possession of 
 Charles of Durazzo. Louis, however, 
 entered Italy with a very large army, 
 consisting at least of 30,000 cavalry, and, 
 according to some writers, more than 
 double that number.* He was joined by 
 many Neapolitan barons attached to the 
 late queen. But, by a fate not unusual in 
 so imperfect a state of military science, 
 this armament produced no adequate ef- 
 fect, and mouldered away through dis- 
 ease and want of provisions. Louis him- 
 self dying not long afterward, the gov- 
 ernment of Charles III. appeared secure, 
 and he was tempted to accept an offer 
 of the crown of Hungary. This enter- 
 prise, equally unjust and injudicious, ter- 
 minated in his assassination. Ladislaus, 
 his son, a child ten years old, succeeded 
 to the throne of Naples, under the guar- 
 dianship of his mother Margaret ; whose 
 exactions of money producing discontent, 
 the party which had supported the late 
 Duke of Anjou became powerful enough 
 to call in his son. Louis II., as he was 
 called, reigned at Naples, and possessed 
 most part of the kingdom for several 
 years ; the young king Ladislaus, who 
 retained some of the northern provinces, 
 fixing his residence at Gaeta. If Louis 
 had prosecuted the war with activity, it 
 seems probable that he would have sub- 
 dued his adversary. But his character 
 was not very energetic ; and Ladislaus, 
 as he advanced to manhood, displaying 
 much superior qualities, gained ground 
 by degrees, till the Angevin barons, per- 
 ceiving the turn of the tide, came over to 
 his banner, and he recovered his whole 
 dominions. 
 
 * Muratori. Summonte. Costanzo. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 180 
 
 The kingdom of Naples, at the close 
 of the fourteenth century, was 
 aus ' still altogether a feudal gov- 
 ernment. This had been introduced by 
 the first Norman kings, and the system 
 had rather been strengthened than im- 
 paired under the Angevin line. The 
 princes of the blood, who were at one 
 time numerous, obtained extensive do- 
 mains by way of appanage. The prin- 
 cipality of Tarento was a large portion 
 of the kingdom.* The rest was occu- 
 pied by some great families, whose 
 strength, as well as pride, was shown in 
 the number of men-at-arms whom they 
 could muster under their banner. At the 
 coronation of Louis II., in 1390, the San- 
 severini appeared with 1800 cavalry com- 
 pletely equipped. f This illustrious house, 
 which had filled all the high offices of 
 state, and changed kings at its pleasure, 
 was crushed by Ladislaus, whose bold 
 and unrelenting spirit well fitted him to 
 bruise the heads of the aristocratic 
 hydra. After thoroughly establishing 
 his government at home, this ambitious 
 monarch directed his powerful resources 
 towards foreign conquests. The eccle- 
 siastical territories had never been se- 
 cure from rebellion or usurpation; but 
 legitimate sovereigns had hitherto re- 
 spected the patrimony of the head of the 
 church. It was reserved for Ladislaus, 
 a feudal vassal of the Holy See, to seize 
 upon Rome itself as his spoil. For sev- 
 eral years, while the disordered state of 
 the church, in consequence of the schism 
 and the means taken to extinguish it, 
 gave him an opportunity, the King of 
 Naples occupied great part of the papal 
 territories. He was disposed to have 
 carried his arms farther north, and at 
 tacked the republic of Florence, if not 
 the states of Lombardy, when his death 
 relieved Italy from the danger of this 
 new tyranny. 
 
 An elder sister, Joanna II., reigned 
 , at Naples after Ladislaus. Un- 
 
 Joannall. -, ., F , ... - 
 
 der this queen, destitute of cour- 
 age and understanding, and the slave of 
 appetites which her age rendered doubly 
 disgraceful, the kingdom relapsed into 
 that state of anarchy from which its late 
 sovereign had rescued it. I shall only 
 
 * It comprehended the provinces now called 
 Terra d'Otranto and Terra di Bari, besides part 
 of those adjoining. Summonte, Istoria di Napoli, 
 t. iii., p. 537. Orsini, prince of Tarento, who died 
 in 1463, had 4000 troops in arms, and the value of 
 1,000,000 florins in moveables. Sismondi, t. x., 
 p. 151. 
 
 t Summonte, t. iii., p. 517, Giannone, 1. xxiv., 
 c.4. 
 
 refer the reader to more enlarged histo- 
 ries for the first years of Joanna's reign. 
 In 1421 the two most powerful individ- 
 uals were Sforza Attendolo, great con- 
 stable, and Sir Gianni Caraccioli, the 
 queen's minion, who governed the pal- 
 ace with unlimited sway. Sfprza, aware 
 that the favourite was contriving his ruin, 
 and remembering the prison in which he 
 had lain more than once since the acces- 
 sion of Joanna, determined to anticipate 
 his enemies by calling a pretender to 
 the crown, another Louis of Anjou, third 
 in descent of that unsuccessful dynasty. 
 The Angevin party, though proscribed 
 and oppressed, was not extinct ; and the 
 populace of Naples, in particular, had 
 always been on that side. Caraccioli's 
 influence and the queen's dishonourable 
 weakness rendered the nobility disaffect- 
 ed. Louis III. therefore had no remote 
 prospect of success. But Caraccioli was 
 more prudent than favourites, selected 
 from such motives, have usually proved. 
 Joanna was old and childless ; the rever- 
 sion to her dominions was a valuable 
 object to any prince in Europe. None 
 was so competent to assist her, Adoption or 
 or so likely to be influenced by Aiionso of 
 the hope of succession, as A}- Ara s n - 
 fonso, king of Aragon and Sicily. That 
 island, after the reign of its de- Affairs of 
 iiverer, Frederick I., had unfor- Sicil y- 
 tunately devolved upon weak or infant 
 princes. One great family, the Chiara- 
 monti, had possessed itself of half Sicily ; 
 not by a feudal title, as in other king- 
 doms, but as a kind of counter-sovereign- 
 ty, in opposition to the crown, though 
 affecting rather to bear arms against the 
 advisers of their kings than against them- 
 selves. The marriage of Maria, queen 
 of Sicily, with Martin, son of the King 
 of Aragon, put an end to the national 
 independence of her country. Dying 
 without issue, she left the crown to her 
 husband. This was consonant perhaps 
 to the received law of some European 
 kingdoms. But, upon the death of Mar- 
 tin, in 1409, his father, also named Mar- 
 tin, king of Aragon, took possession, as 
 heir to his son, without any election by 
 the Sicilian parliament. The Chiara- 
 monti had been destroyed by the younger 
 Martin, and no party remained to make 
 opposition. Thus was Sicily united to 
 the crown of Aragon. Alfonso, who 
 now enjoyed those two crowns, gladly 
 embraced the proposals of the Queen of 
 Naples. They were founded indeed on 
 the most substantial basis, mutual inter- 
 est. She adopted Alfonso as her son 
 and successor, while he bound himself 
 
190 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. HI. 
 
 to employ his forces in delivering a king- 
 dom that was to become his own. Louis 
 of Anjou, though acknowledged in sever- 
 al provinces, was chiefly to depend upon 
 the army of Sforza ; and an army of Ital- 
 ian mercenaries could only be kept by 
 means which he was not able to apply. 
 The King of Aragon, therefore, had far 
 the better prospects in the war, when 
 one of the many revolutions of this 
 reign defeated his immediate expecta- 
 tions. Whether it was that Alfonso's no- 
 ble and affable nature afforded a contrast 
 which Joanna was afraid of exhibiting to 
 the people, or that he had really formed a 
 plan to anticipate his succession to the 
 throne, she became more and more dis- 
 trustful of her adopted son ; till, an open 
 rupture having taken place, she entered 
 into a treaty with her hereditary competi- 
 tor, Louis of Anjou, and, revoking the 
 
 adoption of Alfonso, substituted 
 tionTnfa- tne French prince in his room, 
 vourof The King of Aragon was dis- 
 An U ou f appointed by this unforeseen 
 
 stroke, which, uniting the Ange- 
 vin faction with that of the reigning fami- 
 ly, made it impracticable for him to main- 
 tain his ground for any length of time in 
 the kingdom. Joanna reigned for more 
 than ten years without experiencing any 
 inquietude from the pacific spirit of Louis, 
 who, content with his reversionary hopes, 
 lived as a sort of exile in Calabria.* 
 Upon his death, the queen, who did not 
 long survive him, settled the kingdom on 
 his brother Regnier. The Neapolitans 
 were generally disposed to execute this 
 bequest. But Regnier was unluckily at 
 that time a prisoner to the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy; and though his wife maintained 
 the cause with great spirit, it was diffi- 
 cult for her, or even for himself, to con- 
 
 * Joanna's great favourite, Caraccioli, fell a vic- 
 tim some time before his mistress's death to an in- 
 trigue of the palace ; the Dutchess of Sessia, a new 
 favourite, having prevailed on the feeble old queen 
 to permit him to be assassinated. About this time 
 Alfonso had every reason to hope for the renewal 
 of the settlement in his favour. Caraccioli had 
 himself opened a negotiation with the King of Ar- 
 agon ; and, after his death, the Dutchess of Sessia 
 embarked in the same cause. Joan even revoked 
 secretly the adoption of the Duke of Anjou. This 
 circumstance might appear doubtful ; but the his- 
 torian to whom I refer has published the act of 
 revocation itself, which bears date April llth, 1433. 
 Zurita (Anales de Aragon, t. iv., p. 217) admits 
 that no other writer, either contemporary or sub- 
 sequent, has mentioned any part of the transaction, 
 which must have been kept very secret ; but his 
 authority is so respectable, that I thought it worth 
 notice, however uninteresting these remote in- 
 trigues may appear to most readers. Joanna soon 
 changed her mind again, and took no overt steps 
 in favour of Alfonso 
 
 tend against the King of Aragon, who 
 immediately laid claim to the kingdom. 
 After a contest of several years, Reg- 
 nier, having experienced the treacherous 
 and selfish abandonment of his friends, 
 yielded the game to his adversary ; and 
 Alfonso founded the Aragonese line of 
 sovereigns at Naples, deriving preten- 
 sions more splendid than just from Man- 
 fred, from the house of Swabia, and from 
 Roger Guiscard.* 
 
 In the first year of Alfonso's Neapoli- 
 tan war, he was defeated and Alfonso, 
 taken prisoner by a fleet of the king of' 
 Genoese, who, as constant ene- Na P les - 
 mies of the Catalans in all the naval war- 
 fare of the Mediterranean, had willingly 
 lent their aid to the Angevin party. Ge- 
 noa was at this time subject to Filippo 
 Maria, duke of Milan ; and her royal 
 captive was transmitted to his court. 
 But here the brilliant graces of Alfonso's 
 character won over his conqueror, who 
 had no reason to consider the war as his 
 own concern. The king persuaded him, 
 on the contrary, that a strict alliance 
 with an Aragonese dynasty in Naples 
 against the pretensions of any French 
 claimant, would be the true policy and 
 best security of Milan. That city, which 
 he had entered as a prisoner, he left as a 
 friend and ally. From this time Filippo 
 Maria Visconti and Alfonso were firmly 
 united in their Italian politics, and formed 
 one weight of the balance, which the re- 
 publics of Venice and Florence kept in 
 equipoise. After the succession of Sfor- 
 za to the dutchy of Milan, the Hisconr.ex- 
 same alliance was generally pre- ion with 
 served. Sforza had still more Milan> 
 powerful reasons than his predecessor 
 for excluding the French from Italy, his 
 own title being contested by the Duke of 
 Orleans, who derived a claim from his 
 mother Valentine, a daughter of Gian 
 Galeazzo Visconti. But the two re- 
 publics were no longer disposed towards 
 war. Florence had spent a great deal 
 without any advantage in her contest 
 with Filippo Maria ;f and the new Duke 
 
 * According to a treaty between Frederick III., 
 king of Sicily, and Joanna I., of Naples,' in 1363, 
 the former monarch was to assume the title of 
 King ofTrinacria, leaving the original style to the 
 Neapolitan line. But neither he, nor his succes- 
 sors in the island, ever complied with this condi- 
 tion, or entitled themselves otherwise than kings 
 of Sicily ultra Pharum, in contradistinction to the 
 other kingdom, which they denominated, Sicily 
 citriSi Pharum. Alfonso of Aragon, when he uni- 
 ted both these, was the first who took the title, 
 King of the two Sicilies, which his successors have 
 retained ever since. Giannone, t. iii., p. 234. 
 
 t The war ending with the peace of Ferrara, 
 
PART II ] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 101 
 
 of Milan had been the constant personal 
 friend of Cosmo de' Medici, who alto- 
 gether influenced that republic. At Ven- 
 ice, indeed, he had been regarded with 
 very different sentiments ; the senate 
 had prolonged their war against Milan 
 with redoubled animosity after his eleva- 
 tion, deeming him a not less ambitious 
 and more formidable neighbour than the 
 Visconti. But they were deceived in the 
 character of Sforza. Conscious that he 
 had reached an eminence beyond his 
 early hopes, he had no care but to secure 
 for his family the possession of Milan, 
 without disturbing the balance of Lom- 
 bardy. No one better knew than Sforza 
 the faithless temper and destructive pol- 
 itics of the condottieri, whose interest 
 was placed in the oscillations of intermi- 
 nable war, and whose defection might 
 shake the stability of any government. 
 Without peace it was impossible to break 
 that ruinous system, and accustom states 
 to rely upon their natural resources. 
 Venice had little reason to expect further 
 conquests in Lombardy : and if her am- 
 bition had inspired the hope of them, she 
 was summoned by a stronger call, that 
 of self-preservation, to defend her nu- 
 merous and dispersed possessions in the 
 Levant, against the arms of Mahomet II. 
 All Italy indeed felt the peril that im- 
 Quadrupie pended from that side : and these 
 league of various motions occasioned a 
 quadruple league in 1455, be- 
 tween the King of Naples, the Duke 
 of Milan, and the two republics, for the 
 preservation of peace in Italy. One ob- 
 ject of this alliance, and the prevailing 
 object with Alfonso, was the implied 
 guarantee of his succession in the king- 
 dom of Naples to his illegitimate son, 
 Ferdinand. He had no lawful issue; 
 and there seemed no reason why an ac- 
 quisition of his own valour should pass 
 against his will to collateral heirs. The 
 pope, as feudal superior of the kingdom, 
 and the Neapolitan parliament, the sole 
 competent tribunal, confirmed the inherit- 
 ance of Ferdinand.* Whatever may be 
 thought of the claims subsisting in the 
 house of Anjou, there can be no question 
 that the reigning family of Aragon were 
 legitimately excluded from that throne, 
 though force and treachery enabled them 
 ultimately to obtain it. 
 
 Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous, 
 Character was by far the most accomplish- 
 of Alfonso. e d sovereign whom the fifteenth 
 century produced. The virtues of chiv- 
 
 in 1428, is said to have cost the republic of Flor- 
 ence 3,500,000 florins. Ammirato, p. 1043. 
 * Giannone, 1. xxvi., c. 2. 
 
 airy were combined in him with the pat- 
 ronage of letters, and with more than 
 their patronage, a real enthusiasm for 
 learning, seldom found in a king, and 
 especially in one so active and ambi- 
 tious.* This devotion to literature was, 
 among the Italians of that age, almost as 
 sure a passport to general admiration as 
 his more chivalrous perfection. Magnif- 
 icence in architecture, and the pageantry 
 of a splendid court, gave fresh lustre to 
 his reign. The Neapolitans perceived 
 with grateful pride that he lived almost 
 entirely among them, in preference to his 
 patrimonial kingdom; and forgave the 
 heavy taxes, which faults nearly allied to 
 his virtues, profuseness and ambition, 
 compelled him to impose. f But they re- 
 marked a very different character in his 
 son. Ferdinand was as dark and F ,. 
 vindictive as his father was af- ' 
 fable and generous. The barons, who 
 had many opportunities of ascertaining 
 his disposition, began, immediately upon 
 Alfonso's death, to cabal against his suc- 
 cession, turning their eyes first to the le- 
 gitimate branch of the family [A. D. 
 1461], and, on finding that prospect not 
 favourable, to John, titular duke of Cala- 
 bria, son of Regnier of Anjou, who survi- 
 ved to protest against the revolution that 
 had dethroned him. John was easily 
 prevailed upon to undertake an invasion 
 of Naples. Notwithstanding the treaty 
 concluded in 1455, Florence assisted him 
 with money, and Venice at least with her 
 wishes ; but Sforza remained unshaken 
 in that alliance with Ferdinand, which his 
 clear-sighted policy discerned to be the 
 best safeguard for his own dynasty. A 
 large proportion of the Neapolitan nobil- 
 ity, including Orsini, prince of Tarento, 
 the most powerful vassal of the crown, 
 raised the banner of Anjou, which was 
 sustained also by the youngest Piccinino, 
 the last of the great condottieri, under 
 whose command the veterans of former 
 warfare rejoiced to serve. But John un- 
 derwent the fate that had always attend- 
 ed his family in their long competition 
 for that throne. After some brilliant suc- 
 cesses, his want of resources, aggravated 
 by the defection of Genoa, on whose an- 
 cient enmity to the house of Aragon he 
 had relied, was perceived by the barons 
 of his party, who, according to the prac- 
 tice of their ancestors, returned one by 
 
 * A story is told, true or false, that his delight in 
 hearing Quintus Curtius read, without any other 
 medicine, cured the king of an illness. See other 
 proofs of his love of letters in Tiraboschi, t. vt. 
 p. 40. 
 
 t Giannone, 1. xxvi. 
 
192 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 one to the allegiance of Ferdinand. [A. 
 D. 1464.] 
 
 The peace of Italy was little disturbed, 
 except by a few domestic revolutions, for 
 state or several years after this Neapol- 
 itaiy in the itan war. * Even the most short- 
 ofthefif- 1 sighted politicians were some- 
 teenthcen- times withdrawn from selfish 
 tury. objects by the appalling prog- 
 ress of the Turks, though there was not 
 energy enough in their councils to form 
 any concerted plans for their own secu- 
 rity. Venice maintained a long, but ulti- 
 mately an unsuccessful contest with Ma- 
 homet II. for her maritime acquisitions 
 in Greece and Albania ; and it was not 
 
 * The following distribution of a tax of 458,000 
 florins, imposed, or rather proposed, in 1464, to de- 
 fray the expense of a general war against the 
 Turks, will give a notion of the relative wealth and 
 resources of the Italian powers ; but it is probable 
 that the pope rated himself above his fair contin- 
 gent. He was to pay 100,000 florins ; the Vene- 
 tians 100,000 ; Ferdinand of Naples 80,000 ; the 
 Duke of Milan 70,000; Florence 50,000 ; the Duke 
 of Modena 20,000 ; Siena 15,000 ; the Marquis of 
 Mantua 10,000; Lucca 8000; the Marquis of Mont- 
 i'errat 5000. Sismondi, t. x., p. 229. A similar as- 
 sessment occurs, p. 307, where the proportions are 
 not quite the same. 
 
 Perhaps it may be worth while to extract an 
 estimate of the force of all Christian powers, writ- 
 ten about 1454, from Sanuto's Lives of the Doges 
 of Venice, p. 963. Some parts, however, appear 
 very questionable. The King of France, it is said, 
 can raise 30,000 men-at-arms ; but for any foreign 
 enterprise, only 15,000. The King of England can 
 do the same. These powers are exactly equal ; 
 otherwise one of the two would be destroyed. ' The 
 King of Scotland, " ch'e signore di grandi paesi e 
 popoli con grande poverta," can raise 10,000 men- 
 at-arms : The King of Norway the same : The 
 King of Spain (Castile) 30,000 : The King of Por- 
 tugal 6000 : The Duke of Savoy 8000 : The Duke 
 of Milan 10,000. The republic of Venice can pay 
 from her revenues 10,000 : That of Florence 4000 ; 
 The pope 6000. The emperor and empire can 
 raise 60,000 : The King of Hungary 80,000 (not 
 men-at-arms, certainly). 
 
 The King of France, in 1414, had 2,000,000 du- 
 cats of revenue ; but now only half. The King of 
 England had then as much; now only 700,000. 
 The King of Spain's revenue also is reduced by 
 the wars from 3,000,000 to 800,000. The Duke of 
 Burgundy had 3,000,000 ; now 900,000. The Duke 
 of Milan has sunk from 1,000,000 to 500,000 ; Ven- 
 ice from 1,100,000, which she possessed in 1423, 
 to 800,000 : Florence from 400,000 to 200,000. 
 
 These statistical calculations are chiefly remark- 
 able, as they manifest that comprehensive spirit of 
 treating all the powers of Europe as parts of a com- 
 mon system, which began to actuate the Italians 
 of the fifteenth century. Of these enlarged views 
 of policy the writings of JEneas Sylvius afford an 
 eminent instance. Besides the more general and 
 insensible causes, the increase of navigation and 
 revival of literature, this may be ascribed to the 
 continual danger from the progress of the Ottoman 
 arms, which led the politicians of that part of Eu- 
 rope most exposed to them into more extensive 
 views as to the resources and dispositions of Chris- 
 tian states. 
 
 till after his death relieved Italy from its 
 immediate terror that the ambitious re- 
 public endeavoured to extend its terri- 
 tories by encroaching on the house of 
 Este. [A. D. 1482.] Nor had Milan 
 shown much disposition towards ag- 
 grandizement. Francesco Sforza had 
 been succeeded, such is the condition of 
 despotic governments, by his son Galeaz- 
 zo, a tyrant more execrable than the 
 worst of the Visconti. His extreme cru- 
 elties, and the insolence of a debauch- 
 ery that gloried in the public dishonour 
 of families, excited a few daring spirits to 
 assassinate him. [A. D. 1476.] The Mi- 
 lanese profited by a tyrannicide, the per- 
 petrators of which they had not courage 
 or gratitude to protect. The regency of 
 Bonne of Savoy, mother of the infant 
 duke, Gian Galeazzo, deserved the praise 
 of wisdom and moderation. [A. D. 1480.] 
 But it was overthrown in a few years by 
 Ludovico Sforza, surnamed the Moor, her 
 husband's brother; who, while he pro- 
 claimed his nephew's majority, and affect- 
 ed to treat him as a sovereign, hardly dis- 
 guised in his conduct towards foreign 
 states that he had usurped for himself 
 the sole direction of government. 
 
 The annals of one of the few surviving 
 republics, that of Genoa, present Affairs of 
 to us, during the fifteenth as well Genoa in 
 as the preceding century, an un- that a & e 
 ceasing series of revolutions, the shortest 
 enumeration of which would occupy sev- 
 eral pages. Torn by the factions of 
 Adorni and Fregosi, equal and eternal ri- 
 vals, to whom the old patrician families 
 of Doria and Fieschi were content to be- 
 come secondary, sometimes sinking from 
 weariness of civil tumult into the grasp 
 of Milan or France, and again, from im- 
 patience of foreign subjection, starting 
 back from servitude to anarchy, the Ge- 
 noa of those ages exhibits a singular con- 
 trast to the calm and regular aristocracy 
 of the last three centuries. The latest 
 revolution within the compass of this 
 work was in 1488, when the Duke of Mi- 
 lan became sovereign, an Adorno holding 
 the office of doge as his lieutenant. 
 
 Florence, the most illustrious and for- 
 tunate of Italian republics, was and of Flo- 
 now rapidly descending from rence - 
 her rank among free commonwealths, 
 though surrounded with more than usual 
 lustre in the eyes of Europe. We must 
 take up the story of that city from the 
 revolution of 1382, which restored the 
 ancient Guelf aristocracy, or party of the 
 Albizi, to the ascendency of which a 
 popular insurrection had stripped them. 
 Fifty years elapsed during which this 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 party retained the government in its own 
 hands with few attempts at disturbance. 
 Their principal adversaries had been ex- 
 iled, according to the invariable and per- 
 haps necessary custom of a republic; 
 the populace and inferior artisans were 
 dispirited by their ill success. Compared 
 with the leaders of other factions, Maso 
 degP Albizi and Nicola di Uzzano, who 
 succeeded him in the management of hi 
 party, were attached to a constitutional 
 liberty. Yet so difficult is it for any 
 government, which does not rest on a 
 broad basis of public consent, to avoid 
 injustice, that they twice deemed it ne- 
 cessary to violate the ancient constitu- 
 tion. In 1393, after a partial movement 
 in behalf of the vanquished faction, they 
 assembled a parliament, and established 
 what was technically called at Florence 
 a Balia.* This was a temporary delega- 
 tion of sovereignty to a number, gener- 
 ally a considerable number, of citizens, 
 who, during the period of their dictator- 
 ship, named the magistrates, instead of 
 drawing them by lot, and banished sus- 
 pected individuals. A precedent so dan- 
 gerous was eventually fatal to themselves, 
 and to the freedom of their country. Be- 
 sides this temporary balia, the regular 
 scrutinies periodically made in order to 
 replenish the bags, out of which the 
 names of all magistrates were drwan by 
 lot, according to the constitution estab- 
 lished in 1328, were so managed as to ex- 
 clude' all persons disaffected to the domi- 
 nant faction. But, for still greater secu- 
 rity, a council of two hundred was form- 
 ed^ in 1411, out of those alone who had 
 enjoyed some of the higher offices with- 
 in the last thirty years, the period of the 
 aristocratical ascendency, through which 
 every proposition was to pass before it 
 could be submitted to the two legislative 
 councils.! These precautions indicate a 
 government conscious of public enmity ; 
 and if the Albizi had continued to sway 
 the republic of Florence, their jealousy 
 of the people would have suggested still 
 more innovations, till the constitution 
 had acquired, in legal form as well as 
 substance, an absolutely aristocratical 
 character. 
 
 But, while crushing with deliberate se- 
 verity their avowed adversaries, the ru- 
 ling party had left one family, whose 
 Rise of the prudence gave no reasonable 
 Medici. excuse for persecuting them; 
 and whose popularity, as well as wealth, 
 rendered the experiment hazardous. The 
 Medici were among the most considera- 
 
 Ammirato, p. 840. 
 
 N 
 
 t Id., p. 961. 
 
 193 
 
 ble of the new, or plebeian nobility. 
 From the first years of the fourteenth 
 century, their name not very unfre- 
 quently occurs in the domestic and mili- 
 tary annals of Florence.* Salvestro de' 
 Medici, who had been partially implicated 
 in the democratical revolution that lasted 
 from 1378 to 1382, escaped proscription 
 on the revival of the Guelf party, though 
 some of his family were afterward ban- 
 ished. Throughout the long depression 
 of the popular faction, the house of Med- 
 ici was always regarded as their conso- 
 lation and their hope. That house was 
 now represented by Giovanni,f whose 
 immense wealth, honourably acquired by 
 commercial dealings, which had already 
 rendered the name celebrated in Europe, 
 was expended with liberality and mag- 
 nificence. Of a mild temper, and averse 
 to cabals, Giovanni de' Medici did not at- 
 tempt to set up a party, and contented 
 himself with repressing some fresh en- 
 croachments on the popular part of the 
 constitution, which the Albizi were dis- 
 posed to make.J They, in their turn, 
 freely admitted him to that share in pub- 
 lic councils to which he was entitled 
 by his eminence and virtues; a proof 
 that the spirit of their administration 
 was not illiberally exclusive. But on the 
 death of Giovanni, his son Cosmo de' 
 Medici, inheriting his father's riches and 
 estimation, with more talents and more 
 ambition, thought it time to avail himself 
 of the popularity belonging to his name. 
 By extensive connexions^vith the most 
 eminent men in Italy, especially with 
 Sforza, he came to be considered as the 
 first citizen of Florence. The oligarchy 
 were more than ever unpopular. Their 
 administration, since 1382, had indeed 
 been in general eminently successful; 
 the acquisition of Pisa, and of other Tus- 
 can cities, had aggrandized the republic, 
 while from the port of Leghorn her ships 
 had begun to trade with Alexandria, and 
 sometimes to contend with the Genoese. 
 
 * The Medici are enumerated by Villani among 
 he chiefs of the Black faction in 1304, 1. viii., c. 
 71. One of that family was beheaded by order of 
 the Duke of Athens in 1343, 1. xii., c. 2. It is sin- 
 gular that Mr. Roscoe should refer their first ap- 
 jearance in history, as he seems to do, to the siege 
 of Scarperi, in 1351. 
 
 t Giovanni was not nearly related to Salvestro 
 de' Medici. Their families are said per lungo trat- 
 ,o allontanarsi. Ammirato, p. 992. Nevertheless, 
 his being drawn gonfalonier, in 1421 , created a great 
 sensation in the city, and prepared the way to the 
 subsequent revolution. Ibid. Machiavelli, 1. iv. 
 
 t Machiavelli, Istoria Fiorent., 1. iv. 
 
 4 The Florentines sent their first merchant ship 
 ,o Alexandria in 1422, with great and anxious 
 lopee. Prayers were ordered lor the success of 
 

 194 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 But an unprosperous war with Lucca di- 
 minished a reputation which was never 
 sustained by public affection. Cosmo 
 and his friends aggravated the errors of 
 the government, which, having lost its 
 wise and temperate leader, Nicola di 
 Uzzano, had fallen into the rasher hands 
 of Rinaldo degl' Albizi. He incurred the 
 blame of being the first aggressor in a 
 struggle which had become inevitable. 
 [A. D. 1433.] Cosmo was arrested by 
 command of a gonfalonier devoted to 
 the Albizi, and condemned to banish- 
 ment. But the oligarchy had done too 
 much or too little. The city was full of 
 his friends ; the honours conferred upon 
 him in his exile attested the sentiments 
 of Italy. Next year he was recalled in 
 triumph to Florence, and the Albizi were 
 completely overthrown. 
 
 It is vain to expect, that a victorious 
 faction will scruple to retaliate upon its 
 enemies a still greater measure of injus- 
 tice than it experienced at their hands. 
 The vanquished have no rights in the 
 eyes of a conqueror. The sword of re- 
 turning exiles, flushed by victory, and in- 
 censed by suffering, falls successively 
 upon their enemies, upon those whom 
 they suspect of being enemies, upon 
 those who may hereafter become such. 
 The Albizi had in general respected the 
 legal forms of their free republic, which 
 good citizens, and perhaps themselves, 
 might hope one day to see more effect- 
 ive. The Medici made all their govern- 
 ment conducive to hereditary monarchy. 
 A multitude of noble citizens were driv- 
 en from their country ; some were even 
 put to death. A balia was appointed for 
 ten years, to exclude all the Albizi from 
 magistracy, and for the sake of this secu- 
 rity to the ruling faction, to supersede 
 the legitimate institutions of the republic. 
 After the expiration of this period, the 
 dictatorial power was renewed on pre- 
 tence of fresh danger, and this was re- 
 peated six times in twenty-one years.* 
 In 1455 the constitutional mode of draw- 
 
 the republic by sea ; and an embassy despatched 
 with presents to conciliate the sultan of Babylon, 
 that is, of Grand Cairo. Ammirato, p. 997. Flo- 
 rence had never before been so wealthy. The 
 circulating money was reckoned (perhaps extrava- 
 gantly) at 4,000,000 florins. The manufactures of 
 gilk and cloth of gold had never flourished so much. 
 Architecture revived under Brunelleschi ; litera- 
 ture under Leonard Aretin and Filelfo, p. 977. 
 There is some truth in M. Sismondi's remark, 
 that the Medici have derived part of their glory 
 from their predecessors in government, whom 
 they subverted, and whom they have rendered ob- 
 scure. But the Milanese war, breaking out in 
 1423 tended a good deal to empoverish the city. 
 * Machiavelli, 1. v. Ammirato. 
 
 ing magistrates was permitted to revive, 
 against the wishes of some of the leading 
 party. They had good reason to be jeal- 
 ous of a liberty which was incompatible 
 with their usurpation. The gonfaloniers, 
 drawn at random from among respecta- 
 ble citizens, began to act with an inde- 
 pendence to which the new oligarchy 
 was little accustomed. Cosmo, indeed, 
 the acknowledged chief of the party, per- 
 ceiving that some who had acted in insub- 
 ordination to him were looking forward 
 to the opportunity of becoming them- 
 selves its leaders, was not unwilling to 
 throw upon them the unpopularity attach- 
 ed to a usurpation by which he had main- 
 tained his influence. Without his appa- 
 rent participation, though not against his 
 will, the free constitution was again sus- 
 pended by a balia appointed for the nomin- 
 ation of magistrates ; and the regular draw- 
 ing of names by lot was never, I believe, 
 restored.* Cosmo died at an advanced 
 age in 1464. His son, Piero de' Medici, 
 though not deficient either in virtues or 
 abilities, seemed too infirm in health for the 
 administration of public affairs. At least 
 he could only be chosen by a sort of he- 
 reditary title, which the party above men- 
 tioned, some from patriotic, more from 
 selfish motives, were reluctant to admit. 
 A strong opposition was raised to the 
 family pretensions of the Medici. Like 
 all Florentine factions, it trusted to vio- 
 lence ; and the chance of arms was not 
 in its favour. There is little to regret in 
 the downfall of that oligarchy, which 
 had all the disregard of popular rights, 
 without the generous virtues of the Me- 
 dici, f From this revolution in 1466, when 
 some of the most considerable citizens 
 were banished, we may date an acknowl- 
 edged supremacy in the house of Medici, 
 the chief of which nominated the regular 
 magistrates, and drew to himself the 
 whole conduct of the republic. 
 
 The two sons of Piero, Lorenzo and 
 Julian, especially the former, Lorenzo de 
 though young at their father's Medici. 
 death [A. D. 1469], assumed, by the re- 
 quest of their friends, the reins of gov- 
 ernment. It was impossible that, among 
 a people who had so many recollections 
 to attach to the name of liberty, among 
 so many citizens whom their ancient 
 constitution invited to public trust, the 
 control of a single family should excite 
 no dissatisfaction ; and perhaps their want 
 
 * Ammirato, t. ii., p. 82-87. 
 
 t Ammirato, p. 93. Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Me- 
 dici, ch. 2. Machiavelli. Sismondi. The two 
 latter are perpetual references in this part of histo- 
 ry, where no other is made. 
 
 
 

 PART II.] 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 195 
 
 of any positive authority heightened the 
 appearance of usurpation in their influ- 
 ence. But, if the people's wish to resign 
 their freedom gives a title to accept the 
 government of a country, the Medici 
 were no usurpers. That family never 
 lost the affections of the populace. The 
 cry of Palle, Palle (their armorial distinc- 
 tion), would at any time rouse the Flor- 
 entines to defend the chosen patrons of 
 the republic. If their substantial influ- 
 ence could before be questioned, the con- 
 spiracy of the Pazzi, wherein Julian per- 
 ished, excited an enthusiasm for the sur- 
 viving brother that never ceased during 
 his life. Nor was this any thing unnatu- 
 ral, or any severe reproach to Florence. 
 All around, in Lombardy and Romagna, 
 the lamp of liberty had long since been 
 extinguished in blood. The freedom of 
 Siena and Genoa was dearly purchased 
 by revolutionary proscriptions; that of 
 Venice was only a name. The republic 
 which had preserved longest, and with 
 greatest purity, that vestal fire, had at 
 least no relative degradation to fear in 
 surrendering herself to Lorenzo de' Me- 
 dici. I need not in this place expatiate 
 upon what the name instantly suggests, 
 the patronage of science and art, and the 
 constellation of scholars and poets, of 
 architects and painters, whose reflected 
 beams cast their radiance around his 
 head. His political reputation, though 
 far less durable, was in his own age as 
 conspicuous as that which he acquired in 
 the history of letters. Equally active and 
 sagacious, he held his way through the 
 varying combinations of Italian policy, 
 always with credit, and generally with 
 success. Florence, if not enriched, was 
 upon the whole aggrandized during his 
 administration, which was exposed to 
 some severe storms from the unscrupu- 
 lous adversaries, Sixtus IV. and Ferdi- 
 nand of Naples, whom he was compelled 
 to resist. As a patriot, indeed, we never 
 can bestow upon Lorenzo de' Medici the 
 meed of disinterested virtue. He com- 
 pleted that subversion of the Florentine 
 republic which his two immediate ances- 
 tors had so well prepared. The two 
 councils, her regular legislature, he su- 
 perseded by a permanent senate of sev- 
 enty persons ;* while the gonfalonier and 
 
 * Ammirato, p. 145. Machiavel says, 1. viii., that 
 this was done ristringere il governo, e che le de- 
 liberazioni important! si riducessero in minore nu- 
 mero. Mr. Roscoe, vol. ii., p. 53, is puzzled how 
 to explain this decided breach of the people's rights 
 by his hero. But though it rather appears from 
 Ammirato's expressions that the two councils were 
 now abolished, yet from M. Sismondi, t. xi., p. 186, 
 who quotes an author I have not seen, and from 
 N2 
 
 priors, become a mockery and pageant to 
 keep up the illusion of liberty, were taught 
 that, in exercising a legitimate authority 
 without the sanction of their prince, a 
 name now first heard at Florence, they in- 
 curred the risk of punishment for their au- 
 dacity.* Even the total dilapidation of his 
 commercial wealth was repaired at the 
 cost of the state ; and the republic dis- 
 
 fracefully screened the bankruptcy of the 
 ledici by her own.f But, compared with 
 the statesmen of his age, we can re- 
 proach Lorenzo with no heinous crime. 
 He had many enemies ; his descendants 
 had many more ; but no unequivocal 
 charge of treachery or assassination has 
 been substantiated against his memory. 
 By the side of Galeazzo or Ludovico 
 Sforza, of Ferdinand or his son Alfonso 
 of Naples, of the pope Sixtus IV., he 
 shines with unspotted lustre. [A. D. 
 1492.] So much was Lorenzo esteemed 
 by his contemporaries, that his premature 
 death has frequently been considered as 
 
 Nardi, p. 7, 1 should infer that they still formally 
 subsisted. 
 
 * Cambi, a gonfalonier of justice, had, in concert 
 with the priors, admonished some public officers 
 for a breach of duty. Fu giudicato questo atto 
 molto superbo, says Ammirato, che senza partici- 
 pazione di Lorenzo de' Medici, principe del gover- 
 no, fosse seguito, che in Pisa in quel tempo si ri- 
 trovava, p. 184. The gonfalonier was fined for ex- 
 ecuting his constitutional functions. This was a 
 downright confession that the republic was at an 
 end ; and all it provokes M. Sismondi to say is 
 not too much, t. xi., p. 349. 
 
 f Since the Medici took on themselves the char* 
 acter of princes, they had forgotten how to be mer- 
 chants. But, imprudently enough, they had not 
 discontinued their commerce, which was of course 
 mismanaged by agents, whom they did not overlook, 
 The consequence was the complete dilapidation 
 of their vast fortune. The public revenues had 
 been for some years applied to make up its defi- 
 ciencies. But from the measures adopted by the 
 republic, if we may still use that name, she should 
 appear td have considered herself, rather than Lo* 
 renzo, as the debtor. The interest of the public 
 debt was diminished one half. Many charitable foun* 
 dations were suppressed. The circulating specie 
 was taken at one fifth below its nominal value in 
 payment of taxes, while the government continued 
 to issue it at its former rate. Thus was Lorenzo re- 
 imbursed a part of his loss at the expense of all his 
 fellow-citizens. Sismondi, t. xi., p. 347. It is 
 slightly alluded to by Machiavel. 
 
 The vast expenditure of the Medici for the sake 
 of political influence would of itself have absorbed 
 all their profits. Cosmo is said by Guicciardini to 
 have spent 400,000 ducats in building churches, 
 monasteries, and other public works, 1. i., p. 91. 
 The expenses of the family between 1434 and 1471 
 in buildings, charities, and taxes alone, amounted 
 to 663.755 florins ; equal in value, according to Sis- 
 mondi, to 32,000,000 francs at present. Hist, des 
 Republ., t. x.,p. 173. They seem to have advan- 
 ced moneys imprudently, through their agents, to 
 Edward 1 V., who was not the best of debtors. 
 Comines, Mem. de Charles VIII., 1. vu , c, 6. 
 

 196 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. III. 
 
 the cause of those unhappy revolutions 
 that speedily ensued, and which his fore- 
 sight would", it was imagined, have been 
 able to prevent ; an opinion which, wheth- 
 er founded in probability or otherwise, 
 attests the common sentiment about his 
 character. 
 
 If indeed Lorenzo de' Medici could not 
 Pretensions of nave changed the destinies of 
 France upon Italy, however premature his 
 Naples. death may appear, if we con- 
 sider the ordinary duration of human ex- 
 istence, it must be admitted, that for his 
 own welfare, perhaps for his glory, he 
 had lived out the full measure of his 
 time. An age of new and uncommon 
 revolutions was about to arise, among 
 the earliest of which the temporary down- 
 fall of his family was to be reckoned. 
 The long-contested succession of Naples 
 was again to involve Italy in war. The 
 ambition of strangers was once more to 
 desolate her plains. Ferdinand, king of 
 Naples, had reigned for thirty years after 
 the discomfiture of his competitor with 
 success and ability ; but with a degree of 
 ill faith as well as tyranny towards his 
 subjects that rendered his government 
 deservedly odious. His son Alfonso, 
 whose succession seemed now near at 
 hand, was still more marked by these 
 vices than himself.* Meanwhile, the 
 pretensions of the house of Anjou had 
 legally descended, after the death of old 
 Regnier, to Regnier, duke of Lorraine, 
 his grandson by a daughter ; whose mar- 
 riage into the house of Lorraine had, 
 however, so displeased her father, that 
 he bequeathed his Neapolitan title, along 
 with his real patrimony, the county of 
 Provence, to a count of Maine ; by whose 
 testament they became vested in the 
 crown of France. Louis XL, while he 
 took possession of Provence, gave him- 
 self no trouble about Naples. But Charles 
 VIII., inheriting his father's ambition 
 without that cool sagacity which restrain- 
 ed it in general from impracticable at- 
 tempts, and far better circumstanced at 
 home than Louis had ever been, was 
 ripe for an expedition to vindicate his 
 pretensions upon Naples, or even for 
 more extensive projects. It was now 
 two centuries since the kings of France 
 had aimed, by intervals, at conquests in 
 Italy. Philip the Fair and his succes- 
 sors were anxious to keep up a connex- 
 ion with the Guelf party, and to be con- 
 
 * Comines, who speaks sufficiently ill of the 
 father, sums up the son's character very concisely : 
 Nul homme n'a este plus cruel que lui, ne plus 
 mauvais, ne plus vicieux et plus infect, ne plus 
 gourmand que lui, I. vii., c. 13. 
 
 sidered its natural heads, as the German 
 emperors were of the Ghibelins. The long 
 English wars changed all views of the 
 court of France to self-defence. But, in 
 the fifteenth century, its plans of aggran- 
 dizement beyond the Alps began to re- 
 vive. Several times, as I have mention- 
 ed, the republic of Genoa put itself under 
 the dominion of France. The dukes of 
 Savoy, possessing most part of Pied- 
 mont, and masters of the mountain-pass- 
 es, were, by birth, intermarriage, and 
 habitual policy, completely dedicated to 
 the French interests.* In the former wars 
 of Ferdinand against the house of Anjou, 
 Pope Pius II., a very enlightened states- 
 man, foresaw the danger of Italy from 
 the prevailing influence of France, and 
 deprecated the introduction of her ar- 
 mies, f But at that time the central parts 
 of Lombardy were held by a man equally 
 renowned as a soldier and a politician, 
 Francesco Sforza. Conscious that a 
 claim upon his own dominions subsisted 
 in the house of Orleans, he maintained a 
 strict alliance with the Aragonese dynas- 
 ty at Naples, as having a common interest 
 against France. But after his death the 
 connexion between Milan and Naples 
 came to be weakened. In the new sys- 
 tem of alliances, Milan and Florence, 
 sometimes including Venice, were com- 
 bined against Ferdinand and Sixtus IV., 
 an unprincipled and restless pontiff. Lu- 
 dovico Sforza, who had usurped the 
 guardianship of his nephew, the Duke 
 of Milan, found, as that young man ad- 
 vanced to maturity, that one crime requir- 
 ed to be completed by another. To 
 
 * Denina, Storia dell' Italia Occidentale, t. ii., 
 passim. Louis XI. treated Savoy as a fief of 
 France; interfering in all its affairs, and even 
 taking on himself the regency after the death of 
 Philibert I., under pretence of preventing disor- 
 ders, p. 185. The Marquis of Saluzzo, who pos- 
 sessed considerable territories in the south of Pied- 
 mont, had done homage to France ever since 1353 
 (p. 40), though to the injury of his real superior, 
 the Duke of Savoy. This gave France another 
 pretext for interference in Italy, p. 187. 
 
 f Cosmo de' Medici, in a conference with Pius 
 II. at Florence, having expressed his surprise 
 that the pope should support Ferdinand-: Pontifex 
 haud ferendum fuisse ait, regem a se constituturn, 
 armis ejici, neque id Italiae libertati conducere; 
 Gallos, si regnum obtinuissent, Senas haud dubie 
 subacturos; Florentines adversus lilia nihil actu- 
 ros; Borsium Mutinae ducem Gallis galliorem 
 videri ; Flaminiae regulos ad Francos inclinare ; 
 Genuam Francis subesse, et civitatem Astensem ; 
 si pontifex Romanus aliquando Francorum amicus 
 assumatur, nihil reliqui in Italia remanere quod 
 non transeat in Gallorum nomen ; tueri se Itaham, 
 dum Ferdinandum tueretur. Commentar. Pii Se- 
 cundi, 1. iv., p. 96. Spondanus, who led me to this 
 passage, is very angry ; but the year 1494 proved 
 Pius II. to be a wary statesman. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 197 
 
 depose and murder his ward was how- 
 ever a scheme that prudence, though not 
 conscience, bade him hesitate to execute. 
 He had rendered Ferdinand of Naples, 
 and Piero de' Medici, Lorenzo's heir, his 
 decided enemies. A revolution at Milan 
 would be the probable result of his con- 
 tinuing in usurpation. [A. D. 1439.] In 
 these circumstances, Ludovico Sforza 
 excited the King of France to undertake 
 the conquest of Naples.* 
 
 So long as the three great nations of 
 Europe were unable to put forth their 
 natural strength through internal separa- 
 tion or foreign war, the Italians had so 
 little to dread for their independence, 
 that their policy was altogether directed 
 to regulating the domestic balance of 
 power among themselves. In the latter 
 part of the fifteenth century, a more en- 
 larged view of Europe would have mani- 
 fested the necessity of reconciling petty 
 animosities, and sacrificing petty ambi- 
 tion, in order to preserve the nationality 
 of their governments ; not by attempting 
 to melt down Lombards and Neapolitans, 
 principalities and republics, into a single 
 monarchy, but by the more just and ra- 
 tional scheme of a common federation. 
 The politicians of Italy were abundantly 
 competent, as far as cool and clear un- 
 
 derstandings could render them, to per- 
 ceive the interests of their country. But 
 it is the will of Providence, that the high- 
 est and surest wisdom, even in matters 
 of policy, should never be unconnected 
 with virtue. In relieving himself from an 
 immediate danger, Ludovico Sforza over- 
 looked the consideration that the pre- 
 sumptive heir of the King of France 
 claimed by an ancient title that principal- 
 ity of Milan, which he was compassing 
 by usurpation and murder. But neither 
 Milan nor Naples was free from other 
 claimants than France, nor was she re- 
 served to enjoy unmolested the spoil of 
 Italy. A louder and a louder strain of 
 warlike dissonance will be heard from 
 the banks of the Danube, and from the 
 Mediterranean gulf. The dark and wily 
 Ferdinand, the rash and lively Maximil- 
 ian, are preparing to hasten into the lists ; 
 the schemes of ambition are assuming 
 a more comprehensive aspect; and the 
 controversy of Neapolitan succession 
 is to expand into the long rivalry be- 
 tween the houses of France and Austria. 
 But here, while Italy is still untouched, 
 and before as yet the first lances of 
 France gleam along the defiles of the 
 Alps, we close the history of the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF SPAIN TO THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA. 
 
 Kingdom of the Visigoths. Conquest of Spain by 
 the Moors. Gradual Revival of the Spanish 
 Nation. Kingdoms of Leon, Aragon, Navarre, 
 and Castile, successively formed. Chartered 
 Towns of Castile. Military Orders. Conquest 
 of Ferdinand III. and James of Aragon. Causes 
 of the delay in expelling the Moors. History of 
 Castile continued. Character of the government. 
 Peter the Cruel. House of Trastamare. 
 John II. Henry IV. Constitution of Castile. 
 National Assemblies or Cortes. Their constitu- 
 ent parts. Right of Taxation. Legislation. 
 Privy Council of Castile. Laws for the protec- 
 tion of Liberty. Imperfections of the Constitu- 
 tion. Aragon. Its history in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries. Disputed succession. Con- 
 stitution of Aragon. Free spirit of its Aristoc- 
 racy. Privilege of Union. Powers of the Jus- 
 tiza. Legal Securities. Illustrations. Other 
 Constitutional Laws. Valencia and Catalonia. 
 Union of two Crowns by the Marriage of Fer- 
 dinand and Isabella. Conquest of Granada. 
 
 THE history of Spain during the mid- 
 dle ages ought to commence with the 
 
 * Guicciardini, 1. i. 
 
 dynasty of the Visigoths ; a na- Kingdom of 
 tion among the first that assault- Visigoths in 
 ed and overthrew the Roman Spam - 
 Empire, and whose establishment prece- 
 ded by nearly half a century the invasion 
 of Clovis. Vanquished by that conquer- 
 or in the battle of Poitiers, the Gothic 
 monarchs lost their extensive dominions 
 in Gaul, and transferred their residence 
 from Toulouse to Toledo. But I hold 
 the annals of barbarians so unworthy of 
 remembrance, that I will not detain the 
 reader by naming one sovereign of that 
 obscure race. The Merovingian kings of 
 France were perhaps as deeply stained 
 by atrocious crimes, but their history, 
 slightly as I have noticed it, is the neces- 
 sary foundation of that of Charlemagne, 
 and illustrates the feudal system and 
 constitutional antiquities of France. If 
 those of Castile had been equally inter- 
 esting to the historical student, I should 
 have taken the same pains to trace their 
 
108 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 original in the Gothic monarchy. For 
 that is at least as much the primary 
 source of the old Castilian constitution, 
 as the Anglo-Saxon polity of our own. 
 It may, however, suffice to mention, that 
 it differed in several respects from that 
 of the Franks during the same period. 
 The crown was less hereditary, or at 
 least the regular succession was more 
 frequently disturbed. The prelates had a 
 still more commanding influence in tem- 
 poral government. The distinction of 
 Romans and barbarians was less marked, 
 the laws more uniform, and approaching 
 nearly to the imperial code. The power 
 of the sovereign was perhaps more lim- 
 ited by an aristocratical council than in 
 France, but it never yielded to the dan- 
 gerous influence of mayors of the palace. 
 Civil wars and disputed successions were 
 very frequent, but the integrity of the 
 kingdom was not violated by the custom 
 of partition. 
 
 Spain, after remaining for nearly three 
 Conquest centuries in the possession of the 
 by the Visigoths, fell under the yoke of 
 Saracens. the Saracens in 712. The fer- 
 vid and irresistible enthusiasm which dis- 
 tinguished the youthful period of Ma- 
 hometanism, might sufficiently account 
 for this conquest ; even if we could not 
 assign additional causes, the factions 
 which divided the Goths, the resentment 
 of disappointed pretenders to the throne, 
 the provocations of Count Julian, and the 
 temerity that risked the fate of an em- 
 pire on the chances of a single battle. 
 It is more surprising, that a remnant of 
 this ancient monarchy should not only 
 have preserved its national liberty and 
 name in the northern mountains, but 
 waged for some centuries a successful, 
 and generally an offensive warfare against 
 the conquerors, till the balance was com- 
 pletely turned in its favour, and the 
 Moors were compelled to maintain almost 
 as obstinate and protracted a contest for 
 a small portion of the peninsula. But the 
 Arabian monarchs of Cordova found in 
 their success and imagined security a pre- 
 text for indolence ; even in the cultivation 
 of science, and contemplation of the mag- 
 nificent architecture of their mosques 
 and palaces, they forgot their poor but 
 daring enemies in the Asturias; while, 
 according to the nature of despotism, the 
 fruits of wisdom or bravery in one gen- 
 eration were lost in the follies and ef- 
 feminacy of the next. Their kingdom 
 was dismembered by successful rebels, 
 who formed the states of Toledo, Hues- 
 ca, Saragosa, and others less eminent; 
 and these, in their own mutual contests, 
 
 lot only relaxed their natural enmity to- 
 wards the Christian princes, but some- 
 ;imes sought their alliance.* 
 
 The last attack, which seemed to en- 
 danger the reviving monarchy of Kingdom 
 Spain, was that of Almanzor, the of Leon - 
 llustrious vizier of Haccham II., towards 
 ;he end of the tenth century, wherein the 
 city of Leon, and even the shrine of Com- 
 Dostella, were burnt to the ground. For 
 some ages before this transient reflux, 
 
 radual encroachments had been made 
 upon the Saracens; and the kingdom, 
 originally styled of Oviedo, the seat of 
 which was removed to Leon in 914, had 
 extended its boundary to the Duero, and 
 even to the mountainous chain of the 
 
 uadarrama. The province of old Cas- 
 tile, thus denominated, as is generally 
 supposed, from the castles erected, while 
 t remained a march or frontier against 
 he Moors, was governed by hereditary 
 counts, elected originally by the provin- 
 cial aristocracy, and virtually independ- 
 ent, it seems probable, of the kings of 
 Leon, though commonly serving them in 
 war, as brethren of the same faith and 
 nation.! 
 
 While the kings of Leon were thus occu- 
 )ied in recovering the western provinces, 
 another race of Christian princes grew up 
 silently under the shadow of the Pyrene- 
 an mountains. Nothing can be Kingdoms of 
 more obscure than the begin- Navarre and 
 lings of those little states, Ara g n - 
 which were formed in Navarre and the 
 country of Soprarbe. They might per- 
 laps be almost contemporaneous with the 
 Moorish conquests. On both sides of the 
 Pyrenees dwelt an aboriginal people ; the 
 ast to undergo the yoke, and who had nev- 
 er acquired the language, of Rome. We 
 know little of these intrepid mountain- 
 eers in the dark period which elapsed 
 under the Gothic and Frank dynasties, 
 till we find them cutting off the rear- 
 guard of Charlemagne in Roncesvalles, 
 
 * Cardonne, Hist, de 1'Afrique et de 1'Espagne. 
 
 f According to Roderic of Toledo, one of the 
 earliest Spanish historians, though not older than 
 the beginning of the thirteenth century, the nobles 
 of Castile, in the reign of Froila, about the year 
 924, sibi et posteris providerunt, et duos milites non 
 de potentioribus, sed de prudentioribus elegerunt, 
 quod et judices statuerunt, ut dissensiones patriae 
 et querelantium causae suo judicio sopirentur, 1. v., 
 c. 1. Several other passages in the same writer 
 prove that the counts of Castile were nearly inde- 
 pendent of Leon, at least from the time of Ferdi- 
 nand Gonsalvo about the middle of the tenth centu- 
 ry. Ex quo iste suscepit suaa patriae comitatum, 
 cessaverunt reges Asturiarum insolescere in Cas- 
 tellam, et a flumine Pisorica nihilamplius vindicfe- 
 runt, 1. v., c. 2. Marina, in his Ensayo Historico 
 Critico, is disposed to controvert this fact. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 199 
 
 and maintaining at least their independ 
 ence, though seldom, like the kings oi 
 Asturias, waging offensive war agains 
 the Saracens. The town of Jaca, situa 
 ted among long narrow valleys that in 
 tersect the southern ridges of the Pyre 
 nees, was the capital of a little free state 
 which afterward expanded into the mon- 
 archy of Aragon.* A territory rather 
 more extensive belonged to Navarre, the 
 kings of which fixed their seat at Pam- 
 pelona. Biscay seems to have been di- 
 vided between this kingdom and that of 
 Leon. The connexion of Aragon or So- 
 prarbe and Navarre was very intimate, 
 and they were often united under a single 
 chief. 
 
 At the beginning of the eleventh centu- 
 Kingdomof ry, Sancho the Great, king of 
 Castile. Navarre and Aragon, was ena- 
 bled to render his second son, Ferdinand, 
 count, or, as he 'assumed the title, King 
 of Castile. This effectually dismember- 
 ed that province from the kingdom of 
 Leon ; but their union soon became more 
 complete than ever, though with a re- 
 versed supremacy. Bermudo III. , king of 
 Leon, fell in a battle with the new king 
 of Castile, who had married his sister; 
 and Ferdinand, in her right or in that of 
 conquest, became master of the united 
 monarchy. This cessation of hostilities 
 between the Christian states enabled 
 them to direct a more unremitting ener- 
 gy against their ancient enemies, who 
 were now sensibly weakened by the va- 
 rious causes of decline to which I have 
 already alluded. During the eleventh 
 century, the Spaniards were almost al- 
 ways superior in the field; the towns, 
 
 * The Fueros, or written laws of Jaca, were 
 perhaps more ancient than any local customary in 
 Europe. Alfonso III. confirms them by name of the 
 ancient usages of Jaca. They prescribe the de- 
 scent of lands and moveables, as well as the elec- 
 tion of municipal magistrates. The following law, 
 which enjoins the rising in arms on a sudden emer- 
 gency, illustrates, with a sort of romantic wildness, 
 the manners of a pastoral but warlike people, and 
 reminds us of a well-known passage in the Lady of 
 the Lake, De appellitis ita statuimus. Cum hom- 
 ines de villis, vel qui stant in montanis cum suis 
 ganatis [gregibus], audierint appellitum; omnes 
 capiant arma, et dunissis ganatis, et omnibus aliis 
 BUis faziendis [negotiis] sequantur appellitum. Et 
 si illi qui fuerint magis remoti, invenerint in villa 
 magis proxima appellito [deest aliquid?] omnes 
 qui nondum fuerint egressi tune villam illam, quae 
 tardius secuta est appellitum, pecent [solvant] 
 unam baccam [vaccam] ; et unusquisque homo ex 
 illis qui tardius secutus est appellitum, et quem 
 magis remoti praecesserint, pecet tres solidos, quo- 
 modo nobis videbitur, partiendos. Tamen in Jaca 
 et in aliis villis, sint aliqui nominati et certi, quos 
 elegerint consules, qui remaneant ad villas custo- 
 diendas et defendendas. Biancae Commentaria in 
 Schotti Hispania Illustrata, p. 595. 
 
 which they began by pillaging, they gradu- 
 ally possessed ; their valour was height- 
 ened by the customs of chivalry, and 
 inspired by the example of the Cid"; and, 
 before the end of this age, Alonso VI. re- 
 covered the ancient metropolis of the mon- 
 archy, the city of Toledo. This capture of 
 was the severest blow which the Toledo, 
 Moors had endured, and an unequivocal 
 symptom of that change in their relative 
 strength which, from being so gradual, 
 was the more irretrievable. Calamities 
 scarcely inferior fell upon them in a dif- 
 ferent quarter. The kings of Aragon (a 
 title belonging originally to a little dis- 
 trict upon the river of that name) had 
 been cooped up almost in the mountains 
 by the small Moorish states north of the 
 Ebro, especially that of Huesca. About 
 the middle of the eleventh century, they 
 began to attack their neighbours with 
 success ; the Moors lost one town after 
 another, till, in 1118, exposed and weak- 
 ened by the reduction of all these places, 
 the city of Saragosa, in which a And Sara- 
 line of Mahometan princes had osa - 
 flourished for several ages, became the 
 prize of Alfonso I., and the capital of his 
 kingdom. The southern parts of what 
 is now the province of Aragon were suc- 
 cessively reduced during the twelfth cen- 
 tury ; while all new Castile and Estre- 
 madura became annexed in the same 
 gradual manner to the dominion of the 
 descendants of Alfonso VI. 
 
 Although the feudal system cannot 
 be said to have obtained in the M 0deofset . 
 kingdoms of Leon and Castile, tiing the 
 their peculiar situation gave the w con- 
 aristocracy a great deal of the ql 
 same power and independence which 
 resulted in France and Germany from 
 that institution. The territory succes- 
 sively recovered from the Moors, like 
 waste lands reclaimed, could have no 
 proprietor but the conquerors ; and the 
 prospect of such acquisitions was a con- 
 stant incitement to the nobility of Spain, 
 especially to those who had settled them- 
 selves on the Castilian frontier. In their 
 new conquests, they built towns and 
 nvited Christian settlers, the Saracen 
 nhabitants being commonly expelled, 
 or voluntarily retreating to the safer 
 Drovinces of the south. Thus Burgos was 
 settled by a count of Castile about 880 ; an- 
 other fixed his seat at Osma; a third 
 at Sepulveda; a fourth at Salamanca. 
 These cities were not free from inces- 
 sant peril o/ a sudden attack till the union 
 of the two kingdoms under Ferdinand I., 
 and, consequently, the necessity of keep- 
 ng in exercise a numerous and armed 
 
200 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 population gave a character of personal 
 freedom and privilege to the inferior 
 classes, which they hardly possessed at 
 so early a period in any other monarchy. 
 Villanage seems never to have been 
 established in the Hispano-Gothic king- 
 doms Leon and Castile ; though I confess 
 it was far from being unknown in that 
 of Aragon, which had formed its institu- 
 tions on a feudal pattern. Since nothing 
 makes us forget the arbitrary distinctions 
 of rank so much as participation in any 
 common calamity, every man who had 
 escaped the. great shipwreck of liberty 
 and religion in the mountains of Asturi- 
 as was invested with a personal dignity, 
 which gave him value in his own eyes 
 and those of his country. It is probably 
 this sentiment, transmitted to posterity, 
 and gradually fixing the national charac- 
 ter, that has produced the elevation of 
 manner remarked by travellers in the 
 Castilian peasant. But while these ac- 
 quisitions of the nobility promoted the 
 grand object of winning back the penin- 
 sula from its invaders, they by no means 
 invigorated the government, or tended to 
 domestic tranquillity. 
 
 A more interesting method of securing 
 chartered tne public defence was by the 
 towns or institution of chartered towns 
 communities. or communities. These were 
 established at an earlier period than in 
 France and England, and were in some 
 degree of a peculiar description. Instead 
 of purchasing their immunities, and al- 
 most their personal freedom, at the hands 
 of a master, the burgesses of Castilian 
 towns were invested with civil rights and 
 extensive property on the more liberal 
 condition of protecting their country. 
 The earliest instance of the erection of a 
 community is in 1020, when Alfonso V., 
 in the cortes at Leon, established the priv- 
 ileges of that city with a regular code of 
 laws, by which its magistrates should 
 be governed. The citizens of Carrion, 
 Llanes, and other towns, were incorpo- 
 rated by the same prince. Sancho the 
 Great gave a similar constitution to Nax- 
 ara. Sepulveda had its code of laws in 
 1076 from Alfonso VI. ; in the same reign 
 Logrono and Sahagun acquired their priv- 
 ileges, and Salamanca not long after- 
 ward. The fuero, or original charter of 
 a Spanish community, was properly a 
 compact, by which the king or lord 
 granted a town and adjacent district to 
 the burgesses, with various privileges, 
 and especially that of choosing magis- 
 trates and a common council, who were 
 bound to conform themselves to the laws 
 prescribed by the founder. These laws, 
 
 civil as well as criminal, though essen- 
 tially derived from the ancient code of 
 the Visigoths, which continued to be the 
 common law of Castile till the fourteenth 
 or fifteenth century, varied from each 
 other in particular usages, which had 
 probably grown up and been established 
 in these districts before their legal con- 
 firmation. The territory held by char- 
 tered towns was frequently very exten- 
 sive, far beyond any comparison with 
 corporations in our own country or in 
 France ; including the estates of private 
 landholders, subject to the jurisdiction 
 and control of the municipality, as well 
 as its inalienable demesnes, allotted to 
 the maintenance of the magistrates and 
 other public expenses. In every town 
 the king appointed a governor to receive 
 the usual tributes, and watch over the 
 police and the fortified places within the 
 district ; but the administration of justice 
 was exclusively reserved to the inhabi- 
 tants and their elected judges. Even the 
 executive power of the royal officer was 
 regarded with jealousy ; he was forbid- 
 den to use violence towards any one 
 without legal process ; and, by the fuero 
 of Logrono, if he attempted to enter for- 
 cibly into a private house, he might be 
 killed with impunity. These democrat- 
 ical customs were altered in the four- 
 teenth century by Alfonso XL, who 
 vested the municipal administration in a 
 small number of jurats or regidors. A 
 pretext for this was found in some disor- 
 ders to which popular elections had led ; 
 but the real motive, of course, must have 
 been to secure a greater influence for the 
 crown, as in similar innovations of some 
 English kings. 
 
 In recompense for such liberal conces- 
 sions, the incorporated towns were bound 
 to certain money payments and to mili- 
 tary service. This was absolutely due 
 from every inhabitant, without dispensa- 
 tion or substitution, unless in case of in- 
 firmity. The royal governor and the ma- 
 gistrates, as in the simple times of prim- 
 itive Rome, raised and commanded the 
 militia ; who, in a service always short, 
 and for the most part necessary, pre- 
 served that delightful consciousness of 
 freedom, under the standard of their fel- 
 low-citizens and chosen leaders, which 
 no mere soldier can enjoy. Every man 
 of a certain property was bound to serve 
 on horseback, and was exempted in re- 
 turn from the payment of taxes. This 
 produced a distinction between the cdbal- 
 leros, or noble class, and the pecheros, or 
 payers of tribute. But the distinction 
 appears to have been founded only upon 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 201 
 
 wealth, as in the Roman equites, and not 
 upon hereditary rank, though it most 
 likely prepared the way for the latter. 
 The horses of these caballeros could not 
 be seized for debt ; in some cases they 
 were exclusively eligible to magistracy ; 
 and their honour was protected by laws 
 which rendered it highly penal to insult 
 or molest them. But the civil rights of 
 rich and poor in courts of justice were as 
 equal as in England.* 
 
 The progress of the Christian arms in 
 Military Spain may in part be ascribed to 
 orders, another remarkable feature in the 
 constitution of that country, the military 
 orders. These had already been tried 
 with signal effect in Palestine ; and the 
 similar circumstances of Spain easily led 
 to an adoption of the same policy. In a 
 very few years after the first institution 
 of the Knights Templars, they were en- 
 dowed with great estates, or rather dis- 
 tricts, won from the Moors, on condition 
 of defending their own and the national 
 territory. These lay chiefly in the parts 
 of Aragon beyond the Ebro, the conquest 
 of which was then recent and insecure.! 
 So extraordinary was the respect for this 
 order, and that of St. John, and so power- 
 ful the conviction that the hope of Chris- 
 tendom rested upon their valour, that Al- 
 fonso the First, king of Aragon, dying 
 childless, bequeathed to them his whole 
 kingdom ; an example of liberality, says 
 Mariana, to surprise future times, and dis- 
 please his own. J The states of Aragon 
 annulled, as may be supposed, this strange 
 testament ; but the successor of Alfonso 
 was obliged to pacify the ambitious 
 knights by immense concessions of mo- 
 ney and territory ; stipulating even not to 
 make peace with the Moors against their 
 will. In imitation of these -great mili- 
 tary orders, common to all Christendom, 
 there arose three Spanish institutions of 
 a similar kind, the orders of Calatrava, 
 Santiago, and Alcantara. The first of 
 these was established in 1158; the sec- 
 ond and most famous had its charter 
 from the pope in 1175, though it seems 
 to have existed previously; the third 
 
 * I am indebted for this account of municipal 
 towns in Castile to a book published at Madrid in 
 1808, immediately after the revolution, by the 
 Doctor Marina, a canon of the church of St. Isidor, 
 entitled, Ensayo Historico-Critico sobre la antigua 
 legislacion y principales cuerpos legales de los rey- 
 nps de Lyon y Castilla, especialment sobre el co- 
 digode D. Alonso el Sabio, conocido con el nombre 
 de las Siete Partidas. This work is perhaps not 
 easily to be procured in England : but an article in 
 the Edinburgh Review, No. XLIIL, will convey a 
 sufficient notion of its contents. 
 
 t Mariana, Hist. Hispan., 1. x., c. 10. 
 
 t L. x., c. 15. $ L. x.,c. 18. 
 
 branched off from that of Calatrava at a 
 subsequent time.* These were military 
 colleges, having their walled towns in 
 different parts of Castile, and governed 
 by an elective grand master, whose influ- 
 ence in the state was at least equal to 
 that of any of the nobility. In the civil 
 dissensions of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, the chiefs of these incorpo- 
 rated knights were often very prominent. 
 The kingdoms of Leon and Castile 
 were unwisely divided anew by Final union 
 Alfonso VII., between his sons of Leon and 
 Sancho and Ferdinand, and this Castlle - 
 produced not only a separation, but a re- 
 vival of the ancient jealousy, with fre- 
 quent wars, for near a century. At 
 length, in 1238, Ferdinand III., king of 
 Castile, reunited for ever the two branches 
 of the Gothic monarchy. He employed 
 their joint strength against the Moors, 
 whose dominion, though it still embraced 
 the finest provinces of the peninsula, was 
 sinking by internal weakness, and had 
 never recovered a tremendous defeat at 
 Banos di Toloso, a few miles from Bay- 
 len, in 1210.J Ferdinand, bursting into 
 Andalusia, took its great capi- conquest of 
 tal, the city of Cordova [A. D. Andalusia, 
 1236], not less ennobled by the cultivation 
 of Arabian science, and by the names of 
 Avicenna and Averrpes, than by the 
 splendid works of a rich and munificent 
 dynasty.;}: In a few years more, Seville 
 was added to his conquests, and the 
 Moors lost their favourite regions on 
 the banks of the Guadalquivir. And Valencia. 
 James I. of Aragon, the victories of 
 whose long reign gave him the surname 
 of Conqueror, reduced the city and king- 
 dom of Valencia, the Balearic Isles, and 
 the kingdom of Murcia ; but the last was 
 
 * L. xi., c. 6, 13 ; 1. xii., c. 3. 
 
 t A letter of Alfonso IX., who gained this victory, 
 to Pope Innocent III., puts the loss of the Moors 
 at 180,000 men. The Arabian historians, though 
 without specifying numbers, seem to confirm this 
 immense slaughter, which nevertheless it is diffi- 
 cult to conceive before the invention of gunpow- 
 der, or indeed since. Cardonne, t. il, p. 327. 
 
 t If we can rely on a Moorish author, quoted by 
 Cardonne (t. i., p. 337), the city of Cordova con- 
 tained, I know not exactly in what century, 
 200,000 houses, 600 mosques, and 900 public baths. 
 There were 12,000 towns and villages on the banks 
 of the Guadalquivir. The mines of gold and silver 
 were very productive. And the revenues of the 
 khalifs of Cordova are said to have amounted to 
 130,000,000 of French money ; besides large con- 
 tributions that, according to the practice of orien- 
 tal governments, were paid in the fruits of the 
 earth. Other proofs of the extraordinary opulence 
 and splendour of this monarchy are dispersed in 
 Cardonne's work, from which they have been 
 chiefly borrowed by later writers. The splendid 
 engravings in Murphy's Moorish antiquities of 
 Spain illustrate this subject. 
 
202 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 annexed, according to compact, to the 
 crown of Castile. 
 
 It could hardly have been expected 
 Expulsion of about the middle of the thir- 
 the Moors teenth century, when the splen- 
 long delayed. did conques t s o f Ferdinand and 
 James had planted the Christian banner 
 on the three principal Moorish cities, that 
 two hundred and fifty years were yet to 
 elapse before the rescue of Spain from 
 their yoke should be completed. Ambi- 
 tion, religious zeal, national enmity, could 
 not be supposed to pause in a career 
 which now seemed to be obstructed by 
 such moderate difficulties; but we find, 
 on the contrary, the exertions of the 
 Spaniards begin from this time to relax, 
 and their acquisitions of territory to be- 
 come more slow. One of the causes, 
 undoubtedly, that produced this unex- 
 pected protraction of the contest, was 
 the superior means of resistance which 
 the Moors found in retreating. Their 
 population, spread originally over the 
 whole of Spain, was now condensed, and, 
 if I may so say, become no further com- 
 pressible, in a single province. It had 
 been mingled, in the northern and central 
 parts, with the Mozarabic Christians, 
 their subjects and tributaries, not perhaps 
 treated with much injustice, yet naturally 
 and irremediably their enemies. Toledo 
 and Saragosa, when they fell under a 
 Christian sovereign, were full of these 
 inferior Christians, whose long inter- 
 course with their masters has infused the 
 tones and dialect of Arabia into the lan- 
 guage of Castile.* But in the twelfth 
 century, the Moors, exasperated by de- 
 feat, and jealous of secret disaffection, 
 began to persecute their Christian sub- 
 jects, till they renounced or fled for their 
 religion; so that, in the southern prov- 
 inces, scarcely any professors of Chris- 
 tianity were left at the time of Ferdi- 
 nand's invasion. An equally severe pol- 
 icy was adopted on the other side. The 
 Moors had been permitted to dwell in Sa- 
 ragosa, as the Christians had dwelt be- 
 fore, subjects, not slaves ; but, on the cap- 
 ture of Seville, they were entirely ex- 
 pelled, and new settlers invited from 
 every part of Spain. The strong fortified 
 towns of Andalusia, such as Gibraltar, 
 Algeziras, Tariffa, maintained also a more 
 formidable resistance than had been ex- 
 perienced in Castile; they cost tedious 
 sieges, were sometimes recovered by the 
 enemy, and were always liable to his at- 
 tacks. But the great protection of the 
 Spanish Mahometans was found in the 
 
 * Mariana, 1. xi., c. 1. Gibbon, c. 51. 
 
 alliance and ready aid of their kindred 
 beyond the Straits. Accustomed to hear 
 of the African Moors only as pirates, we 
 cannot easily conceive the powerful dy- 
 nasties, the warlike chiefs, the vast ar- 
 mies, which for seven or eight centuries 
 illustrate the annals of that people. Their 
 assistance was always afforded to the 
 true believers in Spain, though their am- 
 bition was generally dreaded by those 
 who stood in need of their valour.* 
 
 Probably, however, the kings of Gra- 
 nada were most indebted to the indolence 
 which gradually became characteristic of 
 their enemies. By the cession of Murcia 
 to Castile, the kingdom of Aragon shut 
 itself out from the possibility of extend- 
 ing those conquests which had ennobled 
 her earlier sovereigns ; and their succes- 
 sors, not less ambitious and enterprising, 
 diverted their attention towards objects 
 beyond the peninsula. The Castilian, 
 patient and undesponding in bad success, 
 loses his energy as the pressure becomes 
 less heavy, and puts no ordinary evil in 
 comparison with the exertions by which 
 it must be removed. The greater part 
 of his country freed by his arms, he was 
 content to leave the enemy in a single 
 province, rather than undergo the labour 
 of making his triumph complete. 
 
 [A. D. 1252.] If a similar spirit of 
 insubordination had not been AlfonsoX 
 found compatible in earlier ages 
 with the aggrandizement of the Castilian 
 monarchy, we might ascribe its want of 
 splendid successes against the Moors to 
 the continued rebellions which disturbed 
 that government for more than a century 
 after the death of Ferdinand III. His 
 son, Alfonso X., might justly acquire the 
 surname of Wise for his general profi- 
 ciency in learning, and especially in as- 
 tronomical science ; if these attainments 
 deserved praise in a king, who was inca- 
 pable of preserving his subjects in their 
 duty. As a legislator, Alfonso, by his 
 ode of the Siete Partidas, sacrificed the 
 ecclesiastical rights of his crown to the 
 usurpation of Rome ;f and his philosophy 
 sunk below the level of ordinary pru- 
 dence, when he permitted the phantom 
 of an imperial crown in Germany 'to se- 
 duce his hopes for almost twenty years. 
 For the sake of such an illusion he would 
 ven have withdrawn himself from Cas- 
 tile, if the states had not remonstrated 
 against an expedition that would proba- 
 bly have cost him the kingdom. In the 
 Latter years of his turbulent- reign, Al- 
 
 * Cardonne, t. ii. and iii., passim. 
 
 f Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico, p, 372, &c. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 fonso had to contend against his son. 
 The right of representation was hitherto 
 unknown in Castile, which had borrowed 
 little from the customs of feudal nations. 
 By the received law of succession, the 
 nearer was always preferred to the more 
 remote, the son to the grandson. Al- 
 fonso X. had established the different 
 maxim of representation by his code of 
 the Siete Partidas, the authority, of 
 which, however, was not universally ac- 
 knowledged. The question soon came 
 to an issue, on the death of his elder son 
 Ferdinand, leaving two male children. 
 Sancho, their uncle, asserted his claim, 
 founded upon the ancient Castilian right 
 of succession ; and this, chiefly no doubt 
 through fear of arms, though it did not 
 want plausible arguments, was ratified by 
 an assembly of the cortes, and secured, 
 notwithstanding the king's reluctance, 
 by the courage of Sancho. But the de- 
 scendants of Ferdinand, generally called 
 the infants of La Cerda, by the protection 
 of France, to whose royal family they 
 were closely allied, and of Aragon, always 
 prompt to interfere in the disputes of a 
 rival people, continued to assert their 
 pretensions for more than half a century, 
 and, though they were not very success- 
 ful, did not fail to aggravate the troubles 
 of their country. 
 
 The annals of Sancho IV. and his 
 Civil dis- two immediate successors, Fer- 
 turhances dinand IV. and Alfonso XL, pre- 
 ofCastiie. sen t a series of unhappy and 
 dishonourable civil dissensions with too 
 Sancho iv. much rapidity to be remem- 
 
 1284. bered or even understood. Al- 
 iv 1295 though the Castilian nobility 
 Alfonso xi. had no pretence to the original 
 
 312< independence of the French 
 peers, or to the liberties of feudal tenure, 
 they assumed the same privilege of re- 
 belling upon any provocation from their 
 sovereign. When such occurred, they 
 seem to have been permitted, by legal 
 custom, to renounce their allegiance by 
 a solemn instrument, which exempted 
 them from the penalties of treason.* A 
 very few families composed an oligarchy, 
 the worst and most ruinous condition of 
 political society, alternately the favourites 
 and ministers of the prince, or in arms 
 against him. If unable to protect them- 
 selves in their walled towns, and by the 
 aid of their faction, these Christian pa- 
 triots retired to Aragon or Granada, and 
 excited a hostile power against their 
 country and perhaps their religion. Noth- 
 injf is more common in the Castilian his- 
 
 Mariana, 1. xiii., c. 11. 
 
 tory than instances of such defection. 
 Mariana remarks coolly of the family of 
 Castro, that they were much in the habit 
 of revolting to the Moors.* This house 
 and that of Lara were at one time the 
 great rivals for power; but from the 
 time of Alfonso X. the former seems to 
 have declined, and the sole family that 
 came in competition with the Laras du- 
 ring the tempestuous period that followed 
 was that of Haro, which possessed the 
 lordship of Biscay by an hereditary title. 
 The evils of a weak government were 
 aggravated by the unfortunate circum- 
 stances in which Ferdinand IV. and Al- 
 fonso XI. ascended the throne; both 
 minors, with a disputed regency, and the 
 interval too short to give ambitious spir- 
 its leisure to subside. There is, indeed, 
 some apology for the conduct of the 
 Laras and Haros in the character of their 
 sovereigns, who had but one favourite 
 method of avenging a dissembled inju- 
 ry, or anticipating a suspected treason. 
 Sancho IV. assassinates Don Lope Haro 
 in his palace at Valladolid. Alfonso XI. 
 invites to court the infant Don Juan, his 
 first cousin, and commits a similar vio- 
 lence. Such crimes may be found in 
 the history of other countries, but they 
 were nowhere so usual as in Spain, 
 which was far behind France, England, 
 and even Germany, in civilization. 
 
 [A. D. 1350.] But whatever violence 
 and arbitrary spirit might be im- Peter tn 
 puted to Sancho and Alfonso, Cruel - 
 was forgotten in the unexampled tyranny 
 of Peter the Cruel. A suspicion is fre- 
 quently intimated by Mariana, which 
 seems in more modern times to have 
 gained credit, that party malevolence has 
 at least grossly exaggerated the enormi- 
 ties of this prince, f It is difficult, how- 
 
 * Alvarus Castrius patria aliquanto antea, uti 
 moris erat, renunciata. Castria gens per haec 
 ternpora ad Mauros saepe defecisse visa est, 1. xii., 
 c. 12. See also chapters 17 and 19. 
 
 f There is in general room enough for skepti- 
 cism as to the characters of men who are only 
 known to us through their enemies. History is 
 full of calumnies, and of calumnies that can never 
 be effaced. Butt really see no ground for thinking 
 charitably of Peter the Cruel. Froissart, part i., 
 c. 230, and Matteo Villani (in Script. Rerum 
 Italic., t. xiv., p. 43), the latter of whom died be- 
 fore the rebellion of Henry of Trastamare, speak 
 of him much in the same terms as the Spanish 
 historians. And why should Ayala be doubted, 
 when he gives a long list of murders committed in 
 the face of day, within the recollection of many 
 persons living when he wrote ? There may be a 
 question whether Richard III. smothered his neph- 
 ews in the tower ; but nobody can dispute that 
 Henry VIII. cut off Anna Bullen's head. 
 
 The passage from Matteo Villani above men- 
 tioned is as follows : Comincio aspramente a so 
 
204 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 ever, to believe that a number of atro- 
 cious acts, unconnected with each other, 
 and generally notorious enough in their 
 circumstances, have been ascribed to any 
 innocent man. The history of his reign, 
 chiefly derived, it is admitted, from the 
 pen of an inveterate enemy, Lope de 
 Ayala, charges him with the murder of 
 his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, most of his 
 brothers and sisters, with Eleanor Gus- 
 man their mother, many Castilian nobles, 
 and multitudes of the commonalty; be- 
 sides continual outrages of licentious- 
 ness, and especially a pretended mar- 
 riage with a noble lady of the Castrian 
 family. At length a rebellion was head- 
 ed by his illegitimate brother, Henry, 
 count of Trastamare, with the assistance 
 of Aragon and Portugal. This, however, 
 would probably have failed of dethroning 
 Peter, a resolute prince, and certainly 
 not destitute of many faithful supporters, 
 if Henry had not invoked the more pow- 
 erful succour of Bertrand du Guesclin, 
 and the companies of adventure, who, 
 after the pacification between France and 
 England, had lost the occupation of war, 
 and retained only that of plunder. With 
 mercenaries so disciplined it was in vain 
 for Peter to contend; but, abandoning 
 Spain for a moment, he had recourse 
 to a more powerful weapon from the 
 same armory. Edward the Black Prince, 
 then resident at Bourdeaux, was induced, 
 by the promise of Biscay, to enter Spain 
 as the ally of Castile [A. D. 1367] ; and 
 at the great battle of Navarette he con- 
 tinued lord of the ascendant over those 
 who had so often already been foiled by 
 his prowess. Du Guesclin was made 
 prisoner, Henry fled to Aragon, and Peter 
 remounted the throne. But a second 
 revolution was at hand : the Black Prince, 
 whom he had ungratefully offended, with- 
 drew into Guienne ; and he lost his king- 
 dom and life in a second short contest 
 with his brother. 
 
 A more fortunate period began with 
 House of ^ e accession of Henry. His 
 Trastamare. own reign was hardly disturbed 
 He i368 L ky an y re bellion; and though 
 John i. ' his successors, John I. and 
 
 1379. Henry III., were not altogether 
 so unmolested, especially the 
 latter, who ascended the throne 
 in his minority ; yet the troubles of their 
 time were slight in comparison with those 
 formerly excited by the houses of Lara 
 
 far ubbidire, perch& temendo de' suoi baroni, trovo 
 tnodo di far infamare 1'uno 1'altro, e prendendo ca- 
 
 g'one, gli comincio ad uccidere con le sue mani. 
 in brieve tempo ne fece morire 25, e tre suoi 
 fratelli fece morire, &c. 
 
 Henry III 
 1390. 
 
 and Haro, both of which were now hap- 
 pily extinct. Though Henry II. 's illegit- 
 imacy left him no title but popular choice, 
 his queen was sole representative of the 
 Cerdas, the offspring, as has been men- 
 tioned above, of SanchoIV.'s elder broth- 
 er, and by the extinction of the younger 
 branch, unquestioned heiress of the royal 
 line. Some years afterward, by the 
 marriage of Henry III. with Catharine, 
 daughter of John of Gaunt and of Con- 
 stance, an illegitimate child of Peter the 
 Cruel, her pretensions, such as they were, 
 became merged in the crown. 
 
 [A. D. 1406.] No kingdom could be 
 worse prepared to meet the disorders of 
 a minority than Castile, and in none did 
 the circumstance so frequently recur. 
 John II. was but fourteen months old at 
 his accession ; and, but for the disinter- 
 estedness of his uncle Ferdinand, the no- 
 bility would have been inclined to avert 
 the danger by placing that prince upon 
 the throne. In this instance, however, 
 Castile suffered less from faction during 
 the infancy of her sovereign than in his 
 maturity. The queen dowager, at first 
 jointly with Ferdinand, and solely after 
 his accession to the crown of Aragon, 
 administered the government with credit. 
 Fifty years had elapsed at her death, in 
 1418, since the elevation of the house of 
 Trastamare, who had entitled themselves 
 to public affection by conforming them- 
 selves more strictly than their predeces- 
 sors to the constitutional laws cf Castile, 
 which were never so well established as 
 during this period. In external affairs 
 their reigns were not what is considered 
 as glorious. [A. D. 1385.] They were 
 generally at peace with Aragon and Gra- 
 nada, but one memorable defeat by the 
 Portuguese at Aljubarrota disgraces the 
 annals of John I., whose cause was as 
 unjust as his arms were unsuccessful. 
 This comparatively golden period ceases 
 at the majority of John II. His reign 
 was filled up by a series of conspiracies 
 and civil wars, headed by his cousins, 
 John and Henry, the infants of Aragon, 
 who enjoyed very extensive territories in 
 Castile by the testament of their father 
 Ferdinand. Their brother, the King of 
 Aragon, frequently lent the assistance of 
 his arms. John himself, the elder of these 
 two princes, by marriage with the heiress 
 of the kingdom of Navarre, stood in a 
 double relation to Castile, as a neighbour- 
 ing sovereign, and as a member of the 
 native oligarchy. These con- Power an(i 
 spiracies were all ostensibly di- fail of AI- 
 reeled against the favourite of Ae 
 John II., Alvaro de Luna, who 
 

 CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 
 retained for five-and-thirty years an abso- 
 lute control over his feeble master. The 
 adverse faction naturally ascribed to this 
 powerful minister every criminal inten- 
 tion and all public mischiefs. He was 
 certainly not more scrupulous than the 
 generality of statesmen, and appears to 
 have been rapacious in accumulating 
 wealth. But there was an energy and 
 courage about Alvaro de Luna which dis- 
 tinguish him from the cowardly syco- 
 phants who usually rise by the favour of 
 weak princes ; and Castile probably would 
 not have been happier under the admin- 
 istration of his enemies. His fate is 
 among the memorable lessons of history. 
 After a life of troubles endured for the 
 sake of this favourite, sometimes a fugi- 
 tive, sometimes a prisoner, his son head- 
 ing rebellions against him, John II. sud- 
 denly yielded to an intrigue of the palace, 
 and adopted sentiments of dislike towards 
 the man he had so long beloved. No 
 substantial charge appears to have been 
 brought against Alvaro de Luna, except 
 that general malversation which it was 
 too late for the king to object to him. 
 The real cause of John's change of af- 
 fection was, most probably, the insupport- 
 able restraint which the weak are apt to 
 find in that spell of a commanding un- 
 derstanding which they dare not break ; 
 the torment of living subject to the as- 
 cendant of an inferior, which has produ- 
 ced so many examples of fickleness in 
 sovereigns. That of John II. is not the 
 least conspicuous. Alvaro de Luna was 
 brought to a summary trial and behead- 
 ed ; his estates were confiscated. He 
 met his death with the intrepidity of 
 Strafford, to whom he seems to have 
 borne some resemblance in character. 
 
 John II. did not long survive his min- 
 Henrviv ister ' d y im ? in 14 ^4, after a reign 
 ' that may be considered as inglo- 
 rious, compared with any except that of 
 his successor. If the father was not re- 
 spected, the son fell completely into con- 
 tempt. He had been governed by Pa- 
 checo, marquis of Villena, as implicitly as 
 John by Alvaro de Luna. This influence 
 lasted for some time afterward. But the 
 king inclining to transfer his confidence 
 to the queen, Joanna of Portugal, and to 
 one Bertrand de Gueva, upon whom com- 
 mon fame had fixed as her paramour, a 
 powerful confederacy of disaffected no- 
 bles was formed against the royal author- 
 ity. In what degree Henry IV.'s gov- 
 ernment had been improvident or oppres- 
 sive towards the people, it is hard to de- 
 termine. The chiefs of that rebellion, 
 Carillo, archbishop of Toledo, the Admi- 
 
 ral of Castile, a veteran leader of faction, 
 and the Marquis of Villena, so lately the 
 king's favourite, were undoubtedly actua- 
 ted only by selfish ambition and revenge. 
 [A. D. 1465.] They deposed Henry in an 
 assembly of their faction at Avila, with a 
 sort of theatrical pageantry which has 
 often been described. But modern his- 
 torians, struck by the appearance of judi- 
 cial solemnity in this proceeding, are 
 sometimes apt to speak of it as a nation- 
 al act ; while, on the contrary, it seems 
 to have been reprobated by the majority 
 of the Castilians as an audacious outrage 
 upon a sovereign, who, with many de- 
 fects, had not been guilty of any exces- 
 sive tyranny. The confederates set up 
 Alfonso, the king's brother, and a civil 
 war of some duration ensued, in which 
 they had the support of Aragon. The 
 Queen of Castile had at this time borne a 
 daughter, whom the enemies of Henry 
 IV., and indeed no small part of his ad- 
 herents, were determined to treat as spu- 
 rious. Accordingly, after the death of 
 Alfonso, his sister Isabel was considered 
 as heiress of the kingdom. She might 
 have aspired, with the assistance of the 
 confederates, to its immediate possession; 
 but, avoiding the odium of a contest with 
 her brother, Isabel agreed to a treaty, by 
 which the succession was absolutely set- 
 tled upon her. [A. D. 1469.] This ar- 
 rangement was not long afterward fol- 
 lowed by the union of that princess with 
 Ferdinand, son of the King of Aragon. 
 This marriage was by no means accept- 
 able to a part of the Castilian oligarchy, 
 who had preferred a connexion with Por- 
 tugal. And as Henry had never lost 
 sight of the interests of one whom he 
 considered, or pretended to consider, as 
 his daughter, he took the first opportuni- 
 ty of revoking his forced disposition of 
 the crown, and restoring the direct line 
 of succession in favour of the Princess 
 Joanna. Upon his death, in 1474, the 
 right was to be decided by arms. Joan- 
 na had on her side the common presump- 
 tions of law, the testamentary disposition 
 of the late king, the support of Alfonso, 
 king of Portugal, to whom she was be- 
 trothed, and of several considerable lead- 
 ers among the nobility, as the young 
 Marquis of Villena, the family of Mendo- 
 za, and the Archbishop of Toledo, who, 
 charging Ferdinand with ingratitude, had 
 quitted a party which he had above all 
 men contributed to strengthen. For Isa- 
 bella were the general belief of Joanna's 
 illegitimacy, the assistance of Aragon, 
 the adherence of a majority both among 
 the nobles and people, and, more than all, 
 
206 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 secession 
 
 ofthe 
 crown. 
 
 the reputation of ability which both she 
 and her husband had deservedly acquired. 
 The scale, however, was pretty equally 
 balanced, till the King of Portugal having 
 been defeated at Toro, in 1476, Joanna's 
 party discovered their inability to prose- 
 cute the war by themselves, and succes- 
 sively made their submission to Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella. 
 
 The Castilians always considered 
 Constitu- themselves as subject to a legal 
 tion of and limited monarchy. For sev- 
 
 eral a 6S tn6 crown was e l ect ' 
 
 ive, as in most nations of Ger- 
 man origin, within the limits of 
 one royal family.* In general, of course, 
 the public choice fell upon the nearest 
 heir ; and it became a prevailing usage 
 to elect a son during the lifetime of his 
 father; till, about the eleventh century, 
 a right of hereditary succession was 
 clearly established. But the form of 
 recognising the heir-apparent's title in 
 an assembly of the cortes has subsisted 
 until our own time.f 
 
 In the original Gothic monarchy of 
 National Spain, civil as well as ecclesias- 
 counciis. t j ca j affairs were decided in na- 
 tional councils, the acts of many of which 
 are still extant, and have been published 
 in ecclesiastical collections. To these 
 assemblies the dukes and other provincial 
 governors, and in general the principal 
 individuals of the realm, were summoned 
 along with spiritual persons. This double 
 aristocracy of church and state continued 
 to form the great council of advice and 
 consent in the first ages of the new king- 
 doms of Leon and Castile. The prelates 
 and nobility, or rather some of the more 
 distinguished nobility, appear to have 
 concurred in all general measures of le- 
 gislation, as we infer from the preamble 
 of their statutes. It would be against 
 analogy, as well as without evidence, to 
 suppose that any representation of the 
 commons had been formed in the earlier 
 
 * Defuncto in pace principe, primates totius reg- 
 ni una cum sacerdotibus successorem regni con- 
 cilio communi constituant. Concil. Toletan. IV., 
 c. 75, apud Marina, Teoria de las Cortes, t. ii., p. 
 2. This important work, by the author of the En- 
 sayo Historico-Critico, quoted above, contains an 
 ample digest of the parliamentary law of Castile, 
 drawn from original, and, in a great degree, un- 
 published records. I have been favoured with the 
 use of a copy, from which I am the more disposed 
 to make extracts, as the book is likely, through its 
 liberal principles, to become almost as scarce in 
 Spain as in England. Marina's former work (the 
 Ensayo Hist. Grit.) furnishes a series of testimo- 
 nies (c. 66) to the elective character of the monar- 
 chy from Pelayo downwards to the twelfth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 t Teoria de las Cortes, t. ii., p. 7. 
 
 period of the monarchy. In the pream- 
 ble of laws passed in 1020, and at several 
 subsequent times during that and the en- 
 suing century, we find only the bishops 
 and magnats recited as pres- Admission 
 ent. According to the General of deputies 
 Chronicle of Spain, deputies fr 
 from the Castilian towns formed a part 
 of cortes in 1169 ; a date not to be reject- 
 ed as incompatible with their absence in 
 1178. However, in 1188, the first year 
 of the reign of Alfonso IX., they are ex- 
 pressly mentioned; and from that era 
 were constant and necessary parts of 
 those general assemblies.* It has been 
 seen already that the corporate towns, 
 or districts of Castile, had early acquired 
 considerable importance; arising less 
 from commercial wealth, to which the 
 towns of other kingdoms were indebted 
 for their liberties, than from their utility 
 in keeping up a military organization 
 among the people. To this they prob- 
 ably owe their early reception into the 
 cortes as integrant portions of the legis- 
 lature, since we do not read that taxes 
 were frequently demanded till the extrav- 
 agance of later kings, and their aliena- 
 tion of the domain, compelled them to 
 have recourse to the national represent- 
 atives. 
 
 Every chief town of a concejo or cor- 
 poration ought, perhaps, by the constitu- 
 tion of Castile, to have received its regu- 
 lar writ for the election of deputies to 
 cortes. f But there does not appear to 
 have been, in the best times, any uniform 
 practice in this respect. At the cortes 
 of Burgos, in 1315, we find one hun- 
 dred and ninety-two representatives from 
 more than ninety towns ; at those of 
 Madrid, in 1391, one hundred and twenty- 
 six were sent from fifty towns ; and the 
 latter list contains names of several pla- 
 ces which do not appear in the former.J 
 No deputies were present from the king- 
 dom of Leon in the cortes of Alcala in 
 1348, where, among many important en- 
 actments, the code of the Siete Partidas 
 first obtained a legislative recognition. 
 
 * Ensayo Hist. Grit., p. 77. Teoria de las Cor- 
 tes, t. i., p. 66. Marina seems to have somewhat 
 changed nis opinion since the publication of the 
 former work, where he inclines to assert, that the 
 commons were from the earliest times admitted 
 into the legislature. In 1188, the first year of the 
 reign of Alfonso IX., we find positive mention of 
 la muchedumbre de las cibdades e embiados de 
 cada cibdat. 
 
 f Teoria de las Cortes, p. 139. 
 
 J Idem, p. 148. Geddes gives a list of one hun- 
 dred and twenty-seven deputies from forty-eight 
 towns to the cortes at Madrid in 1390. -Miscella- 
 neous Tracts, vol. iii. 
 
 Idem, p. 154. 
 
CHAP. IV. j 
 
 6PAIN 
 
 207 
 
 We find, in short, a good deal more irreg 
 ularity than during the same period in 
 England, where the number of electing 
 boroughs varied pretty considerably at 
 every parliament. Yet the cortes of 
 Castile did not cease to be a numerous 
 body and a fair representation of the peo- 
 ple till the reign of John II. The first 
 princes of the house of Trastamare had 
 acted in all points with the advice of their 
 cortes. But John II., and still more his 
 son, Henry IV., being conscious of their 
 own unpopularity, did not venture to meet 
 a full assembly of the nation. Their 
 writs were directed only to certain 
 towns ; an abuse for which the looseness 
 of preceding usage had given a pretence.* 
 It must be owned that the people bore it 
 in general very patiently. Many of the 
 corporate towns, empoverished by civil 
 warfare and other causes, were glad to 
 save the cost of defraying their deputies' 
 expenses. Thus, by the year 1480, only 
 seventeen cities had retained privilege of 
 representation. A vote was afterward 
 added for Granada, and three more in 
 later times for Palencia, and the prov- 
 inces of Estremadura and Galicia.f It 
 might have been easy, perhaps, to redress 
 this grievance, while the exclusion was 
 yet fresh and recent. But the privileged 
 towns, with a mean and preposterous 
 selfishness, although their zeal for liberty 
 was at its height, could not endure the 
 only means of effectually securing it, by a 
 restoration of elective franchises to their 
 fellow-citizens. The cortes of 1506 as- 
 sert, with one of those bold falsifications 
 upon which a popular body sometimes 
 ventures, that " it is established by some 
 laws and by immemorial usage that eigh- 
 teen cities of these kingdoms have the 
 right of sending deputies to cortes, and 
 no more ;" remonstrating against the at- 
 tempts made by some other towns to ob- 
 
 * Sepades (says John II. in 1442), que en el 
 ayuntamiento que yo fice en la noble villa de Val- 
 
 ladolid los procuradores de ciertas cibdades 
 
 e villas de mis reynos que por mi mandado fueron 
 llamados. This language is repeated as to subse- 
 quent meetings, p. 156. 
 
 t The cities which retain their representation in 
 cortes, if the present tense may still be used even 
 for these ghosts of ancient liberty in Spain, are 
 Burgos, Toledo (there was a constant dispute for 
 precedence between these two), Leon, Granada, 
 Cordova, Murcia, Jaen, Zamora, Toro, Soria, Val- 
 ladolid, Salamanca, Segovia, Avila, Madrid, Gua- 
 dalaxara, and Cuenca. The representatives of 
 these were supposed to vote not only for their im- 
 mediate constituents, but for other adjacent towns. 
 Thus Toro voted for Palencia and the kingdom of 
 Galicia before they obtained separate votes ; Sala- 
 manca for most of Estremadura ; Guadalaxara 
 for Siguenza and four hundred other towns. Teo- 
 ria de las Cortes, p. 160, 268. 
 
 tain the same privilege, which they re- 
 quest may not be conceded. This re- 
 monstrance is repeated in 1512.* 
 
 From the reign of Alfonso XL, who 
 restrained the government of corporations 
 to an oligarchy of magistrates, the right 
 of electing members of cortes was con- 
 fined to the ruling body, the bailiffs or 
 regidores, whose number seldom ex- 
 ceeded twenty-four, and whose succes- 
 sion was kept up by close election 
 among themselves.! The people, there- 
 fore, had no direct share in the choice of 
 representatives. Experience proved, as 
 several instances in these pages will 
 show, that even upon this narrow basis 
 the deputies of Castile were not deficient 
 in zeal for their country and its liberties. 
 But it must be confessed that a small 
 body of electors is always liable to cor- 
 rupt influence and to intimidation. John 
 II. and Henry IV. often invaded the free- 
 dom of election ; the latter even named 
 some of the deputies.! Several energet- 
 ic remonstrances were made in cortes 
 against this flagrant grievance. Laws 
 were enacted, and other precautions de- 
 vised, to secure the due return of depu- 
 ties. In the sixteenth century, the evil 
 of course was aggravated. Charles and 
 Philip corrupted the members by bri- 
 bery. Even in 1573 the cortes are bold 
 enough to complain, that creatures of 
 government were sent thither, " who are 
 always held for suspected by the other 
 deputies, and cause disagreement among 
 them."|| 
 
 There seems to be a considerable ob- 
 scurity about the constitution 
 of the cortes, so far as relates 
 
 to the two higher estates, the rai nobility 
 spiritual and temporal nobil- incortes - 
 ity. It is admitted, that down to the lat- 
 ter part of the thirteenth century, and 
 especially before the introduction of 
 representatives from the commons, they 
 were summoned in considerable num- 
 bers. But the writer to whom I must 
 almost exclusively refer for the consti- 
 tutional history of Castile contends, that, 
 from the reign of Sancho IV,, they took 
 much less share, and retained much less 
 influence, in the deliberations of cortes. ^f 
 There is a remarkable protest of the 
 Archbishop of Toledo in 1295 against the 
 acts done in cortes, because neither he 
 nor the other prelates had been admitted 
 to their discussions, nor given any con- 
 sent to their resolutions, although such 
 
 * Teoria de las Cortes, p. 161. 
 f Idem, p. 86, 197. . $ Idem, p. 199. 
 
 $ Idem, p. 213. |] Idem, p. 202. 
 
 *K Idem, p. 67. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 consent was falsely recited in the laws 
 enacted therein.* This protestation is 
 at least a testimony to the constitutional 
 rights of the prelacy, which indeed all 
 the early history of Castile, as well as 
 the analogy of other governments, con- 
 spires to demonstrate. In the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, however, they 
 were more and more excluded. None 
 of the prelates were summoned to the 
 cortes of 1299 and 1301 ; none either of 
 the prelates or nobles to those of 1370 
 and 1373, of 1480 and 1505. In all the 
 latter cases, indeed, such members of 
 both orders as happened to be present in 
 the court attended the cortes ; a fact 
 which seems to be established by the 
 language of the statutes. f Other instan- 
 ces of a similar kind may be adduced. 
 Nevertheless, the more usual expression 
 in the preamble of laws reciting those 
 summoned to, and present at, the cortes, 
 though subject to considerable variation, 
 seems to imply that all the three estates 
 were, at least nominally and according to 
 legitimate forms, constituent members 
 of the national assembly. And a chron- 
 icle mentions, under the year 1406, the 
 nobility and clergy as deliberating separ- 
 ately, and with some difference of judg- 
 ment, from the deputies of the com- 
 mons. :{: A theory, indeed, which should 
 
 * Protestamos que desde aquf venimos non fue- 
 mos llamados a consejo, ni a los tratados sobre 
 los fechos del reyno, ni sobre las otras cosas que 
 hi fueren tractadas et fechas, et sennaladamente 
 sobre los fechos de los concejos de las hormanda- 
 des, et de las peticiones que fueron fechas de su 
 parte, et sobre los otorgamentos que les ficieron, et 
 sobre los previlegios que por esta nazon les fueron 
 otorgados ; mas ante fuemos ende apartados et es- 
 trannados et secados expresarnente nos et los otros 
 perlados et ricos homes et los fijosdalgo ; et non 
 fue hi cosa fecha con nuestro consejo. Qtrosi pro- 
 testarnos por razon de aquello que dice en los pre- 
 vilegios que les otorgaron, que fueren los perlados 
 llamados, et que eran otorgados de consentimiento 
 et de voluntad dellos, que non fuemos hi presentes 
 ni llamados nin fue fecho con nuestra voluntad, nin 
 consentiemos, nin consentimos en ellos, &c.,p. 72. 
 
 t Teoria de las Cortes, p. 74. 
 
 j T. ii., p. 234. Marina is influenced by a preju- 
 dice in favour of the abortive Spanish constitution 
 of 1812, which excluded the temporal and spirit- 
 ual aristocracy from a place in the legislature, to 
 imagine a similar form of government in ancient 
 times. But his own work furnishes abundant rea- 
 sons, if I am not mistaken, to modify this opinion 
 very essentially. A few out of many instances may 
 be adduced from the enacting words of statutes, 
 which we consider in England as good evidences 
 to establish a constitutional theory. Sepades que 
 yo hobei mio acuerdo e mio consejo con mios her- 
 manos e los arzobispos, e los opisbos, e con los ri- 
 cos homes de Castella, e de Leon, e con homes 
 buenos de las villas de Castella, e de Leon, que 
 fueron conmigo en Valladolit, sobre muchas cosas, 
 &c. (Alfonso X. in 1258.) Mandamos enviar lla- 
 mar por cartas del rei e uuestras a los infantes e 
 
 exclude the great territorial aristocracy 
 from their place in cortes, would expose 
 the dignity and legislative rights of that 
 body to unfavourable inferences. But it 
 is manifest, that the king exercised very 
 freely a prerogative of calling or omitting 
 persons of both the higher orders at his 
 discretion. The bishops were numerous, 
 and many of their sees not rich ; while 
 the same objections of inconvenience 
 applied perhaps to the ricos hombres, but 
 far more forcibly to the lower nobility, 
 the hijosdalgo or caballeros. Castile 
 never adopted the institution of deputies 
 from this order, as in the States General 
 of France and some other countries ; 
 much less that liberal system of landed 
 representation, which forms one of the 
 most admirable peculiarities in our own 
 constitution. It will be seen hereafter, 
 that spiritual, and even temporal peers, 
 were summoned by our kings with much 
 irregularity ; and the disordered state of 
 Castile through almost every reign was 
 likely to prevent the establishment of 
 any fixed usage in this and most other 
 points. 
 
 The primary and most essential char- 
 acteristic of a limited monarchy Right of 
 is, that money can only be levied taxation, 
 upon the people through the consent of 
 their representatives. This principle was 
 thoroughly established in Castile ; and the 
 statutes which enforce it, the remon- 
 strances which protest against its viola- 
 tion, bear a lively analogy to correspond- 
 
 perlados e ricos homes e infanzones e caballeros e 
 homes buenos de las cibdades e de las villas de 
 los reynos de Castilia et de Toledo e de Leon e de 
 las Estramaduras, e de Gallicia e de las Asturias e 
 del Andalusia. (Writ of summons to cortes of 
 Burgos in 1315.) Con acuerdo de los perlados e de 
 los ricos homes e procuradores de las cibdades e 
 villas e logares de los nuestros reynos. (Ordinan- 
 ces of Toro in 1371). Estando hi con el el infante 
 Don Ferrando, &c., e otros perlados e condes e ri- 
 cos homes e otros del consejo del senor rei, e 
 otros caballeros e escuderos, e los procuradores de 
 las cibdades e villas e logares de sus reynos. (Cortes 
 of 1391.) Los tres estados que de ben venir a las 
 cortes e ayuntamientos segunt se debe facer & es de 
 buena costumbre antigua (Cortes of 1393.) This 
 last passage is apparently conclusive to prove, that 
 three estates, the superior clergy, the nobility, and 
 the commons, were essential members of the Le- 
 gislature in Castile, as they were in France and 
 England ; and one is astonished to read in Marina 
 that no faltaron a ninguna de las formalidades de 
 derecho los monarcas quo no tuvieron por oportu- 
 no llamar a cortes para semejantes actos ni al clero 
 ni a la nobleza ni a las personas singulares de uno 
 y otro estado, t. i., p. 69. That great citizen, Jovel- 
 lanos, appears to have had much wiser notions of 
 the ancient government of his country, as well as 
 of the sort of reformation which she wanted, as 
 we may infer from passages in his Memoria & sus 
 compatriotas, Coruna, 1811, quoted by Marina for 
 the purpose of censure. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 ing circumstances in the history of ou 
 constitution. The lands of the nobility 
 and clergy were, I believe, always ex 
 empted from direct taxation ; an immu- 
 nity which perhaps rendered the attend- 
 ance of the members of those estates in 
 the cortes less regular. The corporate 
 districts or concejos, which, as I have ob- 
 served already, differed from the commu- 
 nities of France and England by possess- 
 ing a large extent of territory, subordinate 
 to the principal town, were bound by their 
 charter to a stipulated annual payment, 
 the price of their franchises, called mo- 
 neda forera.* Beyond this sum nothing 
 could be demanded without the consent 
 of the cortes. Alfonso VIII., in 1177, ap- 
 plied for a subsidy towards carrying on 
 the siege of Cuenca. Demands of money 
 do not however seem to have been very 
 usual before the prodigal reign of Alfonso 
 X. That prince and his immediate succes- 
 sors were not much inclined to respect 
 the rights of their subjects ; but they en- 
 countered a steady and insuperable re- 
 sistance. Ferdinand IV., in 1307, prom- 
 ises to raise no money beyond his legal 
 and customary dues. A more explicit 
 law was enacted by Alfonso XL in 1328, 
 who bound himself not to exact from his 
 people, or cause them to pay any tax, 
 either partial or general, not hitherto es- 
 tablished by law, without the previous 
 grant of all the deputies convened to the 
 cortes. f This abolition of illegal impo- 
 sitions was several times confirmed by 
 the same prince. The cortes, in 1393, 
 having made a grant to Henry HI., an- 
 nexed this condition, that " since they 
 had granted him enough for his present 
 necessities, and even to lay up a part for 
 a future exigency, he should swear be- 
 fore one of the archbishops not to take or 
 demand any money, service, or loan, or 
 any thing else of the cities and towns, 
 nor of individuals belonging to them, on 
 any pretence of necessity, until the three 
 estates of the kingdom should first be duly 
 summoned and assembled in cortes ac- 
 cording to ancient usage. And if any 
 such letters requiring money have been 
 written, that they shall be obeyed, and not 
 
 * Marina, Ensayo Hist. Crit., cap. 158. Teoria 
 de las Cortes, t. ii., p. 387. This is expressed 
 in one of their fueros, or charters : Liberi et 
 ingenui semper maneatis, reddendo mini et suc- 
 cessoribus meis in unoquoque anno in die Pente- 
 costes de unaquaque domo 12 denarios ; et, nisi 
 cum bona voluntate vestra feceritis, nullum alium 
 servitium faciatis. 
 
 t De los con echar nin mandar pagar pecho de- 
 saforado ninguno, especial nin general, en toda mi 
 tierra, sin ser llamados primeramente a cortes, e 
 otorgado por todos los procuradores que hi ve- 
 nieren.,p. 388. 
 O 
 
 complied with."* His son, John II., hav- 
 ing violated this constitutional privilege 
 on the allegation of a pressing necessity, 
 the cortes, in 1420, presented a long re- 
 monstrance, couched, in very respectful, 
 but equally firm language, wherein they 
 assert, " the good custom founded in rea- 
 son and in justice, that the cities and 
 towns of your kingdoms shall not be com- 
 pelled to pay taxes, or requisitions, or oth- 
 er new tribute, unless your highness order 
 it by advice and with the grant of the 
 said cities and towns, and of their depu- 
 ties for them." And they express their 
 apprehension lest this right should be in- 
 fringed, because, as they say, " there re- 
 mains no other privilege or liberty which 
 can be profitable to subjects if this be 
 shaken."! The king gave them as full 
 satisfaction as they desired, that his en- 
 croachment should not be drawn into 
 precedent. Some fresh abuses, during 
 the unfortunate reign of Henry IV., pro- 
 duced another declaration in equally ex- 
 plicit language ; forming part of the sen- 
 tence awarded by the arbitrators to whom 
 the differences between the king and his 
 people had been referred at Medina del 
 Campo in 1465. J The Catholic kings, as 
 they are eminently called, Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, never violated this part of the 
 constitution; nor did even Charles I., al- 
 though sometimes refused money by the 
 cortes, attempt to exact it without their 
 consent.^ In the Recopilacion, or code 
 of Castilian law, published by Philip II., 
 
 Obedecidas e non cumplidas. This expression 
 occurs frequently in provisions made against illegal 
 acts of the crown ; and is characteristic of the sin- 
 gular respect with which the Spaniards always 
 thought it right to treat their sovereign, while they 
 were resisting the abuses of his authority. 
 
 t La buena costumbre e possession fundada en 
 razon e en justicia que las cibdades e villas de 
 vuestros reinos tenian de no ser mandado coger 
 monedas e pedidos nin otro tribute nuevo alguno 
 en los vuestros reinos sin que la vuestra senoria lo 
 aga e ordenede consejo e con otorgamiento de las 
 cibdades e villas de los vuestros reinos & de sus 
 procuradores en su nombre * * * * * no queda 
 otro previlegio ni libertad de que los subditos pue- 
 dan gozar ni aprovechar quebrantado el sobre 
 dicho, t. iii., p. 30. 
 
 J Declaramos e ordenamos, que el dicho senor 
 rei nin los otros reyes que despues del fueren non 
 echan nin repartan nin pidan pedidos nin monedas 
 en sus reynos, salvo por gran necessidad, e seyendo 
 primero accordado con los perlados e grandes de 
 sus reynos, econ los otros que a la sazon residieren 
 en su consejo, e seyendo para ello llamados los 
 rocuradores de las cibdades e villas de sus reynos, 
 t ue para las tales cosas se suelen e acostumbran 
 lamar e seyendo per los dichos procuradores otor- 
 gado el dicho pedimento e monedas, t. ii., p. 391. 
 
 <5 Marina has published two letters from Charles 
 ;o the city of Toledo, in 1542 and 1548, requesting 
 hem to instruct their deputies to consent t,o a fur- 
 her grant of money, Which they had wfue'ed to do 
 
210 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 LCHAP. IV, 
 
 we read a positive declaration against ar- 
 bitrary imposition of taxes, which re- 
 mained unaltered on the face of the stat- 
 ute-book till the present age.* The law 
 was indeed frequently broken by Philip 
 II. ; but the cortes, who retained through- 
 out the sixteenth century a degree of 
 steadiness and courage truly admirable, 
 when we consider their political weak- 
 ness, did not cease to remonstrate with 
 that suspicious tyrant, and recorded their 
 unavailing appeal to the law of Alfonso 
 XL, " so ancient and just, and which so 
 long time has been used and observed."! 
 The free assent of the people by their 
 control of representatives to grants of 
 cortes over money was by no means a 
 expenditure. mere ma tter of form. It was 
 connected with other essential rights, in- 
 dispensable to its effectual exercise ; 
 those of examining public accounts and 
 checking the expenditure. The cortes, 
 in the best times at least, were careful to 
 grant no money until they were assured 
 that what had been already levied on 
 their constituents had been properly em- 
 ployed.! They refused a subsidy in 1390, 
 because they had already given so much, 
 and " not knowing how so great a sum 
 had been expended, it would be a great 
 dishonour and mischief to promise any 
 more." In 1406 they stood out a long 
 time, and at length gave only half of 
 what was demanded. Charles I. at- 
 tempted to obtain money, in 1527, from 
 the nobility as well as commons. But 
 the former protested, that " their obliga- 
 tion was to follow the king in war, 
 wherefore to contribute money was to- 
 
 without leave of their constituents. Teoria de las 
 Cortes, t. iii., p. 180, 187. 
 
 * Idem, t. ii., p. 393. 
 
 t En las cortes de ano de 70 y en las de 76 pedi- 
 mos a v. m. fuese servide de no poner nuevos im- 
 puestos, rentas, pechos, ni derechos ni otros tribu- 
 tes particulares ni generates sin junta del reyno en 
 cortes, como esta dispuerto por lei del senor rei Don 
 Alonso y se signified a v. m. el dano grande que 
 con las nuevas rentas habia rescibido el reino, su- 
 plicando a v.m. fuese servido de mandarle aliviar y 
 descargar, y que en 10- de adelante se les hiciesse 
 merced deguardar las dichas leyes reales y que no 
 se impusiessen nuevas rentas sin su asistencia ; 
 piles podria v. m. estar satisfecho de que el reino 
 sirve en las cosas necessarias con toda lealtad y 
 hasta ahora no se ha proveido lo susodicho,' y el 
 reino por la obligacion que tiene a pedir a v. m. 
 guarde la dicha lei, y que no solamente han cessado 
 Fas necessidades de los subditos y naturales de 
 v. m. pero antes crecen de cada dia : vuelve a stt- 
 plicar a v. m. sea servido concederle lo susodicho, 
 y que las nuevas rentas, pechos y derechos se 
 quiten, y que de aquf adelante se guarde la dicha 
 lei del senor rei don Alonso, como tan antigua y 
 justa y que tanto tiempo se us6 y guard6, p. 395. 
 This petition was in 1579. 
 
 t Marina, t. ii., p. 404, 406. $ Ibid., p. 409. 
 
 tally against their privilege, and for that 
 reason they could not acquiesce in his 
 majesty's request."* The commons also 
 refused upon this occasion. In 1538, on 
 a similar proposition, the superior and 
 lower nobility (los grandes y caballeros) 
 "begged with all humility that they 
 might never hear any more of that mat- 
 ter."! 
 
 The contributions granted by cortes 
 were assessed and collected by respect- 
 able individuals (hombres buenos) of the 
 several towns and, villages. J This repar- 
 tition, as the French call it, of direct tax- 
 es, is a matter of the highest importance 
 in those countries where they are impo- 
 sed by means of a gross assessment on a 
 district. The produce was paid to the 
 royal council. It could not be applied to 
 any other purpose than that to which the 
 tax had been appropriated. Thus the 
 cortes of Segovia, in 1407, granted a sub- 
 sidy for the war against Granada, on con- 
 dition " that it should not be laid out on 
 any other service except this war ;" which 
 they requested the queen and Ferdinand, 
 both regents in John II. 's minority, to 
 confirm by oath. Part, however, of the 
 money remained unexpended ; Ferdinand 
 wished to apply it to his own object of 
 procuring the crown of Aragon ; but the 
 queen first obtained not only a release 
 from her oath by the pope, but the con- 
 sent of the cortes. They continued ta 
 insist upon this appropriation, though in- 
 effectually, under the reign of Charles I.<^ 
 
 The cortes did not consider it beyond 
 the line of their duty, notwithstanding the 
 respectful manner in which they always 
 addressed the sovereign, to remonstrate 
 against profuse expenditure even in his 
 own household. They told Alfonso X., 
 in 1258, in the homely style of that age, 
 that they thought it fitting that the king 
 and his wife should eat at the rate of a 
 hundred and fifty maravedis a day, and no 
 more ; and that the king should order his 
 attendants to eat more moderately than 
 they did. || They remonstrated more for- 
 cibly against the prodigality of John II. 
 Even in 1559, they spoke with an un- 
 daunted Castilian spirit to Philip II. ; 
 " Sir, the expenses of your royal estab- 
 lishment and household are much increas- 
 ed j and we conceive it would much re- 
 dound to the good of these kingdoms r 
 that your majesty should direct them to 
 
 * Pero que contribuir a la guerra con ciertas 
 sumas era totalmente opuesto a sus previlegios, & 
 asi que no podrian acomodarse a lo que s. m. de 
 seaba, p. 411. 
 
 t Marina, t. ii., p. 411. t Ibid., p. 398. 
 
 $ Ibid., p. 412. |l Ibid., p. 417. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 211 
 
 be lowered, both as a relief to your wants, 
 and that all the great men and other sub- 
 jects of your majesty may take example 
 therefrom, to restrain the great disorder 
 and excess they commit in that respect."* 
 
 The forms of a Castilian cortes were 
 Forms of analogous to those of an English 
 the cortes. parliament in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. They were summoned by a writ 
 almost exactly coincident in expression 
 with that in use among us.f The session 
 was opened by a speech from the chan- 
 cellor or other chief officer of the court. 
 The deputies were invited to consider 
 certain special business, and commonly 
 to grant money. J After the principal af- 
 fairs were despatched, they conferred to- 
 gether, and having examined the instruc- 
 tions of their respective constituents, 
 drew up a schedule of petitions. These 
 were duly answered one by one, and from 
 the petition and answer, if favourable, 
 laws were afterward drawn up, where the 
 matter required a new law, or promises 
 of redress were given, if the petition re- 
 lated to an abuse or grievance. In the 
 struggling condition of Spanish liberty 
 under Charles I., the crown began to neg- 
 lect answering the petitions of cortes, or 
 to use unsatisfactory generalities of ex- 
 pression. This gave rise to many remon- 
 strances. The deputies insisted, in 1523, 
 on having answers before they granted 
 money. They repeated the same conten- 
 tion in 1525, and obtained a general law, 
 inserted in the Recopilacion, enacting 
 that the king should answer all their pe- 
 titions before he dissolved the assembly.^ 
 This, however, was disregarded as before ; 
 but the cortes, whose intrepid honesty, 
 under Philip II. so often attracts our ad- 
 miration, continued, as late as 1586, to 
 appeal to the written statute, and lament 
 its violation. || 
 
 According to the ancient fundamental 
 Right of constitution of Castile, the king 
 cones m did not legislate for his subjects 
 a> without their consent. The code 
 of the Visigoths, called in Spain the Fuero 
 Jusgo, was enacted in public councils, as 
 were also the laws of the early kings of 
 Leon,TT which appears by the reciting 
 
 * Senhor, los gastos de vuestro real estado y 
 mesa son muy crescidos, y entendemos que con- 
 vernia mucho al bien de estos reinos que v. m. los 
 mandasse moderar asf para algun remedio de sus 
 necessidades como para que de v. m. tomen egem- 
 
 8lo totos los grandes y caballeros y otros subditos 
 e v. m. en la gran desorden y excesses que hacen 
 en las cosas sobredichas. Marina, p. 437. 
 t Ibid., t. i., p. 175 ; t. iii., p. 103. 
 t Ibid., p. 278. t) Ibid., p. 301. 
 
 I! Ibid., p. 288-304. 
 
 f Ibid., t. ii., p. 202. The acts of the cortes 
 O 2 
 
 words of their preambles. This consent 
 was originally given only by the higher 
 estates, who might be considered, in a 
 large sense, as representing the nation, 
 though not chosen by it; but from the 
 end of the twelfth century, by the elect- 
 ed deputies of the commons in cortes. 
 The laws of Alfonso X., in 1258, those of 
 the same prince in 1274, and many oth- 
 ers in subsequent times, are declared to 
 be made with the consent (con acuerdo) 
 of the several orders of the kingdom. 
 More commonly, indeed, the preamble of 
 Castilian statutes only recites their ad- 
 vice (consejo) ; but I do not know that any 
 stress is to be laid on this circumstance. 
 The laws of the Siete Partidas, com- 
 piled by Alfonso X., did not obtain any 
 direct sanction till the famous cortes of 
 Alcala, in 1348, when they were confirm- 
 ed along with several others, forming al- 
 together the basis of the statute law of 
 Spain.* Whether they were in fact re- 
 ceived before that time, has been a mat- 
 ter controverted among Spanish antiqua- 
 ries ; and upon the question of their legal 
 validity at the time of their promulgation, 
 depends an important point in Castilian 
 history, the disputed right of succession 
 between Sancho IV. and the infants of La 
 Cerda; the former claiming under the an- 
 cient customary law, the latter under the 
 new dispositions of the Siete Partidas. 
 If the king could not legally change the 
 established laws without consent of his 
 cortes, as seems most probable, the right 
 of representative succession did not ex- 
 ist in favour of his grandchildren, and 
 Sancho IV. cannot be considered as an 
 usurper. 
 
 It appears upon the whole to have been 
 a constitutional principle, that laws could 
 neither be made nor annulled except in 
 cortes. In 1506, this is claimed by the 
 deputies as an established right.f John 
 
 of Leon hi 1020 run thus : omnes pontifices et ab- 
 bates et optimates regni Hispaniae jussu ipsius re- 
 gis talia decretadecrevimusquae firmiter teneantur 
 futuris temporibus. So those of Salamanca in 
 1178 : Ego rex Fernandus inter caetera quae cum 
 episcopis et abbatibus regni nostri et quamplurimis 
 aliis religiosis, cum cornitibus terrarum et principi- 
 bus et rectonbus provincianim, toto posse tenenda 
 statuimus apud Salamancam. 
 
 * Ensayo Hist. Crit., p. 353. Teoriade las Cor- 
 tes, t. ii., p. 77. Marina seems to have changed his 
 opinion between the publication of these two works, 
 in the former of which he contends for the previous 
 authority of the Siete Partidas, and in favour of 
 the infants of La Cerda. 
 
 t Los reyes establicieron que cuando habiessen 
 de hacer leyes, para que fuessen provechosas a 
 sus reynos y cada provincias fuesen proveidas, se 
 llamasen cortes y procuradores que entendiesen en 
 ellas y por esto se establecio lei que nose biciesen 
 

 212 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 the First had long before admitted, that 
 what was done by cortes and general as- 
 semblies could not be undone by letters 
 missive, but by such cortes and assem- 
 blies alone.* For the kings of Castile 
 had adopted the English practice, of dis- 
 pensing with statutes by a non obstante 
 clause in their grants. But the cortes 
 remonstrated more steadily against this 
 abuse than our own parliament, who suf- 
 fered it to remain in a certain degree till 
 the revolution. It was several times en- 
 acted upon their petition, especially by 
 an explicit statute of Henry II., that 
 grants and letters patent dispensing with 
 statutes should not be obeyed. f Never- 
 theless John II., trusting to force or the 
 servility of the judges, had the assurance 
 to dispense explicitly with this very law.J 
 The cortes of Valladolid, in 1442, obtain- 
 ed fresh promises and enactments against 
 such an abuse. Philip I. and Charles I. 
 began to legislate without asking the 
 consent of cortes ; this grew much worse 
 under Philip II., and reached its height 
 under his successors, who entirely abol- 
 ished all constitutional privileges. In 
 1555, we find a petition that laws made 
 in cortes should be revoked nowhere else. 
 The reply was such as became that age : 
 " To this we answer, that we shall do 
 what best suits our government." But 
 even in 1619, and still afterward, the pa- 
 triot representatives of Castile contin- 
 ued to lift an unavailing voice against il- 
 legal ordinances, though in the form of 
 very humble petition ; perhaps the latest 
 testimonies to the expiring liberties of 
 their country. || The denial of exclusive 
 legislative authority to the crown must, 
 however, be understood to admit the le- 
 gality of particular ordinances, designed 
 to strengthen the king's executive gov- 
 ernment, ^f These, no doubt, like the roy- 
 al proclamations in England, extended 
 sometimes very far, and subjected the 
 people to a sort of arbitrary coercion 
 much beyond what our enlightened no- 
 tions of freedom would consider as rec- 
 oncileable to it. But in the middle ages, 
 such temporary commands and prohibi- 
 tions were not reckoned strictly legisla- 
 
 ni renovasen leyes sino en cortes. Teoria de las 
 Cortes, t. ii., p. 218. 
 
 * Lo que es fecho por cortes e por ayuntamien- 
 tos que non se pueda disfacer por las tales cartas, 
 salvo por ayuntamientos 6 cortes, p. 215. 
 
 t Idem, p. 215. J Idem, p. 216 ; t. iii., p. 40. 
 
 $ Idem, t. ii., p. 218. 
 
 || Ha suplicado el reino a v. m. no se promulguen 
 nuevas leyes, ni en todo ni en parte las antiguas se 
 alteren sin que sea por cortes . . . . y por ser de tan- 
 ta importancia vuelve el reino a suplicarlo humil- 
 mente av. m., p. 220. 
 
 ^ Idem, p. 207. 
 
 tive, and passed, perhaps rightly, for in- 
 evitable consequences of a scanty code, 
 and short sessions of the national council. 
 
 The kings were obliged to swear to the 
 observance of laws enacted in cortes, be- 
 sides their general coronation oath to 
 keep the laws and preserve the liberties 
 of their people. Of this we find several 
 instances from the middle of the thir- 
 teenth century ; and the practice contin- 
 ued till the time of John II., who, in 1433, 
 on being requested to swear to the laws 
 then enacted, answered, that he intended 
 to maintain them, and consequently no 
 oath was necessary ; an evasion, in which 
 the cortes seem unaccountably to have 
 acquiesced.* The guardians of Alfonso 
 XL not only swore to observe all that 
 had been agreed on at Burgos in 1315, 
 but consented that, if any one of them 
 did not keep his oath, the people should 
 no longer be obliged to regard or obey 
 him as regent. f 
 
 It was customary to assemble the cor- 
 tes of Castile for many purposes, Other 
 besides those of granting money rights 
 and concurring in legislation. They J^ rt l e h s e 
 were summoned in every reign to 
 acknowledge and confirm the succession 
 of the heir apparent ; and, upon his acces- 
 sion, to swear allegiance.;}; These acts 
 were however little more than formal, 
 and accordingly have been preserved for 
 the sake of parade, after all the real dig- 
 nity of the cortes was annihilated. In the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they 
 claimed and exercised far more ample 
 powers than our own parliament ever 
 enjoyed. They assumed the right, when 
 questions of regency occurred, to limit 
 the prerogative, as well as to designate 
 the persons who were to use it.$ And 
 the frequent minorities of Castilian kings, 
 which were unfavourable enough to tran- 
 quillity and subordination, served to con- 
 firm these parliamentary privileges. The 
 cortes were usually consulted upon all 
 material business. A law of Alfonso XL , 
 in 1328, printed in the Recopilacion, or 
 code published by Philip II., declares, 
 " Since, in the arduous affairs of our king- 
 dom, the counsel of our natural subjects 
 is necessary, especially of the deputies 
 from our cities and towns, therefore we 
 ordain and command that on such great 
 occasions the cortes shall be assembled, 
 and counsel shall be taken of the three 
 estates of our kingdoms, as the kings our 
 forefathers have been used to do."|| A 
 cortes of John II., in 1419, claimed this 
 
 * Teoria de las Cortes, t. i., p. 306. 
 
 f Id., t. iii., p. 62. J Id., t. i., p. 33 ; t.ii., p. 24. 
 
 ^ Id., p. 230. ||Id., t.i., p. 31. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 213 
 
 right of being consulted in all matters of 
 importance, with a warm remonstrance 
 against the alleged violation of so whole- 
 some a law by the reigning prince ; who 
 answered that, in weighty matters, he had 
 acted, and would continue to act, in con- 
 formity to it.* What should be intended 
 by great and weighty affairs, might be 
 not at all agreed upon by the two parties ; 
 to each of whose interpretations these 
 words gave pretty full scope. However, 
 the current usage of the monarchy cer- 
 tainly permitted much authority in public 
 deliberations to the cortes. Among other 
 instances, which indeed will continually 
 be found in the common civil histories, 
 the cortes of Orcano,in 1469, remonstrate 
 with Henry IV. for allying himself with 
 England rather than France, and give, as 
 the first reason of complaint, that, " ac- 
 cording to the laws of your kingdom, 
 when the kings have any thing of great 
 importance in hand, they ought not to 
 undertake it without advice and knowl- 
 edge of the chief towns and cities of your 
 kingdom."! This privilege of general 
 interference was asserted, like other an- 
 cient rights, under Charles, whom they 
 strongly urged, in 1548, not to permit his 
 son Philip to depart out of the realm. J 
 It is hardly necessary to observe, that in 
 such times they had little chance of be- 
 ing regarded. 
 
 The kings of Leon and Castile acted, 
 Council of during the interval of the cortes, 
 Castile, ^y ^ e advice of a smaller coun- 
 cil, answering, as it seems, almost ex- 
 actly to the king's ordinary council in 
 England. In early ages, before the in- 
 troduction of the commons, it is some- 
 times difficult to distinguish this body 
 from the general council of the nation ; 
 being composed, in fact, of the same class 
 of persons, though in smaller numbers. 
 A similar difficulty applies to the English 
 history. The nature of their proceedings 
 seems best to ascertain the distinction. 
 All executive acts, including those ordi- 
 nances which may appear rather of a le- 
 gislative nature, all grants and charters, 
 are declared to be with the assent of the 
 court (curia), or of the magnats of the 
 palace, or of the chiefs or nobles. $ This 
 privy council was an essential part of all 
 
 * Teoria de las Cortes, t. i., p. 34. 
 
 t Porque, segunt leyes de nuestros reynos, cu- 
 nndo los reyes ban de facer alguna cosa de gran 
 importancia, non lo deben facer sin consejo e safa- 
 ri uria de las cibdades e villas principales devuestros 
 reynos. Idem, t. ii., p. 241. 
 
 J Idem, t. iii., p. 183. 
 
 <$> Cum assensu magnatum palatii : Cum consilio 
 curiae meae : Cum consilio et beneplacito omnium 
 principium meorum, nullo contradicente nee re- 
 clamente, p. 325. 
 
 European monarchies. And, though the 
 sovereign might be considered as free to 
 call in the advice of whomsoever he 
 pleased, yet, in fact, the princes of the 
 blood and most powerful nobility had an- 
 ciently a constitutional right to be mem- 
 bers of such a council ; so that it formed 
 a very material check upon his personal 
 authority. 
 
 The council under went several changes, 
 in progress of time, which it is not ne- 
 cessary to enumerate. It was justly 
 deemed an important member of the con- 
 stitution, and the cortes showed a lauda- 
 ble anxiety to procure its composition in 
 such a manner as to form a guarantee 
 for the due execution of laws after their 
 own dissolution. Several times, espe- 
 cially in minorities, they even named its 
 members, or a part of them ; and in the 
 reigns of Henry III. and John II., they 
 obtained the privilege of adding a perma- 
 nent deputation, consisting of four per- 
 sons, elected out of their own body, an- 
 nexed, as it were, to the council, who 
 were to continue at the court during the 
 interval of cortes, and watch over the due 
 observance of the laws.* This deputation 
 continued, as an empty formality, in the 
 sixteenth century. In the council, the 
 king was bound to sit personally three 
 days in the week. Their business, which 
 included the whole executive govern- 
 ment, was distributed with considerable 
 accuracy into what might be despatched 
 by the council alone, under their own 
 seals and signatures, and what required 
 the royal seal.f The consent of this 
 body was necessary for almost every act 
 of the crown, for pensions or grants of 
 money, ecclesiastical and political pro- 
 motions, and for charters of pardon, the 
 easy concession of which was a great 
 encouragement to the homicides so usual 
 in those ages, and was restrained by 
 some of our own laws.| But the coun- 
 cil did not exercise any judicial authority, 
 if we may believe the well-informed au- 
 thor from whom I have learned these 
 particulars ; unlike, in this, to the ordi- 
 nary council of the kings of England. It 
 was not until the days of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella that this, among other innova- 
 tions, was introduced. $ 
 
 Civil and criminal justice was adminis- 
 tered, in the first instance, by the A a m inis- 
 alcaldes, or municipal judges of tration of 
 towns; elected within themselves J ustice - 
 originally by the community at large, but 
 in subsequent times by the governing 
 
 * Teoria de las Cortes, t. ii., p. 346. 
 
 t Idem, p. 354. t Idem, p. 360, 362, 372. 
 
 f) Idem, p. 375, 379. 
 
214 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 body. In other places, a lord possessed 
 the right of jurisdiction by grant from the 
 crown, not, what we find in countries 
 where the feudal system was more thor- 
 oughly established, as incident to his 
 own territorial superiority. The kings, 
 however, began in the thirteenth century 
 to appoint judges of their own, called cor- 
 regidores, a name which seems to express 
 concurrent jurisdiction with regidores, or 
 ordinary magistrates.* The cortes fre- 
 quently remonstrated against this en- 
 croachment. Alfonso XI. consented to 
 withdraw his judges from all corpora- 
 tions by which he had not been requested 
 to appoint them.f Some attempts to in- 
 terfere with the municipal authorities of 
 Toledo produced serious disturbances 
 under Henry III. and John H.J Even 
 where the king appointed magistrates at 
 a city's request, he was bound to select 
 them from among the citizens. $ From 
 this immediate jurisdiction an appeal lay 
 to the adelantado, or governor of the 
 province, and from thence to the tribunal 
 of royal alcaldes. || The latter, however, 
 could not take cognizance of any cause 
 depending before the ordinary judges ; a 
 contrast to the practice of Aragon, where 
 the justiciary's right of evocation (juris 
 firm a) was considered as a principal safe- 
 guard of public liberty.^ As a court of 
 appeal, the royal alcaldes had the su- 
 preme jurisdiction. The king could only 
 cause their sentence to be revised, but 
 neither alter nor revoke it.** They have 
 continued to the present day as a criminal 
 tribunal ; but civil appeals were trans- 
 ferred by the ordinances of Toro in 1371 
 to a new court, styled the king's audience, 
 which, though deprived under Ferdinand 
 and his successors of part of its jurisdic- 
 tion, still remains one of the principal ju- 
 dicatures in Castile. ft 
 
 No people in a half-civilized state of 
 violent ac- soc i e ty have a full practical se- 
 tions of curity against particular acts of 
 some kings arbitrary power. They were 
 tlle ' more common, perhaps, in Cas- 
 tile than in any other European monarchy 
 which professed to be free. Laws in- 
 deed were not wanting to protect men's 
 lives and liberties, as well as their prop- 
 erties. Ferdinand IV., in 1299, agreed to 
 a petition that "justice shall be executed 
 
 * Alfonso X- says ; Ningun ome sea osado juz- 
 gar pleytos, se no fuere alcalde puesto por el rey. 
 Teoria de las Cortes, fol. 27. This seems an 
 encroachment on the municipal magistrates. 
 
 t Teoria de las Cortes, p. 251. 
 
 j Idem, p. 255. Mariana, 1. xx., c. 13. 
 
 $ Idem, p. 255. || Idem, p. 266. 
 
 % Idem, p. 260. ** Idem, p. 287, 304. 
 
 ft Idem, p. 292-302, 
 
 impartially according to law and right; 
 and that no one shall be put to death, or 
 imprisoned, or deprived of his posses- 
 sions without trial, and that this be bet- 
 ter observed than heretofore."* He re- 
 newed the same law in 1307. Neverthe- 
 less, the most remarkable circumstance 
 of this monarch's history was a violation 
 of so sacred and apparently so well es- 
 tablished a law. Two gentlemen having 
 been accused of murder, Ferdinand, with- 
 out waiting for any process, ordered them 
 to instant execution. They summoned 
 him with their last words to appear be- 
 fore the tribunal of God in thirty days ; 
 and his death within the time, which has 
 given him the surname of the Summon- 
 ed, might, we may hope, deter succeed- 
 ing sovereigns from iniquity so flagrant. 
 But from the practice of causing their 
 enemies to be assassinated, neither law 
 nor conscience could withhold them. 
 Alfonso XL was more than once guilty 
 of this crime. Yet he too passed an or- 
 dinance, in 1325, that no warrant should 
 issue for putting any one to death, or 
 seizing his property, till he should be 
 duly tried by course of law. Henry II. 
 repeats the same law in very explicit 
 language.! But the civil history of Spain 
 displays several violations of it. An ex- 
 traordinary prerogative of committing 
 murder appears to have been admitted, 
 in early times, by several nations who 
 did not acknowledge unlimited power in 
 their sovereign. J Before any regular 
 police was established, a powerful crimi- 
 nal might have been secure from all pun- 
 ishment, but for a notion, as barbarous 
 as any which it served to counteract, 
 that he could be lawfully killed by the 
 personal mandate of the king. And the 
 frequent attendance of sovereigns in their 
 courts of judicature might lead men not 
 accustomed to consider the indispensable 
 necessity of legal forms, to confound an 
 
 * Que mandase facer la justicia en aquellos que la 
 merecen comunahnente con fuero e con derecho ; 
 e los homes que non sean muertos nin presos nin 
 tornados lo que han sin ser oidos por derecho 6 por 
 fuero de aquel logar do acaesciere, e que sea guarda- 
 do mejor que se guard6 fasta aqui. Marina, En- 
 sayo Hist. Critico, p. 148. 
 
 t Que non mandemos matar nin prender nin lisi- 
 ar nin despechar nin tomar a alguno ninguna cosa 
 de lo suyo, sin ser ante Hamad o oido e vencido 
 por fuero e por derecho, por querella nin por querel- 
 las que a nos fuesen dadas, segunt que esto esta or- 
 denado por el rei don Alonso nuestro padre. Teo- 
 ria de las Cortes, t. ii., p. 287. 
 
 t Si quis hominem per jussionem regis vel ducis 
 sui occiderit, non requiratur ei, nee sit faidosus, 
 quia jussio domini sui fuit, et non potuit contradi 
 cere jussionem. Leges Bajuvariorum, tit. ii., in 
 Baluz. Capitularibus, 
 
CHAP. IV.3 
 
 SPAIN, 
 
 215 
 
 act of assassination with the execution 
 of justice. 
 
 Though it is very improbable that the 
 Confedera- nobility were not considered as 
 des of the essential members of the cortes, 
 nobility. ^ e y certainly attended in small- 
 er numbers than we should expect to find 
 from the great legislative and deliberative 
 'authority of that assembly. This arose 
 chiefly from the lawless spirit of that 
 martial aristocracy, which placed less 
 confidence in the constitutional methods 
 of resisting arbitrary encroachment than 
 in its own armed combinations.* Such 
 confederacies to obtain redress of griev- 
 ances by force, of which there were five 
 or six remarkable instances, were called 
 Hermandad (brotherhood or union), and 
 though not so explicitly sanctioned as 
 they were by the celebrated Privilege 
 of Union in Aragon, found countenance 
 in a law of Alfonso X., which cannot be 
 deemed so much to have voluntarily em- 
 anated from that prince as to be a rec- 
 ord of original rights possessed by the 
 Castilian nobility. " The duty of sub- 
 jects towards their king," he says, "en- 
 joins them not to permit him knowingly 
 to endanger his salvation, nor to incur 
 dishonour and inconvenience in his per- 
 son or family, nor to produce mischief to 
 liis kingdom. And this may be fulfilled 
 in two ways ; one by good advice, show- 
 ing him the reason wherefore he ought not 
 to act thus ; the other by deeds, seeking 
 means to prevent his going on to his 
 own ruin, and putting a stop to those 
 who give him ill counsel, forasmuch as 
 his errors are of worse consequence than 
 those of other men, it is the bounden 
 cluty of subjects to prevent his commit- 
 ting them."f To this law the insurgents 
 appealed in their coalition against Alva- 
 ro de Luna ; and indeed we must confess, 
 that however just and admirable the prin- 
 ciples which it breathes, so general a 
 license of rebellion was not likely to pre- 
 serve the tranquillity of a kingdom. The 
 deputies of towns, in a cortes of 1445, pe- 
 titioned the king to declare that no con- 
 struction should be put on this law in- 
 consistent with the obedience of subjects 
 towards their sovereign; a request to 
 which of course he willingly acceded. 
 
 Castile, it will be apparent, bore a 
 closer analogy to England in its form of 
 civil polity than France or even Aragon. 
 But the frequent disorders of its govern- 
 ment, and a barbarous state of manners, 
 rendered violations of law much more 
 continual and flagrant than they were in 
 
 * Teoria de las Cortes, t. ii., p. 465. 
 t Ensayo Hist. Critico, p. 312. 
 
 England under the Plantagenet dynasty. 
 And besides these practical mischiefs, 
 there were two essential defects in the 
 constitution of Castile, through which 
 perhaps it was ultimately subverted. It 
 wanted those two brilliants in the coro- 
 net of British liberty, the representation 
 of freeholders among the commons, 
 and trial by jury. The cortes of Castile 
 became a congress of deputies from a 
 few cities, public-spirited indeed and in- 
 trepid, as we find them in bad times, to 
 an eminent degree, but too much limited 
 in number, and too unconnected with 
 the territorial aristocracy, to maintain a 
 just balance against the crown. Yet, 
 with every disadvantage, that country 
 possessed a liberal form of government, 
 and was animated with a noble spirit for 
 its defence. Spain, in her late memora- 
 ble though short resuscitation, might well 
 have gone back to her ancient institu- 
 tions, and perfected a scheme of policy 
 which the great example of England 
 would have shown to be well adapted to 
 the security of freedom. What she did, 
 or rather attempted instead, I need not 
 recall. May her next effort be more 
 wisely planned and more happily termi- 
 nated !* 
 
 Though the kingdom of Aragon was 
 very inferior in extent to that of Affairs or 
 Castile, yet the advantages of a Aragon. 
 better form of government and wiser 
 sovereigns, with those of industry and 
 commerce along a line of seacoast, ren- 
 dered it almost equal in importance. Cas- 
 tile rarely intermeddled in the civil dis- 
 sensions of Aragon ; the kings of Aragon 
 frequently carried their arms into the 
 heart of Castile. During the sanguinary 
 outrages of Peter the Cruel, and the 
 stormy revolutions which ended in es- 
 tablishing the house of Trastamare, Ara- 
 gon was not indeed at peace, nor alto- 
 gether well governed ; but her political 
 consequence rose in the eyes of Europe 
 through the long reign of the ambitious 
 and wily Peter IV., whose sagacity and 
 good fortune redeemed, according to the 
 common notions of mankind, the iniquity 
 with which he stripped his relation, the 
 King of Majorca, of the Balearic Islands, 
 and the constant perfidiousness of his 
 character. I have mentioned in another 
 place the Sicilian war, prosecuted with 
 so much eagerness for many years by 
 Peter III. and his son Alfonso III. Af- 
 ter this object was relinquished, James 
 II. undertook an enterprise less splen- 
 did, but not much less difficult, the con- 
 
 * The first edition of this work was published 
 in 1818. 
 
 
216 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 quest of Sardinia. That island, long ac- 
 customed to independence, cost an in- 
 credible expense of blood and treasure 
 to the kings of Aragon during the whole 
 fourteenth century. It was not fully 
 subdued till the commencement of the 
 next, under the reign of Martin. 
 
 At the death of Martin, king of Aragon, 
 Disputed in 1410, a memorable question 
 succession arose as to the right of succes- 
 death of sion. Though Petronilla, daugh- 
 Martin. ter of Ramiro II., had reigned 
 in her own right from 1137 to 1172, an 
 opinion seems to have gained ground 
 from the thirteenth century, that females 
 could not inherit the crown of Aragon. 
 Peter IV. had excited a civil war by at- 
 tempting to settle the succession upon 
 his daughter, to the exclusion of his next 
 brother. The birth of a son about the 
 same time suspended the ultimate decis- 
 ion of this question ; but it was tacitly 
 understood that what is called the Salique- 
 law ought to prevail.* Accordingly, on 
 the death of John I., in 1395, his two 
 daughters were set aside in favour of his 
 brother Martin, though not without oppo- 
 sition on the part of the elder, whose 
 husband, the Count of Foix, invaded the 
 kingdom, and desisted from his preten- 
 sion only through want of force. Mar- 
 tin's son, the King of Sicily, dying in his 
 father's lifetime, the nation was anxious 
 that the king should fix upon his suc- 
 cessor, and would probably have acqui- 
 esced in his choice. But his dissolution 
 occurring more rapidly than was expect- 
 ed, the throne remained absolutely va- 
 cant. The Count of Urgel had obtained 
 
 [ a grant of the lieutenancy, which was the 
 right of the heir apparent. This noble- 
 man possessed an extensive territory in 
 Catalonia, bordering on the Pyrenees. 
 He was grandson of James, next brother 
 to Peter IV., and, according to our rules 
 of inheritance, certainly stood in the first 
 place. The other claimants were the 
 Duke of Gandia, grandson of James II., 
 who, though descended from a more 
 distant ancestor, set up a claim founded 
 on proximity to the royal stock, which 
 in some countries was preferred to a rep- 
 resentative title ; the Duke of Calabria, 
 son of Violante, younger daughter of 
 John I. (the Countess of Foix being 
 childless) ; Frederick, count of Luna, a 
 natural son of the younger Martin, king 
 of Sicily, legitimated by the pope, but 
 with a reservation excluding him from 
 royal succession ; and finally, Ferdinand, 
 infant of Castile, son of the late king's 
 sister. t The Count of Urgel was fa- 
 voured in general by the Catalans, and 
 he seemed to have a powerful support in 
 Antonio de Luna, a baron of Aragon, so 
 rich that he might go through his own 
 estate from France to Castile. But this 
 apparent superiority frustrated his hopes. 
 The justiciary and other leading Arago- 
 nese were determined not to suffer this 
 great constitutional question to be deci- 
 ded by an appeal to force, which might 
 sweep away their liberties in the strug- 
 gle. Urgel, confident of his right, and 
 surrounded by men of ruined fortunes, 
 was unwilling to submit his pretensions 
 to a civil tribunal. His adherent, Anto- 
 nio de Luna, committed an extraordinary 
 
 * Zurita, t. ii., f. 188. It was pretended that women were excluded from the crown in England as 
 well as France : and this analogy seems to have had some influence in determining the Aragonese to 
 adopt a Salique-law. 
 
 t The subjoined pedigree will show more clearly the respective titles of the competitors : 
 JAMES II. died 1327. 
 
 ALFONSO IV. d. 1336. 
 
 D. of 
 D. of 
 
 PETER IV. d. 1387. 
 
 James C. of Urgel. 
 Peter C. of Urgel. 
 
 C. of Urgel. 
 1409. 
 
 Elear 
 
 He 
 K. of 
 
 or Q. of Castile. JOHN I. d. 1395. MARTIN, 
 d. 1410. 
 
 iry III. Ferdinand. 
 Castile. 
 
 Martin, 
 
 1 ~ 
 
 | K. of Sicily, 
 
 Joanna 
 
 John II. Countess of Foix. 
 K. of Castile. 
 
 Violante 
 Q. of Naples. 
 
 1 Frederick 
 
 I C. of Luna. 
 
 Louis D. of 
 CcXafria. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 217 
 
 outrage, the assassination of the Arch- 
 bishop of Saragosa, which alienated the 
 minds of good citizens from his cause. 
 On the other hand, neither the Duke of 
 Gandia, who was very old,* nor the 
 Count of Luna, seemed fit to succeed. 
 The party of Ferdinand, therefore, gained 
 ground by degrees. It was determined, 
 however, to render a legal sentence. 
 The cortes of each nation agreed upon 
 the nomination of nine persons, three 
 Aragonese, three Catalans, and three 
 Valencians, who were to discuss the 
 pretensions of the several competitors, 
 and, by a plurality of six votes, to adjudge 
 the crown. Nothing could be more 
 solemn, more peaceful, nor, in appear- 
 ance, more equitable, than the proceed- 
 ings of this tribunal. They summoned 
 the claimants before them, and heard 
 them by counsel. One of these, Fred- 
 erick of Luna, being ill defended, the 
 court took charge of his interests, and 
 named other advocates to maintain them. 
 A month was passed in hearing argu- 
 ments ; a second was allotted to con- 
 sidering them ; and, at the expiration of 
 the prescribed time, it was announced to 
 the people, by the mouth of St. Vincent 
 Ferrier, that Ferdinand of Castile had 
 ascended the throne. f 
 
 [A. D. 1412.] In this decision it is im- 
 Decision in po ss il e not to suspect that the 
 favour of judges were swayed rather by 
 Ferdinand politic considerations than a 
 ' strict sense of hereditary right. 
 It was therefore by no means universally 
 popular, especially in Catalonia, of which 
 principality the Count of Urgel was a 
 native ; and perhaps the great rebellion 
 of the Catalans fifty years afterward may 
 
 * This Duke of Gandia died during the interreg- 
 num. His son, though not so objectionable on the 
 score of age, seemed to have a worse claim ; yet 
 he became a competitor. 
 
 t Biancae Commentaria, in Schotti Hispariia II- 
 lustrata, t. ii. Zurita, t. iii. f. 1-74. Vincent Fer- 
 rier was the most distinguished churchman of his 
 time in Spain. His influence, as one of the nine 
 judges, is said to have been very instrumental in 
 procuring the crown for Ferdinand. Five others 
 voted the same way ; one for the Count of Urgel ; 
 one doubtfully between the Count of Urgel and 
 Duke of Gandia ; the ninth declined to vote. 
 Zurita, t. iii., f. 71. It is curious enough, that 
 John, king of Castile, was altogether disregarded ; 
 though his claim was at least as plausible as that 
 of his uncle Ferdinand. Indeed, upon the princi- 
 ples of inheritance to which we are accustomed, 
 Louis, duke of Calabria, had a prior right to Ferdi- 
 nand, admitting the rule which it was necessary 
 for both of them to establish ; namely, that a right 
 of succession might be transmitted through females, 
 which females could not personally enjoy. This, 
 as is well known, had been advanced in the pre- 
 ceding age by Edward III. as the foundation of his 
 claim to the crown of France. 
 
 be traced to the disaffection which this 
 breach, as they thought, of the lawful 
 succession had excited. Ferdinand how- 
 ever was well received in Aragon. The 
 cortes generously recommended the 
 Count of Urgel to his favour, on account 
 of the great expenses he had incurred in 
 prosecuting his claim. But Urgel did not 
 wait the effect of this recommendation. 
 Unwisely attempting a rebellion with 
 very inadequate means, he lost his es- 
 tates, and was thrown for life into prison. 
 [A. D. 1416.] Ferdinand's sue- oy 
 
 cessor was his son Alfonso V., 
 more distinguished in the history of Italy 
 than of Spain. For all the latter years 
 of his life, he never quitted the kingdom 
 that he had acquired by his arms : and, 
 enchanted by the delicious air of Naples, 
 intrusted the government of his patrimo- 
 nial territories to the care of a brother 
 and an heir. [A. D. 1458.] John 
 II., upon whom they devolved by c 
 the death of Alfonso without legitimate 
 progeny, had been engaged during his 
 youth in the turbulent revolutions of Cas- 
 tile, as the head of a strong party that op- 
 posed the domination of Alvaro de Luna. 
 [A. D. 1420.] By marriage with the heir- 
 ess of Navarre, he was entitled, accord- 
 ing to the usage of those times, to assume 
 the title of king, and administration of 
 government during her life. But his am,- 
 bitious retention of power still longer 
 produced events which are the chief 
 stain on his memory. Charles, prince of 
 Viana, was, by the constitution of Na- 
 varre, entitled to succeed his mother. [A. 
 D. 1442.] She had requested him in her 
 testament not to assume the government 
 without his father's consent. That con- 
 sent was always withheld. The prince 
 raised what we ought not to call a rebell- 
 ion ; but was made prisoner, and remain- 
 ed for some time in captivity. John's ill 
 disposition towards his son was exasper- 
 ated by a stepmother, who scarcely dis- 
 guised her intention of placing her own 
 child on the throne of Aragon at the ex- 
 pense of the eldest-born. After a life of 
 perpetual oppression, chiefly passed in 
 exile or captivity, the Prince of Viana 
 died in Catalonia, at a moment when that 
 province was in open insurrection upon 
 his account. [A. D. 1461.] Though it 
 hardly seems that the Catalans had any 
 more general provocations, they perse- 
 vered for more than ten years with in- 
 veterate obstinacy in their rebellion ; of- 
 fering the sovereignty first to a prince of 
 Portugal, and afterward to Regnier, duke 
 of Anjou, who was destined to pass his 
 life in unsuccessful competition for king- 
 
 
218 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 doms. The King of Aragon behaved 
 with great clemency towards these in- 
 surgents on their final submission. 
 
 It is consonant to the principle of this 
 constitution work, to pass lightly over the 
 of Aragon. common details of history, in 
 order to fix the reader's attention more 
 fully on subjects of philosophical inquiry. 
 Perhaps in no European monarchy, ex- 
 cept our own, was the form of govern- 
 ment more interesting than in Aragon, as 
 a fortunate temperament of law and jus- 
 tice with the royal authority. So far as 
 Originally a any thing can be pronounced of 
 sort of regal its earlier period, before the 
 racy - capture of Saragosa in 1118, it 
 was a kind of regal aristocracy, where a 
 small number of powerful barons elected 
 their sovereign on every vacancy, though, 
 as usual in other countries, out of one 
 family ; and considered him as little more 
 t * ian ^ e cm ^f of their confeder- 
 acy.* These were the ricos 
 hombres or hombres or barons, the first or- 
 der of the state. Among these 
 the kings of Aragon, in subsequent times, 
 as they extended their dominions, shared 
 the conquered territory in grants of hon- 
 ours on a feudal tenure. f For this sys- 
 tem was fully established in the kingdom 
 of Aragon. A rico hombre, as we read 
 in Vitalis, bishop of Huesca, about the 
 middle of the thirteenth century ,J must 
 hold of the king an honour or barony 
 capable of supporting more than three 
 knights ; and this he was bound to dis- 
 tribute among his vassals in military fiefs. 
 Once in the year he might be summoned 
 with his feudataries to serve the sover- 
 eign for two months (Zurita says three) ; 
 and he was to attend the royal court, or 
 general assembly, as a counsellor, when- 
 
 * Alfonso III. complained that his barons want- 
 ed to bring back old times, quando havia en el 
 reyno tantos reyes como ricos hombres. Biancae 
 Commentaria, p. 787. The form of election sup- 
 posed to have been used by these bold barons is 
 well known. " We, who are as good as you, 
 choose you for our king and lord, provided that you 
 observe our laws arid privileges, and if not, not." 
 But I do not much believe the authenticity of this 
 form of words. See Robertson's Charles V., vol. 
 i., note 31. It is, however, sufficiently agreeable 
 to the spirit of the old government. 
 
 t Los ricos hombres, por los feudos que tenian 
 del rey, eran obligados de seguir al rey, si yva en 
 persona a la guerra, y residir en ella tres meses en 
 cadaun ano. Zurita, torn, i., fol. 43. (Saragosa, 
 1610.) A fief was usually called in Aragon an hon- 
 our, que en Castilla llamavan tierra, y en el prin- 
 cipado de Cataluaa feudo, fol. 46. 
 
 \ I do not know whether this work of Vitalis 
 has been printed ; but there are large extracts from 
 it in Blancas's history, and also in Du Cange, un- 
 der the words Infancia, Mesnadarius, &c. Several 
 illustrations of these military tenures may be found 
 in the Fueros de Aragon, especially lib. 7. 
 
 ever called upon, assisting in its judicial 
 as well as deliberative business. In the 
 towns and villages of his barony he might 
 appoint bailiffs to administer justice and 
 receive penalties ; but the higher crimi- 
 nal jurisdiction seems to have been re- 
 served to the crown. According to 
 Vitalis, the king could divest these ricos 
 hombres of their honours at pleasure, af- 
 ter which they fell into the class of mes- 
 nadaries, or mere tenants in chief. But 
 if this were constitutional in the reign of 
 James I., which Blancas denies, it was 
 not long permitted by that high-spirited 
 aristocracy. By the General Privilege, or 
 Charter of Peter III., it is declared that 
 no barony can be taken away without a 
 just cause and legal sentence of the jus- 
 ticiary and council of barons.* And the 
 same protection was extended to the vas- 
 sals of the ricos hombres. 
 
 Below these superior nobles were the 
 mesnadaries, corresponding to Lower no- 
 our mere tenants in chief, hold- bmtv - 
 ing estates not baronial immediately 
 from the crown ; and the military vas- 
 sals of the high nobility, the knights and 
 infanzones ; a word which may be ren- 
 dered by gentlemen. These had con- 
 siderable privileges in that aristocratic 
 government: they were exempted from 
 all taxes, they could only be tried by the 
 royal judges for any crime ; and offences 
 committed against them were punished 
 with additional severity.f The Burgesses 
 ignoble classes were, as in other and peas- 
 countries, the burgesses of towns, antry - 
 and the villeins or peasantry. The peas- 
 antry seem to have been subject to ter- 
 ritorial servitude, as in France and Eng- 
 land. Vitalis says, that some villeins 
 were originally so unprotected, that, as 
 he expresses it, they might be divided 
 into pieces by the sword among the sons 
 of their masters : till they were provoked 
 to an insurrection, which ended in es- 
 tablishing certain stipulations, whence 
 they obtained the denomination of vil- 
 leins de parada, or of convention.^ 
 
 Though from the twelfth century the 
 principle of hereditary succes- Liberties0 f 
 sion to the throne superseded, tneAragon- 
 in Aragon as well as Castile, j e m king ' 
 the original right of choosing a 
 sovereign within the royal family, it was 
 still founded upon one more sacred and 
 fundamental, that of compact. No king 
 of Aragon was entitled to assume that 
 name until he had taken a coronation 
 oath, administered by the justiciary at 
 Saragosa, to observe the laws and liber- 
 
 * Biancae Comm., p. 730. 
 f Idem, p. 732. 
 
 I Idem, p. 729. 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 210 
 
 ties of the realm.* Alfonso III., in 1285, 
 being in France at the time of his father's 
 death, named himself king in addressing 
 the states, who immediately remonstra- 
 ted on this premature assumption of his 
 title, and obtained an apology.f Thus 
 too Martin, having been called to the 
 crown of Aragon by the cortes in 1395, 
 was specially required not to exercise 
 any authority before his coronation.! 
 
 Blancas quotes a noble passage from 
 the acts of cortes in 1451. "We have 
 always heard of old time, and it is found 
 by experience, that, seeing the great bar- 
 renness of this land, and the poverty of 
 the realm, if it were not for the liberties 
 thereof, the folk would go hence to live 
 and abide in other realms, and lands 
 more fruitful. "$ This high spirit of free- 
 dom had long animated the Aragonese. 
 After several contests with the crown in 
 the reign of James I., not to go back to 
 earlier times, they compelled Peter III., 
 General m 1283 > to grant a law, called the 
 Privilege General Privilege, the Magna 
 of 1283 Charta of Aragon, and perhaps a 
 more full and satisfactory basis of civil 
 liberty than our own. It contains a se- 
 ries of provisions against arbitrary talla- 
 ges, spoliations of property, secret pro- 
 cess after the manner of the Inquisition in 
 criminal charges, sentences of the justi- 
 ciary without assent of the cortes, ap- 
 pointment of foreigners or Jews to judi- 
 cial offices, trials of accused persons in 
 places beyond the kingdom, the use of 
 torture, except in charges of falsifying 
 the coin, and the bribery of judges. 
 These are claimed as the ancient, liber- 
 ties of their country. "Absolute power 
 
 * Zurita, Anales de Aragon, t. i., fol. 104; t. iii., 
 fol. 76. 
 
 t Biancae Comm.. p. 661. They acknowledged, 
 at the same time, that he was their natural lord, 
 and entitled to reign as lawful heir to his father 
 so oddly were the hereditary and elective titles 
 jumbled together. Zurita, t. i., fol. 303. 
 
 t Zurita, t. ii., fol. 424. 
 
 <j Siempre havemos oydo dezir antigament, e se 
 trqba por esperiencia, que attendida la grand ste- 
 rilidad deaquesta tierra,e probreza deaqueste reg- 
 no, si non fues por las libertades de aquel, se yrian 
 a bivir, y habitar las gentes a otros regnos, e tier- 
 ras mas frutieras, p. 571. Aragon was, in fact, a 
 poor country, barren and ill-peopled. The kings 
 were forced to go to Catalonia for money, and in- 
 deed were little able to maintain expensive con- 
 tests. The wars of Peter IV. in Sardinia, and of 
 Alfonso V. with Genoa and Naples, empoverished 
 their people. A hearth-tax having been imposed 
 in 1404, it was found that there were 42,683 houses 
 in Aragon, which, according to most calculations, 
 will not give much more than 200,000 inhabitants. 
 In 1429, a similar tax being laid on, it is said that 
 the number of houses was diminished in conse- 
 quence of war. Zurita, t. iii., fol. 1 89. It contains 
 at present between 600,000 and 700,000 inhabitants. 
 
 (mero imperio e mixto), it is declared, 
 never was the constitution of Aragon, nor 
 of Valencia, nor yet of Ribagorpa, nor 
 shall there be in time to come any inno- 
 vation made ; but only the law, custom, 
 and privilege which has been anciently 
 used in the aforesaid kingdoms."* . 
 
 The concessions extorted by our ances- 
 tors from John, Henry III., and privilege of 
 Edward I.,were secured by the Union. 
 only guarantee those times could afford, 
 the determination of the barons to en- 
 force them by armed confederacies. 
 These, however, were formed according 
 to emergencies, and, except in the fa- 
 mous commission of twenty-five conser- 
 vators of Magna Charta, in the last year 
 of John, were certainly unwarranted by 
 law. But the Aragonese established a 
 positive right of maintaining their liber- 
 ties by arms. This was contained in the 
 Privilege of Union granted by Alfonso 
 
 III. in 1287, after a violent conflict with 
 his subjects; but which was afterward 
 so completely abolished, and even eradi- 
 cated from the records of the kingdom, 
 that its precise words have never been 
 recovered.! According to Zurita, it con- 
 sisted of two articles : first, that, in the 
 case of the king's proceeding forcibly 
 against any member of the union without 
 previous sentence of the justiciary, the 
 rest should be absolved from their allegi- 
 ance ; secondly, that he should hold cor- 
 tes every year in Saragosa.J During the 
 two subsequent reigns of James II. and 
 Alfonso IV., little pretence seems to have 
 been given for the exercise of this right. 
 But dissensions breaking out under Peter 
 
 IV. in 1347, rather on account of his at- 
 tempt to settle the crown upon his daugh- 
 ter than of any specific public grievances, 
 the nobles had recourse to the union, that 
 last voice, says Blancas, of an al- Revo i t 
 most expiring state, full of weight against 
 and dignity, to chastise the pre- Peterlv ~- 
 sumption of kings. ^ They assembled at 
 Saragosa, and used a remarkable seal for 
 all their public instruments, an engraving 
 from which may be seen in the historian 
 
 * Fueros de Aragon, fol. 9. Zurita, t. i., fol. 265. 
 
 f Blancas says that he had discovered a copy of 
 the Privilege of Union in the archives of the see 
 of Tarragona, and would gladly have published it, 
 but for his deference to the wisdom of former ages, 
 which had studiously endeavoured to destroy all 
 recollection of that dangerous law. Ibid., p. 662. 
 
 $ Ibid., t. i., f. 322. 
 
 Priscam illam Unionis, quasi morientis reipub- 
 licae extremam vocem, auctoritatis et gravitatis ple- 
 nam, regum insolentiae apertum vindicem excita"- 
 runt, summa" ac singulari bonorum omnium con- 
 sensione, p. 669. It is remarkable that such strong 
 language should have been tolerated under Philip 
 
220 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 I have just quoted. It represents the 
 king sitting on his throne, with the con- 
 federates kneeling in a suppliant attitude 
 around, to denote their loyalty, and un 
 willingness to offend. But in the back- 
 ground tents and lines of spears are dis- 
 covered, as a hint of their ability and res- 
 olution to defend themselves. The le- 
 gend is Sigillum Unionis Aragonum. This 
 respectful demeanour towards a sovereign 
 against whom they were waging war, re- 
 minds us of the language held out by our 
 Long Parliament before the Presbyteri- 
 an party was overthrown. And although 
 it has been lightly censured as inconsist- 
 ent and hypocritical, this tone is the safest 
 that men can adopt, who, deeming them- 
 selves under the necessity of withstand- 
 ing the reigning monarch, are anxious to 
 avoid a change of dynasty, or subversion 
 of their constitution. These confederates 
 were defeated by the king at Epila, in 
 1348.* But his prudence and the re- 
 maining strength of his opponents indu- 
 cing him to pursue a moderate course, 
 there ensued a more legitimate and per- 
 manent balance of the constitution from 
 Privilege this victory of the royalists. The 
 abdnsEi P r i v il e g e f Union was abroga- 
 other pro- ted, Peter himself cutting to 
 visions in- pieces with his sword the origi- 
 ted - nal instrument. But, in return, 
 many excellent laws for the security of 
 the subject were enacted ;f and their pres- 
 ervation was intrusted to the greatest 
 officer of the kingdom, the justiciary, 
 whose authority and pre-eminence may 
 in a great degree be dated from this peri- 
 od.! That watchfulness over public lib- 
 erty, which originally belonged to the 
 aristocracy of ricos hombres, always apt 
 to thwart the crown, or to oppress the 
 people, and which was afterward main- 
 tained by the dangerous privilege of union, 
 became the duty of a civil magistrate, 
 accustomed to legal rules, and responsi- 
 ble for his actions, whose office and func- 
 
 * Zurita observes that the battle of Epila was 
 the last fought in defence of public liberty, for 
 which it was held lawful of old to take up arms, 
 and resist the king, by virtue of the Privileges of 
 Union. For the authority of the justiciary being 
 afterward established, the former contentions and 
 wars came to an end ; means being found to put 
 the weak on a level with the powerful, in which 
 consists the peace and tranquillity of all states ; and 
 from thence the name of Union was, by common 
 consent, proscribed, t. ii., fol. 226. Blancas also 
 remarks, that nothing could have turned out more 
 advantageous to the Aragouese than their ill-for- 
 tune at Epila. 
 
 t Fueros de Aragon. De lis, quae Dominus rex, 
 fol. 14,. et alibi passim. 
 
 t Bianc. Comm., p. 671,811. Zurita, t. ii., fol. 
 
 tions are the most pleasing feature in the 
 constitutional history of Aragon. 
 
 The justiza or justiciary of Aragon has 
 been treated by some writers as office of 
 a sort of anomalous magistrate, J*Wjjr. 
 created originally as an intermediate pow- 
 er between the king and people, to watch 
 over the exercise of royal authority. But 
 I do not perceive that his functions were, 
 in any essential respect, different from 
 those of the chief justice of England, di- 
 vided, from the time of Edward I., among 
 the judges of the King's Bench. We 
 should undervalue our own constitution 
 by supposing that there did not reside in 
 that court as perfect an authority to re- 
 dress the subject's injuries, as was pos- 
 sessed bv the Aragonese magistrate. In 
 the pracucal exercise, indeed, of this pow- 
 er, there was an abundant difference. 
 Our English judges, more timid and pli- 
 ant, left to the remonstrances of parlia- 
 ment that redress of grievances which 
 very frequently lay within the sphere of 
 their jurisdiction. There is, I believe, no 
 recorded instance of a habeas corpus 
 granted in any case of illegal imprison- 
 ment by the crown ojr its officers during 
 the continuance of the Plantagenet dy- 
 nasty. We shall speedily take notice of 
 a very different conduct in Aragon. 
 
 The office of justiciary, whatever con- 
 jectural antiquity some have assigned to 
 it, is not to be traced beyond the capture 
 of Saragosa in 1118, when the series of 
 magistrates commences.* But for a 
 reat length of time they do not appear 
 to have been particularly important ; the 
 "udicial authority residing in the council 
 of ricos hombres, whose suffrages the jus- 
 ticiary collected, in order to pronounce 
 their sentence rather than his own. A pas- 
 sage in Vitalis, bishop of Huesca, whom 
 [ have already mentioned, shows this to 
 have been the practice during the reign 
 of James I.f Gradually, as notions of 
 liberty became more definite, and laws 
 more numerous, the reverence paid to 
 their permanent interpreter grew strong- 
 r ; and there was fortunately a succes- 
 sion of prudent and just men in that high 
 office, through whom it acquired dignity 
 and stable influence. Soon after the ac- 
 
 * Biancse Comment., p. 638. 
 
 t Id., p. 722. Zurita indeed refers the justicia- 
 ry's pre-eminence to an earlier date ; namely, the 
 reign of Peter II., who took away a great part of 
 ;he local jurisdictions of the ricos hombres, t. i.,fol. 
 102. But, if I do not misunderstand the meaning 
 of Vitalis, his testimony seems to be beyond dis- 
 pute. By the General Privilege of 1283, the justi- 
 ciary was to advise with the ricos hombres in all 
 cases where the king was a party against any of 
 his subjects. Zurita, f. 281. See also f. 180, 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 221 
 
 cession of James II., on some dissen- 
 sions arising between the king and his 
 barons, he called in the justiciary as a me- 
 diator, whose sentence, says Blancas> all 
 obeyed.* At a subsequent time in the 
 same reign, the military orders, pretending 
 that some of their privileges were violated, 
 raised a confederacy or union against the 
 king. James offered to refer the dispute 
 to the justiciary, Ximenes Salanova, a 
 man of eminent legal knowledge. The 
 knights resisted his jurisdiction, alleging 
 the question to be of spiritual cognizance. 
 He decided it, however, against them in 
 full cortes at Saragosa, annulled their 
 league, and sentenced the leaders to pun- 
 ishment, f It was- adjudged also that no 
 appeal could lie to the spiritual court 
 from a sentence of the justiciary passed 
 with assent of the cortes. James II. is 
 said to have frequently sued his subjects 
 in the justiciary's court, to show his re- 
 gard for legal measures ; and during the 
 reign of this good prince, its authority 
 became more established. J Yet it was 
 not perhaps looked upon as fully equal to 
 maintain public liberty against the crown, 
 till, in the cortes of 1348, after the Privi- 
 lege of Union was for ever abolished, such 
 laws were enacted, and such authority giv- 
 en to the justiciary, as proved eventually a 
 more adequate barrier against oppression 
 than any other country could boast. All 
 the royal as well as territorial judges 
 were bound to apply for his opinion in 
 case of legal difficulties arising in their 
 courts, which he was to certify within 
 eight days. By subsequent statutes of 
 the same reign, it was made penal for 
 any one to obtain letters from the king, 
 impeding the execution of the justiza's 
 process, and they were declared null. In- 
 ferior courts were forbidden to proceed 
 in any business after his prohibition.^ 
 Many other laws might be cited, corrob- 
 orating the authority of the great magis- 
 trate ; but there are two parts of his re- 
 medial jurisdiction which deserve special 
 notice. 
 
 These are the processes of jurisfirma, or 
 firma del derecho, and of manifestation. 
 
 * Biancas Comment., p. 663. 
 
 t Zurita, t. i., f. 403 ; t. ii., f. 34. Blanc., p. 666. 
 The assent of the cortes seems to render this in the 
 nature of a legislative rather than a judicial pro- 
 ceeding ; but it is difficult to pronounce about a 
 transaction so remote in time, and in a foreign 
 country, the native historians writing rather con- 
 cisely. 
 
 t Bianc., p. 663. James acquired the surname of 
 Just, el Justiciero, by his fair dealings towards his 
 subjects. Zurita, t. ii., fol. 82. 
 
 Fueros de Aragon : Quod in dubiis non crassis. 
 (A. D. 1348.) Quod impetrans (1372), &c. Zurita, 
 t. ii., fol. 229. Bianc., p. 671 and 811. 
 
 The former bears some anal- Processes of 
 ogy to the writs of pone and Ini"! 3 
 certiorari in England, through festation. 
 which the court of King's Bench exer- 
 cises its right of withdrawing a suit from 
 the jurisdiction of inferior tribunals. But 
 the Aragonese jurisfirma was of more 
 extensive operation. Its object was not 
 only to bring a cause commenced in an in- 
 ferior court before the justiciary, but to 
 prevent or inhibit any process from issu- 
 ing against the person who applied for its 
 benefit, or any molestation from being 
 offered to him; so that, as Biancas ex- 
 presses it, when we have entered into a 
 recognisance (firme et graviter assevere- 
 mus) before the justiciary of Aragon to 
 abide the decision of law, our fortunes 
 shall be protected by the interposition of 
 his prohibition, from the intolerable ini- 
 quity of the royal judges.* The process 
 termed manifestation, afforded as ample 
 security for personal liberty as that of 
 jurisfirma did for property. "To mani- 
 fest any one," says the writer so often 
 quoted, " is to wrest him from the hands 
 of the royal officers, that he may not suf- 
 fer any illegal violence; not that he is 
 set at liberty by this process, because the 
 merits of his case are still to be inquired 
 into ; but because he is now detained 
 publicly, instead of being, as it were, con- 
 cealed, and the charge against him is 
 investigated, not suddenly or with pas- 
 sion, but in calmness and according to 
 law, therefore this is called manifesta- 
 tion."! The power of this writ (if I may 
 
 * Bianc., p. 751. Fueros de Aragon, f. 137. 
 
 t Est apud nos manifestare, reum subito sumere, 
 atque e regiis manibus extorquere, ne qua ipsi con- 
 tra jus vis inferatur. Non quod tune reus judicio 
 liberetur ; nihilominus tamen.ut loquimur, de mer- 
 itis causae ad plenum cognoscitur. Sed quod dein- 
 ceps manifesto teneatur, quasi antea celatus extitis- 
 set ; necesseque deinde sit de ipsius culpa,, non im- 
 petu et cum furore, sed sedatis prorsus animis, et 
 juxta constitutas leges judicari. Ex eo autem, quod 
 hujusmodi judicium manifesto deprehensum, omni- 
 bus jam patere debeat, Manifestationis sibi nomen 
 arripuit, p. 675. 
 
 Ipsius Manifestationis potestas tarn solida est et 
 repentina, ut homini jam collum in laqueum inse- 
 renti subveniat. Illius enim praesidio, damnatus, 
 dum per leges licet, quasi experiendi juris gratia, 
 de manibus judicum confestim extorquetur, et in 
 carcerem ducitur ad id aedificatum, ibidemque as- 
 servatur tamdiu, quamdiu jurene, an injuna quid 
 in ea causa factum fuerit, judicatur. Propterea 
 career hie vulgari lingua, la carcel de los manifes 
 tados nuncupatur, p. 751. 
 
 Fueros de Aragon, fol. 60. De Manifestationi- 
 bus personarum. Independently of this right of 
 manifestation by writ of the justiciary, there are 
 several statutes in the Fueros against illegal de- 
 tention, or unnecessary severity towards prisoners. 
 (De Custodia reorum, f. 163.) No judge could 
 proceed secretly in a criminal process ; an indis- 
 pensable safeguard to public liberty, and one of the 
 
S22 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 apply our term) was such, as he else- 
 where asserts, that it would rescue a 
 man whose neck was in the halter. A 
 particular prison was allotted to those 
 detained for trial under this process. 
 
 Several proofs that such admirable pro- 
 instances of visions did not remain a dead 
 their appii- letter in the law of Aragon, 
 cation. appear in the two historians, 
 Blancas and Zurita, whose noble attach- 
 ment to liberties, of which they had 
 either witnessed, or might foretel the 
 
 most salutary, as well as most ancient, provisions 
 in our own constitution. (De judiciis.) Torture 
 was abolished, except in cases of coining false mon- 
 ey, and then only in respect of vagabonds. (Gen- 
 eral Privilege of 1283.) 
 
 Zurita has explained the two processes of juris- 
 firma and manifestation so perspicuously, that, as 
 the subject is very interesting, and rather out of 
 the common way, I shall both quote and translate 
 the passage. Con firrnar de derecho, que es dar 
 caution a estar a justicia, se conseden literas inhib- 
 itorias por el justicia de Aragon, para que no pue- 
 dan ser presos, ni privados, ni despojados de su 
 possession, hasta que judicialmente se conozca, y 
 declare sobre la pretension, y justicia de las partes, 
 y parezca por processo legitimo, que se deve revo- 
 car la tal inhibition. Esta fue la suprema y prin- 
 cipal autoridad del Justicia de Aragon desde que 
 este magistrado tuvo origen, y lo que llama mani- 
 festation; porque assi como la firma de derecho 
 por privilegio general del reyno impide, que no 
 puede ninguno'ser preso, o agraviado contra razon 
 y justicia, de la misma manera la manifestation, 
 que es otro privilegio, y remedia muy principal, 
 tiene fuerca, quando alguno es preso sin preceder 
 processo legitimo, o quando lo prenden de hecho 
 sin orden de justicia ; y en estos casos solo el Jus- 
 ticia de Aragon, quando se tiene recurso al el, se 
 interpone, manifestando il preso, que es tomarlo a 
 su mano, de poder de qualquiera juez, aunque sea 
 el mas supremo ; y es obligado el Justicia de Ara- 
 gon, y sus lugartenientes de proveer la manifesta- 
 cion en el mismo instante, que les es pedida sin 
 preceder informacion ; y basta que se pida por 
 qualquiere persona que se diga procurator del que 
 quiere que lo tengan por manifesto, t. ii., fol. 386. 
 " Upon a firma de derecho, which is to give securi- 
 ty for abiding the decision of law, the Justiciary of 
 Aragon issues letters inhibiting all persons to ar- 
 rest the party, or deprive him of his possession, 
 until the matter shall be judicially inquired into, 
 and it shall appear that such inhibition ought to be 
 revoked. This process and that which is called 
 manifestation have been the chief powers of the 
 justiciary ever since the commencement of that 
 magistracy. And as the firma de derecho, by the 
 general privilege of the realm, secures every man 
 from being arrested or molested against reason 
 and justice, so the manifestation, which is another 
 principal and remedial right, takes place when any 
 one is actually arrested without lawful process ; 
 and in such cases only the Justiciary of Aragon, 
 when recourse is had to him, interposes by mani- 
 festing the person arrested, that is, by taking him 
 into his own hands, out of the power of any judge, 
 however high in authority ; and this manifestation 
 the justiciary, or his deputies in his absence, are 
 bound to issue at the same instant it is demanded, 
 without farther inquiry ; and it may be demanded 
 by any one as attorney of the party requiring to be 
 manifested." 
 
 extinction, continually displays itself. I 
 cannot help illustrating this subject by 
 two remarkable instances. The heir ap- 
 parent of the kingdom of Aragon had a 
 constitutional right to the lieutenancy or 
 regency during the sovereign's absence 
 from the realm. The title and office in 
 deed were permanent, though the func- 
 tions must of course have been superse- 
 ded during the personal exercise of roy- 
 al authority. But as neither Catalonia 
 nor Valencia, which often demanded the 
 king's presence, was considered as part 
 of the kingdom, there were pretty fre- 
 quent occasions for this anticipated reign 
 of the eldest prince. Such a regulation 
 was not likely to diminish the mutual 
 and almost inevitable jealousies between 
 kings and their heirs apparent, which have 
 so often disturbed the tranquillity of a 
 court and a nation. Peter IV. removed 
 his eldest son, afterward John I., from 
 the lieutenancy of the kingdom. The 
 prince entered into a firma del derecho 
 before the justiciary, Dominic de Cerda, 
 who, pronouncing in his favour, enjoined 
 the king to replace his son in the lieuten- 
 ancy as the undoubted right of the eldest 
 born. Peter obeyed, not only in fact, to 
 which, as Blancas observes, the law com- 
 pelled him, but with apparent cheerful- 
 ness.* There are indeed no private per- 
 sons who have so strong an interest in 
 maintaining a free constitution and the 
 civil liberties of their countrymen, as the 
 members of royal families; since none 
 are so much exposed, in absolute govern- 
 ments, to the resentment and suspicion 
 of a reigning monarch: 
 
 John I., who had experienced the pro- 
 tection of law in his weakness, had af- 
 terward occasion to find it interposed 
 against his power. This king had sent 
 some citizens of Saragosa to prison with- 
 out form of law. They applied to Juan 
 de Cerda, the justiciary, for a manifesta- 
 tion. He issued his writ accordingly; 
 nor, says Blancas, could he do otherwise, 
 without being subject to a heavy fine. 
 The king, pretending that the justiciary 
 was partial, named one of his own judges, 
 the vice-chancellor, as coadjutor. This 
 raised a constitutional question, whether, 
 on suspicion of partiality, a coadjutor to 
 the justiciary could be appointed. The 
 king sent a private order to the justiciary 
 not to proceed to sentence upon this in- 
 terlocutory point until he should receive 
 instructions in the council, to which he 
 was directed to repair. But he instantly 
 pronounced sentence in favour of his ex- 
 
 * Zurita, ubi supra. Blancas, p. 673. 
 
CHAP. IV.j 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 223 
 
 elusive jurisdiction without a coadjutor. 
 He then repaired to the palace. Here 
 the vice-chancellor, in a long harangue, 
 enjoined him to suspend sentence till he 
 had heard the decision of the council. 
 Juan de Cerda answered that, the case 
 being clear, he had already pronounced 
 upon it. This produced some expres- 
 sions of anger from th king, who began 
 to enter into an argument on the merits 
 of the question. But the justiciary an- 
 swered that, with all deference to his 
 majesty, he was bound to defend his con- 
 duct before the cortes, and not elsewhere. 
 On a subsequent day, the king having 
 drawn the justiciary to his country pal- 
 ace on pretence of hunting, renewed the 
 conversation with the assistance of his 
 ally the vice-chancellor ; but no impres- 
 sion was made on the venerable magis- 
 trate, whom John at length, though much 
 pressed by his advisers to violent cour- 
 ses, dismissed with civility. The king 
 was probably misled throughout this trans- 
 action, which 1 have thought fit to draw 
 from obscurity, not only in order to illus- 
 trate the privilege of manifestation, but 
 as exhibiting an instance of judicial firm- 
 ness and integrity, to which, in the four- 
 teenth century, no country perhaps in 
 Europe could offer a parallel.* 
 
 Before the cortes of 1348, it seems as 
 Office of if tne justiciary might have 
 justiciary been displaced at the king's 
 held for life, pleasure. From that time he 
 held his station for life. But, in order to 
 evade this law, the king sometimes ex- 
 acted a promise to resign upon request. 
 Ximenes Cerdan, the justiciary in 1420, 
 having refused to fulfil this engagement, 
 Alfonso V. gave notice to all his subjects 
 not to obey him, and notwithstanding the 
 alarm which this encroachment created, 
 eventually succeeded in compelling him 
 to quit his office. In 1439, Alfonso in- 
 sisted with still greater severity upon the 
 execution of a promise to resign made 
 by another justiciary, detaining him in 
 prison until his death. But the cortes of 
 1442 proposed a law, to which the king 
 reluctantly acceded, that the justiciary 
 should not be compellable to resign his 
 office on account of any previous en- 
 gagement he might have made.f 
 
 But lest these high powers, imparted 
 Responsibi- f r ^ ne prevention of abuses, 
 lityofthis should themselves be abused, 
 magistrate. tne j us ticiary was responsible, 
 in case of an unjust sentence, to the ex- 
 
 * Biancae Commentar., ubi supra. Zurita relates 
 ^he story, but not so fully. 
 
 t Fueros de Aragon, fol. 22. Zurita, t. iii., fol. 
 140, 255, 272. Bianc. Comment., p. 701. 
 
 tent of the injury inflicted;* and was 
 also subjected, by a statute of 1390, to a 
 court of inquiry, composed of four per- 
 sons chosen by the king out of eight 
 named by the cortes; whose office ap- 
 pears to have been that of examining 
 and reporting to the four estates in cortes, 
 by whom he was ultimately to be ac- 
 quitted or condemned. This superintend- 
 ence of the cortes, however, being 
 thought dilatory and inconvenient, a 
 court of seventeen persons was appointed, 
 in 1461, to hear complaints against the 
 justiciary. Some alterations were after- 
 ward made in this tribunal.f The justi- 
 ciary was always a knight, chosen from 
 the second order of nobility, the barons 
 not being liable to personal punishment. 
 He administered the coronation-oath to 
 the king; and in the cortes of Aragon, 
 the justiciary acted as a sort of royal 
 commissioner, opening or proroguing the 
 assembly by the king's direction. 
 
 No laws could be enacted or repealed, 
 nor any tax imposed, without Rj ghtso n e _ 
 the consent of the estates duly gisiation and 
 assembled. ; Even as early as taxation - 
 the reign of Peter II., in 1205, that prince 
 having attempted to impose a general tal- 
 lage, the nobility and commons united for 
 the preservation of their franchises ; and 
 the tax was afterward granted in part by 
 the cortes. $ It may easily be supposed 
 that the Aragonese were not behind other 
 nations in statutes to secure these priv- 
 ileges, which, upon the whole, appear to 
 have been more respected than in any 
 other monarchy. || The general privilege 
 
 
 * Fueros de Aragon, fol. 25. 
 
 t Blancas. Zurita, t. iii., f. 321 ; t. iv., f. 103. 
 These regulations were very acceptable to the na- 
 tion. In fact, the justiza of Aragon had possessed 
 much more unlimited powers than ought to be in- 
 trusted to any single magistrate. The court of 
 King's Bench in England, besides its consisting of 
 four co-ordinate judges, is checked by the appel- 
 lant jurisdictions of the Exchequer Chamber and 
 House of Lords, and, still more importantly, by the 
 rights of juries. 
 
 J Majores nostri, quae de omnibus statuenda es- 
 sent, noluenint juberi, vetarive posse, nisi vocatis, 
 descriptisque ordinibus. ac cunctis eorum adhibitis 
 suffrages, re ipsa cognita et promulgata. Unde 
 perpetuum illud nobis comparatum est jus, ut com- 
 munes et publicae leges neque tolli, necme rogari 
 possint, nisi prius universus populus una voce co- 
 mitiis institutis suum e& de re liberums uffragium 
 ferat ; idque postea ipsius regis assensu comprobe- 
 tur. Biancae, p. 761. 
 
 Zurita, t. i., fol. 92. 
 
 II Fueros de Aragon : Quod sissae in Aragonia 
 removeantur (A D. 1372). De prohibitione sissa- 
 rum (1398). De conservatione patrimonii (1461). 
 I have only remarked two instances of arbitrary 
 taxation in Zurita's history, which is singularly full 
 of information ; one, in 1343, when Peter IV. col- 
 lected money from various cities, though not with 
 out opposition ; and the other a remonstrance of 
 
224 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 of 1283 formed a sort of ground-work for 
 this legislation, like the Great Charter in 
 England, By a clause in this law, cortes 
 were to be held every year at Saragosa 
 But, under James II., their time of meet- 
 ing was reduced to once in two years 
 and the place was left to the king's dis- 
 cretion.* Nor were the cortes of Ara- 
 gon less vigilant than those of Castile in 
 claiming a right to be consulted in all im- 
 portant deliberations of the executive 
 power, or in remonstrating against abuses 
 of government, or in superintending the 
 proper expenditure of public money. f A 
 variety of provisions, intended to secure 
 these parliamentary privileges and the 
 civil liberty of the subject, will be found 
 dispersed in the collection of Aragonese 
 laws,;}; which may be favourably com- 
 pared with those of our own statute- 
 book. 
 
 Four estates, or, as they were called, 
 Cortes of arms (brazos), formed the cortes 
 Aragon. of Aragon ; the prelates,^ andcom- 
 
 the cortes in 1383 against heavy taxes ; and it is 
 not clear that this refers to general unauthorized 
 taxation. Zurita, t. ii., f. 168 and 382. Blancas 
 mentions that Alfonso V. set a tallage upon his 
 towns for the marriage of his natural daughters, 
 which he might have done had they been legiti- 
 mate ; but they appealed to the justiciary's tribu- 
 nal, and the king receded from his demand, p. 701. 
 
 Some instances of tyrannical conduct in violation 
 of the constitutional laws occur, as will naturally 
 be supposed, in the annals of Zurita. The execu- 
 tion of Bernard Cabrera under Peter IV., t. ii., f. 
 336, and the severities inflicted on Queen Forcia 
 by her son-in-law John I., f. 391, are perhaps as 
 remarkable as any. 
 
 * Zurita, t. i., f. 426. In general the session 
 lasted from four to six months. One assembly 
 was prorogued from time to time, and continued 
 six years, from 1446 to 1452, which was com- 
 plained of as a violation of the law for their bien- 
 nial renewal, t. iv., f. 6. 
 
 t The Sicilian war of Peter III. was very, un- 
 popular, because it bad been undertaken without 
 consent of the barons, contrary to the practice of 
 the kingdom; porque ningun negocio arduo em- 
 prendian, sin acuerdo y consejo de sus ricos hom- 
 bres. Zurita, t. i, fol. 264. The cortes, he tells 
 us, were usually divided into two parties, whigs 
 and tories ; estava ordinariamente dividida en dos 
 partes, la una que pensava procurar el beneficiodel 
 reyno, y la otra que el servicio del rey, t. iii., fol. 
 321. 
 
 t Fueros y observancias del reyno de Aragon. 
 2 vols. in fol., Saragosa, 1667. The most impor- 
 tant of these are collected by Blancas, p. 750. 
 
 It is said by some writers that the ecclesiasti- 
 cal arm was not added to the cortes of Aragon till 
 about the year 1300. But I do not find mention in 
 Zurita of any such constitutional change at that 
 time ; and the prelates, as we might expect from 
 the analogy of other countries, appear as members 
 of the national council long before. Queen Petro- 
 niila, in 1142, summoned a los perlados, ricos 
 hornbres, y cavalleros, y procuradores de las ciu- 
 dades y villas, que le juntassen a cortes generales 
 en la ciudad de Huesca. Zurita, t. i., fol. 71. So 
 in the cortes of 1275, and on other occasions. 
 
 manders of military orders, who passed 
 for ecclesiastics; the barons, or ricos 
 hombres ; the equestrian order, or in fan- 
 zones, and the deputies of royal towns.* 
 The two former had a right of appearing 
 by proxy. There was no representation 
 of the infanzones, or lower nobility. 
 But it must be remembered that they 
 were not numerous, nor was the kingdom 
 large. Thirty-five are reckoned by Zu- 
 rita as present in the cortes of 1395, and 
 thirty-three in those of 1412 ; and as 
 upon both occasions an oath of fealty to 
 a new monarch was to be taken, I pre- 
 sume that nearly all the nobility of the 
 kingdom were present. f The ricos hom- 
 bres do not seem to have exceeded twelve 
 or fourteen in number. The ecclesiasti- 
 cal estate was not much, if at all, more 
 numerous. A few principal towns alone 
 sent deputies to the cortes; but their 
 representation was very full; eight or 
 ten, and sometimes more, sat for Sara- 
 gosa, and no town appears to have had 
 less than four representatives. During 
 the interval of the cortes a permanent 
 commission, varying a good deal as to 
 numbers, but chosen out of the four es- 
 tates, was empowered to sit with very 
 considerable authority, receiving and 
 managing the public revenue, and pro- 
 tecting the justiciary in his functions. | 
 
 The kingdom of Valencia and princi- 
 pality of Catalonia having been Govern . 
 annexed to Aragon, the one by mem of Va- 
 conquest, the other by marriage, i encia and 
 were always kept distinct from 
 it in their laws and government. Each 
 had its cortes, composed of three estates, 
 for the division of the nobility into two 
 orders did not exist in either country. 
 The Catalans were tenacious of their 
 ancient usages, and averse to incorpora- 
 ;ion with any other people of Spain. 
 Their national character was high-spir- 
 ted and independent ; in no part of the 
 peninsula did the territorial aristocracy 
 retain, or at least pretend to such exten- 
 sive privileges,^ and the citizens were 
 
 * Popular representation was more ancient in 
 Aragon than in any other monarchy. The depu- 
 ;ies of towns appear in the cortes of 1133, .as Rob- 
 ertson has remarked from Zurita. Hist, of Charles 
 V., note 32. And this cannot well be called in ques- 
 ion, or treated as an anomaly ; for we find them 
 nentioned in 1142 (the passage cited in the last 
 note), and again in 1164, when Zurita enumerates 
 many of their names, fol. 74. The institution of 
 concejos, or corporate districts under a presiding 
 own, prevailed in Aragon, as it did in Castile. 
 
 t Zurita, t. ii., f. 420 ; t. iii., f. 76. 
 
 t Biancse, p. 762. Zurita, t. hi., f. 76 ; f. 182, et 
 alibi. 
 
 Zurita, t. ii., f. 360. The villanage of the peas- 
 antry in some parts of Catalonia was very severe, 
 
CHAP. IV.] 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 225 
 
 justly proud of wealth acquired by Indus 
 try, and of renown achieved by valour 
 At the accession of Ferdinand L, which 
 they had not much desired, the Catalans 
 obliged him to swear three times succes- 
 sively to maintain their liberties, before 
 they would take the reciprocal oath of 
 allegiance.* For Valencia it seems to 
 have been a politic design of James the 
 Conqueror to establish a constitution 
 nearly analogous to that of Aragon, but 
 with such limitations as he should im- 
 pose, taking care that the nobles of the 
 two kingdoms should not acquire strength 
 by union. In the reigns of Peter III. 
 and Alfonso III., one of the principal ob- 
 jects contended for by the barons of Ar- 
 agon was the establishment of their own 
 laws in Valencia; to which the king 
 never acceded. f They permitted, how- 
 ever, the possessions of the natives of Ar- 
 agon in the latter kingdom to be govern- 
 ed by the law of Aragon.| These three 
 states, Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia, 
 were perpetually united by a law of Al- 
 fonso III. ; and every king on his acces- 
 sion was bound to swear that he would 
 never separate them. Sometimes gen- 
 eral cortes of the kingdoms and princi- 
 pality were convened ; but the members 
 did not, even in this case, sit together, 
 and were no otherwise united, than as 
 they met in the same city.|| 
 
 I do not mean to represent the actual 
 condition of society in Aragon as equally 
 excellent with the constitutional laws. 
 Relatively to ^)ther monarchies, as I 
 state of have already observed, there seem 
 police, to have been fewer excesses of 
 the royal prerogative in that kingdom. 
 But the licentious habits of a feudal aris- 
 tocracy prevailed very long. We find in 
 history instances of private war between 
 the great families, so as to disturb the 
 peace of the whole nation, even near the 
 close of the fifteenth century.^f The 
 right of avenging injuries by arms, and 
 the ceremony of diffidation, or solemn 
 defiance of an enemy, are preserved by 
 the laws. We even meet with the an- 
 cient barbarous usage of paying a compo- 
 sition to the kindred of a murdered man.** 
 The citizens of Saragosa were sometimes 
 
 even near the end of the fifteenth century, t. iv., 
 f. 237. 
 
 * Zurita, t. iii., f. 81. 
 
 t Id., t. i., f. 281, 310, 333. There was originally 
 a justiciary in the kingdom of Valencia, f. 281 ; but 
 this, I believe, did not long continue. 
 
 t Idem, t. ii, f. 433. $ Idem, t. ii., f. 91. 
 
 II Biancae Comment., p. 760. Zurita, t. iii., fol. 
 239. 
 
 IT Zurita, t. iv., fol. 189. 
 
 ** Fueros de Aragon, f. 166, &c. 
 
 turbulent, and a refractory nobleman 
 sometimes defied the ministers of jus- 
 tice. But, owing to the remarkable co- 
 piousness of the principal Aragonese his- 
 torian, we find more frequent details of 
 this nature than in the scantier annals of 
 some countries. The internal condition 
 of society was certainly far from peace- 
 able in other parts of Europe. 
 
 By the marriage of Ferdinand with 
 Isabella, and by the death of Union df 
 John II. in 1479, the two an- Castiieand 
 cient and rival kingdoms of Cas- Ara s n - 
 tile and Aragon were for ever consolida- 
 ted in the monarchy of Spain. There 
 had been some difficulty in adjusting the 
 respective rights of the husband and wife 
 over Castile. In the middle ages, it was 
 customary for the more powerful sex to 
 exercise all the rights which it derived 
 from the weaker, as much in sovereign- 
 ties as in private possessions. But the 
 Castilians were determined to maintain 
 the positive and distinct prerogatives of 
 their que'en, to which they attached the 
 independence of their nation. A com- 
 promise therefore was concluded, by 
 which, though, according to our notions, 
 Ferdinand obtained more than a due 
 share, he might consider himself as more 
 strictly limited than his father had been 
 in Navarre. The names of both were to 
 appear jointly in their style, and upon 
 the coin, the king's taking the prece- 
 dence in respect of his sex. But, in the 
 royal scutcheon, the arms of Castile 
 were preferred on account of the king- 
 dom's dignity. Isabella had the appoint- 
 ment of all civil offices in Castile ; the 
 nomination of spiritual benefices ran in 
 the name of both. The government was 
 to be conducted by the two conjointly 
 when they were together, or by either 
 singly, in the province where one or other 
 might happen to reside.* This partition 
 was well preserved throughout the life 
 of Isabel without mutual encroachments 
 or jealousies. So rare a unanimity be- 
 tween persons thus circumstanced must 
 
 attributed to the superior qualities of 
 that princess, who, while she maintained 
 a constant good understanding with a 
 very ambitious husband, never relaxed 
 n the exercise of her paternal authority 
 over the kingdoms of her ancestors. 
 
 Ferdinand and Isabella had no sooner 
 quenched the flames of civil Conquest of 
 discord in Castile, than they Granada, 
 determined to give an unequivocal proof 
 to Europe of the vigour which the Span- 
 'sh monarchy was to display under their 
 
 * Zurita, t. iv., fol. 224. Mariana, 1. xxiv., c. 5. 
 
226 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IV. 
 
 government. For many years an armis- 
 tice with the Moors of Granada had been 
 uninterrupted. Neither John II. nor 
 Henry IV. had been at leisure to think of 
 aggressive hostilities ; and the Moors 
 themselves, a prey, like their Christian 
 enemies, to civil war, and the feuds of 
 their royal family, were content with the 
 unmolested enjoyment of the finest prov- 
 ince in the peninsula. If we may trust 
 historians, the sovereigns of Granada 
 were generally usurpers and tyrants. 
 But I know not how to account for that 
 vast populousness, that grandeur and 
 magnificence, which distinguished the 
 Mahometan kingdoms of Spain, without 
 ascribing some measure of wisdom and 
 beneficence to their governments. These 
 southern provinces have dwindled in later 
 times ; and, in fact, Spain itself is chiefly 
 interesting to most travellers, for the 
 monuments which a foreign and odious 
 race of conquerors have left behind 
 them. Granada was however disturbed 
 by a series of revolutions about'the time 
 of Ferdinand's accession, which natural- 
 ly encouraged his designs. The Moors, 
 contrary to what might have been ex- 
 pected from their relative strength, were 
 the aggressors by attacking a town in 
 Andalusia.* [A. D. 1481.] Predatory in- 
 roads of this nature had hitherto been 
 only retaliated by the Christians. But 
 Ferdinand was conscious that his resour- 
 ces extended to the conquest of Granada, 
 the consummation of a struggle protract- 
 ed through nearly eight centuries. Even 
 in the last stage of the Moorish dominion, 
 exposed on every side to invasion, en- 
 feebled by a civil dissension, that led one 
 party to abet the common enemy, Grana- 
 da was not subdued without ten years of 
 sanguinary and unremitting contest. Fer- 
 tile beyond all the rest of Spain, that 
 kingdom contained seventy walled towns ; 
 and the capital is said, almost two cen- 
 turies before, to have been peopled by 
 
 * Zurita, t. iv., fol. 314. 
 
 200,000 inhabitants.* Its resistance to 
 such a force as that of Ferdinand is per- 
 haps the best justification of the apparent 
 negligence of earlier monarchs. But 
 Granada was ultimately compelled to un- 
 dergo the yoke. The city surrendered 
 on the second of January, 1492 ; an event 
 glorious not only to Spain, but to Chris- 
 tendom ; and which, in the political com- 
 bat of the two religions, seemed almost 
 to counterbalance the loss of Constanti- 
 nople. It raised the name of Ferdinand, 
 and of the new monarchy which he gov- 
 erned, to high estimation throughout Eu- 
 rope. Spain appeared an equal compet- 
 itor with France in the lists of ambition. 
 These great kingdoms had for some time 
 felt the jealousy natural to emulous neigh- 
 Dours. The house of Aragon loudly com- 
 Dlained of the treacherous policy of Louis 
 XL He had fomented the troubles of 
 astile, and given, not indeed an effectual 
 aid, but all promises of support, to the 
 Princess Joanna, the competitor of Isabel. 
 Rousillon, a province belonging to Ara- 
 gon, had been pledged to France by John 
 [I. for a sum of money. It would be te- 
 dious to relate the subsequent events, or 
 o discuss their respective claims to its 
 possession.! At the accession of Fer- 
 dinand, Louis XL still held Rousillon, and 
 howed little intention to resign it. But 
 Charles VIII. , eager to smooth every im- 
 pediment to his Italian expedition, resto- 
 ed the province to Ferdinand in 1493. 
 Whether, by such a sacrifice, he was able 
 o lull the King of Aragon into acquies- 
 cence, while he dethroned his relation 
 at Naples, and alarmed for a moment all 
 taly with the apprehension of French 
 dominion, it is not within the limits of the 
 present work to inquire. 
 
 * Zurita, t. iv., fol. 314. 
 
 t For these transactions, see Gamier, Hist, de 
 r rance, or Gaillard, Rivalit6 de France et d'Es- 
 >agne, t. iii. The latter is the most impartial 
 Drench writer I have ever read, in matters where 
 lis own country is concerned. 
 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 
 227 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HISTORY OF GERMANY TO THE DIET OF WORMS IN 1495, 
 
 Sketch of German History under the Emperors of 
 the House of Saxony. House of Franconia. 
 Henry IV. House of Swabia. Frederick Bar- 
 barossa. Fall of Henry the Lion. Frederick II. 
 Extinction of House of Swabia. Changes in 
 the Germanic Constitution. Electors. Terri- 
 torial Sovereignty 6f the Princes. Rodolph of 
 Hapsburg. State of the Empire after his Time. 
 Causes of Decline of Imperial Power. House 
 of Luxemburg. Charles IV. Golden Bull. 
 House of Austria. Frederick III. Imperial 
 Cities. Provincial States. Maximilian. Diet 
 of Worms. Abolition of private Wars. Im- 
 perial Chamber. Aulic Council. Bohemia. 
 Hungary. Switzerland. 
 
 AFTER the deposition of Charles the 
 
 Separation Fat > in 888 > vvhich finall y sev ~ 
 
 of Germany ered the connexion between 
 from France. France and Germany,* Arnulf, 
 an illegitimate descendant of Charle- 
 magne, obtained the throne of the latter 
 country, in which he was succeeded by 
 his son Louis. f But upon the death of 
 this prince in 911, the German branch of 
 that dynasty became extinct. There re- 
 mained indeed Charles the Simple, ac- 
 knowledged as king in some parts of 
 France, but rejected in others, and pos- 
 sessing no per^mal claims to respect. 
 The Germans Therefore wisely deter- 
 mined to choose a sovereign from among 
 themselves. They were at this time 
 divided into five nations, each under its 
 own duke, and distinguished by difference 
 of laws as well as of origin; the Franks, 
 whose territory, comprising Franconia 
 and the modem palatinate, was consid- 
 ered as the cradle of the empire, and 
 who seem to have arrogated some supe- 
 riority over the rest, the Swabians, the 
 Bavarians, the Saxons, under which name 
 the inhabitants of Lower Saxony alone 
 and Westphalia were included, and the 
 
 * There can be no question about this in a gen- 
 eral sense. But several German writers of the 
 time assert, that both Eudes and Charles the Sim- 
 ple, rival kings of France, acknowledged the feudal 
 superiority of Arnulf. Charles, says Regino, re^ 
 num quod usurpaverat ex manu ejus percepit. 
 Struvius, Corpus Hist. German., p. 202, 203. 
 
 t The German princes had some hesitation about 
 the choice of Louis : but their partiality to the 
 Carlovingian line prevailed. Struvius, p. 208: 
 quia reges Francorum semper ex uno genere pro- 
 cedebant, says an archbishop Hatto, in writing to 
 
 P 2 
 
 Lorrainers, who occupied the left bank 
 of the Rhine as far as its termination. 
 [A. D. 911.] The choice of these Election of 
 nations in their general assem- Conrad, 
 bly fell upon Conrad, duke of Franco- 
 nia, according to some writers, or at 
 least a man of high rank, and descended 
 through females from Charlemagne.* 
 
 Conrad dying without male issue, the 
 crown of Germany was bestowed House of 
 upon Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony. 
 Saxony, ancestor of the three Othos, who 
 followed him in direct succes- Henry the 
 sion. To Henry, and to the Fowier,9i9. 
 first Otho, Germany was more indebted 
 than to any sovereign since Charle- 
 magne. The conquest of Italy, and re- 
 covery of the imperial title, are Otho T 936 
 indeed the most brilliant tro- otho li. 073. 
 phies of Otho the Great; but othoin.983. 
 he conferred far more unequivocal bene- 
 fits upon his own country by completing 
 what his father had begun, her liberation 
 from the inroads of the Hungarians. 
 Two marches, that of Misnia, erected by 
 Henry the Fowler, and that of Austria, 
 by Otho, were added to the Germanic 
 territories by their victories.! 
 
 A lineal succession of four descents 
 without the least opposition, seems to 
 show that the Germans were disposed to 
 consider their monarchy as fixed in the 
 Saxon family. Otho II. and III. had 
 been chosen each in his father's life- 
 time, and during infancy. The formality 
 of election subsisted at that time in every 
 European kingdom; and the imperfect 
 rights of birth required a ratification by 
 public assent. If at least France and 
 England were hereditary monarchies in 
 
 * Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. ii., p. 288, 
 Struvius, Corpus Historiae Germanicaj, p. 210. 
 The former of these writers does not consider 
 Conrad as Duke of Franconia. 
 
 t Many towns in Germany, especially on the 
 Saxon frontier, were built by Henry I., who is 
 said to have compelled every ninth man to take up 
 his residence in them. This had a remarkable 
 tendency to promote the improvement of that ter- 
 ritory, and, combined with the discovery of the 
 gold and silver mines of Goslar under Otho I., ren- 
 dered it the richest and most important part of the 
 empire. Struvius, p. 225 and 251. Schmidt, t. ii., 
 p. 322. Putter, Historical Development of the 
 German Constitution, vol.. i., p. 115, 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 the tenth century, the same may surely 
 be said of Germany; since we find the 
 lineal succession fully as well observed 
 in the last as in the former. But upon 
 the immature and unexpected decease of 
 Otho III., a momentary opposition was 
 Henry ii. offered to Henry, duke of Bava- 
 
 1002. r j a , a collateral branch of the 
 reigning family. He obtained the crown, 
 however, by what contemporary his- 
 torians call an hereditary title,* and it 
 was not until his death, in 1024, that the 
 house of Saxony was deemed to be ex- 
 tinguished. 
 
 No person had now any pretensions 
 House of that could interfere with the un- 
 Franconia. biased suffrages of the nation ; 
 C i024 d IL an( * accordingly a general as- 
 Henry'm. sembly was determined by merit 
 
 H 1039 'iv to elect Conrad ' surnamed the 
 IS. ' Salic, a nobleman of Franco- 
 Henry v. nia.f From this prince sprang 
 106. three successive emperors, Hen- 
 ry III., IV., and V. Perhaps the impe- 
 rial prerogatives over that insubordinate 
 confederacy never reached so high a 
 point as in the reign of Henry III., the 
 second emperor of the house of Franco- 
 ma. It had been, as was natural, the, 
 object of all his predecessors, not only to' 
 render their throne hereditary, which, in 
 effect, the nation was willing to concede, 
 but to surround it with authority suffi- 
 cient to control the leading vassals. 
 These were the dukes of the four nations 
 of Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, Svvabia, 
 and Franconia, and the three archbishops 
 of the Rhenish cities, Mentz, Treves, and 
 Cologne. Originally, as has been more 
 fully shown in another place, dutchies, 
 like counties, were temporary govern- 
 ments, bestowed at the pleasure of the 
 crown. From this first stage they ad- 
 vanced to hereditary offices, and finally 
 to patrimonial fiefs. But their progress 
 was much slower in Germany than in 
 France. Under the Saxon line of empe- 
 rors, it appears probable, that although 
 it was usual, and consonant to the pre- 
 vailing notions of equity, to confer a 
 dutchy upon the nearest heir, yet no pos- 
 itive rule enforced this upon the empe- 
 ror % and some instances of a contrary 
 proceeding occurred. J But, if the royal 
 
 * A maxima multitudine vox una respondit; 
 Henricum, Christ! adjutorio, et jure haereditario, 
 regnaturum. Ditmar apud Stru vium, p. 273. See 
 other passages quoted in the same place. Schmidt, 
 t. ii., p. 410. 
 
 t Conrad was descended from a daughter of 
 Otho the Great, and also from Conrad I. His 
 first cousin was Duke of Franconia. Struvius. 
 Schmidt. Pfeffel. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. ii., p. 393, 403. Struvius, p. 214, 
 
 prerogative in this respect stood higher 
 than in France, there was a countervail- 
 ing principle, that prohibited the empe- 
 ror from uniting a fief to his domain, or 
 even retaining one which he had posses- 
 sed before his accession. Thus Otho the 
 Great granted away his dutchy of Saxony, 
 and Henry II. that of Bavaria. Otho the 
 Great endeavoured to counteract the ef- 
 fects of this custom, by conferring the 
 dutchies that fell into his hands upon 
 members of his own family. This pol- 
 icy, though apparently well conceived, 
 proved of no advantage to Otho ; his son 
 and brother having mixed in several 
 rebellions against him. It was revived, 
 however, by Conrad II. and Henry III. 
 The latter was invested by his father 
 with the two dutchies of Swabia and 
 Bavaria. Upon his own accession, he 
 retained the former for six years, and 
 even the latter for a short time. The 
 dutchy of Franconia, which became va- 
 cant, he did not regrant, but endeavoured 
 to set a precedent of uniting fiefs to the 
 domain. At another time, after sentence 
 of forfeiture against the Duke of Bavaria, 
 he bestowed that great province on his 
 wife, the Emperess Agnes.* He put an 
 end altogether to the form of popular 
 concurrence, which had been usual when 
 the investiture of a dutchy was conferred : 
 and even deposed dukes by the sentence 
 of a few princes, without the consent of 
 the diet.f If we combine with these 
 proofs of authority in the domestic ad- 
 ministration of Henry III., his almost 
 unlimited control oveH^apal elections, 
 or rather the right of nomination that he 
 acquired, we must consider him as the 
 most absolute monarch in the annals of 
 Germany. 
 
 These ambitious measures of Henry 
 III. prepared fifty years of ca- unfortunate 
 .amity for his son. It is easy reign of 
 to perceive that the misfortunes Henry 1V - 
 of Henry IV. were primarily occasioned 
 3y the jealousy with which repeated vio- 
 .ations of their constitutional usages had 
 inspired the nobility.J The mere cir- 
 cumstance of Henry IV. 's minority, under 
 
 supposes the hereditary rights of dukes to have 
 commenced under Conrad 1. ; but Schmidt is per- 
 laps a better authority ; and Struvius afterward 
 mentions the refusal of Otho I. to grant the dutchy 
 of Bavaria to the sons of the last duke, which, 
 however, excited a rebellion, p. 235. 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iii., p. 25, 37. 
 
 t Id., p. 207. 
 
 J In the very first year of Henry's reign, while 
 tie was but six years old, the princes of Saxony are 
 said by Lambert of Aschaffenburg to have formed 
 a conspiracy to depose him, out of resentment for 
 the injuries they had sustained from his father .- 
 Struvius, p. 306. St. Marc, t. iii., p. 248. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 the guardianship of a woman, was enough 
 to dissipate whatever powers his fathei 
 had acquired. Hanno, archbishop of 
 Mentz, carried the young king away by 
 force from his mother, and governed 
 Germany in his name ; till another arch- 
 bishop, Adalbert of Bremen, obtained 
 greater influence over him. Through 
 the neglect of his education, Henry grew 
 up with a character not well fitted to re- 
 trieve the mischief of so unprotected a 
 minority ; brave indeed, well-natured, and 
 affable, but dissolute beyond measure, and 
 addicted to low and debauched company 
 [A. D. 1073.] He was'soon involved in a 
 desperate war with the Saxons, a nation 
 valuing itself on its populousness and 
 riches, jealous of the house of Franco- 
 nia, who wore a crown that had belonged 
 to their own dukes, and indignant at 
 Henry's conduct in erecting fortresses 
 throughout their country. 
 
 In the progress of this war many of the 
 chief princes evinced an unwillingness to 
 support the emperor.* Notwithstanding 
 this, it would probably have terminated, 
 as other rebellions had done, with no per- 
 manent loss to either party. But, in the 
 middle of this contest, another far more 
 memorable broke out with the Roman 
 see, concerning ecclesiastical investi- 
 tures. The motives of this famous quar- 
 rel will be explained in a different chap- 
 ter of the present work. Its effect in 
 Germany was ruinous to Henry. [A. D. 
 1077.] A sentence, not only of excom- 
 munication, but of deposition, which Greg- 
 ory VII. pronounced against him, gave a 
 pretence to all his enemies, secret as well 
 as avowed, to withdraw their allegiance. f 
 At the head of these was Rodolph, duke 
 of Swabia, whom an assembly of revolted 
 princes raised to the throne. We may 
 perceive, in the conditions of Rodolph's 
 election, a symptom of the real principle 
 that animated the German aristocracy 
 against Henry IV. It was agreed that 
 the kingdom should no longer be heredi- 
 tary, not conferred on the son of a reign- 
 
 * Struvius. Schmidt. 
 
 f A party had been already f ormed who were 
 meditating to depose Henry. His excommunica- 
 tion came just in time to confirm their resolutions. 
 It appears clearly, upon a little consideration of 
 Henry IV.'s reign, that the ecclesiastical quarrel 
 was only secondary in the eyes of Germany. The 
 contest against him was a struggle of the aristoc- 
 racy, jealous of the imperial prerogatives which 
 Conrad II. and Henry III. had strained to the ut- 
 most. Those who were in rebellion against Henry 
 were not pleased with Gregory VII. Bruno, au- 
 thor of a history of the Saxon war, a furious invec- 
 tive, manifests great dissatisfaction with the court 
 of Rome, which he reproaches with dissimulation 
 and venality. 
 
 ing monarch, unless his merit should 
 challenge the popular approbation.* The 
 pope strongly encouraged this plan of 
 rendering the empire elective, by which 
 he hoped either eventually to secure the 
 nomination of its chief for the Holy See, 
 or, at least, by sowing the seed of civil 
 dissensions in Germany, to render Italy 
 more independent. Henry IV. however 
 displayed greater abilities in his adversity 
 than his early conduct had promised. 
 [A. D. 1080.] In the last of several deci- 
 sive battles, Rodolph, though victorious, 
 was mortally wounded ; and no one cared 
 to take up a gauntlet which was to be 
 won with so much trouble and uncer- 
 tainty. The Germans were sufficiently 
 disposed to submit ; but Rome persevered 
 in her unrelenting hatred. At the close 
 of Henry's long reign, she excited against 
 him his eldest son, and after more than 
 thirty years of hostility, had the satisfac- 
 tion of wearing him down with misfortune, 
 and casting out his body, as excommuni- 
 cated, from its sepulchre. 
 
 In the reign of his son Henry V. there 
 is no event worthy of much at- Extinction or 
 tention, except the termination the House of 
 of the great contest about in- F 
 vestitures. At his death in 1 125, the male 
 line of the Franconian emperors was at 
 an end. [A. D. 1125.] Frederick, duke 
 of Swabia, grandson by his mother of 
 Henry IV., had inherited their patrimo- 
 nial estates, and seemed to represent their 
 dynasty. But both the last emperors had 
 so many .enemies, ,and a disposition to 
 render the crown elective prevailed so 
 strongly among the leading princes, that 
 Lothaire, duke of Saxony, was Election of 
 elevated to the throne, though Lothaire. 
 rather in a tumultuous and irregular man- 
 ner, f Lothaire, who had been engaged 
 n a revolt against Henry V. and the chief 
 
 * Hoc etiam ibi cpnsensu communi comproba- 
 .um, Romani pontiflcis auctoritate est corrobora- 
 ,um, ut regia potestas nulli per haereditatem, sicut 
 antea fuit consuetude, cederet, sed filius regis, 
 etiamsi valde dignus esset, per electionem spqnta- 
 neam, non per successions lineam, rex proveniret : 
 si vero non esset dignus regis filius, vel si nollet 
 eum populus, quern regem facere vellet, haberet in 
 )otestate populus. Bruno de Bello Saxonico, apud 
 Struvium, p. 327. 
 
 t See an account of Lothaire's election by a con- 
 emporary writer, in Struvius, p. 357. See also 
 proofs of the dissatisfaction of the aristocracy at the 
 Vanconian government. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 328. 
 t was evidently their determination to render the 
 smpire truly elective (Id., p. 335) ; and perhaps we 
 nay date that fundamental principle of the Ger- 
 manic constitution from the accession of Lothaire. 
 reviously to that era, birth seems to have given 
 lot only a fair title to preference, but a sort of in- 
 hoate right, as in France, Spain, and England, 
 jothaire signed a capitulation at his accession. 
 
230 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 of a nation that bore an inveterate hatred 
 to the house of Franconia, was the natu- 
 ral enemy of the new family that derived 
 its importance and pretensions from that 
 stock. It was the object of his reign, ac- 
 cordingly, to oppress the two brothers, 
 Frederick and Conrad, of the Hohen- 
 stauffen or Swabian family. By this 
 means he expected to secure the succes- 
 sion of the empire for his son-in-law. 
 Henry, surnamed the Proud, who mar- 
 ried Lothaire's only child, was fourth in 
 descent from Welf, son of Azon, marquis 
 of Este, by Cunegonda, heiress of a dis- 
 tinguished family, the Welfs of Altorf in 
 Swabia. Her son was invested with the 
 dutchy of Bavaria in 1071. His descend- 
 ant, Henry the Proud, represented also, 
 through his mother, the ancient dukes 
 of Saxony, surnamed Billung, from whom 
 he derived the dutchy of Luneburg. The 
 wife of Lothaire transmitted to her daugh- 
 ter the patrimony of Henry the Fowler, 
 consisting of Hanover and Brunswick. 
 Besides this great dowry, Lothaire be- 
 stowed upon his son-in-law the dutchy of 
 Saxony, in addition to that of Bavaria.* 
 
 This amazing preponderance, however, 
 tended to alienate the princes of Ger- 
 many from Lothaire's views in favour of 
 Henry ; and the latter does not seem to 
 have possessed abilities adequate to his 
 eminent station. On the death of Lo- 
 thaire in 1138, the partisans of the house 
 of Swabia made a hasty and irregular 
 election of Conrad, in which the Saxon 
 House of faction found itself obliged to 
 Swabia. acquiesce.f The new emperor 
 Conrad in. availed himself of the jealousy 
 which Henry the Proud's aggrandizement 
 had excited. [A. IX 1138.] Under pre- 
 tence that two dutchies could not legally 
 be held by the same person, Henry was 
 summoned to resign one of them ; and on 
 his refusal, the diet pronounced that he 
 had incurred a forfeiture of both. Henry 
 made but little resistance, and, before his 
 death, which happened soon afterward, 
 saw himself stripped of all his hereditary 
 as well as acquired possessions. Upon 
 Original of this occasion, the famous names 
 Gueifsand o f Guelf and Ghibelin were first 
 Ghibeims. heard? which we - e d estined to 
 
 keep alive the flame of civil dissension in 
 far distant countries, and after their mean- 
 ing had been forgotten. The Guelfs or 
 Welfs were, as I have said, the ancestors 
 of Henry, and the name has become a 
 sort of patronymic in his family. The 
 
 * Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique de 1'Histoire 
 d'Allemagne, t. i., p. 269 (Paris, 1777). Gibbon's 
 Antiquities of the House of Brunswick. 
 
 f Schmidt. 
 
 word Ghibelin is derived from Wibelung, 
 a town in Franconia, whence the empe- 
 rors of that line are said to have sprung. 
 The house of Swabia was considered in 
 Germany as representing that of Fran- 
 conia ; as the Guelfs may, without much 
 impropriety, be deemed to represent the 
 Saxon line.* 
 
 Though Conrad III. left a son, the 
 choice of the electors fell, at Frederick 
 his own request, upon his neph- arbarowa. 
 ew, Frederick Barbarossa.f The most 
 conspicuous events of this great empe- 
 ror's life belong to the history of Italy. 
 At home he was feared and respected ; 
 the imperial prerogatives stood as high 
 during his reign, as, after their previous 
 decline, it was possible for a single man 
 to carry them.J But the only circum- 
 stance which appears memorable enough 
 for the present sketch, is the second fall 
 of the Guelfs. [A. D. 1178.] Fan of Hen- 
 Henry the Lion, son of Henry r y the Lion - 
 the Proud, had been restored by Conrad 
 III. to his father's dutchy of Saxony, 
 resigning his claim to that of Bavaria, 
 which had been conferred on the Mar- 
 grave of Austria. This renunciation, 
 which indeed was only made in his name 
 during childhood, did not prevent him 
 from urging the Emperor Frederick to 
 restore the whole of his birthright ; and 
 Frederick, his first cousin, whose life he 
 had saved in a sedition at Rome, was in- 
 duced to comply with this request in 1156. 
 Far from evincing that political jealousy 
 which some writers impute to him, the 
 emperor seems to have carried his gen- 
 erosity beyond the limits of prudence. 
 For many years their union was appa- 
 rently cordial. But, whether it was that 
 Henry took umbrage at part of Freder- 
 ick's conduct,^ or that mere ambition ren- 
 dered him ungrateful, he certainly aban- 
 doned his sovereign in a moment of dis- 
 tress, refusing to give any assistance in 
 that expedition into Lombardy, which end- 
 ed in the unsuccessful battle of Legnano. 
 Frederick could not forgive this injury ; 
 and taking advantage of complaints which 
 Henry's power and haughtiness had pro- 
 duced, summoned him to answer charges 
 in a general diet. The duke refused to 
 appear, and being adjudged contumacious, 
 a sentence of confiscation, similar to that 
 which ruined his father, fell upon his 
 head ; and the vast imperial fiefs that he 
 
 * Struvius, p. 370 and 378. t Ibid. 
 
 t Pfeffel, p. 341. 
 
 Frederick had obtained the succession of Welf, 
 marquis of Tuscany, uncle of Henry the Lion, who 
 probably considered himself as entitled to expect it. 
 Schmidt, p. 427. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 281 
 
 possessed were shared among some po- 
 tent enemies.* He made an ineffectual 
 resistance ; like his father, he appears to 
 have owed more to fortune than to na- 
 ture ; and, after three years' exile, was 
 obliged to remain content with the res- 
 toration of his allodial estates in Saxony. 
 These, fifty years afterward, were con- 
 verted into imperial fiefs, and became 
 the two dutchies of the house of Bruns- 
 wick, the lineal representatives of Henry 
 the Lion, and inheritors of the name of 
 Guelf.f 
 
 Notwithstanding the prevailing spirit 
 of the German oligarchy, Frederick Bar- 
 barossa had found no difficulty in procu- 
 ring the election of his son Henry, even 
 during infancy, as his successor.! [A. D. 
 1190.] The fall of Henry the 
 Henry vi. Lion had grea tly weakened the 
 ducal authority in Saxony and Bavaria ; 
 the princes who acquired that title, es- 
 pecially in the former country, finding 
 that the secular and spiritual nobility of 
 the first class had taken the opportunity 
 to raise themselves into an immediate 
 dependance upon the empire. Henry VI. 
 came therefore to the crown with con- 
 siderable advantages in respect of pre- 
 rogative ; and these inspired him with a 
 bold scheme of declaring the empire he- 
 reditary. One is more surprised to find 
 that he had no contemptible prospect of 
 success in this attempt ; fifty-two princes, 
 and even what appears hardly credible, 
 the See of Rome, under Clement III., 
 having been induced to concur in it. 
 But the Saxons made so vigorous an op- 
 position, that Henry did not think it 
 advisable to persevere. He procured, 
 however, the election of his son Freder- 
 ick, an infant only two years old. But, 
 the emperor dying almost immediately, 
 a powerful body of princes, supported by 
 Pope Innocent III., were desirous to 
 withdraw their consent. [A. D. 1197.] 
 Philip, duke of Swabia, the late king's 
 
 * Putter, in his Historical Development of the 
 Constitution of the German Empire, is inclined to 
 consider Henry the Lion as sacrificed to the empe- 
 ror's jealousy of the Guelfs, and as illegally pro- 
 scribed by the diet. But the provocations he had 
 given Frederick are undeniable ; and, without pre- 
 tending to decide on a question of German history, 
 I do not see that there was any precipitancy or 
 manifest breach of justice in the course of pro- 
 ceedings against him. Schmidt, Pfeftel, and Stru- 
 vius do not represent the condemnation of Henry 
 as unjust. 
 
 f Putter, p. 220. J Struvius, p. 418. 
 
 Struvius, p. 424. Impetravit a subditis, ut, 
 cessante pristina Palatinorum electione, imperiurn 
 in ipsius posteritatem, distincta proximorum suc- 
 cessione, transiret, et sic in ipso terminus esset 
 electionis, principiumque successive dignitatis. 
 Gervaa. Tilburiens., ibidem. 
 
 brother, unable to secure his ne- phiiip and 
 phew's succession, brought about O' h IV - 
 his own election by one party, while 
 another chose Otho of Brunswick, young- 
 er son of Henry the Lion. This double 
 election renewed the rivalry between 
 the Guelfs and Ghibelins, and threw Ger- 
 many into confusion for several years. 
 Philip, whose pretensions appear to be 
 the mftre legitimate of the two, gained 
 ground upon his adversary, notwithstand- 
 ing the opposition of the pope, till he 
 was assassinated, in consequence of a 
 private resentment. [A. D. 1208.] Otho 
 IV. reaped the benefit of a crime in 
 which he did not participate ; and be- 
 came for some years undisputed sover- 
 eign. But, having offended the pope 
 by not entirely abandoning his imperial 
 rights over Italy, he had, in the latter 
 part of his reign, to contend against 
 Frederick, son of Henry VI., who, having 
 grown up to manhood, came into Germa- 
 ny as heir of the house of Swabia, and, 
 what was not very usual in his own his- 
 tory or that of his family, the favoured 
 candidate of the Holy See. Otho IV. 
 had been almost entirely deserted, ex- 
 cept by his natural subjects, when his 
 death, in 1218, removed every difficulty, 
 and left Frederick II. in the peaceable 
 possession of Germany. 
 
 The eventful life of Frederick II. was 
 chiefly passed in Italy. To 
 preserve his hereditary domin- ! 
 ions, and chastise the Lombard cities, 
 were the leading objects of his political 
 and military career. He paid therefore 
 but little attention to Germany, from 
 which it was in vain for any emperor to 
 expect effectual assistance towards ob- 
 jects of his own. Careless of preroga- 
 tives which it seemed hardly worth an ef- 
 fort to preserve, he sanctioned the inde- 
 pendence of the princes, which may be 
 properly dated from his reign. In return, 
 they readily elected his son Henry king 
 of the Romans ; and, on his. being impli- 
 cated in a rebellion, deposed him with 
 equal readiness, and substituted his broth- 
 er Conrad at the emperors request,* 
 But in the latter part of Frederick's reign, 
 the deadly hatred of Rome penetrated be- 
 yond the Alps. After his sol- Conge . 
 emn deposition in the council quencesof 
 of Lyons, he was incapable, in ^ L C .n" cil 
 ecclesiastical eyes, of holding 
 the imperial sceptre. [A. D. 1245.] In- 
 nocent IV. found however some difficulty 
 in setting up a rival emperor. Henry, 
 landgrave of Thuringia, made an indiffer- 
 
 * Struvius, p. 457. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 ent figure in this character. [A. D. 1248.] 
 Upon his death, William, count of Hol- 
 land, was chosen by the party adverse to 
 Frederick and his son Conrad ; and, after 
 the emperor's death, he had some suc- 
 cess against the latter. It is hard indeed 
 to say that any one was actually sover- 
 eign for twenty-two years that followed 
 the death of Frederick II. ; a period of 
 contested title and universal anarchy, 
 Grand in- which is usually denominated 
 terregnum. th e g ra nd interregnum. [A. D. 
 1250-1272.] On the decease of William 
 of Holland, in 1256, a schism among the 
 electors produced the double choice of 
 Richard of Richard, earl of Cornwall, and 
 Cornwall. Alfonso X., king of Castile. It 
 seems not easy to determine which of 
 these candidates had a legal majority of 
 votes,* but the subsequent recognition 
 of almost all Germany, and a sort of pos- 
 session evidenced by public acts, which 
 have been held valid, as well as the gener- 
 al consent of contemporaries, may justify 
 us in adding Richard to the imperial list. 
 The choice indeed was ridiculous, as he 
 possessed no talents which could compen- 
 sate for his want of power ; but the elec- 
 tors attained their objects; to perpetuate 
 a state of confusion by which their own 
 independence was consolidated, and to 
 plunder without scruple a man, like Di- 
 dius at Rome, rich and foolish enough to 
 purchase the first place upon earth. 
 
 That place, indeed, was now become a 
 state of the mockery of greatness. For 
 Germanic more than two centuries, not- 
 tion - withstanding the temporary in- 
 fluence of Frederick Barbarossa and his 
 son, the imperial authority had been in a 
 state of gradual decay. From the time 
 of Frederick II. it had bordered upon ab- 
 solute insignificance ; and the more pru- 
 dent German princes were slow to can- 
 vass for a dignity so little accompanied 
 
 * The election ought legally to have been made 
 at Frankfort. But the Elector of Treves, having 
 got possession of the town, shut out the archbish- 
 ops of Mentz and Cologne, and the count palatine, 
 on pretence of apprehending violence. They met 
 under the walls, and there elected Richard. After- 
 ward Alfonso was chosen by the votes of Treves, 
 Saxony, and Brandenburg. Historians differ about 
 the vote of Ottocar, king of Bohemia, which would 
 turn the scale. Some time after the election, it is 
 certain that he was on the side of Richard. Per- 
 haps we may collect from the opposite statement 
 in Struvius, p. 504, that the proxies of Ottocar had 
 voted for Alfonso, and that he did not think fit to 
 recognise their act. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Richard was de facto 
 sovereign of Germany ; and it is singular that 
 Struvius should assert the contrary, on the author- 
 ity of an instrument of Rodolph, which expressly 
 designates him king, per quondam Richardum re- 
 gem illustrem. Struv., p. 502. 
 
 by respect. The changes wrought in the 
 Germanic constitution during the period 
 of the Swabian emperors chiefly consist 
 in the establishment of an oligarchy of 
 electors, and of the territorial sovereignty 
 of the princes. 
 
 1. At the extinction of the Franconian 
 line by the death of Henry V., it 
 was determined by the German 
 nobility to make their empire practically 
 elective, admitting no right, or even nat- 
 ural pretension, in the eldest son of a 
 reigning sovereign. Their choice upon 
 former occasions had been made by free 
 and general suffrage. But it may be pre- 
 sumed that each nation voted unanimous- 
 ly, and according to the disposition of its 
 duke. It is probable, jpo, that the lead- 
 ers, after discussing in previous delibera- 
 tions the merits of the several candidates, 
 submitted their own resolutions to the 
 assembly, which would generally concur 
 in them without hesitation. At the elec- 
 tion of Lothaire, in 1124, we find an evi- 
 dent instance of this previous choice, or, 
 as it was called, prataxation, from which 
 the electoral college of Germany has 
 been derived. The princes, it is said, 
 trusted the choice of an emperor to ten 
 persons, in whose judgment they prom- 
 ised to acquiesce.* This precedent was, 
 in all likelihood, followed at all subse- 
 quent elections. The proofs indeed are 
 not perfectly clear. But in the famous 
 privilege of Austria, granted by Frederick 
 I., in 1156, he bestows a rank upon the 
 newly created duke of that country, im- 
 mediately* after the electing princes (post 
 principes electores) ;f a strong presump- 
 tion that the right of praetaxation was not 
 only established, but limited to a few def- 
 inite persons. In a letter of Innocent 
 III. concerning the double election of 
 Philip and Otho, in 1198, he asserts the 
 latter to have had a majority in his favour 
 of those to whom the right of election 
 chiefly belongs (ad quos principaliter 
 spectat electio)4 And a ^ aw f Otho, in 
 1208, if it be genuine, appears to fix the 
 exclusive privilege of the seven electors. 
 Nevertheless, so obscure is this important 
 part of the Germanic system, that we 
 find four ecclesiastical and two secular 
 princes concurring with the regular elect- 
 ors in the act, as reported by a contem- 
 porary writer, that creates Conrad, son 
 of Frederick II., king of the Romans. || 
 This, however, may have been an irregu- 
 
 * Struv., p. 357. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 331. 
 f Schmidt, t. iii., p. 390. J Pfeffel, p. 360. 
 <j Schmidt, t. iv., p. 80. 
 
 || This is not mentioned in Struvius, or the other 
 German writers. But Denina (Rivoluzioni d'lta- 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 233 
 
 lar deviation from the principle already 
 established. But it is admitted, that all 
 the princes retained, at least during the 
 twelfth century, their consenting suf- 
 frage ; like the laity in an episcopal elec- 
 tion, whose approbation continued to be 
 necessary long after the real power of 
 choice had been withdrawn from them.* 
 It is not easy to account for all the 
 circumstances that gave to seven spirit- 
 ual and temporal princes this distinguish- 
 ed pre-eminence. The three archbish- 
 ops, Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, were 
 always indeed at the head of the German 
 church. But the secular electors should 
 naturally have been the dukes of four 
 nations : Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and 
 Bavaria. We find, however, only the 
 first of these in the undisputed exercise 
 of a vote. It seems probable that, when 
 the electoral princes came to be distin- 
 guished from the rest, their privilege was 
 considered as peculiarly connected with 
 the discharge of one of the great offices 
 in the imperial court. These were at- 
 tached, as early as the diet of Mentz, in 
 1184, to the four electors, who ever af- 
 terward possessed them : the Duke of 
 Saxony having then officiated as arch- 
 marshal, the Count Palatine of the Rhine 
 as arch-steward, the King of Bohemia as 
 arch-cup-bearer, and the Margrave of 
 Brandenburg as arch-chamberlain of the 
 empire. f But it still continues a prob- 
 lem why the three latter offices, with the 
 electoral capacity as their incident, should 
 not rather have been granted to the dukes 
 of Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. I 
 have seen no adequate explanation of 
 this circumstance ; which may perhaps 
 lead us to presume that the right of pre- 
 election was not quite so soon confined 
 to the precise number of seven princes. 
 The final extinction of two great origi- 
 nal dutchies, Franconia and Swabia, in 
 the thirteenth century, left the electoral 
 rights of the count palatine and the Mar- 
 grave of Brandenburg beyond dispute. 
 But the dukes of Bavaria continued to 
 claim a vote in opposition to the kings 
 of Bohemia. At the election of Rodolph 
 in 1272, the two brothers of the house of 
 Wittelsbach voted separately, as count 
 palatine, and Duke of Lower Bavaria. 
 Ottocar was excluded upon this occasion ; 
 and it was not till 1290 that the suffrage 
 
 A 
 
 lia, 1. xi., c. 9) quotes the style of the act of elec- 
 tion from the Chronicle of Francis Pippin. 
 
 * This is manifest by the various passages rela- 
 ting to the elections of Philip and Otho, quoted 
 by Struvius, p. 428, 430. See too Pfeffel, ubi su- 
 pra. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 79. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. iv., p. 78. 
 
 of Bohemia was fully recognised. The 
 palatine and Bavarian branches, howev- 
 er, continued to enjoy their family vote 
 conjointly, by a determination of Rodolph ; 
 upon which Louis of Bavaria slightly in- 
 novated, by rendering the suffrage alter- 
 nate. But the golden bull of Charles IV. 
 put an end to all doubts on the rights of 
 electoral houses, and absolutely excluded 
 Bavaria from voting. The limitation to 
 seven electors,* first perhaps fixed by ac- 
 cident, came to be invested with a sort 
 of mysterious importance, and certainly 
 was considered, until times comparative- 
 ly recent, as a fundamental law of the 
 empire.* 
 
 2. It might appear natural to expect 
 that an oligarchy of seven per- 
 sons, who had thus excluded 
 their equals from all share in 
 the election of a sovereign, ity ' 
 would assume still greater authority, and 
 trespass farther upon the less powerful 
 vassals of the empire. But while the 
 electors were establishing their peculiar 
 privilege, the class immediately inferior 
 raised itself by important acquisitions of 
 power. The German dukes, even after 
 they became hereditary, did not succeed 
 in compelling the chief nobility within 
 their limits to hold their lands in fief so 
 completely as the peers of France had 
 done. The nobles of Swabia refused to 
 follow their duke into the field against 
 the Emperor Conrad II. f Of this aristoc- 
 racy the superior class were denominated 
 princes ; an appellation which, after the 
 eleventh century, distinguished them 
 from the untitled nobility, most of whom 
 were their vassals. They were constit- 
 uent parts of all diets, and though grad- 
 ually deprived of their original participa- 
 tion in electing an emperor, possessed, 
 in all other respects, the same rights as 
 the dukes or electors. Some of them 
 were fully equal to the electors, in birth 
 as well as extent of dominions ; such as 
 the princely houses of Austria, Hesse, 
 Brunswick, and Misnia. By the division 
 of Henry the Lion's vast territories,^ and 
 by the absolute extinction of the Swabian 
 family in the following century, a great 
 many princes acquired additional weight. 
 Of the ancient dutchies only Saxony and 
 Bavaria remained ; the former of which 
 especially was so dismembered, that it 
 was vain to attempt any renewal of the 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 78, 568. Putter, p. 274. 
 Pfeffel, p. 435, 565. Struvius, p. 51 1. 
 
 t Pfeffel, p. 209. 
 
 i See the arrangements made in consequence 
 of Henry's forfeiture, which gave quite a new face 
 to Germany, in Pfeffel, p. 234, also p. 437. 
 
234 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V 
 
 ducal jurisdiction. That of the emperor, 
 formerly exercised by the counts pala- 
 tine, went almost equally into disuse du- 
 ring the contest between Philip and 
 Otho IV. The princes accordingly had 
 acted with sovereign independence with- 
 in their own fiefs before the reign of 
 Frederick II. ; but the legal recognition 
 of their immunities was reserved for two 
 edicts of that emperor ; one in 1220, re- 
 lating to ecclesiastical, and the other in 
 1232, to secular princes. By these he 
 engaged neither to levy the customary 
 imperial dues, nor to permit the jurisdic- 
 tion of the palatine judges, within the 
 limits of a state of the empire ;* conces- 
 sions that amounted to little less than an 
 abdication of his own sovereignty. From 
 this epoch the territorial independence of 
 the states may be dated. 
 
 A class of titled nobility, inferior to the 
 princes, were the counts of the empire, 
 who seem to have been separated from 
 the former in the twelfth century, and to 
 have lost at the same time their right of 
 voting in the diets. f In some parts of 
 Germany, chiefly in Franconia and upon 
 the Rhine, there always existed a very 
 numerous body of lower nobility; unti- 
 tled, at least till modern times, but sub- 
 ject to no superior except the emperor. 
 These are supposed to have become im- 
 mediate, after the destruction of the house 
 of Swabia, within whose dutchies they 
 had been comprehended. J 
 
 [A. D. 1272.] A short interval elapsed 
 Election of a ^ ter tne death of Richard of 
 Rodoiphof Cornwall, before the electors 
 Hapsburg. cou \& be induced, by the deplo- 
 rable state of confusion into which Ger- 
 many had fallen, to fill the imperial 
 throne. Their choice was however the 
 best that could have been made. It fell 
 upon Rodolph, count of Hapsburg, a 
 prince of very ancient family, and of 
 considerable possessions as well in Swis- 
 serland as upon each bank of the upper 
 Rhine, but not sufficiently powerful to 
 alarm the electoral oligarchy. Rodolph 
 was brave, active, and just ; but his char- 
 acteristic quality appears to have been 
 good sense, and judgment of the circum- 
 stances in which he was placed. Of this 
 he gave a signal proof in relinquishing 
 the favourite project of so many prece- 
 ding emperors, and leaving Italy alto- 
 
 gether to itself. At home he manifested 
 a vigilant spirit in administering justice, 
 and is said to have destroyed seventy 
 strongholds of noble robbers in Thurin- 
 gia and other parts, bringing many of the 
 criminals to capital punishment.* But 
 he wisely avoided giving offence to the 
 more powerful princes; and during his 
 reign there were hardly any rebellions 
 in Germany. 
 
 It was a very reasonable object of 
 every emperor to aggrandize his investment 
 family by investing his near f ;. his so " 
 kindred with vacant fiefs ; but dutch" of 
 no one was so fortunate in his Austria, 
 opportunities as Rodolph. At his acces- 
 sion, Austria, Styria, and Carniola were 
 in the hands of Ottocar, king of Bohe- 
 mia. These extensive and fertile coun- 
 tries had been formed into a march or 
 margraviate, after the victories of Otho 
 he Great over the Hungarians. Frederick 
 Barbarossa erected them into a dutchy, 
 vith many distinguished privileges, espe- 
 ially that of female succession, hitherto 
 unknown in the feudal principalities of 
 jermany.f Upon the extinction of the 
 louse of Bamberg, which had enjoyed 
 his dutchy, it was granted by Frederick 
 I. to a cousin of his own name ; after 
 whose death a disputed succession gave 
 rise to several changes, and ultimately 
 enabled Ottocar to gain possession of the 
 country. Against this King of Bohemia 
 Rodolph waged two successive wars, and 
 recovered the Austrian provinces, which, 
 as vacant fiefs, he conferred, with the 
 consent of the diet, upon his son Albert. t 
 r A. D. 1283.] 
 
 * Pfeffel, p. 384. Putter, p. 233. 
 
 t In the instruments relating to the election of 
 Otho IV., the princes sign their names, Ego N, 
 elegi et subscripsi. But the counts only as follows 
 Ego N. consensi et subscripsi. Pfeffel, p. 360. 
 
 t Pfeflel, p. 445. Putter, p. 254. Struvius, p 
 511. 
 
 * Struvius, p. 530. Coxe's Hist, of House of 
 Austria, p. 57. This valuable work contains a full 
 and interesting account of Rodolph's reign. 
 
 t The privileges of Austria were granted to the 
 Margrave Henry in 1156, by way of indemnity for 
 lis restituiion of Bavaria to Henry the Lion. The 
 territory between the Inn and the Ems was sep- 
 arated from the latter province, and annexed to 
 Austria at this time. The Dukes of Austria are 
 declared equal in rank to the palatine archdukes 
 'archi-ducibus palatinis). This expression gave a 
 hint to the Duke Rodolph IV. to assume the title 
 of Archduke of Austria. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 390. 
 Frederick II. even created the Duke of Austria 
 king: a very curious fact, though neither .he nor 
 his successors ever assumed the title. Struvius, 
 p. 463. The instrument runs as follows : Duca- 
 tus Austriae et Styriae, cum pertinentiis et termi- 
 nis suis quot hactenus habuit, ad nomen et honorem 
 regium transferentes, te hactnus ducatuum, prae- 
 dictorum ducem, de potestatis nostrse plenitudine et 
 magnificentia speciali promovemus in regem, per 
 libertates et jura prsedictum regnum tuum praesen- 
 tis epigrammatis auctoritate donantes, quae regiam 
 deceant dignitatem : ut tamen ex honore quem tibi 
 libenter addimus, nihil honoris et juris nostri dia 
 dematis aut imperil subtrahatur. 
 t Struvius, p. 525. Schmidt. Coxe. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 235 
 
 Notwithstanding the merit and popu- 
 stateofthe larity of Rodolph , the electors 
 empire after refused to choose his son King 
 Kodoiph. O f the Romans in his lifetime ; 
 and, after his death, determined to avoid 
 Adoiphus tne appearance of hereditary 
 succession, put Adoiphus of 
 A1 i b 293 ! ' Nassau upon the throne. There 
 Henry "vii. is very little to attract notice 
 . 13 . 08 j v in the domestic history of the 
 i3U. ' empire during the next two 
 Charles iv. centuries. From Adoiphus to 
 We 3 nc 7 esiaus Sigismund, every emperor had 
 
 1378. either to struggle against a 
 R i b 4oo competitor, claiming the ma- 
 Sigismund jority of votes at his election, 
 
 1414. or against a combination of 
 the electors to dethrone him. The impe- 
 rial authority became more and more in- 
 effective ; yet it was frequently made a 
 subject of reproach against the emperors, 
 that they did not maintain a sovereignty 
 to which no one was disposed to submit. 
 
 It may appear surprising, that the Ger- 
 manic confederacy, under the nominal 
 supremacy of an emperor, should have 
 been preserved in circumstances appa- 
 rently so calculated to dissolve it. But, 
 besides the natural effect of prejudice 
 and a famous name, there were sufficient 
 reasons to induce the electors to pre- 
 serve a form of government in which 
 they bore so decided a sway. Accident 
 had in a considerable degree restricted 
 the electoral suffrages to seven princes. 
 Without the college, there were houses 
 more substantially powerful than any 
 within it. The dutchy of Saxony had 
 been subdivided by repeated partitions 
 among children, till the electoral right 
 was vested in a prince who possessed 
 only the small territory of Wittenberg. 
 The great families of Austria, Bavaria, 
 and Luxemburg, though not electoral, 
 were the real heads of the German body ; 
 and though the two former lost much of 
 their influence for a time through the per- 
 nicious custom of partition, the empire 
 seldom looked for its head to any other 
 house than one of these three. 
 
 While the dutchies and counties of Ger- 
 Custom of many retained their original char- 
 partition, acter of offices or governments, 
 they were of course, even though consid- 
 ered as hereditary, not subject to parti- 
 tion among children. When they ac- 
 quired the nature of fiefs, it was still con- 
 sonant to the principles of a feudal ten- 
 ure, that the eldest son should inherit ac- 
 cording to the law of primogeniture ; an 
 inferior provision, or appanage, at most, 
 being reserved for the younger children. 
 The law of England favoured the eldest 
 
 exclusively; that of France gave him 
 great advantages. But in Germany a dif- 
 ferent rule began to prevail about the 
 thirteenth century.* An equal partition 
 of the inheritance, without the least re- 
 gard to priority of birth, was the general 
 law of its principalities. Sometimes this 
 was effected by undivided possession, or 
 tenancy in common, the brothers resi- 
 ding together and reigning jointly. This 
 tended to preserve the integrity of domin- 
 ion ; but as it was frequently incommo- 
 dious, a more usual practice was to di- 
 vide the territory. From such partitions 
 are derived those numerous independent 
 principalities of the same house, many 
 of which still subsist in Germany. In 
 1589, there were eight reigning princes 
 of the palatine family ; and fourteen, in 
 1675, of that of Saxony.f Originally, 
 these partitions were in general absolute 
 and without reversion ; but, as their ef- 
 fect in weakening families became evi- 
 dent, a practice was introduced of ma- 
 king compacts of reciprocal succession, 
 by which a fief was prevented from es- 
 cheating to the empire, until all the male 
 posterity of the first feudatary should be 
 extinct. Thus, while the German em- 
 pire survived, all the princes of Hesse or 
 of Saxony had reciprocal contingencies 
 of succession, or what our lawyers call 
 cross-remainders, to each other's domin- 
 ions. A different system was gradually 
 adopted. By the Golden Bull of Charles 
 IV., the electoral territory, that is, the 
 particular district to which the electoral 
 suffrage was inseparably attached, be- 
 came incapable of partition, and was to 
 descend to the eldest son. In the fif- 
 teenth century, the present house of 
 Brandenburg set the first example of es- 
 tablishing primogeniture by law; the 
 principalities of Anspach and Bayreuth 
 were dismembered from it for the benefit 
 of younger branches ; but it was declared 
 that all the other dominions of the family 
 should for the future belong exclusively 
 to the reigning elector. This politic 
 measure was adopted in several other 
 families ; but, even in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, the prejudice was not removed, and 
 some German princes denounced curses 
 on their posterity if they should introduce 
 the impious custom of primogeniture. J 
 Weakened by these subdivisions, the 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 66. Pfeffel, p. 289, main- 
 tains that partitions were not introduced till the 
 latter end of the thirteenth century. This may 
 be true, as a general rule ; but I find the house of 
 Baden divided into two branches, Baden and Hoch- 
 berg, in 1190, with rights of mutual reversion. 
 
 f Pfeffel, ib. Putter, p. 189. J Id., p. 280. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 principalities of Germany in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries shrink to a 
 more and more diminutive size in the 
 scale of nations. But one family, the 
 most illustrious of the former age, was 
 less exposed to this enfeebling system. 
 House of Henry VII., count of Luxem- 
 Luxemburg. burg, a man of much more per- 
 sonal merit than hereditary importance, 
 was elevated to the empire in 1308. Most 
 part of his short reign he passed in Italy ; 
 but he had a fortunate opportunity of ob- 
 taining the crown of Bohemia for his 
 son. John, king of Bohemia, did not 
 himself wear the imperial crown; but 
 three of his descendants possessed it 
 with less interruption than could have 
 been expected. His son Charles IV. 
 succeeded Louis of Bavaria in 1347 ; not 
 indeed without opposition, for a double 
 election and a civil war were matters of 
 course in Germany. Charles IV. has 
 been treated with more derision by his 
 contemporaries, and consequently by 
 later writers, than almost any prince in 
 history ; yet he was remarkably success- 
 ful in the only objects that he seriously 
 pursued. Deficient in personal courage, 
 insensible of humiliation, bending with- 
 out shame to the pope, to the Italians, to 
 the electors, so poor and so little rever- 
 enced as to be arrested by a butcher at 
 Worms for want of paying his demand, 
 Charles IV. affords a proof that a certain 
 dexterity and cold-blooded perseverance 
 may occasionally supply, in a sovereign, 
 the want of more respectable qualities. 
 He has been reproached with neglecting 
 the empire. But he never designed to 
 trouble himself about the empire, except 
 for his private ends. He did not neglect 
 the kingdom of Bohemia, to which he al- 
 most seemed to render Germany a prov- 
 ince. Bohemia had been long consid- 
 ered as a fief of the empire, and indeed 
 could pretend to an electoral vote by no 
 other title. Charles, however, gave the 
 states by law the right of choosing a king, 
 on the extinction of the royal family, 
 which seems derogatory to the imperial 
 prerogative.* It was much more mate- 
 rial that, upon acquiring Brandenburg, 
 partly by conquest and partly by a com- 
 pact of succession in 1373, he not only 
 invested his sons with it, which was con- 
 formable to usage, but annexed that elec- 
 torate for ever to the kingdom of Bohe- 
 mia, f He constantly resided at Prague, 
 where he founded a celebrated university, 
 and embellished the city with buildings. 
 
 * Struvius, p. 641. 
 
 t Pfeffel, p. 575. Schmidt, t. iv. t p. 595. 
 
 This kingdom, augmented also during his 
 reign by the acquisition of Silesia, he be- 
 queathed to his son Wenceslaus, for 
 whom, by pliancy towards the electors 
 and the court of Rome, he had procured, 
 against all recent example, the imperial 
 succession.* 
 
 The reign of Charles IV. is distinguish- 
 ed in the constitutional history of the 
 empire by his Golden Bull ; an in- Golden 
 strument which finally ascertained Bul i- 
 the prerogatives of the electoral college. 
 [A. D. 1355.] The Golden Bull termina- 
 ted the disputes which had arisen be- 
 tween different members of the same 
 house as to their right of suffrage, which 
 was declared inherent in certain definite 
 territories. The number was absolutely 
 restrained to seven. The place of legal 
 imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort ; 
 of coronations, at Aix-la-Chapelle ; and 
 the latter ceremony was to be performed 
 by the Archbishop of Cologne. These 
 regulations, though consonant to ancient 
 usage, had not always been observed, 
 and their neglect had sometimes excited 
 questions as to the validity of elections. 
 The dignity of elector was enhanced by 
 the Golden Bull as highly as an imperial 
 edict could carry it ; they were declared 
 equal to kings, and conspiracy against 
 their persons incurred the penalty of high 
 treason. f Many other privileges are 
 granted to render them more completely 
 sovereign within their dominions. It 
 seems extraordinary that Charles should 
 have voluntarily elevated an oligarchy, 
 from whose pretensions his predecessors 
 had frequently suffered injury. But he 
 had more to apprehend from the two 
 great families of Bavaria and Austria, 
 whom he relatively depressed by giving 
 such a preponderance to the seven elec- 
 tors, than from any members of the col- 
 lege. By this compact with Branden- 
 Durg he had a fair prospect of adding a 
 second vote to his own ; and there was 
 more room for intrigue and management, 
 which Charles always preferred to arms, 
 with a small number, than with the whole 
 body of princes. 
 
 The next reign, "nevertheless, evinced 
 the danger of investing the elec- Deposition 
 tors with such preponderating of Wen- 
 authority. Wenceslaus, a su- ceslaus - 
 Dine and voluptuous man, less respected, 
 and more negligent of Germany, if pos- 
 
 * Struvius. p. 637. 
 
 t Pfeffel, p. 565. Putter, p. 271. Schmidt, t. 
 v., p. 566. The Golden Bull not only fixed the 
 )alatine vote, in absolute exclusion of Bavaria, but 
 settled a controversy of long standing between the 
 ,wo branches of the house of Saxony, Wittenberg 
 md Lauenberg, in favour of the former. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 237 
 
 sible, than his father, was regularly de- 
 posed by a majority of the electoral col- 
 lege in 1400. This right, if it is to be 
 considered as a right, they had already 
 used against Adolphus of Nassau in 1298, 
 and against Louis of Bavaria in 1346. 
 They chose Robert count palatine in- 
 stead of Wenceslaus; and though the 
 latter did not cease to have some adhe- 
 rents, Robert has generally been counted 
 among the lawful emperors.* Upon his 
 death the empire returned to the house of 
 Luxemburg ; Wenceslaus himself waiv- 
 ing his right in favour of his brother Si- 
 gismund, king of Hungary. f 
 
 The house of Austria had hitherto giv- 
 House of en but two emperors to Germa- 
 Austria. nV) Rodolph, its founder, and his 
 son Albert, whom a successful rebellion 
 elevated in the place of Adolphus. Upon 
 the death of Henry of Luxemburg, in 
 1313, Frederick, son of Albert, disputed 
 the election of Louis, duke of Bavaria, 
 alleging a majority of genuine votes. 
 This produced a civil war, in which the 
 Austrian party were entirely worsted. 
 Though they advanced no pretensions to 
 the imperial dignity during the rest of 
 the fourteenth century, the princes of 
 that line added to their possessions Ca- 
 rinthia, Istria, and the Tyrol. As a coun- 
 terbalance to these acquisitions, they lost 
 a great part of their ancient inheritance 
 by unsuccessful wars with the Swiss. 
 According to the custom of partition, so 
 injurious to princely houses, their domin- 
 ions were divided among three branches : 
 one reigning in Austria, a second in Styria 
 and the adjacent provinces, a third in the 
 Tyrol and Alsace. [A. D. 1438.] 
 l< This had in a considerable degree 
 eclipsed the glory of the house of Haps- 
 burg. But it was now its destiny to re- 
 vive, and to enter upon a career of pros- 
 perity which has never since been per- 
 manently interrupted. Albert, duke of 
 Austria, who had married Sigismund's 
 only daughter, the queen of Hungary and 
 Bohemia, was raised to the imperial 
 throne upon the death of his father-in- 
 
 * Many of the cities, besides some princes, con- 
 tinued to recognise Wenceslaus throughout the life 
 of Robert ; and the latter was so much considered 
 as a usurper by foreign states, that his ambassa- 
 dors were refused admittance at the council of Pisa. 
 Struvius, p. 658. 
 
 t This election of Sigismund was not uncontest- 
 ed : Josse. or Jodocus, margrave of Moravia, hav- 
 ing been chosen, as far as appears, by a legal major- 
 ity. However, his death, within three months, re- 
 moved the difficulty ; and Josse, who was not crown- 
 ed at Frankfort, has never been reckoned among 
 the emperors, though modern critics agree that his 
 title was legitimate.- Struv., p. 684. Pfeffel, p. 
 
 law in 1437. He died in two years, leav- 
 ing his wife pregnant with a son, Ladis- 
 laus Posthumus, who afterward reigned 
 in the two kingdoms just mentioned ; and 
 the choice of the electors fell upon Fred- 
 erick, duke of Styria, second cousin of 
 the last emperor, from whose posterity 
 it never departed, except in a single in- 
 stance, upon the extinction of his male 
 line in 1740. 
 
 Frederick III. reigned fifty-three years ; 
 a longer period than any of his Reign of 
 predecessors ; and his person- Frederick in. 
 al character was more insignificant. [A. 
 D. 1440-1493.] With better fortune than 
 could be expected, considering both these 
 circumstances, he escaped any overt at- 
 tempt to depose him, though such a pro- 
 ject was sometimes in agitation. He 
 reigned during an interesting age, full of 
 remarkable events, and big with others 
 of more leading importance. The de- 
 struction of the Greek empire, and ap- 
 pearance of the victorious crescent upon 
 the Danube, gave an unhappy distinction 
 to the earlier years of his reign, and dis- 
 played his mean* and pusillanimous char- 
 acter in circumstances which demanded 
 a hero. At a later season he was drawn 
 into contentions with France and Bur- 
 gundy, which ultimately produced a new 
 and more general combination of Europe- 
 an politics. Frederick, always poor, and 
 scarcely able to protect himself in Aus- 
 tria from the seditions of his subjects, or 
 the inroads of the King of Hungary, was 
 yet another founder of his family, and 
 left their fortunes incomparably more 
 prosperous than at his accession. The 
 marriage of his son Maximilian with the 
 heiress of Burgundy began that aggran- 
 dizement of the house of Austria which 
 Frederick seems to have anticipated.* 
 The electors, who had lost a good deal 
 of their former spirit, and were grown 
 sensible of the necessity of choosing a 
 powerful sovereign, made no opposition 
 to Maximilian's becoming king of the 
 Romans in his father's lifetime. The 
 Austrian provinces were reunited, either 
 under Frederick, or in the first years of 
 Maximilian ; so that, at the close of that 
 
 * The famous device of Austria, A. E. I. O. U., 
 was first used by Frederick III., who adopted it on 
 his plate, books, and buildings. These initials 
 stand for Austriae Est Imperare Orbi Universe ; or, 
 in German, Alles Erdreich 1st Osterreich Unter- 
 than : a bold assumption for a man who was not safe 
 in an inch of his dominions. Struvius, p. 722. He 
 confirmed the arch-ducal title of his family, whkh 
 might seem implied in the original grant of Freder- 
 ick I., and bestowed other high privileges above 
 all princes of the empire. These are enumerated 
 in Coxe's house of Austria, vol. i., p. 263. 
 
238 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 f 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 period which we denominate the Middle 
 Ages, the German empire, sustained by 
 the patrimonial dominions of its chief, be- 
 came again considerable in the scale of 
 nations, and capable of preserving a bal- 
 ance between the ambitious monarchies 
 of France and Spain. 
 
 The period between Rodolph and Fred- 
 Progress or erick IIT. is distinguished by no 
 free imp*- circumstance so interesting as 
 rial cities, fa e prosperous state of the free 
 imperial cities, which had attained their 
 maturity about the commencement of 
 that interval. We find the cities of Ger- 
 many, in the tenth century, divided into 
 such as depended immediately upon the 
 empire, which were usually governed by 
 their bishop as imperial vicar, and such 
 as were included in the territories of the 
 dukes and counts.* Some of the former, 
 lying principally Upon the Rhine and in 
 Franconia, acquired a certain degree of 
 importance before the expiration of the 
 eleventh century. Worms and Cologne 
 manifested a zealous attachment to Hen- 
 ry IV., whom they supported in despite 
 of their bishops. f His son Henry V. 
 granted privileges of enfranchisement 
 to the inferior townsmen or artisans, 
 who had hitherto been distinguished from 
 the upper class of freemen, and particu- 
 larly relieved them from oppressive usa- 
 ges, which either gave the whole of their 
 moveable goods to the lord upon their 
 decease, or at least enabled him to seize 
 the best chattel as his heriot.J He took 
 away the temporal authority of the bish- 
 op, at least in several instances, and re- 
 stored the cities to a more immediate de- 
 pendance upon the empire. The citizens 
 were classed in companies, according 
 to their several occupations; an in- 
 stitution which was speedily adopted 
 in other commercial countries. It does 
 not appear that any German city had ob- 
 tained, under this emperor, those privile- 
 ges of choosing its own magistrates, 
 which were conceded about the same 
 time, in a few instances, to those of 
 France. Gradually, however, they be- 
 gan to elect councils of citizens as a sort 
 of senate and magistracy. This innova- 
 tion might perhaps take place as early as 
 
 * Pieffel, p. 187. The Othos adopted the same 
 policy in Germany which they had introduced in 
 Italy, conferring the temporal government of cities 
 upon the bishops ; probably as a counterbalance to 
 the lay aristocracy. Putter, p. 136. Struvius, 
 p. 252. 
 
 f Schmidt, t. iii., p. 239. 
 
 t Schmidt, p. 242. Pfeffel, p. 293. Dumont, 
 Corps Diplomatique, t. i., p. 64. 
 
 $ Schmidt, p. 245, 
 
 the reign of Frederick I, ;* at least it was 
 fully established in that of his grandson. 
 They were at first only assistants to the 
 imperial or episcopal bailiff, who proba- 
 bly continued to administer criminal jus- 
 tice. But, in the thirteenth century, the 
 citizens, grown richer and stronger, ei- 
 ther purchased the jurisdiction, or usurp- 
 ed it through the lord's neglect, or drove 
 out the bailiff by force. f The great rev- 
 olution in Franconia and Swabia occa- 
 sioned by the fall of the Hohenstauffen 
 family, completed the victory of the cit- 
 ies. Those which had depended upon 
 mediate lords became immediately con- 
 nected with the empire; and with the 
 empire in its state of feebleness, when an 
 occasional present of money would easi- 
 ly induce its chief to acquiesce in any 
 claims of immunity which the citizens 
 might prefer. 
 
 It was a natural consequence of the 
 importance which the free citizens had 
 reached, and of their immediacy, that 
 they were admitted to a place in the 
 diets, or general meetings of the confed- 
 eracy. They were tacitly acknowledged 
 to be equally sovereign with the electors 
 and princes. , No proof exists of any law 
 by which they were adopted into the 
 diet. We find it said that Rodolph of 
 Hapsburg, in 1291, renewed his oath 
 with the princes, lords, and cities. Under 
 the Emperor Henry VII. there is unequiv- 
 ocal mention of the three orders compo- 
 sing the diet ; electors, princes, and dep- 
 uties from cities. | And, in 1344, they ap- 
 pear as a third distinct college in the 
 diet of Frankfort. 
 
 The inhabitants of these free cities al- 
 ways preserved their respect for the em- 
 peror, and gave him much less vexation 
 than his other subjects. He was indeed 
 their natural friend. But their nobility 
 and prelates were their natural enemies ; 
 and the western parts of Germany were 
 the scenes of irreconcilable warfare be- 
 tween the possessors of fortified castles 
 and the inhabitants of fortified cities. 
 Each party was frequently the aggressor. 
 
 * In the charter granted by Frederick I. to Spire 
 in 1182, confirming and enlarging that of Henry 
 V., though no express mention is made of any muni- 
 cipal jurisdiction, yet it seems implied in the fol- 
 lowing words : Causam in civitate jam lite con- 
 testatam non episcopus aut alia potestas extra civ- 
 itatem determinari compellet. Dumont, p. 108. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. iv., p. 96. Pfeffel, p. 441. 
 
 j Mansit ibi rex sex hebdomadibus cum principi- 
 bus electoribus et aliis principibus el civitatum nun- 
 tils, de suo* transitu et de prsestandis servitiis in 
 Italiam disponendo. Auctor apud Schmidt, t. vi. 
 p. 31. 
 
 $ Pfeffel, p. 552. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 239 
 
 The nobles were too often mere robbers, 
 who lived upon the plunder of travellers. 
 But the citizens were almost equally in- 
 attentive to the rights of others. It was 
 their policy to offer the privileges of 
 burghership to all strangers. The peas- 
 antry of feudal lords, flying to a neigh- 
 bouring town, found an asylum constant- 
 ly open. A multitude of aliens, thus 
 seeking as it were sanctuary, dwelt in 
 the suburbs or liberties, between the city 
 walls and the palisades which bounded 
 the territory. Hence they were called 
 Pfahlburgher, or burgesses of the pali- 
 sades; and "this encroachment on the 
 rights of the nobility was positively, 
 but vainly prohibited by several imperial 
 edicts, especially the Golden Bull. An- 
 other class were the Ausburger, or out- 
 burghers, who had been admitted to priv- 
 ileges of citizenship, though resident at a 
 distance, and pretended in consequence 
 to be exempted from all dues to their 
 original feudal superiors. If a lord re- 
 sisted so unreasonable a claim, he incur- 
 red the danger of bringing down upon 
 himself the vengeance of the citizens. 
 These outburghers are in general classed 
 under the general name of Pfahlburgher 
 by contemporary writers.* 
 
 As the towns were conscious of the 
 Leagues of hatred which the nobility bore 
 the cities, towards them, it was their inter- 
 est to make a common cause, and render 
 mutual assistance. From this necessity 
 of maintaining, by united exertions, their 
 general liberty, the German cities never 
 suffered the petty jealousies which might, 
 no doubt, exist among them, to ripen into 
 such deadly feuds as sullied the glory, 
 and ultimately destroyed the freedom, of 
 Lombardy. They withstood the bishops 
 and barons by confederacies of their own, 
 framed expressly to secure their com- 
 merce against rapine or unjust exactions 
 of toll. More than sixty cities, with three 
 ecclesiastical electors at their head, form- 
 ed the league of the Rhine in 1255, to re- 
 pel the inferior nobility, who, having now 
 become immediate, abused that inde- 
 pendence by perpetual robberies. f The 
 Hanseatic Union owes its origin to no 
 other cause, and may be traced perhaps 
 to rather a higher date. About the year 
 1370, a league was formed, which, though 
 it did not continue so long, seems to have 
 produced more striking effects in Ger- 
 many. The cities of Swabia and the 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 98 ; t. vi., p. 76. Pfeffel, p. 
 402. Du Cange, Gloss, v. Pfalburger. Fauxbourg 
 is derived from this word. 
 
 t Struvius, p. 498. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 101. Pfef- 
 fel, p. 416. 
 
 Rhine united themselves in a strict con- 
 federacy against the princes, and espe- 
 cially the families of Wirtemburg and Ba- 
 varia. It is said that the Emperor Wen- 
 ceslaus secretly abetted their projects. 
 The recent successes of the Swiss, who 
 had now almost established their repub- 
 lic, inspired their neighbours in the empire 
 with expectations which the event did not 
 realize; for they were defeated in this 
 war, and ultimately compelled to relin- 
 quish their league. Counter-associations 
 were formed by the nobles, styled socie- 
 ty of St. George, St. William, the Lion, 
 or the Panther.* 
 
 The spirit of political liberty was not 
 confined to the free immediate provincial 
 cities. In all the German prin- states of the 
 cipalities, a form of limited empire - 
 monarchy prevailed, reflecting, on a re- 
 duced scale, the general constitution of 
 the empire. As the emperors shared 
 their legislative sovereignty with the diet, 
 so all the princes who belonged to that 
 assembly had their own provincial states 
 composed of their feudal vassals, and of 
 their rhediate towns within their territory. 
 No tax could be imposed without consent 
 of the states ; and, in some countries, the 
 prince was obliged to account for the 
 proper disposition of the money granted. 
 In all matters of importance affecting the 
 principality, and especially in cases of 
 partition, it was necessary to consult 
 them; and they sometimes decided be- 
 tween competitors in a disputed succes- 
 sion, though this indeed more strictly be- 
 longed to the emperor. The provincial 
 states concurred with the prince in ma- 
 king laws, except such as were enacted 
 by the general diet. The city of Wurtz- 
 burgh, in the fourteenth century, tells its 
 bishop, that if a lord would make any new 
 ordinance, the custom is that he must 
 consult the citizens, who have always 
 opposed his innovating upon the ancient 
 laws without their consent.! 
 
 The ancient imperial domain, or pos- 
 sessions which belonged to the Alienation of 
 chief of the empire as such, the imperial 
 had originally been very exten- domain - 
 sive. Besides large estates in every 
 province, the territory upon each bank 
 of the Rhine, afterward occupied by the 
 counts palatine and ecclesiastical elec- 
 tors, was, until the thirteenth century, an 
 exclusive property of the emperor. This 
 imperial domain was deemed so adequate 
 to the support of his dignity, that it was 
 usual, if not obligatory, for him to grant 
 
 * Struvius, p. 649. Pfeffel, p. 586. Schmidt, t. 
 v., p. 10 ; t. vi., p. 78. Putter, p. 293. 
 t Schmidt, t. vi., p. 8. Putter, p. 236. 
 
240 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 tCHAP. V. 
 
 away his patrimonial domains upon his 
 election. But the necessities of Freder- 
 ick II., and the long confusion that en- 
 sued upon his death, caused the domain 
 to be almost entirely dissipated. Ro- 
 dolph made some efforts to retrieve it, 
 but too late; and the poor remains of 
 what had belonged to Charlemagne and 
 Otho were alienated by Charles IV.* 
 This produced a necessary change in 
 that part of the constitution which depri- 
 ved an emperor of hereditary posses- 
 sions. It was, however, some time be- 
 fore it took place. Even Albert I. con- 
 ferred the dutchy of Austria upon his 
 sons when he was chosen emperor, f 
 Louis of Bavaria was the first who re- 
 tained his hereditary dominions, and 
 made them his residence. J Charles IV. 
 and Wenceslaus lived almost wholly in 
 Bohemia ; Sigismund chiefly in Hungary ; 
 Frederick III. in Austria. This residence 
 in their hereditary countries, while it 
 seemed rather to lower the imperial dig- 
 nity, and to lessen their connexion with 
 the general confederacy, gave them in- 
 trinsic power and influence. If the em- 
 perors of the houses of Luxemburg and 
 Austria were not like the Conrads and 
 Fredericks, they were at least very su- 
 perior in importance to the Williams and 
 Adolphuses of the thirteenth century. 
 
 [A. D. 1495.] The accession of Maxi- 
 
 e milian nearly coincides with 
 
 MaxTSan the expedition of Charles VIII. 
 
 Diet of against Naples; and I should 
 
 *' here close the German history 
 of the middle age, were it not for the 
 great epoch which is made by the diet of 
 Worms, in 1495. This assembly is cel- 
 ebrated for the establishment of a perpet- 
 ual public peace, and of a paramount 
 court of justice, the Imperial Chamber. 
 
 The same causes which produced 
 F w h cont i nual hostilities among the 
 mem of " French nobility were not likely 
 public to operate less powerfully on 
 peace> the Germans, equally warlike 
 with their neighbours, and rather less 
 civilized. But while the imperial gov- 
 ernment was still vigorous, they were 
 kept under some restraint. We find 
 Henry III., the most powerful of the 
 Franconian emperors, forbidding all pri- 
 vate defiances, and establishing solemnly 
 
 * Pfeffel, p. 580. 
 
 t Idem, p. 494. Struvius, p. 546. 
 
 t Struvius, p. 611. In the capitulation of Rob- 
 ert, it was expressly provided that he should re- 
 tain any escheated fief for the domain, instead of 
 granting it away ; so completely was the public 
 policy of the empire reversed. Schmidt, t. v., 
 p. 44. 
 
 a general peace.* After his time, the 
 natural tendency of manners overpower- 
 ered all attempts to coerce it, and private 
 war raged without limits in the empire. 
 Frederick I. endeavoured to repress it 
 by a regulation which admitted its legal- 
 ity. This was the law of defiance (jus 
 diffidationis), which required a solemn 
 declaration of war, and three days' no- 
 tice, before the commencement of hostile 
 measures. All persons contravening this 
 provision were deemed robbers, and not 
 legitimate enemies. f Frederick II. car- 
 ried the restraint farther, and limited the 
 right of self-redress to cases where jus- 
 tice could not be obtained. Unfortunate- 
 ly there was, in later times, no sufficient 
 provision for rendering justice. The 
 German empire indeed had now assumed 
 so peculiar a character, and the mass of 
 states who composed it were in so many 
 respects sovereign within their own ter- 
 ritories, that wars, unless in themselves 
 unjust, could not be made a subject of 
 reproach against them, nor considered, 
 strictly speaking, as private. It was cer- 
 tainly most desirable to put an end to 
 them by common agreement, and by the 
 only means that could render war unne- 
 cessary, the establishment of a supreme 
 jurisdiction. War indeed, legally under- 
 taken, was not the only, nor the severest 
 grievance. A very large proportion of 
 the rural nobility lived by robbery. J 
 Their castles, as the ruins still bear wit- 
 ness, were erected upon inaccessible hills, 
 and in defiles that command the public 
 road. An archbishop of Cologne having 
 built a fortress of this kind, the governor 
 inquired how he was to maintain him- 
 self, no revenue having been assigned for 
 that purpose. The prelate only desired 
 him to remark that the castle was situa- 
 ted near the junction of four roads. As 
 commerce increased, and the example of 
 French and Italian civilization rendered 
 the Germans more sensible to their own 
 rudeness, the preservation of public peace 
 was loudly demanded. Every diet under 
 Frederick III. professed to occupy itself 
 with the two great objects of domestic 
 reformation, peace and law. Temporary 
 
 * Pfeffel, p. 212. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. iv.,p. 108, et infra. Pfeffel, p. 340. 
 Putter, p. 205. 
 
 J Germani atque Alemanni, quibus census patri- 
 monii ad victum suppetit, et hos qui procul urbi- 
 bus, aut qui castellis et oppidulis dominantur, quo- 
 rum magna pars latrocinio deditur, nobiles censent. 
 Pet. de Andlo. apud Schmidt, t. v., p. 490. 
 
 A Quern cum officiatus suus interrogans, de quo 
 castrum deberit retinere, cum annuis careret redi- 
 tibus, dicitur respondisse : Quatuorviae sunt trans 
 castrum situate. Auctor apud Schmidt, p. 492. 
 
CHAP. V.J 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 241 
 
 cessations, during which all private hos- 
 tility was illegal, were sometimes enact- 
 ed ; and, if observed, which may well be 
 doubted, might contribute to accustom 
 men to habits of greater tranquillity, 
 The leagues of the cities were probably 
 more efficacious checks upon the disturb- 
 ers of order. In 1486 a ten years' peace 
 was proclaimed, and before the expira- 
 tion of this period the perpetual abolition 
 of the right of defiance was happily ac- 
 complished in the diet of Worms.* 
 
 These wars, incessantly waged by the 
 states of Germany, seldom ended in con- 
 quest. Very few princely houses of the 
 middle ages were aggrandized by such 
 means. That small and independent no- 
 bility, the counts and knights of the em- 
 pire, whom the unprincipled rapacity of 
 our own age has annihilated, stood 
 through the storms of centuries with 
 little diminution of their numbers. An 
 incursion into the enemy's territory, a 
 pitched battle, a siege, a treaty, are the 
 general circumstances of the minor wars 
 of the middle ages, as far as they appear 
 in history. Before the invention of ar- 
 tillery, a strongly fortified castle, or 
 walled city, was hardly reduced except 
 by famine, which a besieging army, wast- 
 ing improvidently its means of subsist- 
 ence, was full as likely to feel. That 
 invention altered the condition of society, 
 and introduced an inequality of forces, 
 that rendered war more inevitably ruin- 
 ous to the inferior party. Its first and 
 most beneficial effect was to bring the 
 plundering class of the nobility into con- 
 trol ; their castles were more easily 
 taken, and it became their interest to de- 
 serve the protection of law. A few of 
 these continued to follow their own pro- 
 fession after the diet of Worms ; but they 
 were soon overpowered by the more ef- 
 ficient police established under Maximil- 
 ian. 
 
 The next object of the diet was to pro- 
 imperial vide an effectual remedy for pri- 
 chamber. va t, e wrongs which might super- 
 sede all pretence for taking up arms. 
 The administration of justice had always 
 been a high prerogative, as well as bound- 
 en duty, of the emperors. It was exer- 
 cised originally by themselves in person, 
 or by the count palatine, the judge who 
 always attended their court. In the prov- 
 inces of Germany, the dukes were in- 
 trusted with this duty: but, in order to 
 control their influence, Otho the Great 
 appointed provincial counts palatine, 
 whose jurisdiction was in some respects 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 116; t. v., p. 338, 371 ; t. vi., 
 p. 34. Putter, p. 292, 348. 
 
 Q 
 
 exclusive of that still possessed by the 
 dukes. As the latter became more inde- 
 pendent of the empire, the provincial 
 counts palatine lost the importance of 
 their office, though their name may be 
 traced to the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies.* The ordinary administration of 
 justice by the emperors went into disuse ; 
 in cases where states of the empire 
 were concerned, it appertained to the 
 diet, or to a special court of princes. 
 The first attempt to re-establish an im- 
 perial tribunal was made by Frederick IL 
 in a diet held at Mentz in 1235. A judge 
 of the court was appointed to sit daily, 
 with certain assessors, half nobles, half 
 lawyers, and with jurisdiction over all 
 causes where princes of the empire 
 were not concerned.! Rodolphof Haps- 
 burg endeavoured to give efficacy to this 
 judicature ; but, after his reign, it under- 
 went the fate of all those parts of the 
 Germanic constitution which maintained 
 the prerogatives of the emperors. Si- 
 gismund endeavoured to revive this tri- 
 bunal ; but, as he did not render it perma- 
 nent, nor fix the place of its sittings, it 
 produced little other good than as it ex- 
 cited an earnest anxiety for a regular sys- 
 tem. This system, delayed throughout 
 the reign of Frederick III., was reserved 
 for the first diet of his son.J 
 
 The Imperial Chamber, such was the 
 name of the new tribunal, consisted, at 
 its original institution, of a chief judge, 
 who was to be chosen among the princes 
 or counts, and of sixteen assessors, part- 
 ly of noble or equestrian rank, partly pro- 
 fessors of law. They were named by 
 the emperor with the approbation of the 
 diet. The functions of the Imperial 
 Chamber were chiefly the two following. 
 They exercised an appellant jurisdiction 
 over causes that had been decided by the 
 tribunals established in states of the em- 
 pire. But their jurisdiction in private 
 causes was merely appellant. According 
 to the original law of Germany, no man 
 could be sued except in the nation or 
 province to which he belonged. The 
 early emperors travelled from one part 
 of their dominions to another, in order to 
 render justice consistently with this fun- 
 damental privilege. When the Luxem- 
 burg emperors fixed their residence in 
 Bohemia, the jurisdiction of the imperial 
 court in the first instance would have 
 ceased of itself by the operation of this 
 ancient rule. It was not, however, 
 strictly complied with ; and it is said that 
 
 * PfefFel, p. 180. 
 
 i Idem, p. 386. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 56. 
 
 * Pfeffel, t. Jx, p. 66. 
 
242 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 the emperors had a concurrent jurisdic- 
 tion with the provincial tribunals even in 
 private causes. They divested them- 
 selves, nevertheless, of this right, by 
 granting privileges de non evocando ; so 
 that no subject of a state which enjoyed 
 such a privilege could be summoned into 
 the imperial court. All the electors pos- 
 sessed this exemption by the terms of the 
 Golden Bull ; and it was specially granted 
 to the burgraves of Nuremberg, and some 
 other princes. This matter was finally 
 settled at the diet of Worms; and the 
 Imperial Chamber was positively re- 
 stricted from taking cognizance of any 
 causes in the first instance, even where 
 a state of the empire was one of the par- 
 ties. It was enacted, to obviate the de- 
 nial of justice that appeared likely to re- 
 sult from the regulation in the latter case, 
 that every elector and prince should es- 
 tablish a tribunal in his own dominions, 
 where suits against himself might be en- 
 tertained.* 
 
 The second part of the chamber's ju- 
 risdiction related to disputes between 
 two states of the empire. But these two 
 could only come before it by way of ap- 
 peal. During the period of anarchy which 
 preceded the establishment of its juris- 
 diction, a custom was introduced, in or- 
 der to prevent the constant recurrence 
 of hostilities, of referring the quarrels of 
 states to certain arbitrators, called Aus- 
 tregues, chosen among states of the same 
 rank. This conventional reference be- 
 came so popular that the princes would 
 not consent to abandon it on the institu- 
 tion of the Imperial Chamber ; but, on the 
 contrary, it was changed into an invaria- 
 ble and universal law, that all disputes 
 between different states must, in the first 
 instance, be submitted to the arbitration 
 of Austregues.f 
 
 The sentence of the chamber would 
 Establish- have been very idly pronounced, 
 ment of if means had not been devised to 
 carry them into execution. In 
 earlier times the want of coercive pro- 
 cess had been more felt than that of ac- 
 tual jurisdiction. For a few years after 
 the establishment of the chamber, this de- 
 ficiency was not supplied. But in 1501 
 an institution, originally planned under 
 Wenceslaus, and attempted by Albert II., 
 was carried into effect. The empire, 
 with the exception of the electorates and 
 the Austrian dominions, was divided into 
 six circles ; each of which had its coun- 
 cil of states, its director, whose province 
 
 * Schmidt, t. v., p. 373. Putter, p. 372. 
 t Putter, p. 361. Pfeffel, p. 452. 
 
 it was to convoke them, and its military 
 force to compel obedience. In 1512 four 
 more circles were added, comprehending 
 those states which had been excluded in 
 the first division. It was the business of 
 the police of the circles to enforce the 
 execution of sentences pronounced by 
 the Imperial Chamber against refractory 
 states of the empire.* 
 
 As the judges of the Imperial Chamber 
 were appointed with the consent AUHC 
 of the diet, and held their sittings council. 
 in a free imperial city, its establishment 
 seemed rather to encroach on the ancient 
 prerogatives of the emperors. Maximil- 
 ian expressly reserved these in consent- 
 ing to the new tribunal. And, in order to 
 revive them, he soon afterward instituted 
 an Aulic Council at Vienna, composed of 
 judges appointed by himself, and under 
 the political control of the Austrian gov- 
 ernment. Though some German patri- 
 ots regarded this tribunal with jealousy, 
 it continued until the dissolution of the 
 empire. The Aulic Council had, in all 
 cases, a concurrent jurisdiction with the 
 Imperial Chamber; an exclusive one in 
 feudal and some other causes. But it 
 was equally confined to cases of appeal ; 
 and these, by multiplied privileges de non 
 appellando, granted to the electoral and 
 superior princely houses, were gradually 
 reduced into moderate compass. f 
 
 The Germanic constitution may be 
 reckoned complete, as to all its essential 
 characteristics, in the reign of Maximil- 
 ian. In later times, and especially by 
 the treaty of Westphalia, it underwent 
 several modifications. Whatever might 
 be its defects, and many of them seem to 
 have been susceptible of reformation 
 without destroying the system of govern- 
 ment, it had one invaluable excellence : 
 it protected the rights of the weaker 
 against the stronger powers. The law of 
 nations was first taught in Germany, and 
 grew out of the public law of the empire. 
 To narrow, as far as possible, the rights 
 of war and of conquest, was a natural 
 principle of those who belonged to petty 
 states, and had nothing to tempt them in 
 ambition. No revolution of our own 
 eventful age, except the fall of the ancient 
 French system of government, has been 
 so extensive, or so likely to produce im- 
 portant consequences, as the spontane- 
 ous dissolution of the German empire. 
 Whether the new confederacy that has 
 been substituted for that venerable con- 
 stitution will be equally favourable to 
 
 * Putter, p. 355. Pfeffel, t. ii., p. 100. 
 t Idem, p. 357. Pfeffel, p. 102. 
 
CH.VP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY". 
 
 243 
 
 peace, justice, and liberty, is among the 
 most interesting and difficult problems 
 that can occupy a philosophical observer.* 
 
 At the accession of Conrad the First, 
 Limits of Germany had by no means 
 the empire, reached its present extent on 
 the eastern frontier. Henry the Fowler 
 and the Othos made great acquisitions 
 upon that side. But tribes of Sclavonian 
 origin, generally called Venedic, or, less 
 properly, Vandal, occupied the northern 
 coast from the Elbe to the Vistula. These 
 were independent and formidable both 
 to the kings of Denmark and princes of 
 Germany, till, in the reign of Frederick 
 Barbarossa, two of the latter, Henry the 
 Lion, duke of Saxony, and Alberi the 
 Bear, margrave of Brandenburg, subdued 
 Mecklenburg and Pomerania, which af- 
 terward became dutchies of the empire. 
 Bohemia was undoubtedly subject, in a 
 feudal sense, to Frederick I. and his suc- 
 cessors, though its connexion with Ger- 
 many was always slight. The emperors 
 sometimes assumed a sovereignty over 
 Denmark, Hungary, and Poland. But 
 what they gained upon this quarter was 
 compensated by the gradual separation of 
 the Netherlands from their dominion, and 
 by the still more complete loss of the king- 
 dom of Aries. The house of Burgundy 
 possessed most part of the former, and paid 
 as little regard as possible to the imperial 
 supremacy ; though the German diets in 
 the reign of Maximilian still continued to 
 treat the Netherlands as equally subject 
 to their lawful control with the states on 
 the right bank of the Rhine. But the 
 provinces between the Rhone and the 
 Alps were absolutely separated ; Swis- 
 serland has completely succeeded in es- 
 tablishing her own independence ; and 
 the kings of France no longer sought 
 even the ceremony of an imperial inves- 
 titure for Dauphine and Provence. 
 
 Bohemia, which received the Christian 
 Bohemia faith in the tenth century, was 
 its consti- elevated to the rank of a kingdom 
 near the end of the twelfth. The 
 dukes and kings of Bohemia were feudal- 
 ly dependant upon the emperors, from 
 whom they received investiture. They 
 possessed, in return, a suffrage among the 
 seven electors, and held one of the great 
 offices in the imperial court. But, sep- 
 arated by a rampart of mountains, by a 
 difference of origin and language, and 
 perhaps by national prejudices, from Ger- 
 many, the Bohemians withdrew as far as 
 possible from the general politics of the 
 
 * The first edition of this work was published 
 early in 1818. 
 Q2 
 
 confederacy. The kings obtained dis- 
 pensations from attending the diets of the 
 empire, nor were they able to reinstate 
 themselves in the privilege thus abandon- 
 ed till the beginning of the last century.* 
 The government of this kingdom, in a 
 very slight degree partaking of the feudal 
 character,! bore rather a resemblance to 
 that of Poland ; but the nobility were di- 
 vided into two classes, the baronial and 
 the equestrian, and the burghers formed a 
 third state in the national diet. For the 
 peasantry, they were in a condition of 
 servitude, or predial villanage. The roy- 
 al authority was restrained by a corona- 
 tion oath, by a permanent senate, and by 
 frequent assemblies of the diet, where a 
 numerous and armed nobility appeared to 
 secure their liberties by law or force.J 
 The sceptre passed, in ordinary times, to 
 the nearest heir of the royaj blood ; but 
 the right of election was only suspended, 
 and no king of Bohemia ventured to boast 
 of it as his inheritance. This mixture 
 of elective and hereditary monarchy was 
 common, as we have seen, to most Eu- 
 ropean kingdoms in their original consti- 
 tution, though few continued so long to ad- 
 mit the participation of popular suffrages. 
 The reigning dynasty having become 
 extinct, in 1306, by the death of House of 
 Wenceslaus, son of that Otto- Luxemburg. 
 car, who, after extending his conquests 
 to the Baltic Sea, and almost to the Adri- 
 atic, had lost his life in an unsuccessful 
 contention with the Emperor Rodolph, 
 the Bohemians chose John of Luxemburg, 
 son of Henry VII. Under the kings of 
 this family in the fourteenth century, and 
 especially Charles IV.. whose character 
 appeared in a far more advantageous light 
 in his native domains than in the empire, 
 Bohemia imbibed some portion of refine- 
 ment and science.j) A university, erect- 
 ed by Charles at Prague, became one of 
 
 * Pfeffel, t. ii., p. 497. 
 
 t Bpna ipsorum tola Bohemia pleraque omnia 
 hseredilaria sunt seu allodialia, perpauca feudalia. 
 Stransky, Resp. Bohemica, p. 392. Stransky 
 was a Bohemian Protestant, who fled to Holland 
 after the subversion of the civil and religious liber- 
 ties of his country by the fatal battle of Prague, in 
 1621. 
 
 % Dubravius, the Bohemian historian, relates 
 (lib. xviii.) that the kingdom having no written laws, 
 Wenceslaus, one of the kings, about the year 1300, 
 sent for an Italian lawyer to compile a code. But 
 the nobility refused to consent to this ; aware, prob- 
 ably, of the consequences of letting in the prerog- 
 ative doctrines of the civilians. They opposed, at 
 the same- time, the institution of a university at 
 Praguepwhich, however, took place afterward un- 
 der Charles IV. 
 
 $ Stransky, Resp. Bohem. Coxe's House ef 
 Austria, p. 487. 
 
 I! Schmidt. Coxe. 
 
244 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 the most celebrated in Europe. [A. D. 
 HUBS 14 f 6 -] J nn Huss, rector of the 
 ' university, who had distinguish- 
 ed himself by opposition to many abuses 
 then prevailing in the church, repaired to 
 the council of Constance, under a safe con- 
 duct from the Emperor Sigismund. In vi- 
 olation of this pledge, to the indelible in- 
 famy of that prince and of the council, he 
 was condemned to be burnt ; and his dis- 
 ciple, Jerome of Prague, underwent after- 
 Hussitewar ward the same fate. Hiscoun- 
 ' trymen, aroused by this atroci- 
 ty, flew to arms. They found at their 
 head one of those extraordinary men, 
 whose genius, created by nature and 
 called into action by fortuitous events, 
 appears to borrow no reflected light from 
 
 John Zisca that of otners - Jo . nn Zisca had 
 not been trained in any school 
 which could have initiated him in the 
 science of war; that, indeed, except in 
 Italy, was still rude, and nowhere more 
 so than in Bohemia. But, self-taught, he 
 became one of the greatest captains who 
 had appeared hitherto in Europe. It ren- 
 ders his exploits more marvellous, that 
 he was totally deprived of sight. Zisca 
 has been called the inventor of the mod- 
 ern art of fortification ; the famous moun- 
 tain near Prague, fanatically called Tabor, 
 became, by his skill, an impregnable in- 
 trenchment. For his stratagems he has 
 been compared to Hannibal. In battle, 
 being destitute of cavalry, he disposed at 
 intervals ramparts of carriages filled with 
 soldiers, to defend his troops from the 
 enemy's horse. His own station was by 
 the chief standard ; where, after hearing 
 the circumstances of the situation ex- 
 plained, he gave his orders for the dispo- 
 sition of the army. Zisca was never de- 
 feated ; and his genius inspired the Hus- 
 sites with such enthusiastic affection, that 
 some of those who had served under him 
 refused to obey any other general, and 
 denominated themselves Orphans, in 
 commemoration of his loss. He was in- 
 deed a ferocious enemy, though some of 
 his cruelties might, perhaps, be extenua- 
 ted by the law of retaliation ; but to his 
 soldiers affable and generous, dividing 
 among them all the spoil.* 
 
 [A. D. 1424.] Even during the lifetime 
 n nvti of Zisca, the Hussite sect was 
 
 OailXlinSt , . -j-i i * /-r-k 
 
 disunited; the citizens of Prague 
 and many of the nobility contenting them- 
 selves with moderate demands, while the 
 Taborites, his peculiar followers, were 
 actuated by a most fanatical phrensy. The 
 
 * Lenfant, Hist, de la Guerre des Hussites. 
 Schmidt. Coxe. 
 
 former took the name of Calixtins, from 
 their retention of the sacramental cup, of 
 which the priests had latterly thought fit 
 to debar laymen; an abuse indeed not 
 sufficient to justify a civil war, but so to- 
 tally without pretence or apology, that 
 no thing less than the determined obstinacy 
 of the Romish church could have main- 
 tained it to this time. The Taborites, 
 though no longer led by Zisca, gained 
 some remarkable victories, but were at 
 last wholly defeated ; while the Catholic 
 and Calixtin parties came to an accom- 
 modation, by which Sigismund was ac- 
 knowledged as King of Bohemia, which 
 he had claimed by the title of heir to his 
 brother Wenceslaus, and a few indul- 
 gences, especially the use of the sacra- 
 mental cup, conceded to the moderate 
 Hussites. [A. D. 1433.] But this com- 
 pact, though concluded by the council of 
 Basle, being ill observed through the per- 
 fidious bigotry of the See of Rome, the 
 reformers armed again to defend their re- 
 ligious liberties, and ultimately elected a 
 nobleman of their own party [A. D. 1458], 
 by name George Podiebrad, to the throne 
 of Bohemia, which he maintained during 
 his life with great vigour and prudence.* 
 Upon his death they chose Uladislaus 
 [A. D. 1471], son of Casimir, king of Po- 
 land, who afterward obtained also the 
 kingdom of Hungary. [A. D. 1527.] Both 
 these crowns were conferred on his son 
 Louis, after whose death, in the unfortu- 
 nate battle of Mohacz, Ferdinand of Aus- 
 tria became sovereign of the two king- 
 doms. 
 
 The Hungarians, that terrible people 
 who laid waste the Italian and 
 German provinces of the empire 
 in the tenth century, became proselytes 
 soon afterward to the religion of Europe, 
 and their sovereign, St. Stephen, was ad- 
 mitted by the pope into the list of Chris- 
 tian kings. Though the Hungarians were 
 of a race perfectly distinct from either 
 the Gothic or the Sclavonian tribes, their 
 system of government was in a great 
 measure analogous. None indeed could 
 be more natural to rude nations, who had 
 but recently accustomed themselves to 
 settled possessions, than a territorial aris- 
 tocracy, jealous of unlimited or even he- 
 reditary power in their chieftain, and sub- 
 jugating the inferior people to that servi- 
 tude, which, in such a state of society, is 
 the unavoidable consequence of poverty. 
 
 The marriage of an Hungarian princess 
 with Charles II., king of Naples, event- 
 ually connected her country far more 
 
 * Lenfant. Schmidt. Coxe. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 245 
 
 than it had been with the affairs of Italy. 
 1 have mentioned in a different place the 
 circumstances which led to the invasion 
 of Naples by Louis, king of Hungary, and 
 the wars of that powerful monarch with 
 , Venice. [A. D. 1392.] By mar- 
 
 Sigismund. . T.U Id c 
 
 rymg the eldest daughter of 
 Louis, Sigismund, afterward emperor, ac- 
 quired the crown of Hungary, which, upon 
 her death without issue, he retained in 
 his own right, and was even able to trans- 
 mit to the child of a second marriage, and 
 to her husband, Albert, duke of Austria. 
 From this commencement is deduced the 
 connexion between Hungary and Austria. 
 [A. D. 1437.] In two years, however, Al- 
 bert, dying, left his widow pregnant ; but 
 the states of Hungary, jealous of Austrian 
 influence, and of the intrigues of a mi- 
 nority, without waiting for her delivery, 
 _ bestowed the crown upon Ula- 
 
 uiauisiaus. -.. . , T * i i r* T-V 
 
 dislaus, king of Poland. [A. D. 
 1440.] The birth of Albert's posthumous 
 son, Ladislaus, produced an opposition in 
 behalf of the infant's right; but the Aus- 
 trian party turned out the weaker, and 
 Uladislaus, after a civil war of some du- 
 ration, became undisputed king. Mean- 
 while a more formidable enemy drew 
 near. The Turkish arms had subdued all 
 Servia, and excited a just alarm through- 
 out Christendom. Uladislaus led a con- 
 siderable force, to which the presence of 
 the Cardinal Julian gave the appearance 
 of a crusade, into Bulgaria, and after sev- 
 eral successes, concluded an honourable 
 treaty with Amurath II. [A. D. 1444.] 
 Battle of But this he was unhappily per- 
 Wama. suaded to violate, at the instiga- 
 tion of the cardinal, who abhorred the 
 impiety of keeping faith with infidels.* 
 Heaven judged of this otherwise, if the 
 judgment of Heaven was pronounced 
 upon the field of Warna. In that fatal 
 battle Uladislaus was killed, and the Hun- 
 garians utterly routed. The crown was 
 now permitted to rest on the head of 
 young Ladislaus; but the regency was 
 allotted by the states of Hungary to a na- 
 Hunniades ^ ve warr i r > John Hunniades.f 
 
 This hero stood in the breach 
 for twelve years against the Turkish 
 
 * ^Eneas Sylvius lays this perfidy on Pope Eu- 
 genius IV. Scripsit Cardinali, nullum valere 
 foedus, quod se inconsulto cum hostibus religionis 
 percussum esset, p. 397. The words in italics are 
 slipped in to give a slight pretext for breaking the 
 treaty. 
 
 t Hunniades was a Wallachian, of a small fam- 
 ily. The Poles charged him with cowardice at 
 Warna. (JEneas Sylvius, p. 398.) And the Greeks 
 impute the same to him, or at least desertion of his 
 troops, at Cossova, where he was defeated in 1448. 
 (Spondanus, adann. 1448.) Probably he was one 
 
 power, frequently defeated, but uncon- 
 quered in defeat. If the renown of Hun- 
 niades may seem exaggerated by the par- 
 tiality of writers who lived under the 
 reign of his son, it is confirmed by more 
 unequivocal evidence, by the dread and 
 hatred of the Turks, whose children were 
 taught obedience by threatening them 
 with his name, and by the deference of a 
 jealous aristocracy to a man of no dis- 
 tinguished birth. He surrendered to 
 young Ladislaus a trust that he had exer- 
 cised with perfect fidelity ; but his merit 
 was too great to be forgiven, and the 
 court never treated him with cordiality. 
 The last, and the most splendid service of 
 Hunniades, was the relief of Belgrade. 
 [A. D. 1456.] That strong city was Relief of 
 besieged by Mahomet II., three Belgrade. 
 years after the fall of Constantinople ; 
 its capture would have laid open all Hun- 
 gary. A tumultuary army, chiefly col- 
 lected by the preaching of a friar, was 
 intrusted to Hunniades ; he penetrated 
 into the city, and having repulsed the 
 Turks in a fortunate sally, wherein Ma- 
 homet was wounded, had the honour of 
 compelling him to raise the siege in con- 
 fusion. The relief of Belgrade was more 
 important in its effect than in its imme- 
 diate circumstances. It revived the spir- 
 its of Europe, which had been appalled 
 by the unceasing victories of the infidels. 
 Mahomet himself seemed to acknowl- 
 edge the importance of the blow, and sel- 
 dom afterward attacked the Hungarians. 
 Hunniades died soon after this achieve- 
 ment, and was followed by the King La- 
 dislaus.* The states of Hungary, al- 
 though the Emperor Frederick III. had 
 secured to himself, as he thought, the re- 
 
 of those prudently brave men, who, when victory 
 is out of their power, reserve themselves to fight 
 another day ; which is the characteristic of all par- 
 tisans accustomed to desultory warfare. This is 
 the apology made for him by ^Ineas Sylvius : for- 
 tasse rei militaris perito nulla in pugna salus visa, 
 et salvare aliquos quam omnes perire maluit. Po- 
 loni acceptam eo praelio cladem Huniadis vecordiae 
 atque ignaviae tradiderunt ; ipse sua consilia spreta 
 conquestus est. I observe that all the writers 
 upon Hungarian affairs have a party bias one way 
 or other. The best and most authentic account of 
 Hunniades seems to be, still allowing for this par- 
 tiality, in the chronicle of John Thwrocz, who 
 lived under Matthias. Bonfinius, an Italian com- 
 piler of the same age, has amplified this original au- 
 thority in his three decads of Hungarian history. 
 
 * Ladislaus died at Prague, at the age of twen- 
 ty-two, with great suspicion of poison, which fell 
 chiefly on George Podiebrad and the Bohemians. 
 uEneas Sylvius was with him at the time, and in a 
 letter written immediately after, plainly hints this ; 
 and his manner carries with it more persuasion than 
 if he had spoken out. Epist. 324. Mr. Coxe, 
 however, informs us that the Bohemian historians 
 have fully disproved the charge. 
 
246 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V 
 
 version, were justly averse to his char- 
 acter, and to Austrian connexions. They 
 Matthias conferred their crown on Mat- 
 corvinus. thias Corvinus, son of their great 
 Hunniades. [A. D. 1458.] This prince 
 reigned above thirty years with consid- 
 erable reputation, to which his patronage 
 of learned men, who repaid his munifi- 
 cence with very profuse eulogies, did not 
 a little contribute.* Hungary, at least in 
 his time, was undoubtedly formidable to 
 her neighbours, and held a respectable 
 rank as an independent power in the re- 
 public of Europe. 
 
 The kingdom of Burgundy or Aries com- 
 swisscriand P^ehended the whole mount- 
 its early ainous region which we now 
 history. ca u Swisserland. It was ac- 
 cordingly reunited to the Germanic em- 
 pire by the bequest of Rodolph along 
 with the rest of his dominions. [A. D. 
 1032.] A numerous and ancient nobility, 
 vassals one to another, or to the empire, 
 divided the possession with ecclesiasti- 
 cal lords, hardly less powerful than them- 
 selves. Of the former we find the counts 
 of Zahringen, Kyburg, Hapsburg, and 
 Tokenburg most conspicuous ; of the lat- 
 ter, the Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. 
 Gall, and Abbess of Seckingen. Every 
 variety of feudal rights was early found 
 and long preserved in Helvetia ; nor is 
 there any country whose history better 
 illustrates that ambiguous relation, half 
 property and half dominion, in which the 
 territorial aristocracy, under the feudal 
 system, stood with respect to their de- 
 pendants. In the twelfth century, the 
 Swiss towns rise into some degree of 
 importance. Zuric was eminent for com- 
 mercial activity, and seems to have had 
 no lord but the, emperor. Basle, though 
 subject to its bishop, possessed the usu- 
 al privileges of municipal government. 
 Berne and Friburg, founded only in that 
 century, made a rapid progress, and the 
 latter was raised, along with Zuric, by 
 Frederick II., in 1218, to the rank of a 
 free imperial city. Several changes in 
 the principal Helvetian families took 
 place in the thirteenth century, before 
 the end of which the house of Hapsburg, 
 under the politic and enterprising Ro- 
 
 * Spondanus frequently blames the Italians, 
 who received pensions from Matthias, or wrote at 
 his court, for exaggerating his virtues or dissem- 
 bling his misfortunes. And this was probably the 
 case. However, Spondanus has rather contracted 
 a prejudice against the Corvini. A treatise of Gal- 
 eotus Martius, an Italian litterateur, De dictis et fac- 
 tis Mathiae, though it often notices an ordinary say- 
 ing as jocose or facete dictum, gives a favourable 
 impression of Matthias's ability, and also of his 
 integrity. 
 
 dolph, and his son Albert, became pos- 
 sessed, through various titles, of a great 
 ascendency in Swisserland.* 
 
 Of these titles none was more tempt- 
 ing to an ambitious chief than Albert of 
 that of advocate to a convent. Austria. 
 That specious name conveyed with it a 
 kind of indefinite guardianship, and right 
 of interference, which frequently ended 
 in reversing the conditions of the eccle- 
 siastical sovereign and its vassal. But, 
 during times of feudal anarchy, there 
 was perhaps no other means to secure 
 the rich abbeys from absolute spoliation ; 
 and the free cities in their early stage 
 sometimes adopted the same policy. 
 Among other advocacies, Albert T . 
 obtained that of some convents 
 which had estates in the valleys of 
 Schvvitz and Underwald. These seques- 
 tered regions in the heart of the Alps 
 had been for ages the habitation of a 
 pastoral race, so happily forgotten, or 
 so inaccessible in their fastnesses, as to 
 have acquired a virtual independence, reg- 
 ulating their own affairs in their general 
 assembly with a perfect equality, though 
 they acknowledged the sovereignty of 
 the empire. t The people of Schwitz 
 had made Rodolph their advocate. They 
 distrusted Albert, whose succession to 
 his father's inheritance spread alarm 
 through Helvetia. It soon appeared that 
 their suspicions were well founded. Be- 
 sides the local rights which his ecclesi- 
 astical advocates gave him over part of 
 the forest cantons, he pretended, after 
 his election to the empire, to send impe- 
 rial bailiffs into their valleys, as adminis- 
 trators of criminal justice. Their op- 
 pression of a people unused to control, 
 whom it was plainly the design of Albert 
 to reduce into servitude, excited those 
 generous emotions of resentment which 
 a brave and simple race have seldom 
 the discretion to repress. Three men, 
 Stauffacher of Schwitz, Furst of Uri, 
 Melchthal of Underwald, each Their insur- 
 with ten chosen associates, met rectum, 
 by night in a sequestered field, and 
 swore to assert the common cause of 
 their liberties, without bloodshed or in- 
 jury to the rights of others. Their 
 success was answerable to the justice 
 of their undertaking ; the three cantons 
 unanimously took up arms, and expelled 
 their oppressors without a contest. [A. 
 D. 1308.] Albert's assassination by his 
 nephew, which followed soon afterward, 
 fortunately gave them leisure to consol- 
 
 * Planta's History of the Helvetic Confederacy, 
 vol. i., chaps. 2-5. 
 t Id., c. 4. 
 
CHAP. V.] 
 
 idate their union.* He was succeeded 
 in the empire by Henry VII., jealous of 
 the Austrian family, and not at all dis- 
 pleased at proceedings which had been 
 accompanied with so little violence or 
 disrespect for the empire. But Leopold, 
 duke of Austria, resolved to humble the 
 peasants who had rebelled against his 
 father, led a considerable force into their 
 country. The Swiss, commending them- 
 selves to Heaven, and determined rather 
 to perish than undergo that yoke a sec- 
 ond time, though ignorant of regular 
 discipline and unprovided with defensive 
 Battle of armour, utterly discomfited the 
 Morgarien. assailants at Morgarten.f [A. D. 
 1315.] 
 
 This great victory, the Marathon of 
 Swisserland, confirmed the independence 
 Form tion ^ ^e three original cantons. 
 of Swiss After some years, Lucerne, con- 
 confede- tiguous in situation and alike in 
 interests, was incorporated into 
 their confederacy. It was far more ma- 
 terially enlarged about the middle of 
 the fourteenth century, by the accession 
 of Zuric, Glaris, Zug, and Berne, all 
 which took place within two years. The 
 first and last of these cities had already 
 been engaged in frequent wars with the 
 Helvetian nobility, and their internal 
 polity was altogether republican.^ They 
 acquired, not independence, which they 
 already enjoyed, but additional security 
 by this union with the Swiss, properly 
 so called, who, in deference to their 
 power and reputation, ceded to them the 
 first rank in the league. The eight 
 already enumerated are called the an- 
 cient cantons, and continued till the late 
 reformation of the Helvetic system to 
 possess several distinctive privileges, 
 and even rights of sovereignty over sub- 
 ject territories, in which the five cantons 
 of Friburg, Soleure, Basle, Schaffausen, 
 and Appenzel, did not participate. From 
 this time the united cantons, but espe- 
 cially those of Berne and Zuric, began 
 to extend their territories at the expense 
 of the rural nobility. The same contest 
 between these parties, with the same 
 termination, which we know generally 
 to have taken place in Lombardy during 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries, may 
 be traced with more minuteness in the 
 annals of Swisserland. $ Like the Lom- 
 bards too, the Helvetic cities acted with 
 policy and moderation towards the nobles 
 whom they overcame, admitting them to 
 the franchises of their community, as co- 
 
 GERMANY. 247 
 
 burghers (a privilege which virtually im- 
 plied a defensive alliance against any 
 assailant), and uniformly respecting the 
 legal rights of property. Many feudal 
 superiorities they obtained from the 
 owners in a more peaceable manner, 
 through purchase or mortgage. Thus 
 the house of Austria, to which the exten- 
 sive domains of the counts of Kyburg 
 had devolved, abandoning, after repeated 
 defeats, its hopes of subduing the forest 
 cantons, alienated a great part of its 
 possessions to Zuric and Berne.* And 
 the last remnant of their ancient Helve- 
 tic territories in Argovia was wrested in 
 1417 from Frederick, count of Tyrol, who, 
 imprudently supporting Pope John XXIII. 
 against the council of Constance, had 
 been put to the ban of the empire. These 
 conquests Berne could not be induced to 
 restore, and thus completed the inde- 
 pendence of the confederate republics.! 
 The other free cities, though not yet in- 
 corporated, and the few remaining nobles, 
 whether lay or spiritual, of whom the 
 abbot of St. Gall was the principal, entered 
 into separate leagues with different can- 
 tons. Swisserland became therefore, in 
 the first part of the fifteenth century, a 
 free country, acknowledged as such by 
 neighbouring states, and subject to no 
 external control, though still compre- 
 hended within the nominal sovereignty 
 of the empire. 
 
 The affairs of Swisserland occupy a 
 very small space in the great chart of Eu- 
 ropean history But in some respects they 
 are more interesting than the revolutions 
 of mighty kingdoms. Nowhere besides 
 do we find so many titles to our sympa- 
 thy, or the union of so much virtue with 
 so complete success. In the Italian re- 
 publics, a more splendid temple may 
 seem to have been erected to liberty; but, 
 as we approach, the serpents of faction 
 hiss around her altar, and the form of 
 tyranny flits among the distant shadows 
 behind the shrine. Swisserland, not ab- 
 solutely blameless (for what republic has 
 aeen so ?), but comparatively exempt from 
 turbulence, usurpation, and injustice, has 
 well deserved to employ the native pen 
 of an historian, accounted the most elo- 
 quent of the last age.J Other nations 
 
 * Planta, c. 6. 
 t W., cc. 8, 9. 
 
 t Id., c. 7. 
 $ Id., c. 10. 
 
 * Planta, c. 11. f Vol. ii., e. 1. 
 
 | I am unacquainted with Muller's history in the 
 original language ; but, presuming the first volume 
 of Mr. Planta's History of the Helvetic Confedera- 
 cy to be a free translation or abridgment of it, I can 
 
 ell conceive that it deserves the encomiums of 
 Madame de Stae'l, and other foreign critics. It is 
 very rare to meet with such picturesque and lively 
 delineation in a modern historian of distant times. 
 But I must observe, that, if the authentic chroni- 
 
248 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. V. 
 
 displayed an insuperable resolution in the 
 defence of walled towns; but the steadi- 
 ness of the Swiss in the field of battle 
 was without a parallel, unless we recall 
 the memory of Lacedaemon. It was even 
 established as a law, that whoever re- 
 turned from battle after a defeat should 
 forfeit his life by the hands of the exe- 
 cutioner. Sixteen hundred men, who had 
 been sent to oppose the predatory inva- 
 sion of the French in 1444, though they 
 might have retreated without loss, deter- 
 mined rather to perish on the spot, and 
 fell amid a far greater heap of the hostile 
 slain.* At the famous battle of Sem- 
 pach, in 1385, the last which Austria pre- 
 sumed to try against the forest cantons, 
 the enemy's knights, dismounted from 
 their horses, presented an impregnable 
 barrier of lances, which disconcerted the 
 Swiss ; till Winkelried, a gentleman of 
 Underwald, commending his wife and 
 children to his countrymen, threw him- 
 self upon the opposite ranks, and collect- 
 ing as many lances as he could grasp, 
 forced a passage for his followers by bu- 
 rying them in his bosom. f 
 
 The burghers and peasants of Swisser- 
 Exceiience land, ill provided with cavalry, 
 of the Swiss and better able to dispense with 
 it than the natives of cham- 
 paign countries, may be deemed the prin- 
 cipal restorers of the Greek and Roman 
 tactics, which place the strength of ar- 
 mies in a steady mass of infantry. Be- 
 sides their splendid victories over the 
 dukes of Austria and their own neigh- 
 bouring nobility, they had repulsed, in the 
 year 1375, one of those predatory bodies 
 of troops, the scourge of Europe in that 
 age, and to whose licentiousness king- 
 doms and free states yielded alike a pas- 
 sive submission. They gave the dauphin, 
 afterward Louis XI., who entered their 
 country, in 1444, with a similar body of 
 ruffians, called Armagnacs, the disbanded 
 mercenaries of the English war, sufficient 
 reason to desist from his invasion and to 
 respect their valour. That able prince 
 formed indeed so high a notion of the 
 Swiss, that he sedulously cultivated their 
 alliance during the rest of his life. He 
 
 cles of Swisserland have enabled Muller to embel- 
 lish his narration with so much circumstantial de- 
 tail, he has been remarkably fortunate in his au- 
 thorities. No man could write the annals of Eng- 
 land or France in the fourteenth century with such 
 particularity, if he was scrupulous not to fill up the 
 meager sketch of chroniclers from the stories of 
 his invention. The striking scenery of Swisser- 
 land, and Muller's exact acquaintance with it, 
 have given him another advantage as a painter of 
 history. 
 
 Vol. ii., c. 2. t Vol. i., c. 10. 
 
 was made abundantly sensible of the wis- 
 dom of this policy, when he saw his 
 greatest enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, 
 routed at Granson and Moral, and his af- 
 fairs irrecoverably ruined by these hardy 
 republicans. The ensuing age is the 
 most conspicuous, though not the most 
 essentially glorious, in the history of 
 Swisserland. Courted for the excellence 
 of their troops by the rival sovereigns of 
 Europe, and themselves too sensible both 
 to ambitious schemes of dominion and to 
 the thirst of money, the united cantons 
 came to play a very prominent part in the 
 wars of Lombardy, with great military 
 renown, but not without some impeach- 
 ment of that sterling probity which had 
 distinguished their earlier efforts for in- 
 dependence. These events, however, do 
 not fall within my limits; but the last 
 year of the fifteenth century is a leading 
 epoch with which I shall close this 
 sketch. Though the house of p ,.. 
 Austria had ceased to menace SfSSnO? 
 the liberties of Helvetia, and dependence 
 had even been for many years in 1500 ' 
 its ally, the Emperor Maximilian, aware 
 of the important service he might derive 
 from the cantons in his projects upon 
 Italy, as well as of the disadvantage he 
 sustained by their partiality to French in- 
 terest, endeavoured to revive the im- 
 extinguished supremacy of the empire. 
 That supremacy had just been restored 
 in Germany by the establishment of the 
 Imperial Chamber, and of a regular pecu- 
 niary contribution for its support as- well 
 as for other purposes, in the diet of 
 Worms. The Helvetic cantons were 
 summoned to yield obedience to these 
 imperial laws; an innovation, for such 
 the revival of obsolete prerogatives must 
 be considered, exceedingly hostile to their 
 republican independence, and involving 
 consequences not less material in their 
 eyes, the abandonment of a line of policy 
 which tended to enrich, if not to ag- 
 grandize them. Their refusal to comply 
 brought on a war, wherein the Tyrolese 
 subjects of Maximilian, and the Swabian 
 league, a confederacy of cities in that 
 province lately formed under the empe- 
 ror's auspices, were principally engaged 
 against the Swiss. But the success of 
 the latter was decisive ; and, after a ter- 
 rible devastation of the frontiers of Ger- 
 many, peace was concluded upon terms 
 very honourable for Swisserland. The 
 cantons were declared free from the ju- 
 risdiction of the Imperial Chamber, and 
 from all contributions imposed by the 
 diet. Their right to enter into foreign 
 alliance, even hostile to the empire, if it 
 
CIUP. VI.] 
 
 GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 249 
 
 was not expressly recognised, continued ; treaty of Westphalia, their real sover- 
 imimpaired in practice ; nor am I aware | eignty must be dated by an historian from 
 that they were at any time afterward sup- j the year when every prerogative which 
 
 posed to incur the crime of rebellion by 
 such proceedings. Though, perhaps, in 
 the strictest letter of public law, the Swiss 
 cantons were not absolutely released from 
 their subjection to the empire until the 
 
 a government can exercise was finally 
 abandoned.* 
 
 * Planta, vol. ii., c. 4. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 Rise of Mahometanism. Causes of its Success. 
 Progress of Saracen Arms. Greek Empire. 
 Decline of the Khalifs. The Greeks recover 
 part of their Losses. The Turks. The Cru- 
 sades. Capture of Constantinople by the Lat- 
 ins. Its Recovery by the Greeks. The Mo- 
 guls. The Ottomans. Danger at Constantino- 
 ple. Timur. Capture of Constantinople by Ma- 
 homet II. Alarm of Europe. 
 
 THE difficulty which occurs to us in 
 endeavouring to fix a natural commence- 
 ment of modern history, even in the 
 Western countries of Europe, is much 
 enhanced when we direct our attention 
 to the Eastern Empire. In tracing the 
 long series of the Byzantine annals, we 
 never lose sight of antiquity ; the Greek 
 language, the Roman name, the titles, 
 the laws, all the shadowy circumstance 
 of ancient greatness, attend us throughout 
 the progress from the first to the last of 
 the Constantines ; and it is only when 
 we observe the external condition and 
 relations of their empire, that we per- 
 ceive ourselves to be embarked in a new 
 sea, and are compelled to deduce, from 
 points of bearing to the history of other 
 nations, a line of separation, which the 
 domestic revolutions of Constantinople 
 would not satisfactorily afford. The ap- 
 pearance of Mahomet, and the conquests 
 of his disciples, present an epoch in the 
 history of Asia still more important and 
 more definite than the subversion of the 
 Roman empire in Europe ; and hence the 
 boundary line between the ancient and 
 modern divisions of Byzantine history 
 will intersect the reign of Heraclius. 
 That prince may be said to have stood 
 on the verge of both hemispheres of time, 
 whose youth was crowned with the last 
 victories over the successors of Arta- 
 xerxes, and whose age was clouded by 
 the first calamities of Mahometan inva- 
 sion. 
 
 Of all the revolutions which have had 
 
 a permanent influence upon the 
 civil history of mankind, none anceofMs- 
 I could so little be anticipated by homet - 
 I human prudence as that effected by the 
 I religion of Arabia. As the seeds of in- 
 | visible disease grow up sometimes in si- 
 lence to maturity, till they manifest them- 
 selves hopeless and irresistible, the grad- 
 ual propagation of a new faith in a bar- 
 barous country beyond the limits of the 
 empire was hardly known perhaps, and 
 certainly disregarded, in the court of 
 Constantinople. Arabia, in the age of 
 Mahomet, was divided into many small 
 states, most of which, however, seem to 
 have looked up to Mecca as the capital 
 of their nation and the chief seat of their 
 religious worship. The capture of that 
 city accordingly, and subjugation of its 
 powerful and numerous aristocracy, read- 
 ily drew after it the submission of the 
 minor tribes, who transferred to the con- 
 queror the reverence they were used to 
 show to those he had subdued. If we 
 consider Mahomet only as a military 
 usurper, there is nothing more explicable, 
 or more analogous, especially to the 
 course of Oriental history, than his suc- 
 cess. But as the author of a religious 
 imposture, upon which, though avowedly 
 unattested by miraculous powers, and 
 though originally discountenanced by 
 the civil magistrates, he had the boldness 
 to found a scheme of universal dominion 
 which his followers were half enabled to 
 realize, it is a curious speculation, by 
 what means he could inspire so sincere, 
 so ardent, so energetic, and so perma- 
 nent a belief. 
 
 A full explanation of the causes which 
 contributed to the progress of Causes of 
 Mahometanism is not perhaps ^ success, 
 at present attainable by those most con- 
 versant with this department of litera- 
 ture. But we may point out several of 
 
250 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VI. 
 
 leading importance :* in the first place, 
 those just and elevated notions of the di- 
 vine nature, and of moral duties, the gold 
 ore that pervades the dross of the Koran, 
 which were calculated to strike a serious 
 and reflecting people, already perhaps 
 disinclined, by intermixture with their 
 Jewish and Christian fellow-citizens, to 
 the superstitions of their ancient idola- 
 try;! next, the artful incorporation of 
 tenets, usages, and traditions from the 
 various religions that existed in Arabia ;| 
 and thirdly, the extensive application of 
 the precepts in the Koran, a book con- 
 fessedly written with more elegance and 
 purity, to all legal transactions, and all 
 the business of life. It may be expected 
 that I should add to these, what is com- 
 
 * We are very destitute of satisfactory materials 
 for the history of Mahomet himself. Abulfeda, the 
 most judicious of his biographers, lived in the four- 
 teenth century, when it must have been morally 
 impossible to discriminate the truth amid the tor- 
 rent of fabulous tradition. Al Jannabi, whom Gag- 
 nier translated, is a mere legend writer ; it would 
 be as rational to quote the Acta Sanctorum as his 
 romance. It is therefore difficult to ascertain the 
 real character of the prophet, except as it is dedu- 
 cible from the Koran ; and some skeptical Orien- 
 talists, if I am not mistaken, have called in ques- 
 tion the absolute genuineness even of that. Gib- 
 bon has hardly apprized the reader sufficiently of 
 the crumbling foundation upon which his narrative 
 of Mahomet's life and actions depends. 
 
 t The very curious romance of Antar, written 
 perhaps before the appearance of Mahomet, seems 
 to render it probable, that however idolatry, as we 
 are told by Sale, might prevail in some parts of 
 Arabia, yet the genuine religion of the descendants 
 of Ishmael was a belief in the unity of God as 
 strict as is laid down in the Koran itself, and ac- 
 companied by the same antipathy, partly religious, 
 partly national, towards the Fire-worshippers, 
 which Mahomet inculcated. This corroborates 
 what I had said in the text before the publication 
 of that work. 
 
 t I am very much disposed to believe, notwith- 
 standing what seems to be the general opinion, 
 that Mahomet had never read any part of the New 
 Testament. His knowledge of Christianity ap- 
 pears to be wholly derived from the apocryphal 
 gospels, and similar works. He admitted the mi- 
 raculous conception and prophetic character of 
 Jesus, but not his divinity or pre-existence. Hence 
 it is rather surprising to read, in a popular book of 
 sermons by a living prelate, that all the heresies of 
 the Christian church (I quote the substance from 
 memory) are to be found in the Koran, but espe- 
 cially that of Ariamsm. No one who knows what 
 Arianism is, and what Mahometanism is, could 
 possibly fall into so strange an error. The mis- 
 fortune has been, that the learned writer, while 
 accumulating a mass of reading upon this part of 
 his subject, neglected what should have been the 
 nucleus of the whole, a perusal of the single book 
 which contains the doctrine of the Arabian impos- 
 tor. In this strange chimera about the Arianism , 
 of Mahomet, he has been led away by a misplaced 
 trust in Whitaker; a writer almost invariably in 
 the wrong, and whose bad reasoning upon all the 
 points of historical criticism which he attempted 
 to discuss is quite notorious. 
 
 monly considered as a distinguishing 
 mark of Mahometanism, its indulgence to 
 voluptuousness. But this appears to be 
 greatly exaggerated. Although the char- 
 acter of its founder may have been taint- 
 ed by sensuality as well as ferociousness, 
 I do not think that he relied upon induce- 
 ments of the former kind for the diffusion 
 of his system. We are not to judge of 
 this by rules of Christian purity or of 
 European practice. If polygamy was a 
 prevailing usage in Arabia, as is not ques- 
 tioned, its permission gave no additional 
 license to the proselytes of Mahomet, 
 who will be found rather to have nar- 
 rowed the unbounded liberty of Oriental 
 manners in this respect ; while his deci- 
 ded condemnation of adultery, and of in- 
 cestuous connexions, so frequent among 
 barbarous nations, does not argue a very 
 lax and accommodating morality. A de- 
 vout Mussulman exhibits much more of 
 the Stoical than the Epicurean character. 
 Nor can any one read the Koran without 
 being sensible that it breathes an austere 
 and scrupulous spirit. And, in fact, the 
 founder of a new religion or sect is little 
 likely to obtain permanent success by in- 
 dulging the vices and luxuries of mankind. 
 I should rather be disposed to reckon the 
 severity of Mahomet's discipline among 
 the causes of its influence. Precepts of 
 ritual observance, being always definite 
 and unequivocal, are less likely to be 
 neglected, after their obligation has been 
 acknowledged, than those of moral vir- 
 tue. Thus the long fasting, the pilgrim- 
 ages, the regular prayers and ablutions, 
 the constant almsgiving, the abstinence 
 from stimulating liquors, enjoined by the 
 Koran, created a visible standard of prac- 
 ice among its followers, and preserved a 
 continual recollection of their law. 
 
 But the prevalence of Islam in the life- 
 ime of its prophet, and during the first 
 ages of its existence, was chiefly owing 
 o the spirit of martial energy that he in- 
 used into it. The religion of Mahomet 
 is as essentially a military system as the 
 institution of chivalry in the west of Eu- 
 rope. The people of Arabia, a race of 
 strong passions and sanguinary temper, 
 inured to habits of pillage and murder, 
 found in the law of their native prophet, 
 not a license, but a command to desolate 
 the world, and a promise of all that their 
 glowing imaginations could anticipate of 
 Paradise annexed to all in which they 
 nost delighted upon earth. It is difficult 
 for us, in the calmness of our closets, to 
 conceive that feverish intensity of excite- 
 ment to which man may be wrought, 
 when the animal and intellectual ener- 
 
CHAP. VI.] 
 
 GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 251 
 
 gies of his nature converge to a point, 
 and the buoyancy of strength and cour- 
 age reciprocates the influence of moral 
 sentiment or religious hope. The effect 
 of this union I have formerly remarked 
 in the crusades ; a phenomenon perfectly 
 analogous to the early history of the 
 Saracens. In each, one hardly knows 
 whether most to admire the prodigious 
 exertions of heroism, or to revolt from 
 the ferocious bigotry that attended them. 
 But the crusades were a temporary ef- 
 fort, not thoroughly congenial to the 
 spirit of Christendom, which, even in the 
 darkest and most superstitious ages, was 
 not susceptible of the solitary and over- 
 ruling fanaticism of the Moslems. They 
 needed no excitements from pontiffs and 
 preachers to achieve the work to which 
 they were called ; the precept was in 
 their law, the principle was in their 
 hearts, the assurance of success was in 
 their swords. O prophet, exclaimed 
 Ali, when Mahomet, in the first years 
 of his mission, sought among the scanty 
 and hesitating assembly of his friends a 
 vizier and lieutenant in command, I am 
 the man ; whoever rises against thee, I 
 will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, 
 break his legs, rip up his belly. O proph- 
 et, I will be thy vizier over ,them.* 
 These words of Mahomet's early and il- 
 lustrious disciple are, as it were, a text, 
 upon which the commentary expands 
 into the whole Saracenic history. They 
 contain the vital essence of his religion, 
 implicit faith, and ferocious energy. 
 Death, slavery, tribute to unbelievers, 
 were the glad tidings of the Arabian 
 prophet. To the idolaters indeed, or 
 those who. acknowledged no special rev- 
 elation, one alternative only was pro- 
 posed, conversion or the sword. The 
 People of the Book, as they are termed 
 in the Koran, or four sects of Christians, 
 Jews, Magians, and Sabians, were per- 
 mitted to redeem their adherence to their 
 ancient law, by the payment of tribute, 
 and other marks of humiliation and ser- 
 vitude. But the limits which Mahomet- 
 an intolerance had prescribed to itself 
 were seldom transgressed, the word 
 pledged to unbelievers was seldom for- 
 feited ; and, with all their insolence and 
 oppression, the Moslem conquerors were 
 mild and liberal in comparison with those 
 who obeyed the pontiffs of Rome or Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 At the death of Mahomet in 632, his 
 First con- temporal and religious sover- 
 guestsof the eignty embraced, and was lim- 
 ited by, the Arabian peninsula. 
 * Gibbon, vol. ix., p. 284! 
 
 Saracens. 
 
 The Roman and Persian empires, enga- 
 ged in tedious and indecisive hostility 
 upon the rivers of Mesopotamia and the 
 Armenian mountains, were viewed by the 
 ambitious fanatics of his creed as their 
 quarry. In the very first year of Mahom- 
 et's immediate successor, Abubeker, each 
 of these mighty empires was invaded. 
 The latter opposed but a short resistance. 
 The crumbling fabric of eastern despot- 
 ism is never secure against rapid and 
 total subversion ; a few victories, a few 
 sieges, carried the Arabian arms from 
 the Tigris to the Oxus, and overthrew, 
 with the Sassanian dynasty, the an- 
 cient and famous religion they had 
 professed. Seven years of active and 
 unceasing warfare sufficed to subju- 
 gate the rich province of Syria, though 
 defended by numerous armies and for- 
 tified cities [A. D. 632-639]; and the 
 Khalif Omar had scarcely returned thanks 
 for the accomplishment of this conquest, 
 when Amrou his lieutenant announced 
 to him the entire reduction of Egypt. 
 After some interval, the Saracens won 
 their way along the coast of Africa as 
 far as the pillars of Hercules [A. D. 647 
 -698], and a third province was irretriev- 
 ably torn from the Greek empire. These 
 western conquests introduced them to 
 fresh enemies, and ushered in more splen- 
 did successes ; encouraged by the disu- 
 nion of the Visigoths, and invited by 
 treachery, Musa, the general of a master 
 who sat beyond the opposite extremity of 
 the Mediterranean Sea [A. D. 710], pass- 
 ed over into Spain, and within about two 
 years the name of Mahomet was invoked 
 under the Pyrenees.* 
 
 These conquests, which astonish the 
 careless and superficial, are less state of the 
 perplexing to a calm inquirer than Greek em * 
 their cessation ; the loss of half PI 
 the Roman empire, than the preservation 
 of the rest. A glance from Medina to 
 Constantinople, in the middle of the sev- 
 enth century, would probably have indu- 
 ced an indifferent spectator, if such a be- 
 ing may be imagined, to anticipate by 
 eight hundred years the establishment of 
 
 * Ockley's History of the Saracens. Cardonne, 
 Revolutions de I'Afrique et de 1'Espagne. The 
 former of these works is well known, and justly 
 admired for its simplicity and picturesque details. 
 Scarcely any narrative has ever excelled in beauty 
 that of the death of Hossein. But these do not 
 tend to render it more deserving of confidence. 
 On the contrary, it may be laid down as a pretty 
 general rule, that circumstantiality, which enhances 
 the credibility of a witness, diminishes that of an 
 historian remote in time or situation. And I ob- 
 serve that Reiske, in his preface to Abulfeda, 
 speaks of Wakidi, from whom Ockley's book is 
 but a translation, as a mere fabulist. 
 
252 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VI. 
 
 a Mahometan dominion upon the shores 
 of the Hellespont. The fame of Herac- 
 lius had withered in the Syrian war; and 
 his successors appeared as incapable to 
 resist as they were unworthy to govern. 
 Their despotism, unchecked by law, was 
 often punished by successful rebellion ; 
 but not a whisper of civil liberty was 
 ever heard, and the vicissitudes of servi- 
 tude and anarchy consummated the mor- 
 al degeneracy of the nation. Less igno- 
 rant than the western barbarians, the 
 Greeks abused their ingenuity in theo- 
 logical controversies, those especially 
 which related to the nature and incarna- 
 tion of our Saviour ; wherein the dispu- 
 tants, as is usual, became more positive 
 and rancorous as their creed receded 
 from the possibility of human apprehen- 
 sion. Nor were these confined to the 
 clergy, who had not, in the East, obtain- 
 ed the prerogative of guiding the national 
 faith; the sovereigns sided alternately 
 with opposing factions ; Heraclius was 
 not too brave, nor Theodora too infamous, 
 for discussions of theology ; and the dis- 
 senters from an imperial decision were 
 involved in the double proscription of 
 treason and heresy. But the persecu- 
 tors of their opponents at home pretend- 
 ed to cowardly scrupulousness in the 
 field ; nor was the Greek church ashamed 
 to require the lustration of a canonical 
 penance from the soldier who shed the 
 blood of his enemies in a national war. 
 
 But this depraved people were preserv- 
 Deciine of G & from destruction by the vices 
 the Sara- of their enemies, still more than 
 cens. by some intrinsic resources which 
 they yet possessed. A rapid degenera- 
 cy enfeebled the victorious Moslems in 
 their career. That irresistible enthu- 
 siasm, that earnest and disinterested zeal 
 of the companions of Mahomet was in a 
 great measure lost, even before the first 
 generation had passed away. In the 
 fruitful valleys of Damascus and Bassora, 
 the Arabs of the desert forgot their ab- 
 stemious habits. Rich from the tribute 
 of an enslaved people, the Mahometan 
 sovereigns knew no employment of rich- 
 es but in sensual luxury, and paid the 
 price of voluptuous indulgence in the re- 
 laxation of their strength and energy. 
 Under the reign of Moawiyah, the fifth 
 khalif, an hereditary succession was sub- 
 stituted for the free choice of the faith- 
 ful, by which the first representatives 
 of the prophet had been elevated to pow- 
 er ; and this regulation, necessary as it 
 plainly was to avert in some degree the 
 dangers of schism and civil war, exposed 
 the kingdom to the certainty of being 
 
 often governed by feeble tyrants. But no 
 regulation could be more than a tempo- 
 rary preservative against civil war. The 
 dissensions which still separate and ren- 
 der hostile the followers of Mahomet, 
 may be traced to the first events that en- 
 sued upon his death, to the rejection of 
 his son-in-law Ali by the electors of Me- 
 dina. Two reigns, those of Abubeker 
 and Omar, passed in external glory and 
 domestic reverence ; but the old age of 
 Othman was weak and imprudent, and 
 the conspirators against him established 
 the first among a hundred precedents of 
 rebellion and regicide. Ali was now 
 chosen ; but a strong faction disputed his 
 right ; and the Saracen empire was for 
 many years distracted with civil war, 
 among competitors who appealed, in re- 
 ality, to no other decision than that of 
 the sword. The family of Ommiyah suc- 
 ceeded at last in establishing an unresist- 
 ed, if not an undoubted title. But rebell- 
 ions were perpetually afterward breaking 
 out in that vast extent of dominion, till 
 one of these revolters acquired by suc- 
 cess a better name than rebel, and found- 
 ed the dynasty of the Abbassides. 
 
 [A. D. 750.] Damascus had been the 
 seat of empire under the Ommi- Khaiifs of 
 ades ; it was removed by the sue- Ba i dad - 
 ceeding family to their new city of Bag- 
 dad. There are not any names in the 
 long line of khalifs, after the companions 
 of Mahomet, more renowned in history 
 than some of the earlier sovereigns who 
 reigned in this capital, Almansor, Haroun 
 Alraschid, and Almamun. Their splen- 
 did palaces, their numerous guards, their 
 treasures of gold and silver, the popu- 
 lousness and wealth of their cities, form- 
 ed a striking contrast to the rudeness and 
 poverty of the western nations in the 
 same age. In their court, learning, which 
 the first Moslem had despised as unwar- 
 like, or rejected as profane, was held in 
 honour.* The Khalif Almamiln, especial- 
 ly, was distinguished for his patronage 
 of letters ; the philosophical writings of 
 Greece were eagerly sought and transla- 
 ted ; the stars were numbered, the course 
 of the planets was measured ; the Arabi- 
 ans improved upon the science they bor- 
 rowed, and returned it with abundant in- 
 terest to Europe in the communication of 
 numeral figures and the intellectual lan- 
 guage of algebra. f Yet the merit of the 
 
 * The Arabian writers date the 9rigin of their 
 literature (except those works of fiction which had 
 always been popular) from the reign of Almansor, 
 A. D. 758. Abulpharagius, p. 160. Gibbon, c. 52. 
 
 f Several very recent publications contain in- 
 teresting details on Saracen literature; Berington's 
 
CHAP. VI.] 
 
 GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 253 
 
 Abbassides has been exaggerated by adu- 
 lation or gratitude. After all the vague 
 praises of hireling poets, which have some- 
 times been repeated in Europe, it is very 
 rare to read the history of an eastern 
 sovereign unstained by atrocious crimes. 
 No Christian government, except perhaps 
 that of Constantinople, exhibits such a 
 series of tyrants as the khalifs of Bagdad, 
 if deeds of blood wrought through unbri- 
 dled passion, or jealous policy, may chal- 
 lenge the name of tyranny. These are 
 ill redeemed by ceremonious devotion, 
 and acts of trifling, perhaps ostentatious 
 humility ; or even by the best attribute of 
 Mahometan princes, a rigorous justice in 
 chastising the offences of others. Anec- 
 dotes of this description give as imperfect 
 a sketch of an oriental sovereign as monk- 
 ish chroniclers sometimes draw of one 
 in Europe, who founded monasteries and 
 obeyed the clergy; though it must be 
 owned that the former are in much bet- 
 ter taste. 
 
 Though the Abbassides have acquired 
 more celebrity, they never attained the 
 real strength of their predecessors. Un- 
 der the last of the house of Ommiyah, one 
 command was obeyed almost along the 
 whole diameter of the known world, from 
 the banks of the Sihon to the utmost pro- 
 montory of Portugal. But the revolution 
 which changed the succession of khalifs 
 produced another not less important. A 
 ifugitive of the vanquished family, by name 
 Abdalrahman, arrived in Spain; and the 
 Moslems of that country, not sharing in 
 the prejudices which had stirred up the 
 Persians in favour of the line of Abbas, 
 and conscious that their remote situa- 
 tion entitled them to independence, pro- 
 separation claimed him Khalif of Cordova, 
 of Spain There could be little hope of re- 
 nca - ducing so distant adependance; 
 and the example was not unlikely to be 
 imitated. In the reign of Haroun Alras- 
 chid, two principalities were formed in 
 Africa ; of the Aglabites, who reigned 
 over Tunis and Tripoli ; and of the Edri- 
 sites, in the western parts of Barbary. 
 These yielded in about a century to the 
 Fatimites, a more powerful dynasty, 
 
 Literary History of the Middle Ages, Mill's Histo- 
 ry of Mahometanism, chap, vi., Turner's History 
 of England, vol. i. Harris's Philological Arrange- 
 ments is perhaps a book better known ; and though 
 it has since been much excelled, was one of the 
 first contributions, in our own language, to this de- 
 partment, in which a great deal yet remains for the 
 oriental scholars of Europe. Casiri's admirable 
 catalogue of Arabic MSS. in the Escurial ought 
 before this to have been followed up by a more ac- 
 curate examination of their contents than it was 
 possible for him to give. But sound literature and 
 the Escurial ! what jarring ideas ! 
 
 who afterward established an empire in 
 Egypt.* 
 
 The loss, however, of Spain and Africa 
 was the inevitable effect of that im- 
 mensely extended dominion, Decline of 
 which their separation alone the Khalifs. 
 would not have enfeebled. But other 
 revolutions awaited it at home. In the 
 history of the Abbassides of Bagdad we 
 read over again the decline of European 
 monarchies, through their various symp- 
 toms of ruin ; and find alternate analogies 
 to the insults of the barbarians towards 
 imperial Rome in the fifth century, to the 
 personal insignificance of the Merovin- 
 gian kings, and to the feudal usurpations 
 that dismembered the inheritance of 
 Charlemagne. 1. Beyond the northeast- 
 ern frontier of the Saracen empire dwelt 
 a warlike and powerful nation of the Tar- 
 tar family, who defended the independ- 
 ence of Turkestan from the Sea of Aral 
 to the great central chain of mountains. 
 In the wars which the khalifs or their 
 lieutenants waged against them, many of 
 these Turks were led into captivity, and 
 dispersed over the empire. Their strength 
 and courage distinguished them among a 
 people grown effeminate by luxury ; and 
 that jealousy of disaffection among his 
 subjects, so natural to an eastern mon- 
 arch, might be an additional motive with 
 the Khalif Motassem to form bodies of 
 guards out of these prisoners. But his 
 policy was fatally erroneous. More rude, 
 and even more ferocious than the Arabs, 
 they contemned the feebleness of the 
 khalifate, while they grasped at its rich- 
 es. The son of Motassem, Motawakkel, 
 was murdered in his palace by the barba- 
 rians of the north ; and his fate revealed 
 the secret of the empire, that the choice 
 of its sovereign had passed to their slaves. 
 Degradation and death were frequently 
 the lot of succeeding khalifs ; but, in the 
 East, the son leaps boldly on the throne 
 which the blood of his father has stained, 
 and the praetorian guards of Bagdad rarely 
 failed to render a fallacious obedience to 
 the nearest heir of the house of Abbas. 
 2. In about one hundred years after the 
 introduction of the Turkish soldiers, the 
 sovereigns of Bagdad sunk almost into 
 oblivion. Al Radi, who died in 940, was 
 the last of these that officiated in the 
 mosque, that commanded the forces in 
 person, that addressed the people from 
 the pulpit, that enjoyed the pomp and 
 splendour of royalty .f But he was the 
 
 For these revolutions, which it is not very easy 
 to fix in the memory, consult Cardonne, who has 
 made as much of them as the subject would bear. 
 
 t Abulfeda, p. 261. Gibbon, 'c. 52. Modem 
 
254 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VI. 
 
 first who appointed, instead of a vizier, a 
 new officer, a mayor, as it were, of the 
 palace, with the title of Emir al Omra, 
 commander of commanders, to whom he 
 delegated by compulsion the functions of 
 his office. This title was usually seized 
 by active and martial spirits ; it was some- 
 times hereditary, and in effect irrevoca- 
 ble by the khalifs, whose names hardly 
 appear after this time in oriental annals. 
 3. During these revolutions of the pal- 
 ace, every province successively shook 
 off its allegiance; new principalities were 
 formed in Syria and Mesopotamia, as 
 well as in Khorasan and Persia, till the 
 dominion of the Commander of the Faith- 
 ful was literally confined to the city of 
 Bagdad and its adjacent territory. Fora 
 time, some of these princes, who had 
 been appointed as governors by the kha- 
 lifs, professed to respect his supremacy, 
 by naming him in the public prayers and 
 upon the coin ; but these tokens of de- 
 pendance were gradually obliterated.* 
 
 Such is the outline of Saracenic his- 
 Revivai of tory for three centuries after 
 the Greek Mahomet ; one age of glorious 
 conquest ; a second of stationary, 
 but rather precarious greatness ; a third 
 of rapid decline. The Greek empire 
 meanwhile survived, and almost recov- 
 ered from the shock it had sustained. 
 Besides the decline of its enemies, sev- 
 eral circumstances may be enumerated, 
 tending to its preservation. The mari- 
 time province of Cilicia had been over- 
 run by the Mahometans ; but between 
 this and the lesser Asia, Mount Taurus 
 raises its massy buckler, spreading, as a 
 natural bulwark, from the seacoast of the 
 ancient Pamphylia to the hilly district of 
 Isauria, whence it extends in an easterly 
 direction, separating the Cappadocian and 
 Cilician plains, and, after throwing off 
 considerable ridges to the north and 
 south, connects itself with other chains 
 of mountains that penetrate far into the 
 Asiatic continent. Beyond this barrier 
 the Saracens formed no durable settle- 
 ment, though the armies of Alraschid 
 wasted the country as far as the Helles- 
 pont, and the city of Amorium in Phry- 
 gia was razed to the ground by Al Mo- 
 tassem. The position of Constantinople, 
 chosen with a sagacity to which the 
 course of events almost gave the appear- 
 ance of prescience, secured her from any 
 
 Univ. Hist., vol. ii. Al Radi's command of the 
 army is only mentioned by the last. 
 
 * The decline of the Saracens is fully discussed 
 in the 52d chapter of Gibbon, which is, in itself, a 
 complete philosophical dissertation upon this part 
 of history. * 
 
 immediate danger on the side of Asia, 
 and rendered her as little accessible to 
 an enemy as any city which valour and 
 patriotism did not protect. Yet, in the 
 days of Arabian energy, she was twice 
 attacked by great naval armaments [A. D. 
 668]; the first siege, or rather blockade, 
 continued for seven years [A. D. 716] ; 
 the second, though shorter, was more 
 terrible, and her walls, as well as her 
 port, were actually invested by the com- 
 bined forces of the Khalif Waled, under 
 his brother Moslema.* The final dis- 
 comfiture of these assailants showed the 
 resisting force of the empire, or rather 
 of its capital; but perhaps the abandon- 
 ment of such maritime enterprises by the 
 Saracens may be in some measure as- 
 cribed to the removal of their metropolis 
 from Damascus to Bagdad. But the 
 Greeks in their turn determined to dis- 
 pute the command of the sea. By pos- 
 sessing the secret of an inextinguishable 
 fire, they fought on superior terms : their 
 wealth, perhaps their skill, enabled them 
 to employ larger and better appointed 
 vessels ; and they ultimately expelled 
 their enemies from the islands of Crete 
 and Cyprus. By land they were less de- 
 sirous of encountering the Moslems. 
 The science of tactics is studied by the 
 pusillanimous, like that of medicine by 
 the sick; and the Byzantine emperors, 
 Leo and Constantine, have left written 
 treatises on the art of avoiding defeat, of 
 protracting contest, of resisting attack. f 
 But this timid policy, and even the pur- 
 chase of armistices from the Saracens, 
 were not ill calculated for the state of 
 both nations ; while Constantinople tem- 
 porized, Bagdad shook to her founda- 
 tions ; and the heirs of the Roman name 
 might boast the immortality of their own 
 empire, when they contemplated the dis- 
 solution of that which had so rapidly 
 sprung up and perished. Amid all the 
 crimes and revolutions of the Byzantine 
 government, and its history is but a series 
 of crimes and revolutions, it was never 
 dismembered by intestine war ; a sedition 
 in the army, a tumult in the theatre, a 
 conspiracy in the palace, precipitated a 
 monarch from the throne ; but the alle- 
 giance of Constantinople was instantly 
 transferred to his successor, and the prov- 
 inces implicitly obeyed the voice of the 
 capital. The custom too of partition, so 
 
 * Gibbon, c. 52. 
 
 f Idem, c. 53. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in 
 his advice to his son as to the administration of the 
 empire, betrays a mind not ashamed to confess 
 weakness and cowardice, and pleasing itself in 
 petty arts to elude the rapacity, or divide the power 
 of its enemie*. 
 
CHAP. VI.] 
 
 GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 255 
 
 baneful to the Latin kingdoms, and which 
 was not altogether unknown to the Sara- 
 cens, never prevailed in the Greek em- 
 pire. It stood in the middle of the tenth 
 century, as vicious indeed and cowardly, 
 but more wealthy, more enlightened, and 
 far more secure from its enemies, than 
 under the first successors of Heraclius. 
 For about one hundred years preceding 
 there had been only partial wars with the 
 Mahometan potentates ; and in these the 
 emperors seem gradually to have gained 
 the advantage, and to have become more 
 frequently the aggressors. [A. D. 963- 
 975.] But the increasing distractions of 
 the East encouraged two brave usurpers, 
 Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, 
 to attempt the actual recovery of the lost 
 provinces. They carried the Roman 
 arms (one may use the term with less re- 
 luctance than usual) over Syria ; Antioch 
 and Aleppo were taken by storm, Damas- 
 cus submitted ; even the cities of Meso- 
 potamia, beyond the ancient boundary of 
 the Euphrates, were added to the trophies 
 of Zimisces, who unwillingly spared the 
 capital of the khalifate. From such dis- 
 tant conquests it was expedient, and in- 
 deed necessary, to withdraw ; but Cilicia 
 and Antioch were permanently restored 
 to the empire. At the close of the tenth 
 century, the emperors of Constantinople 
 possessed the best and greatest portion 
 of the modern kingdom of Naples, a part 
 of Sicily, the whole European dominions 
 of the Ottomans, the province of Anato- 
 lia or Asia Minor, with some part of Syria 
 and Armenia.* 
 
 These successes of the Greek empire 
 were certainly much rather due 
 
 1 lie lurks. , i i J *> ' A 
 
 to the weakness of its enemies, 
 than to any revival of national courage 
 and vigour ; yet they would probably 
 have been more durable, if the contest 
 had been only with the khalifate, or the 
 kingdoms derived from it. But a new 
 actor was to appear on the stage of Asiat- 
 ic tragedy. The same Turkish nation, 
 the slaves and captives from which had 
 become arbiters of the sceptre of Bagdad, 
 passed their original limits of the laxartes. 
 or Sihon. The sultans of Gazna, a dy- 
 nasty whose splendid conquests were of 
 very short duration, had deemed it politic 
 to divide the strength of these formidable 
 allies, by inviting a part of them into Kho- 
 rasan. They covered that fertile prov- 
 
 * Gibbon, c. 52 and 53. The latter of these 
 chapters contains as luminous a sketch of the con- 
 dition of Greece, as the former does of Saracenic 
 history. In each the facts are not grouped histor- 
 ically, according to the order of time, but philosoph- 
 ically, according to their relations. 
 
 ince with their pastoral tents, and beck- 
 oned their compatriots to share the rich- 
 es of the south. [A. D. 1038.] The Gaz- 
 nevides fell the earliest victims ; Their con- 
 but Persia, violated in turn by quests. 
 every conqueror, was a tempting and un- 
 resisting prey. Togrol Bek, the founder 
 of the Seljukian dynasty of Turks, over- 
 threw the family of Bowides, who had 
 long reigned at Ispahan, respected the 
 pageant of Mahometan sovereignty in the 
 Khalif of Bagdad, embraced with all his 
 tribes the religion of the vanquished, and 
 commenced the attack upon Christendom 
 by an irruption into Armenia. [A. D. 
 1071.] His nephew and successor, Alp 
 Arslan, defeated and took prisoner the 
 Emperor Romanus Diogenes; and the 
 conquest of Asia Minor was almost com- 
 pleted by princes of the same family, the 
 Seljukians of Rum,* who were permitted 
 by Malek Shah, the third sultan of the 
 Turks, to form an independent kingdom. 
 Through their own exertions, and the 
 selfish impolicy of rival competitors for 
 the throne of Constantinople, who barter- 
 ed the strength of the empire for assist- 
 ance, the Turks became masters of the 
 Asiatic cities and fortified passes; nor 
 did there seem any obstacle to the inva- 
 sion of Europe. f 
 
 In this state of jeopardy, the Greek 
 empire looked for aid to the na- The first 
 tions of the west, and received it CrUi *ades. 
 in fuller measure than was expected, or 
 perhaps desired. The deliverance of 
 Constantinople was indeed a very sec- 
 ondary object with the crusaders. But it 
 was necessarily included in their scheme 
 of operations, which, though they all 
 tended to the recovery of Jerusalem, 
 must commence with the first enemies 
 that lay on their line of march. The 
 Turks were entirely defeated, their capi- 
 tal of Nice restored to the empire. As 
 the Franks passed onwards, the Emperor 
 Alexius Comnenus trod on their foot- 
 steps, and secured to himself the fruits 
 for which their enthusiasm disdained to 
 wait. He regained possession of the 
 strong places on the ^Egean shores, of 
 the defiles of Bithynia, and of the entire 
 coast of Asia Minor, both on the Euxine 
 and Mediterranean Seas, which the Turk- 
 ish armies, composed of cavalry and un- 
 used to regular warfare, could not recov- 
 er.J So much must undoubtedly be as- 
 
 * Rum, i. e., country of the Romans. 
 
 f Gibbon, c. 57. De Guignes, Hist, des Huns, 
 t. ii., 1. 2. 
 
 t It does not seem perfectly clear whether the 
 seacoast, north and south, was reannexed to the 
 empire during the reign of Alexius, or of his gal- 
 
256 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VI, 
 
 cribed to the first crusade. But I think 
 that the general effect of these expedi- 
 tions has been overrated by those who 
 consider them as having permanently re- 
 Progress of tarded the progress of the Turk- 
 tile Greeks - ish power. The Christians in 
 Palestine and Syria were hardly in con- 
 tact with the Seljukian kingdom of Rum, 
 the only enemies of the empire ; and it is 
 not easy to perceive that their small and 
 feeble principalities, engaged commonly 
 in defending themselves against the Ma- 
 hometan princes of Mesopotamia, or the 
 Fatimite khalifs of Egypt, could obstruct 
 the arms of a sovereign of Iconium upon 
 the Maeander or the Halys. Other causes 
 are adequate to explain the equipoise in 
 which the balance of dominion in Ana- 
 tolia was kept during the twelfth century ; 
 the valour and activity of the two Com- 
 neni, John and Manuel, especially the 
 former ; and the frequent partitions and 
 internal feuds, through which the Selju- 
 kians of Iconium, like all other oriental 
 governments, became incapable of for- 
 eign aggression. 
 
 But whatever obligation might be due 
 Capture of to tne nrst crusaders from the 
 constant!- eastern empire was cancelled by 
 ffLatfns ^eiY descendants one hundred 
 years afterward, when the fourth 
 in number of those expeditions was turn- 
 ed to the subjugation of Constantinople 
 itself. One of those domestic revolu- 
 tions which occur perpetually in Byzan- 
 tine history, had placed a usurper on the 
 imperial throne. The lawful monarch 
 was condemned to blindness and a pris- 
 on ; but the heir escaped to recount his 
 misfortunes to the fleet and army of cru- 
 saders, assembled in the Dalmatian port 
 of Zara. [A. D. 1202.] This armament 
 had been collected for the usual purposes, 
 and through the usual motives, temporal 
 and spiritual, of a crusade ; the military 
 force chiefly consisted of French nobles ; 
 the naval was supplied by the republic 
 of Venice, whose doge commanded per- 
 sonally in the expedition. It was not ap- 
 parently consistent with the primary ob- 
 ject of retrieving the Christian affairs in 
 Palestine, to interfere in the government 
 of a Christian empire; but the tempta- 
 tion of punishing a faithless people, and 
 the hope of assistance in their subsequent 
 operations, prevailed. They turned their 
 prows up the Archipelago ; and notwith- 
 standing the vast population and defen- 
 sible strength of Constantinople, compell- 
 ed the usurper to fly, and the citizens to 
 
 lant son John Comnenus. But the doubt is hard- 
 ly worth noticing. 
 
 surrender. But animosities springing 
 from religious schism and national jeal- 
 ousy were not likely to be allayed by 
 such remedies ; the Greeks, wounded in 
 their pride and bigotry, regarded the legit- 
 imate emperor as a creature of their ene- 
 mies, ready to sacrifice their church^ a 
 stipulated condition of his restoration, to 
 that of Rome. In a few months a new 
 sedition and conspiracy raised another 
 usurper, in defiance of the crusaders' army 
 encamped without the walls. [A. D. 
 1204.] The siege instantly recommen- 
 ced ; and after three months the city of 
 Constantinople was taken by storm. The 
 tale of pillage and murder is always uni- 
 form ; but the calamities of ancient capi- 
 tals, like those of the great, impress us 
 more forcibly. Even now we sympa- 
 thize with the virgin majesty of Constan- 
 tinople, decked with the accumulated 
 wealth of ages, and resplendent with the 
 monuments of Roman empire and of Gre- 
 cian art. Her populousness is estimated 
 beyond credibility : ten, twenty, thirty- 
 fold that of London or Paris ; certainly 
 far beyond the united capitals of all Eu- 
 ropean kingdoms in that age.* In mag- 
 nificence she excelled them more than 
 in numbers; instead of the thatched 
 roofs, the mud walls, the narrow streets, 
 the pitiful buildings of those cities, she 
 had marble and gilded palaces, churches 
 and monasteries, the works of skilful ar- 
 chitects, through nine centuries, gradual- 
 ly sliding from the severity of ancient 
 taste into the more various and brilliant 
 combinations of eastern fancy, f In the 
 libraries of Constantinople were collect- 
 ed the remains of Grecian learning ; her 
 forum and hippodrome were decorated 
 with those of Grecian sculpture ; but nei- 
 ther would be spared by undistinguishing 
 rapine ; nor were the chiefs of the cru- 
 saders more able to appreciate the loss 
 than their soldiery. Four horses, that 
 
 * Ville Hardouin reckons the inhabitants of Con- 
 stantinople at quatre cens mil homines ou plus, by 
 which Gibbon understands him to mean men of a 
 military age. Le Beau allows a million for the 
 whole population. Gibbon, vol. xi., p. 213. We 
 should probably rate London, in 1204. too high at 
 40,000 souls. Paris had been enlarged, by Philip 
 Augustus, and stood on more ground than London. 
 Delamare sur la Police, t. i., p. 76. 
 
 t O quanta civitas, exclaims Fulk of Chartres a 
 hundred years before, nobilis et decora ! quot mo- 
 nasteria quotque palatia sunt in ea, opere mero 
 fabrefacta ! quot etiam in plateis vel in vicis opera 
 ad spectandurn mirabilia ! Taedium est quidem 
 magnum recitare, quanta sit ibi opulentia bonorum 
 omnium, auri et argenti, palliorum multiformium, 
 sacrarumque reliquiarum. Omni etiam tempore, 
 navigio frequenti cuncta hominum necessaria illuc 
 afferuntur. Du Chesne, Scrip. Rerum Gallica- 
 rum, t. iv., p. 822. 
 
CHAP. VI.] 
 
 GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 257 
 
 breathe in the brass of Lysippus, were 
 removed from Constantinople to the 
 square of St. Mark at Venice ; destinet 
 again to become the trophies of war, and 
 to follow the alternate revolutions of con- 
 quest. But we learn from a contemporary 
 Greek to deplore the fate of many other 
 pieces of sculpture, which were destroy- 
 ed in wantonness, or even coined into 
 brass money.* 
 
 The lawful emperor and his son had 
 Partition of perished in the rebellion that 
 the empire. g ave occasion to this catas- 
 trophe ; and there remained no right to 
 interfere with that of conquest. But the 
 Latins were a promiscuous multitude, 
 and what their independent valour had 
 earned was not to be transferred to a 
 single master. Though the name of em- 
 peror seemed necessary for the govern 
 ment of Constantinople, the unity of de- 
 spotic power was very foreign to the 
 principles and the interests of the crusa- 
 ders. In their selfish schemes of ag- 
 grandizement they tore in pieces the 
 Greek empire. One fourth only was al- 
 lotted to the emperor, three eighths were 
 the share of the republic of Venice, and 
 the remainder was divided among the 
 chiefs. Baldwin, count of Flanders, ob- 
 tained the imperial title, with the feudal 
 sovereignty over the minor principalities. 
 A monarchy thus dismembered had little 
 prospect of honour or durability. The 
 Latin emperors of Constantinople were 
 more contemptible and unfortunate, not 
 so much from personal character as po- 
 litical weakness, than their predecessors ; 
 their vassals rebelled against sovereigns 
 not more powerful than themselves ; the 
 Bulgarians, a nation who, after being 
 long formidable, had been subdued by the 
 imperial arms, and only recovered inde- 
 pendence on the eve of the Latin con- 
 quest, insulted their capital ; the Greeks 
 The Greeks v i ewe d them with silent hatred, 
 recover ' and hailed the dawning deliver- 
 Constanti- ance f rO m the Asiatic coast. 
 On that side of the Bosphorus, 
 the Latin usurpation was scarcely for a 
 moment acknowledged; Nice became 
 the seat of a Greek dynasty, who reigned 
 with honour as far as the Maeander ; and 
 crossing into Europe, after having estab- 
 lished their dominion throughout Roma- 
 nia and other provinces [A. D. 1261], ex- 
 pelled the last Latin emperors from Con- 
 stantinople in less than sixty years from 
 its capture. 
 
 During the reign of these Greeks at 
 Nice, they had fortunately little to dread 
 
 * Gibbon, c. 60. 
 
 on the side of their former enemies, and 
 were generally on terms of friendship 
 with the Seljukians of Iconium. That 
 monarchy indeed had sufficient objects 
 of apprehension for itself. Their own 
 example in changing the up- i nvasi0 n 8 of 
 land plains of Tartary for the Asia by the 
 cultivated valleys of the south Karismia ns 
 was imitated in the thirteenth century by 
 two successive hordes of northern bar- 
 barians. The Karismians, whose tents 
 had been pitched on the lower Oxus and 
 Caspian Sea, availed themselves of the 
 decline of the Turkish power to establish 
 their dominion in Persia, and menaced, 
 though they did not overthrow, the king* 
 dom of Iconium. A more tremendous 
 storm ensued in the irruption A dM 
 of Moguls under the sons of 
 Zingis Khan. From the farthest regions 
 of Chinese Tartary issued a race more 
 fierce and destitute of civilization than 
 those who had preceded, whose numbers 
 were told by hundreds of thousands, and 
 whose only test of victory was devasta- 
 tion. [A. D. 1218-1272.] All Asia, from 
 the Sea of China to the Euxine, wasted 
 beneath the locusts of the north. They 
 annihilated the phantom of authority 
 which still lingered with the name of 
 khalif at Bagdad. They reduced into de- 
 pendance, and finally subverted, the Sel- 
 jukian dynasty of Persia, Syria, and Ico- 
 nium. The Turks of the latter kingdom 
 betook themselves to the mountainous 
 country, where they formed several petty 
 principalities, which subsisted by incur- 
 sions into the territory of the Moguls or 
 Greeks. The chief of one of these, na- 
 med Othman, at the end of the thirteenth 
 century [A. D. 1299], penetrated into the 
 province of Bithynia, from which his 
 posterity were never to withdraw.* 
 
 The empire of Constantinople had nev- 
 er recovered the blow it receiv- Declining 
 ed at the hands of the Latins, state of the 
 Most of the islands in the Archi- on** em* 
 pelago, and the provinces of pl 
 proper Greece from Thessaly southward, 
 were still possessed by those invaders. 
 The wealth and naval power of the em- 
 pire had passed into the hands of the 
 naritime republics ; Venice, Genoa, Pi- 
 sa, and Barcelona were enriched by a 
 commerce -which they carried oft as in- 
 dependent states within the precincts of 
 Constantinople, scarcely deigning to so- 
 icit the permission or recognise the su- 
 )remacy of its master, [A. D. 1352.] In 
 i great battle fought under the walls of 
 
 De Guignes, Hist, des Huns, t. iii., 1. 15. Gib- 
 )on, c. 64. 
 
 R 
 
258 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VI. 
 
 the city between the Venetian and Gen- 
 oese fleets, the weight of the Roman em- 
 pire, in Gibbon's expression, was scarce- 
 ly felt in the balance of these opulent 
 and powerful republics. Eight galleys 
 were the contribution of the Emperor 
 Cantacuzene to his Venetian allies ; and 
 upon their defeat he submitted to the ig- 
 nominy of excluding them for ever from 
 trading in his dominions. Meantime the 
 remains of the empire in Asia were seiz- 
 ed by the independent Turkish dynasties, 
 The otto- of which the most illustrious, that 
 mans. o f the Ottomans, occupied the 
 province of Bithynia. [A. D. 1341.] In- 
 vited by a Byzantine faction into Europe, 
 about the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, they fixed themselves in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the capital, and in the thirty 
 years' reign of Amurath I., subdued, with 
 little resistance, the province of Roma- 
 nia, and the small Christian kingdoms 
 that had been formed on the lower Dan- 
 ube. Bajazet, the successor of Amurath, 
 reduced the independent emirs of Anato- 
 lia to subjection, and, after long threaten- 
 ing Constantinople, invested it by sea 
 and land. [A. D. 1396.] The Greeks 
 called loudly upon their brethren of the 
 west for aid against the common enemy 
 of Christendom ; but the flower of French 
 chivalry had been slain or taken in the 
 battle of Nicopolis in Bulgaria,* where 
 the King of Hungary, notwithstanding 
 the heroism of these volunteers, was en- 
 tirely defeated by Bajazet. The Empe- 
 ror Manuel left his capital with a faint 
 hope of exciting the courts of Europe 
 to some decided efforts, by personal rep- 
 resentations of the danger ; and, during 
 his absence, Constantinople was saved, 
 not by a friend, indeed, but by a power 
 more formidable to her enemies than to 
 herself. 
 
 The loose masses of mankind, that 
 The Tartars without laws, agriculture, or 
 or Moguls of fixed dwellings, overspread the 
 vast central regions of Asia, 
 have at various times been impelled, by 
 necessity of subsistence, or through the 
 
 * The Hungarians fled in this battle, and desert- 
 ed their allies, according to the Memoires de Bou- 
 cicaut, c. 25. But Froissart, who seems a fairer 
 authority, imputes the defeat to the rashness of the 
 French. Part iv., ch. 79. The Count de Nevers 
 (Jean Sans Peur, afterward Duke of Burgundy), 
 who commanded the French, was made prisoner 
 with others of the royal blood, and ransomed at a 
 very high price. Many of eminent birth and merit 
 were put to death ; a fate from which Boucicaut 
 was saved by the interference of the Count de 
 Nevers, who might better himself have perished 
 with honour on that occasion, than survived to 
 plunge his country into civil war, and his name 
 into infamy. 
 
 casual appearance of a commanding ge- 
 nius, upon the domain of culture and civ- 
 ilization. Two principal roads connect 
 the nations of Tartary with those of the 
 west and south ; the one into Europe, 
 along the Sea of Azoph, and northern 
 coast of the Euxine ; the other across 
 the interval between the Bukharian moun- 
 tains and the Caspian into Persia. Four 
 times at least within the period of authen- 
 tic history, the Scythian tribes have ta- 
 ken the former course, and poured them- 
 selves into Europe, but each wave was 
 less effectual than the preceding. The 
 first of these was in the fourth and fifth 
 centuries, for we may range those rapid- 
 ly successive migrations of the Goths 
 and Huns together, when the Roman 
 empire fell to the ground, and the only 
 boundary of barbarian conquest was the 
 Atlantic Ocean upon the shores of Portu- 
 gal. The second wave came on with 
 the Hungarians in the tenth century, 
 whose ravages extended as far as the 
 southern provinces of France. A third 
 attack was sustained from the Moguls 
 under the children of Zingis, at the same 
 period as that which overwhelmed Persia. 
 The Russian monarchy was destroyed in 
 this invasion, and for two hundred years 
 that great country lay prostrate under the 
 yoke of the Tartars. As they advanced, 
 Poland and Hungary gave little opposi- 
 tion ; and the farthest nations of Europe 
 were appalled by the tempest. But Ger- 
 many was no longer as she had been in 
 the anarchy of the tenth century; the 
 Moguls were unused to resistance, and 
 still less inclined to regular warfare ; they 
 retired before the Emperor Frederick II. 
 [A. D. 1245], and the utmost points of 
 their western invasion were the cities of 
 Lignitz, in Silesia, and Neustadt, in Aus- 
 tria. In the fourth and last aggression 
 of the Tartars, their progress in Europe 
 is hardly perceptible ; the Moguls of Ti- 
 mur's army could only boast the destruc- 
 tion of Azoph, and the pillage of some 
 Russian provinces. Timur, the sover- 
 eign of these Moguls, and founder of 
 their second dynasty, which has been 
 more permanent and celebrated than that 
 of Zingis, had been the prince of a small 
 tribe in Transoxiana, between the Gihon 
 and Sirr, the doubtful frontier of settled 
 and pastoral nations. His own energy 
 and the weakness of his neighbours are 
 sufficient to explain the revolution he 
 effected. Like former conquerors, To- 
 grol Bek and Zingis, he chose the road 
 through Persia; and, meeting little re- 
 sistance from the disordered governments 
 of Asia, extended his empire on one side 
 
CHAP. VI.] 
 
 GREEKS AND SARACENS. 
 
 259 
 
 to the Syrian coast, while by successes 
 still more renowned^ though not belong- 
 ing to this place, it reached on the other 
 to the heart of Hindostan. In his old 
 age, the restlessness of ambition impelled 
 him against the Turks of Anatolia. Ba- 
 jazet hastened from the siege of Constan- 
 tinople to a more perilous contest : his 
 Defeat of defeat and captivity, in the plains 
 Bajazet. o f Angora [A. D. 1402], clouded 
 for a time the Ottoman crescent, and 
 preserved the wreck of the Greek empire 
 for fifty years longer. 
 
 The Moguls did not improve their 
 Danger of victory ; in the western parts of 
 constan- Asia, as in Hindostan, Timur was 
 tinopie. j-, ut a barbarian destroyer, though 
 at Samarcand a sovereign and a legisla- 
 tor. He gave up Anatolia to the sons of 
 Bajazet ; but the unity of their power 
 was broken ; and the Ottoman kingdom, 
 like those which had preceded, experien- 
 ced the evils of partition and mutual ani- 
 mosity. For about twenty years an op- 
 portunity was given to the Greeks of re- 
 covering part of their losses ; but they 
 were incapable of making the best use of 
 this advantage, and though they regained 
 possession of part of Romania, did not ex- 
 tirpate a strong Turkish colony that held 
 the city of Gallipoli in the Chersonesus. 
 [A. D. 1421.] When Amurath II., there- 
 fore, reunited under his vigorous scep- 
 tre the Ottoman monarchy, Constantino- 
 ple was exposed to another siege and 
 to fresh losses. Her walls, however, 
 repelled the enemy; and, during the 
 reign of Amurath, she had leisure to re- 
 peat those signals of distress which the 
 princes of Christendom refused to ob- 
 serve. The situation of Europe was in- 
 deed sufficiently inauspicious : France, 
 the original country of the crusades and of 
 chivalry, was involved in foreign and do- 
 mestic war; while a schism, apparently 
 interminable, rent the bosom of the Latin 
 church, and impaired the efficiency of the 
 only power that could unite and animate 
 its disciples in a religious war. Even 
 when the Roman pontiffs were best dis- 
 posed to rescue Constantinople from de- 
 struction, it was rather as masters than 
 as allies that they would interfere ; their 
 ungenerous bigotry, or rather pride, dic- 
 tated the submission of her church, and 
 the renunciation of her favourite article 
 of distinctive faith. The Greeks yielded 
 with reluctance and insincerity in the 
 council of Florence ; but soon rescinded 
 their treaty of union. Eugenius IV. pro- 
 cured a short diversion on the side of 
 Hungary ; but after the unfortunate bat- 
 tle of Warna, the Hungarians were abun- 
 R 2 
 
 dantly employed in self-defence. [A. D. 
 1444.] 
 
 The two monarchies which have suc- 
 cessively held their seat in the city of 
 Constantine, may be contrasted in the 
 circumstances of their decline. In the 
 present day we anticipate, with an assu- 
 rance that none can deem extravagant, 
 the approaching subversion of the Otto- 
 man power ; but the signs of internal 
 weakness have not yet been confirmed 
 by the dismemberment of provinces ; and 
 the arch of dominion, that long since has 
 seemed nodding to its fall, and totters at 
 every blast of the north, still rests upon 
 the landmarks of ancient conquest, and 
 spans the ample regions from Bagdad to 
 Belgrade. Far different were the events 
 that preceded the dissolution of the Greek 
 empire. Every province was in turn sub- 
 dued ; every city opened her gates Ug fal] 
 to the conqueror ; the limbs were 
 lopped off one by one ; but the pulse still 
 beat at the heart, and the majesty of the 
 Roman name was ultimately confined to 
 the walls of Constantinople. Before Ma- 
 homet II. planted his cannon against 
 them, he had completed every smaller 
 conquest, and deprived the expiring em- 
 pire of every hope of succour or delay. 
 It was necessary that Constantinople 
 should fall ; but the magnanimous resigna- 
 tion of her emperor bestows an honour 
 upon her fall which her prosperity sel- 
 dom earned. The long deferred but in- 
 evitable moment arrived [A. D. 1453], 
 and the last of the Cesars (I will not say 
 of the Palaeologi) folded round him the 
 imperial mantle, and remembered the 
 name which he represented in the dignity 
 of heroic death. It is thus that the intel- 
 lectual principle, when enfeebled by dis- 
 ease or age, is said to rally its energies 
 in the presence of death, and to pour the 
 radiance of unclouded reason around the 
 last struggles of dissolution. 
 
 Though the fate of Constantinople had 
 been protracted beyond all rea- A i arm ex . 
 sonable expectation, the actual cited by it 
 intelligence operated like that inEur P e - 
 of sudden calamity. A sentiment of 
 consternation, perhaps of self-reproach, 
 thrilled to the heart of Christendom. 
 There seemed no longer any thing to 
 divert the Ottoman armies from Hunga- 
 ry ; and, if Hungary should be subdued, it 
 was evident that both Italy and the Ger- 
 man empire were exposed to invasion.* 
 
 * Sive vincitur Hungaria, sive coacta jungitnr 
 Turcis, neque Italia neque Germania tuta ent, 
 neque satis Rherius Gallos secures reddet. ^En. 
 Sylv., p. 678. This is part of a discourse pronoun- 
 ced by ^Eneas Sylvius before the diet of Frankfort ; 
 
260 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAK VI. 
 
 A general union of Christian powers was 
 required to withstand this common ene- 
 my. But the popes, who had so often 
 armed them against each other, wasted 
 their spiritual and political counsels in 
 attempting to restore unanimity. War 
 was proclaimed against the Turks at the 
 diet of Frankfort, in 1454 ; but no efforts 
 were made to carry the menace into ex- 
 ecution. No prince could have sat on 
 the imperial throne more unfitted for the 
 emergency than Frederick III. ; his mean 
 spirit and narrow capacity exposed him 
 to the contempt of mankind ; his avarice 
 and duplicity ensured the hatred of Aus- 
 tria and Hungary. During the papacy of 
 Pius II., whose heart was thoroughly en- 
 gaged in this legitimate crusade, a more 
 specious attempt was made by convening 
 a European congress at Mantua. Almost 
 all the sovereigns attended by their en- 
 voys ; it was concluded that 50,000 men- 
 at-arms should be raised, and a tax levied 
 for three years of one tenth from the 
 revenues of the clergy, one thirtieth from 
 those of the laity, and one twentieth from 
 the capital of the Jews.* Pius engaged 
 to head this armament in person; but 
 when he appeared next year at Ancona, 
 the appointed place of embarcation, the 
 princes had failed in all their promises of 
 men and money ; and he found only a head- 
 long crowd of adventurers, destitute of 
 every necessary, and expecting to be fed 
 and paid at the pope's expense. It was 
 not by such a body that Mahomet could 
 be expelled from Constantinople. If the 
 Christian sovereigns had given a steady 
 and sincere co-operation, the contest 
 would still have been arduous and uncer- 
 instituiion of tain. In the early crusades, 
 Janizaries, the superiority of arms, of skill, 
 and even of discipline, had been uniform- 
 ly on the side of Europe. But the pres- 
 ent circumstances were far from similar. 
 An institution, begun by the first and per- 
 fected by the second Amurath, had given 
 to the Turkish armies, what their enemies 
 still wanted, military subordination and 
 veteran experience. Aware, as it seems, 
 
 of the real superiority of Europeans in 
 war, these sultans selected the stoutest 
 youths from their Bulgarian, Servian, or 
 Albanian captives, who were educated in 
 habits of martial discipline, and formed 
 into a regular force with the name of Jan- 
 izaries. After conquest had put an end 
 to personal captivity, a tax of every fifth 
 male child was raised upon the Christian 
 population for the same purpose. The 
 arm of Europe was thus turned upon her- 
 self ; and the western nations must have 
 contended with troops of hereditary ro- 
 bustness and intrepidity, whose emulous 
 enthusiasm for the country that had adopt- 
 ed them was controlled by habitual obe- 
 dience to their commanders.* 
 
 Yet, forty years after the fall of 
 Constantinople, at the epoch of Charles 
 VIII. 's expedition into Italy, the just ap- 
 prehensions of European statesmen might 
 have gradually subsided. Except the 
 Morea, Negropont, and a few other un- 
 important conquests, no real suspension of 
 progress had been made by the ottoman 
 the Ottomans. Mahomet II. con <i uests - 
 had been kept at bay by the Hungarians ; 
 he had been repulsed with some ignomi- 
 ny by the knights of St. John from the 
 Island of Rhodes. A petty chieftain de- 
 
 which, though too declamatory, like most of his 
 writings, is an interesting illustration of the state of 
 Europe, and of the impression produced by that 
 calamity. Spondanus, ad an. 1454, has given large 
 extracts from this oration. 
 
 * Spondanus. Neither Charles VII., nor even 
 Philip of Burgundy, who had made the loudest 
 professions, and pledged himself in a fantastic pa- 
 geant at his court, soon after the capture of Con- 
 stantinople, to undertake this crusade, was sincere 
 in his promises. The former pretended apprehen- 
 sions of invasion from England, as an excuse for 
 sending no troops ; which, considering the situation 
 of England in 1459, was a bold attempt upon the 
 credulity of mankind. 
 
 * In the long declamation of ^Eneas Sylvius be- 
 fore the diet of Frankfort, in 1454, he has the follow- 
 ing contrast between the European and Turkish 
 I militia ; a good specimen of the artifice with which 
 an ingenious orator can disguise the truth, while 
 he seems to be stating it most precisely. Confer- 
 amus mine Turcos et vos invicem ; et quid speran- 
 dum sit, si cum illis pugnetis, examinemus. Vos 
 nati ad arma, illi tracti. Vos armati, illi inermes ; 
 vos gladios versatis, illi cultris utuntur ; vos balis- 
 tas tenditis, illi arcus trahunt; vos loricae thora- 
 cesque protegunt, illos culcitra tegit ; vos equos re- 
 gitis, illi ab equis reguntur ; vos nobiles in bellum 
 ducitis, illi servos aut artifices cogunt, &c. &c., p. 
 685. This, however, had little effect upon the 
 hearers, who were better judges of military affairs 
 than the secretary of Frederick III. Pius II., or 
 ^Eneas Sylvius, was a lively writer and a skilful in- 
 triguer. Long experience had given him a consid- 
 erable insight into European politics ; and his 
 views are usually clear and sensible. Though not 
 so learned as some popes, he knevy much better 
 what was going forward in his own time. But the 
 vanity of displaying his eloquence betrayed him into 
 a strange folly, when he addressed a very long let- 
 ter to Mahomet II., explaining the Catholic faith, 
 and urging him to be baptized ; in which case, so 
 far from preaching a crusade against the Turks, he 
 would gladly make use of their power to recover 
 the rights of the church. Some of his inducements 
 are curious, and must, if made public, have been 
 highly gratifying to his friend Frederick III. Quip- 
 pe ut arbitramur, si Christianus fuisses, mortuo 
 Ladislao Ungariae et Bohemias rege, nemo praeter 
 te sua regna fuisset adeptus. Sperassent Ungari 
 post diuturna bellorum mala sub tuo regimine pa- 
 cem, et illos Bohemi secuti fuissent ; sed cum 
 esses nostrae religionis hostis, elegerunt Ungari, 
 &c. Epist. 396. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 261 
 
 fied this mighty conqueror for twenty 
 years in the mountains of Epirus ; and 
 the persevering courage of his desulto- 
 ry warfare with such trifling resources, 
 and so little prospect of ultimate success, 
 may justify the exaggerated admiration 
 with which his contemporaries honoured 
 the names of Scander^lg. Once only 
 the crescent was displayed on the Cala- 
 brian coast [A. D. 1480] ; but the city of 
 Otranto remained but a year in the pos- 
 
 session of Mahomet. On his death a dis- 
 puted succession involved his children in 
 civil war. Bajazet, the eldest, obtained 
 the victory; but his rival brother Zizim 
 fled to Rhodes, from whence he was re- 
 moved to France, and afterward to Rome. 
 Apprehensions of this exiled prince seem 
 to have dictated a pacific policy to the 
 reigning sultan, whose character did not 
 possess the usual energy of Ottoman 
 sovereigns. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HISTORY OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWER DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Wealth of the Clergy its Sources. Encroach- 
 ments on Ecclesiastical Property their Juris- 
 diction arbitrative coercive their Political 
 Power. Supremacy of the Crown. Charle- 
 magne. Change after his Death, and Encroach- 
 ments of the Church in the ninth Century. Pri- 
 macy of the See of Rome its early Stage. 
 Gregory I. Council of Frankfort false Decre- 
 tals. Progress of Papal Authority. Effects of 
 Excommunication. Lothaire. State of the 
 Church in the tenth Century. Marriage of 
 Priests. Simony. Episcopal Elections. Im- 
 perial Authority over the Popes. Disputes con- 
 cerning Investitures. Gregory VII. and Henry 
 IV. Concordat of Calixtus. Election by Chap- 
 tersgeneral System of Gregory VII. Progress 
 of Papal usurpations in the twelfth Century. 
 Innocent III. his Character and Schemes con- 
 tinual Progress of the Papacy. Canon Law. 
 Mendicant Orders dispensing Power. Taxa- 
 tion of the Clergy by the Popes. Encroachments 
 on Rights of Patronage. Mandats, Reserves, 
 &c. General Disaffection towards the See of 
 Rome in the thirteenth century. Progress of 
 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction. Immunity of the 
 Clergy in Criminal Cases. Restraints imposed 
 upon their Jurisdiction upon their Acquisition 
 of Property. Boniface VIII. his Quarrel with 
 Philip the Fair its Termination. Gradual De- 
 cline of Papal Authority. Louis of Bavaria. 
 Secession to Avignon and Return to Rome. 
 Conduct of Avignon Popes contested Election 
 of Urban and Clement produces the great Schism. 
 Council of Pisa Constance Basle. Meth- 
 ods adopted to restrain the Papal usurpations in 
 England, Germany, and France, Liberties of 
 the Gallican Church. Decline of the Papal In- 
 fluence in Italy. 
 
 AT the irruption of the northern inva- 
 f ders into the Roman empire, 
 thVchurch they found the clergy already 
 under the endowed with extensive posses- 
 sions. Besides the spontaneous 
 oblations upon which the ministers of the 
 Christian church had originally subsist- 
 ed, they had obtained, even under the 
 pagan emperors, by concealment or con- 
 nivance, for the Roman law did not per- 
 mit a tenure of lands in mortmain, cer- 
 
 tain immoveable estates, the revenues of 
 which were applicable to their own main- 
 tenance and that of the poor.* These, 
 indeed, were precarious, and liable to 
 confiscation in times of persecution. But 
 it was among the first effects of the con- 
 version of Constantine, to give not only 
 a security, but a legal sanction, to the ter- 
 ritorial acquisitions of the church. The 
 edict of Milan, in 313, recognises the 
 actual estates of ecclesiastical corpora- 
 tions.! Another, published in 321, grants 
 to all the subjects of the empire the pow- 
 er of bequeathing their property to the 
 church.! His own liberality and that of 
 his successors set an example which did 
 not want imitators. Passing rapidly 
 from a condition of distress and persecu- 
 tion to the summit of prosperity, the 
 church degenerated as rapidly from her 
 ancient purity, and forfeited the respect 
 of future ages in the same proportion as 
 she acquired the blind veneration of her 
 own. Covetousness, especially, became 
 almost a characteristic vice. Valentini- 
 an I., in 370, prohibited the clergy from 
 receiving the bequest of women ; a modi- 
 fication more discreditable than any gen- 
 eral law could have been. And several 
 of the fathers severely reprobate the pre- 
 vailing avidity of their contemporaries. 
 The devotion of the conquering na- 
 tions, as it was still less enlight- increased 
 ened than that of the subjects of after its 
 the empire, so was it still more subverelon - 
 
 * Giannone, Istoria di Napoli, 1. ii., c. 8. Gib- 
 bon, c. 15 and c. 20. F. Paul's Treatise on Bene- 
 fices, c. 4. The last writer does not wholly con- 
 firm this position ; but a comparison of the three 
 seems to justify my text. 
 
 f Giannone. Gibbon, ubi supra. F. Paul, c. 5. 
 
 j Idem, Ibid. 
 
 $ Giannone, ubi supra. F. Paul, c. 6 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 munificent. They left, indeed, the wor- 
 ship of Hesus and Taranis in their for- 
 ests ; but they retained the elementary 
 principles of that, and of all barbarous 
 idolatry, a superstitious reverence for the 
 priesthood, a credulity that seemed to in- 
 vite imposture, and a confidence in the 
 efficacy of gifts to expiate offences. Of 
 this temper it is undeniable that the min- 
 isters of religion, influenced probably not 
 so much by personal covetousness as by 
 zeal for the interests of their order, took 
 advantage. Many of the peculiar and 
 prominent characteristics in the faith and 
 discipline of those ages appear to have 
 been either introduced, or sedulously 
 promoted, for the purposes of sordid 
 fraud. To those purposes conspired the 
 veneration for relics, the worship of ima- 
 ges, the idolatry of saints and martyrs, 
 the religious inviolability of sanctuaries, 
 the consecration of cemeteries, but, above 
 all, the doctrine of purgatoiy, and masses 
 for the relief of the dead. A creed thus 
 contrived, operating upon the minds of 
 barbarians, lavish though rapacious, and 
 devout though dissolute, naturally caused 
 a torrent of opulence to pour in upon the 
 church. Donations of land were contin- 
 ually made to the bishops, and, in still 
 more ample proportion, to the monastic 
 foundations. These had not been very 
 numerous in the west till the begin- 
 ning of the sixth century, when Benedict 
 established his celebrated rule.* A more 
 remarkable show of piety, a more abso- 
 lute seclusion from the world, forms 
 more impressive and edifying, prayers 
 and masses more constantly repeated, 
 gave to the professed in these institu- 
 tions a preference over the secular 
 clergy. 
 
 The ecclesiastical hierarchy never re- 
 ceived any territorial endowment by law, 
 either under the Roman empire or the 
 kingdoms erected upon its ruins. But 
 the voluntary munificence of princes, as 
 well as their subjects, amply supplied the 
 place of a more universal provision. 
 Large private estates, or, as they were 
 termed, patrimonies, not only within their 
 own diocesses, but sometimes in distant 
 countries, sustained the dignity of the 
 principal sees, and especially that of 
 Rome.f The French monarchs of the 
 first dynasty, the Carlovingian family 
 and their great chief, the Saxon line of 
 emperors, the kings of England and 
 Leon, set hardly any bounds to their lib- 
 
 * Giannone, 1. iii., c. 6 ; 1. iv., c. 12. Treatise 
 on Benefices, c. 8. Fleury, Huitieme Discours sur 
 1'Hist. Ecclesiastique. Muratori, Dissert. 65. 
 
 f St. Marc, t. i.,p. 281. Giannone, 1. iv., c. 12. 
 
 erality, as numerous charters still extant 
 in diplomatic collections attest. Many 
 churches possessed seven or eight thou- 
 sand mansi ; one with but two thousand 
 passed for only indifferently rich.* But 
 it must be remarked, that many of these 
 donations are of lands uncultivated and 
 unappropriated.^ The monasteries ac- 
 quired legitimate riches by the culture 
 of these deserted tracts, and by the pru- 
 dent management of their revenues, 
 which were less exposed to the ordinary 
 means of dissipation than those of the 
 laity. Their wealth, continually accumu- 
 lated, enabled them to become the regular 
 purchasers of landed estates, especially 
 in the time of the crusades, when the fiefs 
 of the nobility were constantly in the 
 market for sale or mortgage. J 
 
 If the possessions of ecclesiastical 
 communities had all been as Sometime8 
 fairly earned, we could find no- improperly 
 thing in them to reprehend. ac quirea. 
 But other sources of wealth were less 
 pure ; and they derived their wealth from 
 many sources. Those who entered into 
 a monastery threw frequently their whole 
 estates into the common stock ; and even 
 the children of rich parents were expect- 
 ed to make a donation of land on assu- 
 ming the cowl. Some gave their proper- 
 ty to the church before entering on milita- 
 ry expeditions ; gifts were made by some 
 to take effect after their lives, and be- 
 quests by many in the terrors of dissolu- 
 tion. Even those legacies to charitable 
 purposes, which the clergy could with 
 more decency and speciousness recom- 
 mend, and of which the administration 
 was generally confined to them, were fre- 
 quently applied to their own benefit. $ 
 They failed not, above all, to inculcate 
 upon the wealthy sinner, that no atone- 
 ment could be so acceptable to Heaven 
 as liberal presents to its earthly dele- 
 gates.! To die without allotting a por- 
 
 * Schmidt, t. ii., p. 205. 
 
 t Muratori, Dissert. 65. Du Cange, v. Eremus. 
 
 j Heeren, Essai sur les Croisades, p. 166. 
 Schmidt, t. iii., p. 293. 
 
 Primo sacris pastoribus data est facultas, ut 
 haereditatis portio in pauperes et egenos disperge- 
 retur; sed sensim ecclesiae quoque in pauperum 
 censum venerunt, atque intestate gentis mens cre- 
 dita est proclivior in eas futura fuisse : qua ex re 
 pinguius illarum patrimonium evasit. Immo epis- 
 copi ipsi in rem suam ejusmodi consuetudinem 
 interdum convertebant : ac tributum evasit, quod 
 antea pii moris fuit. Muratori, Antiquitates Ita- 
 liae, t. v., Dissert. 67. 
 
 || Muratori, Dissert. 67 (Antiquit. Italic, t. v., 
 p. 1055), has preserved a curious charter of an Ital- 
 ian count, who declares, that, struck with reflec- 
 tions upon his sinful state, he had taken counsel 
 with certain religious how he should atone for his 
 offences. Accepto consilio ab iis excepto si re- 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 263 
 
 tion of worldly wealth to pious uses, 
 was accounted almost like suicide, or a 
 refusal of the last sacraments ; and hence 
 intestacy passed for a sort of fraud upon 
 the church, which she punished by taking 
 the administration of the deceased's ef- 
 fects into her own hands. This, howev- 
 er, was peculiar to England, and seems 
 to have been the case there only between 
 the reigns of Henry III. and Edward III., 
 when the bishop took a portion of the in- 
 testate's personal estate, for the advan- 
 tage of the church and poor, instead of dis- 
 tributing it among his next of kin.* The 
 canonical penances imposed upon repent- 
 ant offenders, extravagantly severe in 
 themselves, were commuted for money 
 or for immoveable possessions ; a fertile, 
 though scandalous source of monastic 
 wealth, which the popes afterward di- 
 verted into their own coffers by the 
 usage of dispensations and indulgences.! 
 The church lands enjoyed an immunity 
 from taxes, though not in general from 
 military service, when of a feudal tenure. 
 But their tenure was frequently in what 
 was called frankalmoign, without any 
 obligation of service. Hence it became 
 a customary fraud of lay proprietors to 
 grant estates to the church, which they 
 received again by way of fief or lease, 
 exempted from public burdens. And as 
 if all these means of accumulating what 
 they could not legitimately enjoy were 
 insufficient, the monks prostituted their 
 knowledge of writing to the purpose of 
 forging charters in their own favour, 
 which might easily impose upon an igno- 
 rant age, since it has required a peculiar 
 science to detect them in modern times. 
 Such rapacity might seem incredible in 
 men cut off from the pursuits of life and 
 the hope of posterity, if we did not be- 
 hold every day the unreasonableness of 
 avarice, and the fervour of professional 
 attachment.^ 
 
 nunciare saeculo possem, nullum esse melius inter 
 eleemosinarum virtutes, quam si de propriis meis 
 substantiis in monasterium concederem. Hoc 
 consilium ab iis libenter, et ardentissimo animo ego 
 accept. 
 
 * Selden, vol. iii., p. 1676. Prynne's Constitu- 
 tions, vol. iii., p. 18. Blackstone, vol. ii., chap. 32. 
 In France, the lord of the fief seems to have taken 
 the whole spoil. Du Cange, v. Intestatus. 
 
 t Muratori, Dissert. 68. 
 
 j Muratori's 65th, 67th, and 68th Dissertations 
 on the antiquities of Italy, have furnished the prin- 
 cipal materials of my text, with Father Paul's trea- 
 tise on Benefices, especially chaps. 19 and 29 ; 
 Giannone, loc. cit. and 1. iv., c. 12 ; 1. v., c. 6 ; 1. x., 
 c. 12. Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. i., p. 370 ; 
 t. ii., p. 203, 462; t. iv., p. 202. Fleury, III., Dis- 
 cours sur PHist. Eccles. Du Cange, voc. Pre- 
 caria. 
 
 As an additional source of revenue, 
 and in imitation of the Jewish law, the 
 payment of tithes was recommended or 
 enjoined. These, however, were not ap- 
 plicable at first to the maintenance of a 
 resident clergy. Parochial divis- 
 ions, as they now exist, did not 
 take place, at least in some countries, till 
 several centuries after the establishment 
 of Christianity.* The rural churches, 
 erected successively as the necessities 
 of a congregation required, or the piety 
 of a landlord suggested, were in fact a 
 sort of chapels dependant on the cathe- 
 dral, and served by itinerant ministers at 
 the bishop's discretion. The bishop him- 
 self received the tithes, and apportioned 
 them as he thought fit. A capitulary of 
 Charlemagne, however, regulates their di- 
 vision into three parts ; one for the bish- 
 op and his clergy, a second for the poor, 
 and a third for the support of the fabric 
 of the church. f Some of the rural church- 
 es obtained by episcopal concessions the 
 privileges of baptism and burial, which 
 were accompanied with a fixed share of 
 tithes, and seem to imply the residence 
 of a minister. The same privileges were 
 gradually extended to the rest ; and thus 
 a complete parochial division was finally 
 established. But this was hardly the 
 case in England till near the time of the 
 conquest.! 
 
 The slow and gradual manner in which 
 parochial churches became independent, 
 appears to be of itself a sufficient answer 
 to those who ascribe a great antiquity to 
 the universal payment of tithes. There 
 are, however, more direct proofs that this 
 species of ecclesiastical property was 
 acquired not only by degrees, but with 
 considerable opposition. We find the 
 payment of tithes first enjoined by the 
 canons of a provincial council in France 
 near the end of the sixth century. From 
 the ninth to the end of the twelfth, or 
 even later, it is continually enforced by 
 similar authority. Father Paul remarks, 
 that most of the sermons preached about 
 the eighth century inculcate this as a 
 duty, and even seem to place the summit 
 of Christian perfection in its perform- 
 
 * Muratori, Dissert. 74, and Fleury, Institutions 
 au Droit Ecclesiastique, t. i., p. 162, refer the ori- 
 gin of parishes to the fourth century ; but this 
 must be limited to the most populous parts of the 
 empire. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. ii., p. 206. This seems to have 
 been founded on an ancient canon. F. Paul, c. 7. 
 
 \ Collier's Ecclesiastical History, p. 229. 
 
 $ Selden's History of Tithes, vol. iii., p. 1108, 
 edit. Wilkins. Tithes are said by Giannone tq 
 have been enforced by some papal decrees in the 
 sixth century, 1. iii., c. 6. 
 
264 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 ance.* This reluctant submission of the 
 people to a general and permanent tribute 
 is perfectly consistent with the eagerness 
 displayed by them in accumulating vol- 
 untary donations upon the church. Char- 
 lemagne was the first who gave the con- 
 firmation of a civil statute to these ec- 
 clesiastical injunctions; no one at least 
 has, so far as I know, adduced any ear- 
 lier law for the payment of tithes than 
 one of his capitularies, f But it would be 
 precipitate to infer, either that the prac- 
 tice had not already gained ground to a 
 considerable extent, through the influ- 
 ence of ecclesiastical authority, or, on 
 the other hand, that it became universal 
 in consequence of the commands of Char- 
 lemagne. | In the subsequent ages, it 
 was very common to appropriate tithes, 
 which had originally been payable to the 
 bishop, either towards the support of par- 
 ticular churches, or, according to the prev- 
 alent superstition, to monastic founda- 
 tions. These arbitrary consecrations, 
 though the subject of complaint, lasted, 
 by a sort of prescriptive right of the land- 
 holder, till about the year 1200. It was 
 nearly at the same time that the obliga- 
 tion of paying tithes, which had been ori- 
 ginally confined to those called predial, 
 or the fruits of the earth, was extended, 
 at least in theory, to every species of 
 profit, and to the wages of every kind of 
 labour. || 
 
 Yet there were many hinderances that 
 spoliation thwarted the clergy in their ac- 
 of cimrch quisition of opulence, and a sort 
 property. Q f re fl UXj t na t set sometimes very 
 strongly against them. In times of bar- 
 barous violence, nothing can thoroughly 
 compensate for the inferiority of physi- 
 cal strength and prowess. The ecclesi- 
 astical history of the middle ages presents 
 one long contention of fraud against rob- 
 bery ; of acquisitions made by the church 
 
 * Treatise on Benefices, c. 11. 
 
 t Mably (Observations sur 1'Hist. de France, t. 
 i., p. 238 et 438) has, with remarkable rashness, 
 attacked the current opinion, that Charlemagne 
 established the legal obligation of tithes, and de- 
 nied that any of his capitularies bear such an inter- 
 pretation- Those which he quotes have indeed a 
 different meaning ; but he has overlooked an ex- 
 press enactment in 789 (Baluzii Capitularia, t. i., p. 
 253), which admits of no question ; and I believe 
 that there are others in confirmation. 
 
 ^ The grant of Ethelwolf in 855 seems to be 
 the most probable origin of the right to tithes in 
 England. Whether this law, for such it was, met 
 with constant regard, is another question. It is 
 said by Marina, that tithes were not legally estab- 
 lished in Castile till the reign of Alfonso X. En- 
 sayo sobre las siete partidas, c. 359. 
 
 Selden, p. 1114, et seq. Coke, 2 Inst., p. 641. 
 
 I! Selden's History of Tithes. Treatise on Ben- 
 efices, c. 28. Giannone, 1. x., c. 12. 
 
 through such means as I have described, 
 and torn from her by lawless power. 
 Those very men who, in the hour of 
 sickness and impending death, showered 
 the gifts of expiatory devotion upon her 
 altars, had passed the sunshine of their 
 lives in sacrilegious plunder. Notwith- 
 standing the frequent instances of ex- 
 treme reverence for religious institutions 
 among the nobility, we should be deceiv- 
 ed in supposing this to be their general 
 character. Rapacity, not less insatiable 
 than that of the abbots, was commonly 
 united with a daring fierceness that the 
 abbots could not resist. In every coun- 
 try, we find continual lamentation over 
 the plunder of ecclesiastical possessions. 
 Charles Martel is reproached with having 
 given the first notorious example of such 
 spoliation. It was not, however, com- 
 monly practised by sovereigns. But the 
 evil was not the less universally felt. 
 The parochial tithes, especially, as the 
 hand of robbery falls heaviest upon the 
 weak, were exposed to unlawful seizure. 
 In the tenth and eleventh centuries noth- 
 ing was more common than to see the 
 revenues of benefices in the hands of lay 
 impropriators, who employed curates at 
 the cheapest rate ; an abuse that has nev- 
 er ceased in the church.* Several at- 
 tempts were made to restore these tithes ; 
 but even Gregory VII. did not venture to 
 proceed in it;f and indeed it is highly 
 probable that they might be held in some 
 instances by a lawful title. | Sometimes 
 the property of monasteries was dilapida- 
 ted by corrupt abbots, whose acts, how- 
 ever clandestine and unlawful, it was not 
 easy to revoke. And both the bishops 
 and convents were obliged to invest pow- 
 erful lay protectors, under the name of 
 advocates, with considerable fiefs, as the 
 price of their assistance against depreda- 
 tors. But these advocates became too 
 often themselves the spoilers, and oppres- 
 sed the helpless ecclesiastics for whose 
 defence they had been engaged. 
 
 * Du Cange, voc. Abbas. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. iv., p. 204. At an assembly held at 
 St. Denis in 997, the bishops proposed to restore 
 the tithes to the secular clergy : but such a tumult 
 was excited by this attempt, that the meeting was 
 broken up. Recueil des Historiens, t. xi,, praefat, 
 p. 212. 
 
 t Selden's Hist, of Tithes, p. 1136. The third 
 council of Lateran restrains laymen from transfer- 
 ring their impropriated tithes to other laymen. 
 Velly, Hist, de France, t. iii., p. 235. This seems 
 tacitly to admit that their possession was lawful, at 
 least by prescription. 
 
 For the injuries sustained by ecclesiastical pro- 
 prietors, see Muratpri, Dissert. 72. Du Cange, v. 
 Advocatus. Schmidt, t. ii., p. 220, 470 ; t. iii., p. 
 290 ; t. iv., p. 188, 202. Recueil des Historiens, t. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 265 
 
 If it had not been for these drawbacks 
 the clergy must, one would imagine, have 
 almost acquired the exclusive property of 
 the soil. They did enjoy nearly one half 
 of England, and, I believe, a greater pro- 
 portion in some countries of Europe.* 
 They had reached, perhaps, their ze- 
 nith in respect of territorial property 
 about the conclusion of the twelfth cen- 
 tury.f After that time, the disposition 
 to enrich the clergy by pious donations 
 grew more languid, and was put under 
 certain legal restraints, to which I shall 
 hereafter advert ; but they became rather 
 more secure from forcible usurpations. 
 
 The acquisitions of wealth by the 
 -,, fi church were hardly so remarka- 
 
 HfCCIcSslaStl- - * . _ _ 
 
 caijurisdic- ble, and scarcely contributed so 
 tion. much to her greatness, as those 
 
 innovations upon the ordinary course of 
 justice, which fall under the head of 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction and immunity. 
 It is hardly, perhaps, necessary to cau- 
 tion the reader, that rights of territorial 
 justice, possessed by ecclesiastics in vir- 
 tue of their fiefs, are by no means in- 
 cluded in this description. Episcopal ju- 
 risdiction, properly so called, may be 
 considered as depending upon the choice 
 of litigant parties, upon their condition, 
 and upon the subject matter of their dif- 
 ferences. 
 
 1. The arbitrative authority of ecclesi- 
 Arbitra- astical pastors, if not coeval with 
 tive. Christianity, grew up very early in 
 the church, and was natural, or even ne- 
 cessary, to an insulated and persecuted 
 society.! Accustomed to feel a strong 
 aversion to the imperial tribunals, and 
 even to consider a recurrence to them as 
 hardly consistent with their profession, 
 the early Christians retained somewhat 
 of a similar prejudice even after the es- 
 tablishment of their religion. The arbi- 
 tration of their bishops still seemed a less 
 objectionable mode of settling differen- 
 
 xi., praefat., p. 184. Martenne, Thesaurus Anec- 
 dotorum, t. i.. p. 595. Vaissette, Hist, de Langue- 
 doc, t. ii., p. 109, and appendix, passim. 
 
 * Turner's Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 413, from 
 Avesbury, According to a calculation founded on 
 a passage in Knyghton, the revenue if the Eng- 
 lish church in 1337 amounted to 730,0<fr marks per 
 annum. Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. 
 i., p. 519. Histoire du Droit public EcsJ.es. Fran- 
 cois, t. i., p. 214. 
 
 t The great age of monasteries in England was 
 in the reigns of Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II. 
 Lyttleton's Henry II., vol. ii., p. 329. David I. of 
 Scotland, contemporary with Henry II., was also a 
 noted founder of monasteries. Dalrymple's Annals. 
 
 t 1 Corinth., c. iv. The word f^ovdevrjfifvovs, ren- 
 dered in our version " of no reputation," has been 
 interpreted by some to mean, persons destitute of 
 coercive authority, referees. The passage at least 
 tends to discourage suits before a secular judge. 
 
 ces. And this arbitrative jurisdiction was 
 powerfully supported by a law of Con- 
 stantine, which directed the civil magis- 
 trate to enforce the execution of episco- 
 pal awards. Another edict, ascribed to 
 the same emperor, and annexed to the 
 Theodosian code, extended the jurisdic- 
 tion of the bishops to all causes which 
 either party chose to refer to it, even 
 where they had already commenced in a 
 secular court, and declared the bishop's 
 sentence not subject to appeal. This 
 edict has clearly been proved to be a 
 forgery. It is evident, by a novel of Va~ 
 lentinian III., about 450, that the church 
 had still no jurisdiction in questions of 
 a temporal nature, except by means of 
 the joint reference of contending parties. 
 Some expressions, indeed, used by the 
 emperor, seem intended to repress the 
 spirit of encroachment upon the civil 
 magistrates, which had probably begun 
 to manifest itself. Charlemagne, how- 
 ever, deceived by the spurious constitu- 
 tion in the Theodosian code, repeats all 
 its absurd and enormous provisions in one 
 of his capitularies.* But it appears so 
 inconceivable, that an enlightened sov- 
 ereign should deliberately place in the 
 hierarchy this absolute control over his 
 own magistrates, that one might be justi- 
 fied in suspecting some kind of fraud to 
 have been practised upon him, or, at 
 least, that he was not thoroughly aware of 
 the extent of his concession. Certain it 
 is, that we do not find the church, in her 
 most arrogant temper, asserting the full 
 privileges contained in this capitulary, f 
 
 2. If it was considered almost as a 
 general obligation upon the prim- Coercive 
 itive Christians to decide their over the 
 civil disputes by internal arbitra- clergy in 
 tion, much more would this be in- C1 
 cumbent upon the clergy. The canons 
 of several councils, in the fourth and fifth 
 centuries, sentence a bishop or priest to 
 deposition who should bring any suit, 
 civil or even criminal, before a secular 
 magistrate. This must, it should appear, 
 be confined to causes where the defend- 
 ant was a clerk, since the ecclesiastical 
 court had hitherto no coercive jurisdic- 
 tion over the laity. It was not .so easy 
 to induce laymen, in their suits against 
 clerks, to prefer the episcopal tribunal. 
 The emperors were not at all disposed to 
 favour this species of encroachment till 
 
 * Baluzii Capitularia, t. i., p. 985. 
 
 t Gibbon, c. xx. Giannone, 1. ii., c. 8 ; 1. iii., c, 6, 
 . vi., c. 7. Schmidt, t. ii., p. 208. Fleury, 7 
 Discours, and Institutions au Droit Eccl6siastique, 
 t. ii., p. 1. Memoires de 1'Academie des Inscrip- 
 tions, t. xxx vii., p. 566. 
 
266 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 the reign of Justinian, who ordered civil 
 suits against ecclesiastics to be carried 
 only before the bishops. Yet this was 
 accompanied by a provision, that a party 
 dissatisfied with the sentence might ap- 
 ply to the secular magistrate, not as an 
 appellant, but a co-ordinate jurisdiction ; 
 for, if different judgments were given in 
 the two courts, the process was ultimate- 
 ly referred to the emperor.* But the 
 early Merovingian kings adopted the ex- 
 clusive jurisdiction of the bishop over 
 causes wherein clerks were interested, 
 without any of the checks which Justin- 
 ian had provided. Many laws enacted 
 during their reigns, and under Charle- 
 magne, strictly prohibit the temporal 
 magistrates from entertaining complaints 
 against the children of the church. 
 
 This jurisdiction over the civil causes 
 Andcrim- of clerks was not immediately 
 ioai suits, attended with an equally exclu- 
 sive cognizance of criminal offences im- 
 puted to them, wherein the state is so 
 deeply interested, and the church could 
 inflict so inadequate a punishment. Jus- 
 tinian appears to have reserved such of- 
 fences for trial before the imperial ma- 
 gistrate, though with a material provision 
 that the sentence against a clerk should 
 not be executed without the consent of 
 the bishop, or the final decision of the 
 emperor. The bishop is not expressly 
 invested with this controlling power by 
 the laws of the Merovingians ; but they 
 enact that he must be present at the trial 
 of one of his clerks ; which probably was 
 intended to declare the necessity of his 
 concurrence in the judgment. The epis- 
 copal order was indeed absolutely ex- 
 empted from secular jurisdiction by Jus- 
 tinian ; a privilege which it had vainly 
 endeavoured to establish under the ear- 
 lier emperors. France permitted the 
 same immunity; Chilperic, one of the 
 most arbitrary of her kings, did not ven- 
 ture to charge some of his bishops with 
 treason, except before a council of their 
 brethren. Finally, Charlemagne seems 
 to have extended to the whole body of 
 the clergy an absolute exemption from 
 the judicial authority of the magistrate.! 
 
 * This was also established about the same time 
 by Athalaric, king of the Ostrogoths, and of 
 course affected the popes, who were his subjects. 
 St. Marc, t. i., p. 60. Fleury, Hist. Eccles., t. 
 vii., p. 292. 
 
 t Memoires de 1'Academie, ubi supra. Gian- 
 none, 1. hi., c. 6. Schmidt, t. ii., p. 236. Fleury, 
 ubi supra. 
 
 Some of these writers do not state the law of 
 Charlemagne so strongly. Nevertheless the words 
 of a capitulary in 789, Ut clerici ecclesiastic! ordi- 
 nis si rulpam incurrerint, apud ecclesiastic os judi- 
 
 3. The character of a cause, as well 
 as of the parties engaged, might over panic 
 bring it within the limits of ec- ular causes - 
 clesiastical jurisdiction. In all questions 
 simply religious, the church had an ori- 
 ginal right of decision ; in those of a tem- 
 poral nature, the civil magistrate had, by 
 the imperial constitutions, as exclusive 
 an authority.* Later ages witnessed 
 strange innovations in this respect, when 
 the spiritual courts usurped, under so- 
 phistical pretences, almost the whole ad- 
 ministration of justice. But these en- 
 croachments were not, I apprehend, very 
 striking till the twelfth century ; and as 
 about the same time measures, more or 
 less vigorous and successful, began to be 
 adopted in order to restrain them, I shall 
 defer this part of the subject for the 
 present. 
 
 In this sketch of the riches and juris- 
 diction of the hierarchy, I may Political 
 seem to have implied their politi- power of 
 cal influence, which is naturally cler g>'- 
 connected with the two former. They 
 possessed, however, more direct means 
 of acquiring temporal power. Even un- 
 der the Roman emperors they had found 
 their road into palaces ; they were some- 
 times ministers, more often secret coun- 
 sellors, always necessary, but formida- 
 ble allies, whose support was to be con- 
 ciliated, and interference to be respected. 
 But they assumed a far more decided 
 influence over the new kingdoms of the 
 west. They were entitled, in the first 
 place, by the nature of those free gov- 
 ernments, to a privilege unknown under 
 the imperial despotism, that of assisting 
 in the deliberative assemblies of the na- 
 tion. Councils of bishops, such as had 
 been convoked by Constantine and his 
 successors, were limited in their func- 
 tions to decisions of faith, or canons of 
 ecclesiastical discipline. But the nor- 
 thern nations did not so well preserve 
 the distinction between secular and spir- 
 itual legislation. The laity seldom, per- 
 haps, gave their suffrage to the canons 
 of the church ; but the church was not 
 so scrupulous as to trespassing upon the 
 province of the laity. Many provisions 
 are found in the canons of national and 
 
 centur, non apud saeculares, are sufficiently gen- 
 eral (Baluz. Capitul., t. L, p. 227): and the same 
 is expressed still more forcibly in the collection 
 published by Ansegisus under Louis the Debonair. 
 (Idem, pp. 904 and 1115.) See other proofs in 
 Fleury, Hist. Eccles., t. ix.,p. 607. 
 
 * Quoties de religione agitur, episcopos oportet 
 judicare ; alteras vero causas quse ad ordinarios 
 cognitores vel ad usurn publici juris pertinent, le- 
 gibus oportet au.diri. Lex Arcadii et Honorii, apud 
 Mem. de PAcademie, t. xxxix., p. 571. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 267 
 
 even provincial councils, which relate to 
 the temporal constitution of the state. 
 Thus one held at Calcluith (an unknown 
 place in England), in 787, enacted that 
 none but legitimate princes should be 
 raised to the throne, and not such as 
 were engendered in adultery or incest. 
 But it is to be observed that, although 
 this synod was strictly ecclesiastical, 
 being summoned by the pope's legate, 
 yet the kings of Mercia and Northum- 
 berland, with many of their nobles, con- 
 firmed the canons by their signature. 
 As for the councils held under the Visi- 
 goth kings of Spain during the seventh 
 century, it is not easy to determine 
 whether they are to be considered as ec- 
 clesiastical or temporal assemblies * No 
 kingdom was so thoroughly under the 
 bondage of the hierarchy as Spain. f The 
 first dynasty of France seem to have, 
 kept their national convention, called 
 the Field of March, more distinct from 
 merely ecclesiastical councils. 
 
 The bishops acquired and retained a 
 great part of their ascendency by a very 
 respectable instrument of power, intel- 
 lectual superiority. As they alone were 
 acquainted with the art of writing, they 
 were naturally intrusted with political 
 correspondence, and with the framing 
 of the laws. As they alone knew the 
 elements of a few sciences, the educa- 
 tion of royal families devolved upon them 
 as a necessary duty. In the fall of Rome, 
 their influence upon the barbarians wore 
 down the asperities of conquest, and 
 saved the provincials half the shock of 
 that tremendous revolution. As captive 
 Greece is said to have subdued her Ro- 
 man conquerors, so Rome, in her own 
 turn of servitude, cast the fetters of a 
 moral captivity upon the fierce invaders 
 of the north. Chiefly through the exer- 
 tions of the bishops, whose ambition may 
 be forgiven for its effects, her religion, 
 her language, in part even her laws, were 
 transplanted into the courts of Paris and 
 Toledo, which became a degree less bar- 
 barous by imitation.J 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the great 
 Supremacy authority and privileges of the 
 or the state, church, it was decidedly subject 
 to the supremacy of the crown, both 
 during the continuance of the western 
 empire, and after its subversion. The 
 emperors convoked, regulated, and dis- 
 solved universal councils ; the kings of 
 
 * Marina, Teoria de las Cortes, t. i ., p. 9. 
 
 t See instances of the temporal power of the 
 Spanish bishops in Fleury, Hist. Eccles., t. viii., p. 
 368, 397 ; t. ix., p. 68, &c. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. i., p. 365. 
 
 France and Spain exercised the same 
 right over the synods of their national 
 churches.* The Ostrogoth kings of Italy 
 fixed by their edicts the limits within 
 which matrimony was prohibited on ac- 
 count of consanguinity, and granted dis- 
 pensations from them.f Though the 
 Roman emperors left episcopal elections 
 to the clergy and people of the diocess, 
 in which they were followed by the 
 Ostrogoths and Lombards, yet they often 
 interfered so far as to confirm a decision, 
 or to determine a contest. The kings of 
 France went farther, and seem to have 
 invariably either nominated the bishops, 
 or, what was nearly tantamount, recom- 
 mended their own candidate to the elec- 
 tors. 
 
 But the sovereign who maintained with 
 the greatest vigour his ecclesi- e8pecia ii y 
 astical supremacy was Charle- ofCharie- 
 magne. Most of the capitularies "> a g ne - 
 of his reign relate to the discipline of the 
 church ; principally, indeed, taken from 
 the ancient canons, but not the less re- 
 ceiving an additional sanction from his 
 authority.^ Some of his regulations, 
 which appear to have been original, are 
 such as men of high-church principles 
 would, even in modern times, deem in- 
 fringements of spiritual independence ; 
 that no legend of doubtful authority 
 should be read in the churches, but only 
 the canonical books, and that no saint 
 should be honoured whom the whole 
 church did not acknowledge. These 
 were not passed in a synod of bishops, 
 but enjoined by the sole authority of the 
 emperor, who seems to have arrogated a 
 legislative power over the church, which 
 he did not possess in temporal affairs. 
 Many of his other laws relating to the 
 ecclesiastical constitution are enacted in 
 a general council of the lay nobility as 
 well as of prelates, and are so blended 
 with those of a secular nature, that the 
 two orders may appear to have equally 
 consented to the whole. His father 
 Pepin, indeed, left a remarkable prece- 
 dent in a council held in 744, where the 
 Nicene faith is declared to be established, 
 
 * Encyclopedic, art. Concile. Schmidt, t. i., 
 p. 384. De Marca, De Concordantia Sacerdotii et 
 Imperil, 1. ii., c. 9, 11 ; et 1. iv., passim. 
 
 The last of these sometimes endeavours to ex- 
 tenuate the royal supremacy, but his own work 
 furnishes abundant evidence of it ; especially 1. vi., 
 c. 19, &c. For the ecclesiastical independence of 
 Spain, down to the eleventh century, see Marina, 
 Ensayo sobre las siete partidas, c. 322, &c. ; and 
 De Marca, 1. vi., c. 23. 
 
 t Giannone, 1. iii., c. 6. 
 
 I Baluzii Capitularia, passim. Schmidt, t. ii., 
 n. 239- Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, t. iii. 
 
268 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 and even a particular heresy condemned, 
 with the consent of the bishops and no- 
 bles. But whatever share we may ima- 
 gine the laity in general to have had in 
 such matters, Charlemagne himself did 
 not consider even theological decisions 
 as beyond his province ; and, in more 
 than one instance, manifested a deter- 
 mination not to surrender his own judg- 
 ment, even in questions of that nature, to 
 any ecclesiastical authority. 
 
 This part of Charlemagne's conduct is 
 duly to be taken into the account, before 
 we censure his vast extension of ecclesi- 
 astical privileges. Nothing was more re- 
 mote from his character than the bigotry 
 of those weak princes who have suffered 
 the clergy to reign under their names. 
 He acted upon a systematic plan of gov- 
 ernment, conceived by his own compre- 
 hensive genius, but requiring too continual 
 an application of similar talents for dura- 
 ble execution. It was the error of a 
 superior mind, zealous for religion and 
 learning, to believe that men, dedicated 
 to the functions of the one, and posses- 
 sing what remained of the other, might, 
 through strict rules of discipline, enforced 
 by the constant vigilance of the sovereign, 
 become fit instruments to reform and 
 civilize a barbarous empire. It was the 
 error of a magnanimous spirit to judge too 
 favourably of human nature, and to pre- 
 sume that great trusts would be fulfilled, 
 and great benefits remembered. 
 
 It is highly probable, indeed, that an 
 ambitious hierarchy did not endure with- 
 out reluctance this imperial supremacy 
 of Charlemagne, though it was not expe- 
 dient for them to resist, a prince so for- 
 midable, and from whom they had so 
 much to expect. But their dis- 
 of re th e ehTe" S satisfaction at a scheme of 
 rarchyin government incompatible with 
 the ninth their own objects of perfect in- 
 dependence, produced a violent 
 recoil under Louis the Debonair, who at- 
 tempted to act the censor of ecclesias- 
 tical abuses with as much earnestness 
 as his father, though with very inferior 
 qualifications for so delicate an under- 
 taking. The bishops, accordingly, were 
 among the chief instigators of those nu- 
 merous revolts of his children which 
 harassed this emperor. They set, upon 
 one occasion, the first example of a 
 usurpation which was to become very 
 dangerous to society, the deposition of 
 sovereigns by ecclesiastical authority. 
 Louis, a prisoner in the hands of his en- 
 emies, had been intimidated enough to 
 undergo a public penance ; and the bish- 
 ops pretended that, according to a can- 
 
 on of the church, he was incapable of 
 returning afterward to a secular life, or 
 preserving the character of sovereignty.* 
 Circumstances enabled him to retain the 
 empire, in defiance of this sentence ; but 
 the church had tasted the pleasure of 
 trampling upon crowned heads, and was 
 eager to repeat the experiment. Under 
 the disjointed and feeble administration 
 of his posterity in their several kingdoms, 
 the bishops availed themselves of more 
 than one opportunity to exalt their tem- 
 poral power. Those weak Carlovingian 
 princes, in their mutual animosities, en- 
 couraged the pretensions of a common 
 enemy. Thus, Charles the Bald, and 
 Louis of Bavaria, having driven their 
 brother Lothaire from his dominions, 
 held an assembly of some bishops, who 
 adjudged him unworthy to reign, and 
 after exacting a promise from the two 
 allied brothers to govern better than he 
 had done, permitted and commanded 
 them to divide his territories.! After 
 concurring in this unprecedented en- 
 croachment, Charles the Bald had little 
 right to complain when, some years af- 
 terward, an assembly of bishops declared 
 himself to have forfeited his crown, re- 
 leased his subjects from their allegiance, 
 and transferred his kingdom to Louis of 
 Bavaria. But, in truth, he did not pre- 
 tend to deny the principle which he had 
 contributed to maintain. Even in his own 
 behalf, he did not appeal to the rights of 
 sovereigns, and of the nation whom they 
 represent. " No one," says this degener- 
 ate grandson of Charlemagne, " ought to 
 have degraded me from the throne to 
 which I was consecrated, until at least I 
 
 * Habitu saeculi se exuens habitum poenitentis 
 per impositionem manuum episcoporum suscepit ; 
 ut post tantam talemque poenitentiam nemo ultra 
 ad militiam sascularem redeat. Acta exauctoratio- 
 nis Ludovici, apud Schmidt, t. ii., p. 68. There 
 was a sort of precedent, though not, I think, very 
 apposite, for this doctrine of implied abdication, in 
 the case qfWamba, king of the Visigoths in Spain, 
 who, having been clothed with a monastic dress, 
 according to a common superstition, during a dan- 
 gerous illness, was afterward adjudged by a council 
 incapable of resuming his crown, to which he vol- 
 untarily submitted. The story, as told by an ori- 
 ginal writer, quoted in Baronius, ad A. D. 681, is 
 too obscure to warrant any positive 'inference; 
 though I think we may justly suspect a fraudulent 
 contrivance between the bishops and Ervigius, the 
 successor of Wamba. The latter, besides his mo- 
 nastic attire, had received the last sacrament ; after 
 which he might be deemed civilly dead. Fleury, 
 3 me Discours sur 1'Hist. Ecclesiast.,puts this case 
 too strongly, when he tells us that the bishops de- 
 posed Wamba ; it may have been a voluntary abdi- 
 cation, influenced by superstition, or, perhaps, by 
 disease. 
 
 f Schmidt, t. ii., p. 77. Velly, t. ii., p. 61 ; see 
 too p. 74. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 269 
 
 had been heard and judged by the bishops, 
 through whose ministry I was consecra- 
 ted, who are called the thrones of God, 
 in which God sitteth, and by whom he 
 dispenses his judgments ; to whose pa- 
 ternal chastisement I was willing to sub- 
 mit, and do still submit myself."* 
 
 These passages are very remarkable, 
 and afford a decisive proof that the pow- 
 er obtained by national churches, through 
 the superstitious prejudices then received, 
 and a train of favourable circumstances, 
 was as dangerous to civil government 
 as the subsequent usurpations of the Ro- 
 man pontiff, against which Protestant 
 writers are apt too exclusively to direct 
 their animadversions. Voltaire, I think, 
 has remarked, that the ninth century was 
 the age of the bishops, as the eleventh 
 and twelfth were of the popes. It seem- 
 ed as if Europe was about to pass under 
 as absolute a domination of the hierar- 
 chy, as had been exercised by the priest- 
 hood of ancient Egypt, or the druids of 
 Gaul. There is extant a remarkable in- 
 strument, recording the election of Boson, 
 king of Aries, by which the bishops alone 
 appear to have elevated him to the throne, 
 without any concurrence of the nobility. f 
 But it is inconceivable that such could 
 have really been the case ; and if the 
 instrument is genuine, we must suppose 
 it to have been framed in order to counte- 
 nance future pretensions. For the cler- 
 gy, by their exclusive knowledge of Latin, 
 had it in their power to mould the lan- 
 guage of public documents for their own 
 purposes; a circumstance which should 
 be cautiously kept in mind when we pe- 
 ruse instruments drawn up during the 
 dark ages. 
 
 It was with an equal defiance of noto- 
 rious truth, that the Bishop of Winches- 
 ter, presiding as papal legate at an assem- 
 bly of the clergy in 1141, during the civil 
 war of Stephen and Matilda, asserted the 
 right of electing a king of England to ap- 
 pertain principally to that order ; and, by 
 virtue of this unprecedented claim, raised 
 Matilda to the throne.| England, indeed, 
 has been obsequious, beyond most other 
 countries, to the arrogance of her hierar- 
 chy ; especially during the Anglo-Saxon 
 period, when the nation was sunk in ig- 
 
 * Schmidt, t. ii., p. 217. Voltaire, Velly, Gail- 
 lard, &c. 
 
 t Recueil des Historiens, t. ix., p. 304. 
 
 j Ventilata est causa, says the Legate, coram 
 major! parte cleri Angliae, ad cujus jus potissimum 
 spectat principem eligere, simulque ordinare. In- 
 vocata itaque primo in auxilium divinitate, filiam 
 pacific! regis, &c., in Anglia Normanniaeque domi- 
 nam eligimus, et ei fidem et manutenementum pro- 
 mittimus. Gul. Malmsb. p. 188. 
 
 norance and effeminate superstition. Ev- 
 ery one knows the story of King Edwy, 
 in some form or other, though I believe 
 it impossible to ascertain the real circum- 
 stances of that controverted anecdote. 
 But, upon the supposition least favoura- 
 ble to the king, the behaviour of Arch- 
 bishop Odo and St. Dunstan was an in- 
 tolerable outrage of spiritual tyranny.* 
 
 But, while the prelates of these na- 
 tions, each within his respect- Riseofthe 
 ive sphere, were prosecuting papal pow- 
 their system of encroachment er - J'scom- 
 upon the laity, a new scheme m 
 was secretly forming within the bosom 
 of the church, to inthral both that and 
 the temporal governments of the world 
 under an ecclesiastical monarch. ~ Lo~n 
 before the earliest epoch that can be fixed 
 for modern history, and, indeed, to speak 
 fairly, almost as jar back as ecclesiastical 
 testimonies can"carry us, the bishops of 
 Rome had been venerated as first in rank 
 among the rulers of the church. The 
 nature of this primacy is doubtless a very 
 controverted subject. It is, however, 
 reduced by some moderate Catholics to 
 little more than a precedency attached to 
 the see of Rome in consequence of its 
 foundation by the chief of the apostles, 
 as well as the dignity of the imperial 
 
 * Two living writers of the Roman Catholic 
 communion, Dr. Milner, in his History of Win- 
 chester, and Mr. Lingard, in his Antiquities of the 
 Anglo-Saxon church, contend that Elgiva, whom 
 some Protestant historians are willing to represent 
 as the queen of Edwy, was but his mistress ; and 
 seem inclined to justify the conduct of Odo and 
 Dunstan towards this unfortunate couple. They 
 are unquestionably so far right, that few, if any of 
 those writers, who have been quoted as authorities 
 in respect of this story, speak of the lady as a 
 queen or lawful wife. I must, therefore, strongly 
 reprobate the conduct of Dr. Henry, who, calling 
 Elgiva queen, and asserting that she was married, 
 refers, at the bottom of his page, to William of 
 Malmsbury, and other chroniclers, who give a to- 
 tally opposite account ; especially as he does not 
 intimate, by a single expression, that the nature 
 of her connexion with the king was equivocal. 
 Such a practice, when it proceeds, as I fear it did 
 in this instance, not from oversight, but from pre- 
 judice, is a glaring violation of historical integrity, 
 and tends to render the use of references, that 
 great improvement of modern history, a sort of 
 r raud upon the reader. But the fact itself, one cer- 
 ainly of little importance, is, in my opinion, not 
 capable of being proved or disproved. The author- 
 ities, as they are called, that is, the passages in 
 monkish writers which mention this transaction, 
 are neither sufficiently circumstantial, nor consist- 
 ent, nor impartial, nor contemporaneous, to afford 
 ground for rational belief; or, at least, there must 
 always remain a strong shade of uncertainty. And 
 t is plain, that different reports of the story pre- 
 vailed, so as to induce some to imagine that there 
 were two Elgivas, one queen, the other concubine. 
 But the monkish chroniclers, experto credite, are not 
 entitled to so much ceremony. 
 
270 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 city. * A sort of general superintendence 
 was admitted as an attribute of this pri- 
 macy, so that the bishops of Rome were 
 entitled, and indeed bound, to remon- 
 strate, when any error or irregularity 
 came to their knowledge, especially in 
 the western churches, a greater part of 
 which had been planted by them, and 
 were connected, as it were by filiation, 
 with the common capital of the Roman 
 empire and of Christendom.! Various 
 causes had a tendency to prevent the 
 bishops of Rome from augmenting their 
 authority in the East, and even to dimin- 
 ish that which they had occasionally ex- 
 ercised ; the institution of patriarchs at 
 Antioch, Alexandria, and afterward at 
 Constantinople, with extensive rights of 
 jurisdiction ; the difference of rituals and 
 discipline; but, above all, the many dis- 
 gusts taken by the Greeks, which ulti- 
 mately produced an irreparable schism 
 between the two churches in the ninth 
 century. But, within the pale of the Lat- 
 in church, every succeeding age enhan- 
 ced the power and dignity of the Roman 
 see. By the constitution of the church, 
 such at least as it became in the fourth 
 century, its divisions being arranged in 
 conformity to those of the empire, every 
 province ought to have its metropolitan, 
 and every vicariate its ecclesiastical ex- 
 arch or primate. The Bishop of Rome 
 presided, in the latter capacity, over the 
 Roman vicariate, comprehending south- 
 ern Italy, and the three chief Mediterra- 
 nean islands. But, as it happened, none 
 
 * These foundations of the Roman primacy are 
 indicated by Valentinian III., a great favourer of 
 that see, in a novel of the year 455 : Cum igitur se- 
 dis apostolic* primatum B. Petri meritum, qui est 
 princeps sacerdotalis coronae, et Romanes dignitas 
 civitatis, sacrae etiam synodi firmavit auctoritas. 
 The last words allude to the sixth canon of the 
 Nicene council, which establishes, or recognises, 
 the patriarchal supremacy, in their respective dis- 
 tricts, of the churches of Rome, Antioch, and 
 Alexandria. De Marca, de Concordantia Sacerdo- 
 tii et Imperii, 1. i., c. 8. At a much earlier period, 
 Irenaeus rather vaguely, and Cyprian more posi- 
 tively, admit, or rather assert, the primacy of the 
 church of Rome, which the latter seems even to 
 have considered as a kind of centre of Catholic 
 unity, though he resisted every attempt of that 
 church to arrogate a controlling power. See his 
 treatise De Unitate Ecclesiae. 
 
 t Dupin, De antiqua Ecclesiae Disciplina, p. 306, 
 et seqq. Histoire du Droit public ecclesiastique 
 Francois, p. 149. The opinion of the Roman see's 
 supremacy, though apparently rather a vague and 
 general notion, as it still continues in those Cath- 
 olics who deny its infallibility, seems to have pre- 
 vailed very much in the fourth century. Fleury 
 brings remarkable proofs of this from the writings 
 of Socrates, Sozomen, Ammianus Marcellinus, 
 and Optatus. Hist. Eccl6s., t. hi., p. 282, 320, 449 ; 
 t. iv., p. 227. 
 
 of the ten provinces forming this division 
 had any metropolitan ; so that the popes 
 exercised all metropolitical functions 
 within them, such as the consecration of 
 bishops, the convocation of synods, the 
 ultimate decision of appeals, and many 
 other sorts of authority. These p a triar- 
 provinces are sometimes called the chate of 
 Roman patriarchate ; the bishops Rome - 
 of Rome having always been reckoned 
 one, generally indeed the first of the patri- 
 archs ; each of whom was at the head of 
 all the metropolitans within his limits, 
 but without exercising those privileges 
 which, by the ecclesiastical constitution, 
 appertained to the latter. Though the 
 Roman patriarchate, properly so called, 
 was comparatively very small in extent, 
 it gave its chief, for the reason mention- 
 ed, advantages in point of authority which 
 the others did not possess.* 
 
 I may perhaps appear to have noticed 
 circumstances interesting only to eccle- 
 siastical scholars. But it is important to 
 apprehend this distinction of the patri- 
 archate from the primacy of Rome, be- 
 cause it was by extending the boundaries 
 of the former, and by applying the max- 
 ims of her administration in the south of 
 Italy to all the western churches, that 
 she accomplished the first object of her 
 scheme of usurpation, in subverting the 
 provincial system of government under 
 the metropolitans. Their first encroach- 
 ment of this kind was in the province of 
 Illyricum, which they annexed in a man- 
 ner to their own patriarchate, by not per- 
 mitting any bishops to be consecrated 
 without their consent. f This was before 
 the end of the fourth century. Their sub- 
 sequent advances were, however, very 
 gradual. About the middle of the sixth 
 century, we find them confirming the 
 elections of archbishops of Milan. J They 
 came by degrees to exercise, though not 
 always successfully, and seldom without 
 opposition, an appellant jurisdiction over 
 the causes of bishops, deposed or cen- 
 
 * Dupin, De antiqua Eccles. Disciplina, p. 39, 
 &c. Giannone, 1st. di Napoli, 1. ii., c. 8 ; 1. iii., c. 
 6. De Marca, 1. i., c. 7, et alibi. There is some 
 disagreement among these writers as to the extent 
 of the Roman patriarchate, which some suppose to 
 have even at first comprehended all the western 
 churches, though they admit that, in a more par- 
 ticular sense, it was confined to the vicariate of 
 Rome. 
 
 t Dupin, p. 66. Fleury, Hist. Eccles., t. v., p. 
 373. The ecclesiastical province of Illyricum in- 
 cluded Macedonia. Siricius, the author of this en- 
 croachment, seems to have been one of the first 
 usurpers. In a letter to the Spanish bishops (A. D. 
 375), he exalts his own authority very high. De 
 Marca, 1. i., c. 8. 
 
 t St. Marc,t. i., p. 139, 153. 
 
CHAP. Vil.J 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 27 1 
 
 sured in provincial synods. This, in- 
 deed, had been granted, if we believe the 
 fact, by the canons of a very early coun- 
 cil, that of Sardica in 347, so far as to 
 permit the pope to order a revision of the 
 process, but not to annul the sentence.* 
 Valentinian III., influenced by Leo the 
 Great, one of the most ambitious of pon- 
 tiffs, had gone a great deal farther, and 
 established almost an absolute judicial 
 supremacy in the Holy See.f But the 
 metropolitans were not inclined to sur- 
 render their prerogatives ; and, upon the 
 whole, the papal authority had made no 
 decisive progress in France, or perhaps 
 anywhere beyond Italy, till the pontifi- 
 cate of Gregory I. 
 
 [A. D. 590-604.] This celebrated person 
 G a was not distinguished by learn- 
 ' ing, which he affected to depre- 
 ciate, nor by his literary performances, 
 which the best critics consider as below 
 mediocrity, but by qualities more neces- 
 sary for his purpose, intrepid ambition and 
 unceasing activity. He maintained a 
 perpetual correspondence with the em- 
 perors and their ministers, with the sov- 
 
 * Dupin, p. 109. De Marca, 1. vi., c. 14. These 
 canons have been questioned, and Dupin does not 
 seem to lay much stress on their authority, though 
 I do not perceive that either he or Fleury (Hist. 
 Eccles , t. iii., p. 372) doubts their genuineness. 
 Sardica was a city of Illyricum, which the transla- 
 tor of Mosheim has confounded with Sardes. 
 
 Consultations or references to the Bishop of 
 Rome, in difficult cases of faith or discipline, had 
 been common in early ages, and were even made 
 by provincial and national councils. But these 
 were also made to other bishops, eminent for per- 
 sonal merit or the dignity 01 their sees. The 
 popes endeavoured to claim this as a matter of 
 right. Innocent I. asserts (A. D. 402) that he was 
 to be consulted, quoties fidei ratio ventUatur ; and 
 Gelasius (A. D. 492) quantum ad religionem per- 
 tinet, non nisi apostolic* sedi, juxta canones, de- 
 betur summa judicii totius. As the oak is in the 
 acorn, so did these maxims contain the system of 
 Bellarmine. De Marca, 1. i., c. 10; and 1. vii., 12. 
 Dupin. 
 
 t Some bishops belonging to the province of 
 Hilary, metropolitan of Aries, appealed from his 
 sentence to Leo, who not only entertained their 
 appeal, but presumed to depose Hilary. This as- 
 sumption of power would have had little effect, if 
 it had not been seconded by the emperor in very 
 unguarded language ; hoc perenni sanctione de- 
 cemimus, ne quid tarn episcopis Gallicanis, quam 
 aliarum provinciarum, contra consuetudinem vete- 
 rem liceat sine auctoritate viri venerabilis papae 
 urbis aeternae tentare ; sed illis omnibusque pro lege 
 sit, quidquid sanxit vel sanxerit apostolicae sedis 
 auctoritas. De Marca, De Concordantia Sacer- 
 dotii et Imperil, 1. i., c. 8. The same emperor 
 enacted, that any bishop who refused to attend the 
 tribunal of the pope when summoned, should be 
 compelled by the governor of his province ; ut 
 quisquis episcoporum ad judicium Romani epis- 
 copi evocatus venire neglexerit, per moderatorem 
 ejusdem provinciae adesse cogatur. Id., 1. vii., c. 13. 
 Dupin, De Ant. Discipl., p. 29 et 171. 
 
 ereigns of the western kingdoms, with 
 all the hierarchy of the Catholic church ; 
 employing, as occasion dictated, the lan- 
 guage of devotion, arrogance, or adula- 
 tion.* Claims hitherto disputed, or half 
 preferred, assumed under his hands a 
 more definite form; and nations too ig- 
 norant to compare precedents or discrim- 
 inate principles, yielded to assertions con- 
 fidently made by the authority which 
 they most respected. Gregory dwelt 
 more than his predecessors upon the pow- 
 er of the keys, exclusively or at least 
 principally committed to St. Peter, which 
 had been supposed in earlier times, as it 
 is now by the Gallican Catholics, to be 
 inherent in the general body of bishops, 
 joint sharers of one indivisible episco- 
 pacy. And thus the patriarchal rights, 
 being manifestly of mere ecclesiastical 
 institution, were artfully confounded, or, 
 as it were, merged in the more para- 
 mount supremacy of the papal chair. 
 From the time of Gregory, the popes 
 appear in a great measure to have 
 thrown away that scaffolding, and relied 
 in preference on the pious veneration of 
 the people, and on the opportunities 
 which might occur for enforcing their 
 dominion with the pretence of divine au- 
 thority.! 
 
 It cannot, I think, be said, that any 
 material acquisitions of ecclesiastical 
 power were obtained by the successors 
 of Gregory for nearly one hundred and 
 fifty years. J As none of them possessed 
 
 * The flattering style in which this pontiff ad- 
 dressed Brunehaut and Phocas, the most flagitious 
 monsters of his time, is mentioned in all civil and 
 ecclesiastical histories. Fleury quotes a remark- 
 able letter to the patriarchs of Antioch and Alex- 
 andria, wherein he says that St. Peter has one see, 
 divided into three, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria ; 
 stooping to this absurdity, and inconsistence with 
 his real system, in order to conciliate their alliance 
 against his more immediate rival, the patriarch of 
 Constantinople. Hist. Eccles., t. viii., p. 124. 
 
 t Gregory seems to have established the appel- 
 lant jurisdiction of the see of Rome, which had 
 been long in suspense. Stephen, a Spanish bishop, 
 having been deposed, appealed to Rome. Gregory 
 sent a legate to Spain, with full powers to confirm 
 or rescind the sentence. He says in his letter on 
 this occasion ; a sede apostolica, qusa omnium ec- 
 clesiarum caput est, causa haec audienda ac diri- 
 menda fuerat. De Marca, 1. vii., c. 18. In wri- 
 ting to the bishops of France, he enjoins them to 
 obey Virgilius, bishop of Aries, whom he has ap- 
 pointed his legate in France, secundum antiquam 
 consuetudinem ; so that, if any contention should 
 arise in the church, he may appease it by his au- 
 thority, as vicegerent of the apostolic see : auc- 
 toritatis suae vigore, vicibus nempe apostolicae 
 sedis functus, discreta moderatione compescat. 
 Gregorii Opera, t. ii., p. 783 (edit. Benedict). 
 Dupin, p. 34. Pasquier, Recherches de la France, 
 1. iii., c. 9. 
 
 J I observe that some modern publications annex 
 
272 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 vigour and reputation equal to his own 
 it might even appear that the papal influ- 
 ence was retrograde. But, in effect, the 
 principles which supported it were taking 
 deep root, and acquiring strength by oc- 
 casional, though not very frequent exer- 
 cise. Appeals to the pope were some- 
 
 considerable importance to a supposed concession 
 of the title of universal bishop, made by the Emperor 
 Phocas in 606 to Boniface III., and even appear to 
 date the papal supremacy from this epoch. Those 
 who have imbibed this notion may probably have 
 been misled by a loose expression in Mosheim's 
 Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii., p. 169; though 
 the general tenour of that passage by no means 
 gives countenance to their opinion. But there are 
 several strong objections to our considering this as 
 a leading fact, much less as marking an era in the 
 history of the papacy. 1. Its truth, as commonly 
 stated, appears more than questionable. The 
 Roman pontiffs, Gregory I. and Boniface III., had 
 been vehemently opposing the assumption of this 
 title by the patriarch of Constantinople, not as due 
 to themselves, but as one to which no bishop could 
 legitimately pretend. There would be something 
 almost ridiculous in the emperor's immediately 
 conferring an appellation on themselves, which 
 they had just disclaimed ; and though this objec- 
 tion would not stand against evidence, yet when 
 we find no better authority quoted for the fact 
 than Baronius, who is no authority at all, it retains 
 considerable weight. And indeed the want of 
 early testimony is so decisive an objection to any 
 alleged historical fact, that, but for the strange 
 preposseesions of some men, one might rest the 
 case here. Fleury takes no notice of this part of 
 the story, though he tells us that Phocas compelled 
 the patriarch of Constantinople to resign his title. 
 2. But if the strongest proof could be advanced for 
 the authenticity of this circumstance, we might well 
 deny its importance. The concession of Phocas 
 could have been of no validity in Lombardy, 
 France, and other western countries, where nev- 
 ertheless the papal supremacy was incomparably 
 more established than in the east. 3. Even within 
 the empire, it could have had no efficacy after the 
 violent death of that usurper, which followed soon 
 afterward. 4. The title of universal bishop is 
 not very intelligible ; but, whatever it meant, the 
 patriarchs of Constantinople had borne it before, 
 and continued to bear it ever afterward. (Dupin, 
 De antiqua Disciplina, p. 329.) 5. The preceding 
 popes, Pelagius II. and Gregory I., had constantly 
 disclaimed the appellation, though it had been 
 adopted by some towards Leo the Great in the 
 council -of Chalcedon (Fleury, t. via., p. 95) ; nor 
 does it appear to have been retained by the succes- 
 sors of Boniface, at least for some centuries. It is 
 even laid down in the decretum of Gratian, that 
 the pope is not styled universal : Nee etiam Ro- 
 manus pontifex umversahs appellatur (p. 303, edit. 
 1591); though some refer its assumption to the 
 ninth century. Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, 
 t. v., p. 93. In fact, it has never been a usual title. 
 6. The popes had unquestionably exercised a spe- 
 cies of supremacy for more than two centuries be- 
 fore this time, which had lately reached a high 
 point of authority under Gregory I. The rescript 
 of Valentinian III., in 455, quoted in a former note, 
 would certainly be more to the purpose than the 
 letter of Phocas. 7. Lastly, there are no sensible 
 marks of this supremacy making a more rapid 
 progress for a century and a half after the pretend- 
 ed grant of that emperor. 
 
 times made by prelates dissatisfied with 
 a local sentence; but his judgment of 
 reversal was not always executed, as we 
 perceive by the instance of Bishop Wil- 
 frid.* National councils were still con- 
 voked by princes, and canons enacted 
 under their authority by the bishops who 
 attended. Though the church of Lom- 
 bardy was under great subjection during 
 this period, yet those of France, and 
 even of England, planted as the latter 
 had been by Gregory, continued to pre- 
 serve a tolerable measure of independ- 
 ence, f The first striking infringement 
 of this was made through the influence 
 of an Englishman, Winfrid, better known 
 as St. Boniface, the apostle of 
 Germany. Having undertaken St - Boniface - 
 the conversion of Thuringia, and other 
 still heathen countries, he applied to the 
 pope for a commission, and was conse- 
 crated bishop without any determinate 
 see. Upon this occasion he took an oath 
 of obedience, and became ever after- 
 ward a zealous upholder of the apostol- 
 ical chair. His success in the conver- 
 sion of Germany was great, his reputa- 
 tion eminent, which enabled him to ef- 
 fect a material revolution in ecclesiasti- 
 cal government. Pelagius II. had, about 
 580, sent a pallium, or vest peculiar to 
 netropolitans, to the Bishop of Aries, 
 perpetual vicar of the Roman see in 
 &aul.| Gregory I. had made a similar 
 present to other metropolitans. But it 
 was never supposed that they were 
 obliged to wait for this favour before 
 hey received consecration, until a synod 
 of the French and German bish- synod of 
 ops, held at Frankfort in 742 by Frankfort 
 Boniface, as legate of Pope Zachary. It 
 was here enacted, that, as a token of 
 heir willing subjection to the see of 
 lome, all metropolitans should request 
 he pallium at the hands of the pope, and 
 )bey his lawful commands. This was 
 
 * I refer to the English historians for the history 
 of Wilfrid, which neither altogether supports, nor 
 much impeaches the independence, of our Anglo- 
 Saxon church in 700; a matter hardly worth so 
 much contention as Usher and Stillingfleet seem to 
 have thought. The consecration of Theodore by 
 Pope Vitalian in 668 is a stronger fact, and cannot 
 be got over by those injudicious Protestants, who 
 take the bull by the horns. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. i., p. 386, 394. 
 
 j Ut ad instar suum, in Galliarum partibus primi 
 sacerdotis locum obtineat, et quidquid ad guber- 
 nationem vel dispensationem ecclesiastic! status 
 gerendum est, servatis patrum regulis, et sedia 
 apostolicss constitutis, faciat. Preterea, pallium 
 illi concedit, &c. Dupin, p. 34. Gregory I. con- 
 firmed this vicariat to Virgilius, bishop of Aries, 
 and gave him the power of convoking synods. De 
 Marca, 1. vi., c. 7. 
 
 $ Decrevimup, says Boniface, in noetro synodali 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 273 
 
 construed by the popes to mean a prom- 
 ise of obedience before receiving the 
 pall, which was changed in after times 
 by Gregory VII. into an oath of fealty.* 
 
 This council of Frankfort claims a 
 leading place as an epoch in the history 
 of the papacy* Several events ensued, 
 chiefly of a political nature, which rapid- 
 ly elevated that usurpation almost to its 
 greatest heightW^ubjects of the throne 
 of Constantinople, the popes had not as 
 yet interfered, unless by mere admoni- 
 tion, with the temporal magistrate. The 
 first instance wherein the civil duties of* 
 a nation and the rights of a crown appear 
 to have been submitted to his decision, 
 was in that famous reference as to the 
 deposition of Childeric. It is impossible 
 to consider this in any other light than as 
 a point of casuistry laid before the first 
 religious judge in the church. Certainly 
 the Franks, who raised the king of their 
 choice upon their shields, never dreamed 
 that a foreign priest had conferred upon 
 him the right of governing. Yet it was 
 easy for succeeding advocates of Rome 
 to construe this transaction very favour- 
 ably for its usurpation over the thrones 
 of the earth.f 
 
 I shall but just glance at the subsequent 
 political revolutions of that period : the 
 invasion of Italy by Pepin, his donation 
 of the exarchate to the Holy See, the 
 conquest of Lombardy by Charlemagne, 
 the patriarchate of Rome conferred upon 
 both these princes, and the revival of the 
 Western Empire in the person of the lat- 
 
 conventu, et confessi sumus fidem catholicam, et 
 unitatem et subjectionem Romanae ecclesiae fine 
 tenus servare, S. Petro et vicario ejus velle subjici, 
 metropolitanos pallia ab ilia sede quaerere, et, per 
 omnia, praecepta S. Petri canonic^ sequi. De 
 Marca, 1. vi., c. 7. Schmidt, t. i., p. 424, 438, 446. 
 This writer justly remarks the obligation which 
 Rome had to St. Boniface, who anticipated the 
 system of Isidore. We have a letter from him to 
 the English clergy, with a copy of canons passed 
 in one of his synods, for the exaltation of the apos- 
 tolic see, but the church of England was not then 
 inclined to acknowledge so great a supremacy in 
 Rome. Collier's Eccles. History, p. 128. 
 
 In the eighth general C9uncil, that of Constanti- 
 nople in 872, this prerogative of sending the pallium 
 to metropolitans was not only confirmed to the 
 pope, but extended to the other patriarchs, who had 
 every disposition to become as great usurpers as 
 their more fortunate elder brother. 
 
 * De Marca, ubi supra. Schmidt, t. ii., p. 262. 
 According to the latter, this oath of fidelity was 
 exacted in the ninth century ; which is very prob- 
 able, since Gregory VII. himself did but fill up the 
 sketch which Nicholas I. and John VIII. had de- 
 lineated. I have since found this confirmed by 
 Gratian, p. 305. 
 
 + Eginhard says that Pepin was made king per 
 auGtoritatem Romani pontificis ; an ambiguous word, 
 which may rise to command, or sink to advice, ao 
 cording to the disposition of the interpreter. 
 
 ter. These events had a natural tenden- 
 cy to exalt the papal supremacy, which 
 it is needless to indicate. But a circum- 
 stance of a very different nature contrib- 
 uted to this in a still greater degree. 
 About the conclusion of the eighth cen- 
 tury, there appeared, under the name of 
 one Isidore, an unknown person, a col- 
 lection of ecclesiastical canons, now 
 commonly denominated the False False De- 
 Decretals.* These purported to cretals - 
 be rescripts or decrees of the early bish- 
 ops of Rome ; and their effect was to di- 
 minish the authority of metropolitans 
 over their suffragans, by establishing an 
 appellant jurisdiction of the Roman See 
 in all causes, and by forbidding national 
 councils to be holden without its consent. 
 Every bishop, according to the decretals 
 of Isidore, was amenable only to the im- 
 mediate tribunal of the pope ; by which 
 one of the most ancient rights of the pro- 
 vincial synod was ahrncrgj.pji^ E^ry^aj^- 
 cused person might not only appeal Irom 
 an inferior sentence, but remove an un- 
 finished process before the supreme pon- 
 tiff. And the latter, instead of directing 
 a revision of the proceedings by the ori- 
 ginal judges, might annul them by his own 
 authority ; a strain of jurisdiction beyond 
 the canons of Sardica, but certainly war- 
 ranted by the more recent practice of 
 Rome. New sees were not to be erect- 
 ed, nor bishops translated from one see 
 to another, nor their resignations accept- 
 ed, without the sanction of the pope. 
 They were still indeed to be consecrated 
 by the metropolitan, but in the pope's 
 name. It has been plausibly suspected 
 that these decretals were forged by some 
 bishop, in jealousy or resentment ; and 
 their general reception may at least be 
 partly ascribed to such sentiments. The 
 archbishops were exceedingly powerful, 
 and might often abuse their superiority 
 over inferior prelates; but the whole 
 
 * The era of the False Decretals has not been 
 precisely fixed ; they have seldom been supposed, 
 however, to have appeared much before 800, But 
 there is a genuine collection of canons published 
 by Adrian I., in 785, which contain nearly the same 
 principles, and many of which are copied by Isi- 
 dore, as well as Charlemagne in his capitularies. 
 De Marca, 1. vii., c. 20. Giannone, 1. v., c. 6. 
 Dupin, de Antiqua Disciplina, p. 133. Fleury, 
 Hist. Eccles., t. ix., p. 500, seems to consider the de- 
 cretals as older than this collection of Adrian ; but 
 I have not observed the same opinion in any other 
 writer. The right of appeal from a sentence of the 
 metropolitan deposing a bishop to the Holy See is 
 positively recognised in the capitularies of Louis 
 the Debonair (Baluze, p. 1000), the three last 
 books of which, according to the collection of An- 
 segisus, are said to be apostolica auctoritate robo- 
 rata, quia his cudendis maxime apoetolica interfuit 
 legatio, p. 1132. 
 
274 
 
 EUROPE DtJRING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII, 
 
 episcopal aristocracy had abundant rea- 
 son to lament their acquiescence in a 
 system of which the metropolitans were 
 but the earliest victims. Upon these 
 spurious decretals was built the great 
 fabric of papal supremacy over the dif- 
 ferent national churches ; a fabric which 
 has stood after its foundation crumbled 
 beneath it ; for no one has pretended 
 to deny, for the last two centuries, that 
 the imposture is too palpable for any but 
 the most ignorant ages to credit.* 
 
 The Gallican church made for some 
 time a spirited, though unavailing strug- 
 gle, against this rising despotism. Greg- 
 ory IV., having come into France to abet 
 the children of Louis the Debonair in 
 Papal en- their rebellion, and threatened to 
 mention excommunicate the bishops who 
 the hie- adhered to the emperor, was re- 
 rarchy. pelled with indignation by those 
 prelates. If he comes here to excommu- 
 nicate, said 4hey, he shall depart hence 
 excommunicated.! In the subsequent 
 reign of Charles the Bald, a bold defend- 
 f er of ecclesiastical independence was 
 found in Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, 
 the most distinguished statesman of his 
 age. Appeals to the pope, even by 
 ordinary clerks, had become common, 
 and the provincial councils, hitherto the 
 supreme spiritual tribunal as well as 
 legislature, were falling rapidly into de- 
 cay. The frame of church government, 
 which had lasted from the third or fourth 
 century, was nearly dissolved ; a refracto- 
 ry bishop was sure to invoke the supreme 
 court of appeal, and generally met there 
 with a more favourable judicature. Hinc- 
 mar, a man equal in ambition, and almost 
 in public estimation, to any pontiff, some- 
 times came off successfully in his conten- 
 tions with Rome. | But time is fatal to 
 the unanimity of coalitions ; the French 
 
 * I have not seen any account of the decretals 
 so clear and judicious as in Schmidt's History of 
 Germany, t. ii., p. 249. Indeed, all the ecclesiasti- 
 cal part of that work is executed in a very superior 
 manner. See also De Marca, 1. iii., c. 5 ; 1. vii., c. 20. 
 The latter writer, from whom I have derived much 
 information, is by no means a strenuous adversary of 
 ultramontane pretensions. In fact, it was his ob- 
 ject to please both in France and at Rome, to be- 
 come both an archbishop and a cardinal. He failed 
 nevertheless of the latter hope ; it being impossible 
 at that time (1650) to satisfy the papal court, with- 
 out sacrificing altogether the Gallican church and 
 the crown. 
 
 t De Marca, 1. iv., c. 11. Velly, &c. 
 
 t De Marca, 1. iv., c. 68, &c. ; 1. vi., c. 14, 28 ; 1. 
 vii., c. 21. Dupin, p. 133, &c. Hist, du Droit Ec- 
 cles. Fransois, p. 188, 224. Velly, &c. Hincmar, 
 however, was not consistent ; for, having obtained 
 the see of Rheims in an equivocal manner, he had 
 applied for confirmation at Rome, and in other re- 
 spects impaired the Gallican rights. Pasquier,Re- 
 cherches de la France, 1. iii., c. 12. 
 
 bishops were accessible to superstitious 
 prejudice, to corrupt influence, to mutual 
 jealousy. Above all, they were con- 
 scious that a persuasion of the pope's- 
 omnipotence had taken hold of the laity. 
 Though ihey complained loudly, and in- 
 voked, like patriots of * dying state, 
 names and principles of a freedom that 
 was no more, they submitted almost in 
 every instance to the* continual usurpa- 
 tions of the Holy See. One of those, 
 which most annoyed their aristocracy, 
 was the concession to monasteries of 
 exemption from episcopal authority. 
 These had been very uncommon till about 
 the eighth century, after which they 
 were studiously multiplied.* It was 
 naturally a favourite object with the ab- 
 bots ; and sovereigns, in those ages of 
 blind veneration for monastic establish- 
 ments, were pleased to see their own 
 foundations rendered, as it would seem, 
 more respectable by privileges of inde- 
 pendence. The popes had a closer inter- 
 est in granting exemptions, which at- 
 tached to them the regular clergy, and 
 lowered the dignity of the bishops. In 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whole 
 orders of monks were declared exempt at 
 a single stroke ; and the abuse began to 
 awaken loud complaints, though it did 
 not fail to be aggravated afterward. 
 
 The principles of ecclesiastical su- 
 premacy were readily applied by And upon 
 the popes to support still more civil gov- 
 insolent usurpations. Chiefs by e nents. 
 divine commission of the whole church, 
 every earthly sovereign must be 
 subject to their interference. The 
 bishops indeed had, with the common 
 
 * The earliest instance of a papal exemption i?, 
 in 455, which indeed is a respectable antiquity. 
 Others scarcely occur till the pontificate of Zacha- 
 ry, in the middle of the eighth century, who granted 
 an exemption to Monte Casino, ita ut nullius juri 
 subjaceat, nisi solius Romani pontificis. See this 
 discussion in Giannone, 1. v., c. 6. Precedents for 
 the exemption of monasteries from episcopal juris- 
 diction occur in Marculfus's forms, compiled to- 
 wards the end of the seventh century, but these 
 were by royal authority. The kings of France 
 were supreme heads of their national church. 
 Schmidt, t. i., p. 382. De Marca, 1. iii., c. 16. 
 Fleury, Institutions au Droit, t. i., p. 288., Murato- 
 ri, Dissert. 70 (t. iii., p. 404, Italian), is of opinion 
 that exemptions of monasteries from episcopal visi- 
 tation did not become frequent in Italy till the elev- 
 enth century ; and that many charters of this kind 
 are forgeries. It is held also by some English an- 
 tiquaries, that no Anglo-Saxon monastery was ex- 
 empt, and that the first instance is that of Battle Ab- 
 bey under the Conqueror ; the charters of an earlier 
 date having been forged. Hody on Convocations, 
 p. 20 and 170. It is remarkable that this grant is 
 made by William, and confirmed by Lanfranc. 
 Collier, p. 256. Exemptions became very usual in 
 England afterward. Henry, vol. v., p. 337. 
 
CHAP. VII ] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 275 
 
 weapons of their order, kept their own 
 sovereigns in cheeky and it could not 
 seem any extraordinary stretch in their 
 supreme head to assert an equal preroga- 
 tive. Gregory IV., as I have mentioned, 
 became a party in the revolt against 
 Louis I. ; but he never carried his threats 
 of excommunication into effect. The 
 first instance where the Roman pontiffs 
 actually tried the force of their arms 
 against a sovereign, was the excommuj, 
 nication of Lothaire, king of Lorraine, and 
 grandson of Louis the Debonair. This 
 prince had repudiated his wife upon un- 
 just pretexts, but with the approbation 
 of a national council, and had subse- 
 quently married his concubine. Nicho- 
 las I., the actual pope, despatched two le- 
 gates to investigate this business, and de- 
 cide according to the canons. They hold 
 a council at Metz, and confirm the divorce 
 and marriage. Enraged at this conduct 
 of his ambassadors, the pope summons 
 a council at Rome, annuls the sentence, 
 deposes the archbishops of Treves and 
 Cologne, and directs the king to discard 
 his mistress. After some shuffling on 
 the part of Lothaire, he is excommunica- 
 ted ; and, in a short time, we find both 
 the king and his prelates, who had begun 
 with expressions of passionate contempt 
 towards the pope, suing humbly for abso- 
 lution at the feet of Adrian II., successor 
 of Nicholas, which was not granted with- 
 out difficulty. In all its most impudent 
 pretensions, the Holy See has attended 
 to the circumstances of the time. Lo- 
 thaire had powerful neighbours, the kings 
 of France and Germany, eager to invade 
 his dominions on the first intimation from 
 Rome ; while the real scandalousness of 
 his behaviour must have intimidated his 
 conscience, and disgusted his subjects. 
 
 Excommunication, whatever opinions 
 Excommu- may be entertained as to its re- ^ 
 nications. Hgious efficacy, was originally | 
 nothing more in appearance than the ex- ' 
 ercise of a right which every society 
 claims, the expulsion of refractory mem- 
 bers from its body. No direct temporal 
 disadvantages attended this penalty for 
 several ages ; but, as it was the most se- 
 vere of spiritual censures, and tended to 
 exclude the object of it not only from a 
 participation in religious rites, but, in a 
 considerable degree, from the intercourse 
 of Christian society, it was used spa- 
 ringly, and upon the gravest occasions. 
 Gradually, as the church became more 
 powerful and more imperious, excommu- 
 nications were issued upon every provo- 
 cation, rather as a weapon of ecclesias- 
 tical warfare than with any regard to its 
 S 2 
 
 original intention. There was certainly 
 some pretext for many of these censures, 
 as the only means of defence within the 
 reach of the clergy, when their posses- 
 sions were lawlessly violated.* Others 
 were founded upon the necessity of enfor- 
 cing their contentious jurisdiction, which, 
 while it was rapidly extending itself over 
 almost all persons and causes, had not 
 acquired any proper coercive process, 
 The spiritual courts in England, whose 
 jurisdiction is so multifarious, and, in 
 general, so little of a religious nature, 
 had till lately no means even of compel- 
 ling an appearance, much less of enfor- 
 cing a sentence, but by excommunica- 
 tion.f Princes, who felt the inadequacy 
 of their own laws to secure obedience, 
 called in the assistance of more formida- 
 ble sanctions. Several capitularies of 
 Charlemagne denounce the penalty of 
 excommunication against incendiaries, or 
 deserters from the army. Charles the 
 Bald procured similar censures against 
 his revolted vassals. Thus the boundary 
 between temporal and spiritual offences 
 grew every day less distinct; and the 
 clergy were encouraged to fresh en- 
 croachments, as they discovered the se- 
 cret of rendering them successful. | 
 
 The civil magistrate ought undoubted- 
 ly to protect the just rights and lawful 
 jurisdiction of the church. It is not so 
 vident that he should attach temporal 
 penalties to her censures. Excommu- 
 nication has never carried such a pre- 
 sumption of moral turpitude as to disable 
 a man, upon any solid principles, from 
 the usual privileges of society. Super- 
 stition and tyranny, however, decided 
 otherwise. The support due to church 
 censures by temporal judges is vaguely 
 declared in the capitularies of Pepin and 
 Charlemagne. It became, in later ages, ' 
 a more established principle in France 
 and England, and, I presume, in other 
 countries. By our common law, an ex- 
 communicated person is incapable of be- 
 ing a witness, or of bringing an action ; 
 and he may be detained in prison until 
 he obtains absolution. By the establish- 
 ments of St. Louis, his estate or person 
 might be attached by the magistrate. 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 217. Fleury, Institutions au 
 Droit, t. ii., p. 192. 
 
 t By a recent statute, 53 G. III., c. 127, the writ 
 De excoinmunicato capiendo, as a process in con- 
 tempt, was abolished in England, but retained in 
 Ireland. 
 
 t Mem. de PAcad. des Inscript., t. xxxix., p. 596, 
 &c. 
 
 Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 121. But an 
 excommunicated person might sue in the lay, 
 though not in the spiritual, court. No law eeem 
 
276 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 These actual penalties were attended by 
 marks of abhorrence and ignominy still 
 more calculated to make an impression 
 on ordinary minds. They were to be 
 Shunned, like men infected with leprosy, 
 by tifcic. servants, their friends, and their 
 families?"SCwo attendants only, if we 
 may trust a "current history, remained 
 with Robert, king of France, who, on ac- 
 count of an irregular marriage, was put 
 to this ban by Gregory V. ; and these 
 threw all the meats which had passed his 
 table into the lire.* Indeed, the mere in- 
 tercourse with a proscribed person incur- 
 red what was called the lesser excom- 
 munication, or privation of the sacra- 
 ments, and required penitence and abso- 
 lution. In some places, a bier was set 
 before the door of an excommunicated 
 individual, and stones thrown at his win- 
 dows ; a singular method of compelling 
 his submission.! Everywhere the ex- 
 communicated were debarred of a regular 
 sepulture, which, though obviously a mat- 
 ter of police, has, through the supersti- 
 tion of consecrating burial-grounds, been 
 treated as belonging to ecclesiastical con- 
 trol. Their carcasses were supposed to 
 be incapable of corruption, which seems 
 to have been thought a privilege unfit for 
 those who had died in so irregular a man- 
 ner.J 
 
 But as excommunication, which at- 
 tacked only one and perhaps a 
 8 ' hardened sinner, was not always 
 efficacious, the church had recourse to 
 a more comprehensive punishment. For 
 the offence of a nobleman, she put a 
 county, for that of a prince, his entire 
 J kingdom, under an interdict, or suspen- 
 \ sion of religious offices. No stretch of 
 her tyranny was perhaps so outrageous 
 as this. During an interdict, the church- 
 es were closed, the bells silent, the dead 
 unburied, no rite but those of baptism 
 and extreme unction performed. The 
 penalty fell upon those who had neither 
 partaken nor could have prevented the 
 offence ; and the offence was often but a 
 private dispute, in which the pride of a 
 pope or bishop had been wounded. In- 
 terdicts were so rare before the time of 
 
 to have been so severe in this respect as that of 
 England ; though it is not strictly accurate to say 
 with Dr. Cosens (Gibson's Codex, p. 1102), that 
 the writ De excommun. capiendo is a privilege pe- 
 culiar to the English church. 
 
 * Velly, t. ii. 
 
 t Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. hi. Appendix, 
 p. 350. Du Cange, v. Excommunicatio. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Imblocatus : where several au- 
 thors are referred to, for the constant opinion 
 among the members of the Greek church, that the 
 bodies of excommunicated persons remain in sta- 
 tu quo. 
 
 Gregory VII., that some have referred 
 them to him as their author; instances 
 may however be found of an earlier date, 
 and especially that which accompanied 
 the abovementioned excommunication of 
 Robert, king of France. They were af- 
 terward issued not unfrequently against 
 kingdoms ; but in particular districts they 
 continually occurred.* 
 
 This was the mainspring of the ma- 
 ghinery that the clergy set in motion, the 
 lever by which they moved the world. 
 From the moment that these interdicts 
 and excommunications had been tried, 
 the powers of the earth might be said to 
 have existed only by sufferance. Nor 
 was the validity of such denunciations 
 supposed to depend upon their justice. 
 The imposer indeed of an unjust excom- 
 munication was guilty of a sin ; but the 
 party subjected to it had no remedy but 
 submission. He who disregards such a 
 sentence, says Beaumanoir, renders his 
 good cause bad.f And indeed, without 
 annexing so much importance to the di- 
 re^ct consequences of an ungrounded cen- 
 sure, it is evident that the received the- 
 ory of religion concerning the indispen- 
 sable obligation and mysterious efficacy 
 of the rites of communion and confession, 
 must have induced scrupulous minds to 
 make any temporal sacrifice rather than 
 incur their privation. One is rather sur- 
 prised at the instances of failure, than 
 of success, in the employment of these 
 spiritual weapons against sovereigns, or 
 the laity in general. It was perhaps 
 a fortunate circumstance for Europe, 
 that they were not introduced, upon a 
 large scale, during the darkest ages of 
 superstition. In the eighth or ninth cen- 
 turies they would probably have met with 
 a more implicit obedience. But after 
 Gregory VII., as the spirit of ecclesi- 
 astical usurpation became more violent, 
 there grew up by slow degrees an op- 
 posite feeling in the laity, which ripened 
 into an alienation of sentiment from the 
 church, and a conviction of that sacred 
 truth, which superstition and sophistry 
 have endeavoured to eradicate from the 
 heart of man, that no tyrannical govern- 
 ment can be founded on a divine commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Excommunications had very seldom, if 
 ever, been levelled at the head Further 
 of a sovereign before the in- usurpation 
 stance of Lothaire. His igno- ofthe 
 millions submission, and the gen- l 
 
 * Giannone, 1. vii., c. 1. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 220- 
 Dupin, De antiqua Eccl. Disciplina, p. 288. St. 
 Marc, t. ii., p. 535. Fleury, Institutions, t, ii., p. 
 200. fP.261. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 277 
 
 eral feebleness of the Carlovingian line 
 produced a repetition of the menace a 
 least, and in cases more evidently be 
 yond the cognizance of a spiritual au 
 thority. Upon the death of this Lothaire 
 his uncle, Charles the Bald, having pos 
 sessed himself of Lorraine, to which the 
 Emperor Louis II. had juster pretensions 
 the pope, Adrian II., warned him to desist 
 declaring that any attempt upon thai 
 country would bring down the penalty of 
 excommunication. Sustained by the in- 
 trepidity of Hincmar, the king did not ex- 
 hibit his usual pusillanimity, and the pope 
 in this instance failed of success.* But 
 John VIII., the next occupier of the 
 chair of St. Peter, carried his pretension 
 to a height which none of his predeces- 
 sors had reached. The Carlovingian 
 princes had formed an alliance against 
 Boson, the usurper of the kingdom of 
 Aries. The pope writes to Charles the 
 Fat : I have adopted the jllusirious_prince 
 Boson as my son ; BcTcontent therefore 
 with your own kingdom ; for I shall in- 
 stantly excommunicate all who attempt 
 to injure my son.f In another letter to 
 the same king, who had taken some prop- 
 erty from a convent, he enjoins him to 
 restore it within sixty days, and to cer- 
 tify by ri envoy that he had obeyed the 
 command ; else an excommunication 
 would immediately ensue, to be fol- 
 lowed by still severer castigation, if the 
 king 'should not repent upon the first 
 punishment.J These expressions seem 
 to intimate a sentence of deposition from 
 his throne, and thus anticipate by two 
 hundred years the famous era of Grego- 
 ry VII., at which we shall soon arrive. 
 In some respects, John VIII. even ad- 
 vanced pretensions beyond those of Greg- 
 ory. He asserts very plainly a right of 
 choosing the emperor, and may seem 
 indirectly to have exercised it in the 
 election of Charles the Bald, who had 
 not primogeniture in his favour. $ This 
 prince, whose restless ambition was uni- 
 ted with meanness as well as insincerity, 
 consented to sign a capitulation, on his 
 coronation at Rome, in favour of the 
 pope and church, a precedent which was 
 improved upon in subsequent ages.|| 
 Rome was now prepared to rivet her fet- 
 ters upon sovereigns, and at no period 
 have the condition of society and the 
 circumstances of civil government been 
 
 * DeMarca, 1. iv., c. 11. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. ii., p. 260. 
 
 i Durioribus deinceps scienste verberibus erudi- 
 endurn. Schmidt, p. 261. 
 
 <j Baluz. Capitularia, t. ii., p.- 251. Schmidt, t. 
 ii., p. 197. 
 
 i! Id., p. 199. 
 
 so favourable for her ambition. But the 
 consummation was still sus- Theirde _ 
 pended, and even her progress generacy'in 
 arrested, for more than a him- the tcnt & 
 dred and fifty years. This cemury ' 
 dreary interval is filled up, in the annals 
 of the papacy, by a series of revolutions 
 and crimes. Six popes were deposed, 
 two murdered, and one mutilated. Fre- 
 quently two or even three competitors, 
 among whom it is not always possible by 
 any genuine criticism to distinguish the 
 true shepherd, drove each other alter- 
 nately from the city. A few respectable 
 names appear thinly scattered through 
 this darkness; and sometimes, perhaps, 
 a pope, who had acquired estimation by 
 his private virtues, may be distinguished 
 by some encroachment on the rights of 
 princes, or the privileges of national 
 churches. But, in general, the pontiffs of 
 that age had neither leisure nor capacity 
 to perfect the great system of temporal 
 supremacy, and looked rather to a vile 
 profit from the sale of episcopal confirm- 
 ations, or of exemptions to monaster- 
 ies.* 
 
 The corruption of the head extended 
 naturally to all other members corruption 
 of the church. All writers con- of morals, 
 cur in stigmatizing the dissoluteness and 
 neglect of decency that prevailed among 
 ,he clergy. Though several codes of 
 ecclesiastical discipline had been compi- 
 ed by particular prelates, yet neither 
 hese nor the ancient canons were much 
 regarded. The bishops, indeed, who were 
 to enforce them, had most occasion to 
 dread their severity. They were obtru- 
 ded upon their sees, as the supreme pon- 
 iffs were upon that of Rome, by force or 
 corruption. A child of five years old 
 was made archbishop of Rheims. The 
 see of Narbonne was purchased for an- 
 other at the age of ten.f By this relax- 
 Uion of morals the priesthood began to 
 ose its hold upon the prejudices of inan- 
 cind. These are nourished chiefly, in- 
 deed, by shining examples of piety and 
 irtue, but also, in a superstitious age, by 
 ascetic observances, by the fasting and 
 matching of monks and hermits; who 
 lave obviously so bad a lot in this life, 
 hat men are induced to conclude that 
 hey must have secured a better rever- 
 fion in futurity. The regular clergy, ac- 
 cordingly, or monastic orders, who prac- 
 
 Schmidt, t. ii^p. 414. Mosheim. St. Marc. 
 Huratori, Ann. d'ltalia, passim. 
 
 f Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., p. 252. It 
 
 was almost general in the church to have bishops 
 
 nder twenty years old. Idem, p. 149. Even the 
 
 'ope Benedict IX. is said to have been only 
 
 welve, but this has been doubted. 
 
278 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 tised, at least apparently, the specious 
 impostures of self-mortification, retained 
 at all times a far greater portion of re- 
 spect than ordinary priests, though de- 
 generated themselves, as was admitted, 
 from their primitive strictness. 
 
 Two crimes, or at least violations of 
 Neglect of ecclesiastical law, had become 
 rules of almost universal in the eleventh 
 celibacy. cen t ur y ? an <} excited general in- 
 dignation ; the marriage or concubinage 
 of priests, and the sale of benefices. By 
 an effect of those prejudices in favour of\ 
 austerity to which I have just alluded, 
 celibacy had been, from very early times, 
 enjoined as an obligation upon the cler- 
 gy. Some of the fathers permitted those 
 already married for the first time, and to 
 a virgin, to retain their wives after ordi- 
 nation, as a kind of indulgence, of which 
 it was more laudable not to take advan- 
 tage ; and this, after prevailing for a 
 length of time in the Greek church, was 
 sanctioned by the council of Trullo in 
 691,* and had ever since continued one 
 of the distinguishing features of its dis- 
 cipline. The Latin church, however, did 
 not receive these canons ; and has uni- 
 formly persevered in excluding the three 
 orders of priests, deacons, and subdea- 
 cons, not only from contracting matri- 
 mony, but from cohabiting with wives 
 espoused before their ordination. The 
 prohibition, however, during some ages, 
 existed only in the letter of her canons. f 
 In every country, the secular or parochial 
 clergy kept women in their houses, upon 
 more or less acknowledged terms of in- 
 tercourse, by a connivance of their eccle- 
 siastical superiors, which almost amount- 
 ed to a positive toleration. The sons of 
 priests were capable of inheriting by the 
 law of France and also of Castile.! Some 
 
 * This council was held at Constantinople in 
 the dome of the palace, calledTrullus, by the Lat- 
 ins. The word Trullo, though soloecistical, is 
 used, I believe, by ecclesiastical writers in Eng- 
 lish. St. Marc, t. i., p. 294. Art de verifier les 
 Dates, t. i,, p. 157. Fleury, Hist. Eceles,, t. ix., p. 
 110. Bishops are not within this permission, and 
 cannot retain their wives by the discipline of the 
 Greek church. 
 
 t This prohibition is sometimes repeated in 
 Charlemagne's capitularies; but I have not ob- 
 served that he notices its violation as a notorious 
 abuse. It is probable, therefore, that the open con- 
 cubinage or marriage of the clergy was not general 
 until a later period. And Fleury declares, that he 
 has found no instance of it before 893, in the case 
 of a parish priest at Chalons, who gave great scan- 
 dal by publicly marrying. Hist. Eccles., t. xi., p. 
 594. 
 
 J Recueil des Historiens, t. xi., preface. Mari- 
 na, Ensayo sobre las siete partidas, c. 221, 223. 
 This was by virtue of the general indulgence 
 shown by the customs of that country to concubi- 
 nage, or barragania ; the children of such a union 
 
 vigorous efforts had been made in England 
 by Dunstan, with the assistance of King 
 Edgar, to dispossess the married canons, 
 if not the parochial clergy, of their bene- 
 fices ; but the abuse, if such it is to be 
 considered, made incessant progress, till 
 the middle of the eleventh century. 
 There was certainly much reason for the 
 rulers of the church to restore, this part 
 of their discipline, since it is by cutting 
 off her members from the charities of 
 domestic life that she secures their en- 
 tire affection to her cause, and renders 
 them, like veteran soldiers, independent 
 of every feeling but that of fidelity to 
 their commander, and regard to the in- 
 terests of their body. Leo IX., accord- 
 ingly, one of the first pontiffs who retriev- 
 ed the honour of the apostolic chair, after 
 its long period of ignominy, began in 
 good earnest the difficult work of enfor- 
 cing celibacy among the clergy.* His 
 successors never lost sight of this essen- 
 tial point of discipline. It was a struggle 
 against the natural rights and strongest 
 affections of mankind, which lasted for 
 several ages, and succeeded only by the 
 toleration of greater evils than those it 
 was intended to remove. The laity, in 
 general, took part against the married 
 priests, who were reduced to infamy and 
 want, or obliged to renounce their dear- 
 est connexions. In many parts of Ger- 
 many, no ministers were left to perform 
 divine services.! But perhaps there was 
 no country where the rules of celibacy 
 met with so little attention as in England. 
 It was acknowledged, in the reign of Hen- 
 ry I., that the greater and better part of 
 the clergy were married ; and that prince 
 is said to have permitted them to retain 
 their wives. | But the hierarchy never 
 
 always inheriting in default of those born in sol- 
 emn wedlock. Ibid. 
 
 * St. Marc, t. iii., p. 152, 164, 219, 602, &c. 
 
 f Schmidt, t. iii., p. 279. Martenne, Thesaurus 
 Anecdotorum, t. i., p. 230. A Danish writer draws 
 a still darker picture of the tyranny exercised to- 
 wards the married clergy, which, if he does not ex- 
 aggerate, was severe indeed : alii membris trunca- 
 bantur, alii occidebantur, alii de patria expelleban- 
 tur, pauci sua retinuere. Langebek, Script. Re- 
 rum Danicarum, t, i., p. 380. The prohibition was 
 repeated by Waldemar II. in 1222, so that there 
 seems to have been much difficulty found. Idem, 
 p. 287 and p. 272. 
 
 J Wilkins, Concilia, p. 387. Chronicon Saxon. 
 Collier, p. 248, 286, 294. Lyttleton, vol. iii., p. 
 328. The third Lateran council, fifty years after- 
 ward, speaks of the detestable custom of keeping 
 concubines, long used by the English clergy. Cum 
 in Anglia prava et detestabili consuetudine et longo 
 tempore fuerit obtentum, ut clerici in domibus suis 
 fornicarias habeant. Labbe, Concilia, t. x., p, 
 1633. Eugenius IV. sent a legate to impose celi- 
 bacy on the Irish clergy. Lyttleton's Henry II- , 
 vol. ii., p. 42. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 279 
 
 relaxed in their efforts ; and all the coun- 
 cils, general or provincial, of the twelfth 
 century, utter denunciations against con- 
 cubinary priests.* After that age we do 
 not find them so frequently mentioned 
 and the abuse by degrees, though not 
 suppressed, was reduced within limits at 
 which the church might connive. 
 /Simony, or the corrupt purchase of 
 Vjsimon spiritual benefices, was the second 
 characteristic reproach of the cler- 
 gy in the eleventh century. The meas- 
 ures taken to repress it deserve particu- 
 lar consideration, as they produced effects 
 of the highest importance in the history 
 Episcopal of the middle ages. According 
 elections. to fa e primitive custom of the 
 church, an episcopal vacancy was filled 
 up by election of the clergy and people 
 belonging to the city or diocess. The 
 subject of their choice was, after the 
 establishment of the federate or provin- 
 cial system, to be approved or rejected 
 by the metropolitan and his suffragans ; 
 and, if approved, he was consecrated by 
 them.f It is probable that, in almost 
 every case, the clergy took a leading 
 part in the selection of their bishops ; 
 but the consent of the laity was abso- 
 lutely necessary to render it valid. J 
 They were, however, by degrees ex- 
 cluded from any real participation, first 
 in the Greek, and finally in the western 
 church. But this was not effected till 
 pretty late times ; the people fully pre- 
 served their elective rights at Milan in 
 the eleventh century ; and traces of their 
 concurrence may be found both in France 
 and Germany in the next age. 
 
 * Quidam sacerdotes Latini, says Innocent III., 
 in domibus suis habent concubinas, et nonnulli ali- 
 quas sibi non metuunt desponsare. Opera Inno- 
 cent III., p. 558. See also p. 300 and 407. The 
 latter cannot be supposed a very common case, 
 after so many prohibitions ; the more usual prac- 
 tice was to keep a female in their houses, under 
 some pretence of relationship or servitude, as is 
 still said to be usual in Catholic countries. Du 
 Cange, v. Focaria. A writer of respectable au- 
 thority asserts, that the clergy frequently obtained 
 a bishop's license to cohabit with a mate. Har- 
 mer's [Wharton's] Observations on Burnet, p. 11. 
 I find a passage in Nicholas de Clemangis, about 
 1400, quoted in Lewis's life of Pecock, p. 30. Pie- 
 risque in diocesibus, rectores parochiarum ex certo 
 et conducto cum his praelatis pretio, passim et pub- 
 lice concubinas tenent. This, however, does not 
 amount to a direct license. 
 
 The marriages of English clergy are noticed and 
 condemned in some provincial constitutions of 
 1237. Matt. Paris, p. 381. And there is, even so 
 late as 1404, a mandate by the Bishop of Exeter 
 against married priests. Wilkins, Concilia, t. hi., 
 p. 277. 
 
 \ Marca, De Concordantia, &c., 1. vi., c. 2. 
 Father Paul on Benefices, c. 7. 
 
 <j De Marca, ubi supi^. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 173. 
 
 It does not appear that the early Chris- 
 tian emperors interposed with the free- 
 dom of choice any farther than to make 
 their own confirmation necessary in the 
 great patriarchal sees, such as Rome and 
 Constantinople, which were frequently 
 the objects of violent competition, and to 
 decide in controverted elections.* The 
 Gothic and Lombard kings of Italy fol- 
 lowed the same line of conduct.f But in 
 the French monarchy a more extensive 
 authority was assumed by the sovereign. 
 Though the practice was subject to some 
 variation, it may be said generally that 
 the Merovingian kings, the line of Char- 
 lemagne, and the German emperors of 
 the house of Saxony, conferred bishoprics 
 either by direct nomination, or, as was 
 more regular, by recommendatory letters 
 to the electors.^ In England also, before 
 the conquest, bishops were appointed in 
 the wittenagemot ; and even in the reign 
 of William, it is said that Lanfranc was 
 raised to the see of Canterbury by con- 
 sent of parliament. $ But, independently 
 of this prerogative, which length of time 
 and the tacit sanction of the people have 
 rendered unquestionably legitimate, the 
 sovereign had other means of controlling 
 the election of a bishop. Those estates 
 and honours which compose the tempo- 
 ralities of the see, and without which the 
 naked spiritual privileges would not have 
 tempted an avaricious generation, had 
 
 The form of election of a bishop of Puy, in 1053, 
 runs thus : clerus, populus, et militia elegimus. 
 Vaissette, Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii. Appendix, p. 
 220. Even Gratian seems to admit in one place 
 that the laity had a sort of share, though no deci- 
 sive voice, in filling up an episcopal vacancy. 
 Electio clericorum est, petitio plebis. Decret.,1. i., 
 distinctio 62, And other subsequent passages con- 
 irm this. 
 
 * Gibbon, c. 20. St. Marc, Abrege Chronolo- 
 gique, t. i., p. 7. 
 
 t Fra Paolo on Benefices, c. ix. Giannone, 1. 
 ii., c. 6 ; 1. iv., c. 12. St. Marc, t. i., p. 37. 
 
 J Schmidt, t. i., p. 386; t. ii., p. 245, 487. This 
 nterference of the kings was perhaps not quite 
 lonformable to their own laws, wnich only reserved 
 o them the confirmation. Episcopo decedente, 
 ays a constitution of Clotaire II. in 615, in loco 
 psius, qui a metropolitario ordinari debet, a provin- 
 :ialibus, a clero et populo eligatur : et si persona 
 ondigna fuerit, per ordinationem principis ordine- 
 ur. Baluz. Capitul., t. i., p. 21. Charlemagne is 
 aid to have adhered to this limitation, leaving 
 Sections free, and only approving the person, and 
 onferring investiture on him. F. Paul, on Bene- 
 ices, c. xv. But a more direct influence was re- 
 tored afterward. Ivon, bishop of Chartres, about 
 he year 1100, thus concisely expresses the several 
 iarties concurring in the creation of a bishop : eli- 
 ;ente clero, suffragante populo, dono regis, per 
 nanum metropolitan!, approbante Romano ponti- 
 fice. Du Chesne, Script. Rerum Gallicarum, t. iv., 
 .174. 
 
 Lyttleton's Hist, of Henry II., vol. iv., p. 144, 
 
280 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 chiefly been granted by former kings, 
 and were assimilated to lands held on a 
 beneficiary tenure. As they seemed to 
 partake of the nature of fiefs, they re- 
 quired similar formalities; in- 
 
 Investitures. vestiture by the lord? and an 
 
 oath of fealty by the tenant. Charle- 
 magne is said to have introdueeUTEis 
 practice ; and, by way of visible symbol, 
 as usual in feudal institutions, to have 
 put the ring: and crosier into the hands of 
 the newly-consecrated bishop. And this 
 continued for more than two centuries 
 afterward without exciting any scandal 
 or resistance.* 
 
 The church has undoubtedly surren- 
 dered part of her independence in return 
 for ample endowments and temporal 
 power ; nor could any claim be more rea- 
 sonable than that of feudal superiors to 
 grant the investiture of dependant fiefs. 
 But the fairest right may be sullied by 
 abuse ; and the sovereigns, the lay-pa- 
 trons, the prelates of the tenth and elev- 
 enth centuries, made their powers of 
 nomination and investiture subservient 
 to the grossest rapacity. f According to 
 the ancient canons, a benifice was avoid- 
 ed by any simoniacal payment or stipu- 
 lation. If these were to be enforced, the 
 church must almost be cleared of its min- 
 isters. Either through bribery in places 
 where elections still prevailed, or through 
 corrupt agreements with princes, or, at 
 least, customary presents to their wives 
 and ministers, a large proportion of the 
 bishops had no valid tenure in their sees. 
 The case was perhaps worse with inferior 
 clerks ; in the church of Milan, which was 
 notorious for this corruption, not a single 
 ecclesiastic could stand the test, the arch- 
 bishop exacting a price for the collation 
 of every benefice. : 
 
 The bishops of Rome, like those of in- 
 im eriai ^ TIOT sees > were regularly elected 
 confirm- by the citizens, laymen as well as 
 ationof ecclesiastics. But their conse- 
 popes. cra ti on was deferred until the 
 popular choice had received the sov- 
 ereign's sanction. The Romans regu- 
 larly despatched letters to Constanti- 
 nople or to the exarchs of Ravenna, 
 
 * De Marca, p. 416. Giannone, 1. vi., c. 7. 
 
 t Boniface, marquis of Tuscany, father of the 
 Countess Matilda, and by far the greatest prince in 
 Italy, was flogged before the altar by an abbot for 
 selling benefices. Muratori, ad ann. 1046. The 
 offence was much more common than the punish- 
 ment, but the two combined furnish a good speci- 
 men of the eleventh century. 
 
 t St. Marc, t. iii., p. 65, 188, 219, 296, 230, 568. 
 Muratori, A. D. 958, 1057, &c. Fleury, Hist. Ec- 
 cles., t. xiii., p. 73. The sum, however, appears to 
 have been very small: rather like a fee than a 
 bribe. 
 
 praying that their election of a pope 
 might be confirmed. Exceptions, if any, 
 are infrequent while Rome was subject 
 to the eastern empire.* This, among 
 other imperial prerogatives, Charlemagne 
 might consider as his own. He posses- 
 sed the city, especially after his corona- 
 tion as emperor, in full sovereignty ; and, 
 even before that event, had investigated, 
 as supreme chief, some accusations pre- 
 ferred against the Pope Leo III. No va- 
 cancy of the papacy took place after 
 Charlemagne became emperor; and it 
 must be confessed, that, in the first which 
 happened under Louis the Debonair, Ste- 
 phen IV. was consecrated in haste without 
 that prince's approbation.! But Gregory 
 IV., his successor, waited till his elec- 
 tion had been confirmed; and, upon 
 the whole, the Carlovingian emperors, 
 though less uniformly than their pred- 
 ecessors, retained that mark of sov- 
 ereignty. | But during the disorderly 
 state of Italy which followed the last 
 reigns of Charlemagne's posterity, while 
 the sovereignty and even the name of an 
 emperor were in abeyance, the supreme 
 dignity of Christendom was conferred 
 only by the factious rabble of its capital. 
 Otho the Great, in receiving the imperial 
 crown, took upon him the prerogatives 
 of Charlemagne. There is even extant a 
 decree of Leo VIII., which grants to him 
 and his successors the right of naming 
 future popes. But the authenticity of 
 this instrument is denied by the Italians. 
 It does not appear that the Saxon em- 
 perors went to such a length as nomina- 
 tion, except in one instance (that of 
 Gregory V. in 996) ; but they sometimes, 
 not uniformly, confirmed the election of 
 a pope, according to ancient custom. 
 An explicit right of nomination was how- 
 ever conceded to the Emperor Henry III. 
 in 1047, as the only means of rescuing 
 the Roman church from the disgrace and 
 depravity into which it had fallen. Henry 
 
 * Le Blanc, Dissertation sur 1'Autorite des Em- 
 pereurs. This is subjoined to his Traite des 
 Monnoyes; but not in all copies, which makes 
 those that want it less valuable. St. Marc and 
 Muratori, passim. 
 
 t Muratori, A. D. 817. St. Marc. 
 
 t Le Blanc. Schmidt, t. ii., p. 186. St. Marc, t. 
 i., p. 387, 393, &c. , 
 
 St. Marc had defended the authenticity of this 
 instrument in a separate dissertation, t. iv., p. 1167, 
 though admitting some interpolations. Pagi in 
 Baronium, t. iv., p. 8, seemed to me to have urged 
 some weighty objections ; and Muratori, Annali 
 d'ltalia, A. D. 962, speaks of it as a gross impos- 
 ture, in which he probably goes too far. It obtain- 
 ed credit rather early, and is admitted into the de- 
 cretum of Gratian, notwithstanding its obvious 
 tendency, p. 211, edit. 1591. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER, 
 
 281 
 
 appointed two or three very good popes : 
 acting in this against the warnings of a 
 selfish policy, as fatal experience soon 
 proved to his family.* 
 
 This high prerogative was perhaps not 
 designed to extend beyond Henry him- 
 self. But, even if it had been transmis- 
 sible to his successors, the infancy of his 
 son Henry IV., and the factions of that 
 minority, precluded the possibility of its 
 Decree of exercise. Nicolas II., in 1059, 
 Nicolas published a decree, which resto- 
 red the rrgtrT"of election to" the 
 Romans, but with a remarkable varia- 
 tion from the original form. The car- 
 dinal bishops (seven in number, holding 
 sees in the neighbourhood of Rome, and 
 consequently suffragans of the pope as 
 patriarch or metropolitan) were to choose 
 the supreme pontiff, with the concur- 
 rence first of the cardinal priests and 
 deacons (or ministers of the parish 
 churches of Rome), and afterward of 
 the laity. Thus elected, the new pope 
 was to be presented for confirmation to 
 Henry, " now king and hereafter to be- 
 come emperor," and to such of his suc- 
 cessors as should personally obtain that 
 privilege.! This decree is the founda- 
 tion of that celebrated mode of election 
 in a conclave of cardinals, which has ever 
 since determined the headship of the 
 church. It was intended not only to ex- 
 clude the citizens, who had indeed justly 
 forfeited their primitive right, but as far 
 as possible to prepare the way for an ab- 
 solute emancipation of the papacy from 
 the imperial control; reserving only a 
 precarious and personal concession to 
 the emperors, instead of their ancient 
 legal prerogative of confirmation. 
 
 The real author of this decree, and 
 Gregory of all other vigorous measures 
 vii. JOTS, adopted by the popes of that 
 age, whether for the assertion of their 
 independence, or the restoration of dis- 
 cipline, was Hildebrand, archdeacon of 
 the church of Rome, by far the most 
 conspicuous person of the eleventh cen- 
 tury. Acquiring by his extraordinary 
 qualities an unbounded ascendency over 
 the Italian clergy, they regarded him as 
 their chosen leader, and the hope of their 
 common cause. He had been empower- 
 ed singly to nominate a pope, on the part 
 of the Romans,| after the death of Leo 
 IX., and compelled Henry III. to acqui- 
 
 * St. Marc. Muratori. Schmidt . Struvius. 
 
 t St. Marc, t. iii., p. 276. The first canon of the 
 third Lateran council makes the consent of two 
 thirds of the college necessary for a pope's elec- 
 tion. Labb6, Concilia, t. x., p. 1508. 
 
 t St. Marc, p. 97. 
 
 esce in his choice of Victor II. No 
 man could proceed more fearlessly to-* 
 wards his object than Hildebrand, nor 
 with less attention to TeetteetenTTous im- 
 pediments. Though the decree of Nic- 
 olas II., his own work, had expressly 
 reserved the right of confirmation of the 
 young King of Germany, yet, on the death 
 of that pope, Hildebrand procured the 
 election and consecration of Alexander 
 II. without waiting for any authority.* 
 During this pontificate he was considered 
 as something greater than the pope, who 
 acted entirely by his counsels. On Alex- 
 ander's decease, Hildebrand, long since 
 the real head of the church, was raised 
 with enthusiasm to its chief dignity, and 
 assumed the name of Gregory VII. 
 
 Notwithstanding the late precedent at 
 the election of Alexander II., it Hig differ . 
 appears that Gregory did not yet ences with 
 consider his plans sufficiently Henry iv. 
 mature to throw off the yoke altogether, 
 but declined to receive consecration un- 
 til he had obtained the consent of the 
 King of Germany. f This moderation 
 was not of long continuance. The situa- 
 tion of Germany speedily afforded him 
 an opportunity of displaying his ambitious 
 views. Henry IV., through a very bad 
 education, was arbitrary ajid dissotete ; 
 the Saxons were engaged fn a desperate 
 rebellion ; and secret disaffection had 
 spread among the princes to an extent 
 of which the pope was much better aware 
 than the king.J He began by excommu- 
 nicating some of Henry's ministers on 
 pretence of simony, and made it a ground 
 of remonstrance that they were not in- 
 stantly dismissed. His next step was to 
 publish a decree, or rather to renew one 
 of Alexander II., against lay investitures. 
 The abolition of these was a favourite ob- 
 ject of Gregory, and formed an essential 
 part of his general scheme for emancipa- 
 ting the spiritual, and subjugating the 
 temporal power. The ring and crosier, 
 it was asserted by the papal advocates, 
 were the emblems of that power which 
 no monarch could bestow; but even if a 
 less offensive symbol were adopted in 
 investitures, the dignity of the church 
 was lowered, and her purity contamina- 
 ted, when her highest ministers were 
 compelled to solicit the patronage or 
 the approbation of laymen. Though the 
 
 * St. Marc, p. 306. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 552. He acted however as pope, cor- 
 responding in that character with bishops of all 
 countries, from the day of his election, p. 554. 
 
 t Schmidt. St. Marc. These two are my prin- 
 cipal authorities for the contest between the church, 
 and the empire. 
 
 $ St. Marc, t. iii., p. 670. 
 
282 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 estates of bishops might strictly be of 
 temporal right, yet, as they had been in- 
 separably annexed to their spiritual of- 
 fice, it became just that what was first in 
 dignity and importance should carry with 
 it those accessory parts. And this was 
 more necessary than in former times, on 
 account of the notorious traffic which 
 sovereigns made of their usurped nomi- 
 nation to benefices, so that scarcely any 
 prelate sat by their favour whose pos- 
 session was not invalidated by simony. 
 
 The contest about investitures, though 
 begun by Gregory VII., did not occupy a 
 very prominent place during his pontifi- 
 cate ; its interest being suspended by 
 other more extraordinary and important 
 dissensions between the church and em- 
 pire. The pope, after tampering some 
 time with the disaffected party in Ger- 
 many, summoned Henry to appear at 
 Rome, and vindicate himself from the 
 charges alleged by his subjects. Such 
 an outrage naturally exasperated a young 
 and passionate monarch. Assembling a 
 number of bishops and other vassals at 
 Worms, he procured a sentence that 
 Gregory should no longer be obeyed as 
 lawful pope. But the time was past for 
 those arbitrary encroachments, or at least 
 high prerogatives of former emperors. 
 The relations of dependance between 
 church and state were now about to be 
 reversed. Gregory had no sooner re- 
 ceived accounts of the proceedings at 
 Worms, than he summoned a council in 
 the Lateran palace, and, by a solemn sen- 
 tence, not only excommunicated Henry, 
 but deprived him of the kingdoms of Ger- 
 many and Italy, releasing his subjects 
 from their allegiance, and forbidding them 
 to obey him as sovereign. Thus Grego- 
 ry VII. obtained the glory of leaving all 
 his predecessors behind, and astonishing 
 mankind by an act of audacity and ambi- 
 tion which the most emulous of his suc- 
 cessors could hardly surpass.* 
 
 * The sentence of Gregory VII. against the Em- 
 peror Henry was directed, we should always re- 
 member, to persons already well disposed to reject 
 his authority. Men are glad to be told that it is 
 their duty to resist a sovereign against whom they 
 are in rebellion, and will not be very scrupulous in 
 examining conclusions which fall in with their in- 
 clinations and interests. Allegiance was in those 
 turbulent ages easily thrown off, and the right of 
 resistance was in continual exercise. To the Ger- 
 mans of the eleventh century, a prince unfit for 
 Christian communion would easily appear unfit to 
 reign over them ; and though Henry had not given 
 much real provocation to the pope, his vices and 
 tyranny might seem to challenge any spiritual cen- 
 sure, or temporal chastisement. A nearly contem- 
 porary writer combines the two justifications of 
 the rebellious party. Nemo Romanorum pontifi- 
 
 The first impulses of Henry's mind on 
 hearing this denunciation were indigna- 
 tion and resentment. But, like other in- 
 experienced and misguided sovereigns, 
 he had formed an erroneous calculation 
 of his own resources. A conspiracy long 
 prepared, of which the dukes of Svvabia 
 and Carinthia were the chiefs, began to 
 manifest itself; some were alienated by 
 his vices, and others jealous of his fami- 
 ly ; the rebellious Saxons took courage ; 
 the bishops, intimidated by excommuni- 
 cations, withdrew from his side ; and he .? 
 suddenly found himself almost insulated "", 
 in the midst of his dominions. In this- 
 desertion he had recourse, through panic, 
 to a miserable expedient. He crossed 
 the Alps with the avowed determination 
 of submitting, and seeking absolution from 
 the pope. Gregory was at Canossa, a 
 fortress near Reggio, belonging to his 
 faithful adherent, the Countess Matilda. 
 [A. D. 1077.] It was in a winter of un- 
 usual severity. The emperor was ad- 
 mitted, without his guards, into an outer 
 court of the castle, and three successive 
 days remained from morning till evening, 
 in a woollen shirt and with naked feet, 
 while Gregory, shut up with the countess, 
 refused to admit him to his presence. 
 On the fourth day he obtained absolution ; 
 but only upon condition of appearing on 
 a certain day to learn the pope's decis- 
 ion, whether or no he should be restored 
 to his kingdom, until which time he 
 promised not to assume the ensigns of 
 royalty. 
 
 This base humiliation, instead of con- 
 ciliating Henry's adversaries, forfeited the 
 attachment of his friends. In his contest 
 with the pope, he had found a zealous 
 support in the principal Lombard cities, 
 among whom the married and simoniacal 
 clergy had great influence.* Indignant 
 
 cem reges a regno deponere posse denegabit, qui- 
 cunque decreta sanctissimi Papae Gregorii non 
 proscribenda judicabit. Ipse enim vir apostolicus 
 . . . . Pneterea, liberi homines Henricum eo pacto 
 sibi praeposuerunt in regem, ut electores suos juste 
 judicare et regali providentia gubernare satageret, 
 quod pactum ille postea praevaricari et contem- 
 nere non cessavit, &c. Ergo, et absque sedis 
 apostolicae judicio principes eum pro rege merito 
 refutare possent, cum pactum adimplere contem- 
 serit, quod iis pro electione sua promiserat ; quo 
 non adimpleto, nee rex esse poterat. Vita Greg. 
 VII. in Muratori, Script. Rer. ItaL, t. iii., p. 342. 
 
 Upon the other hand, the friends and supporters 
 of Henry, though ecclesiastics, protested against 
 this novel stretch of prerogative in the Roman see. 
 Several proofs of this are adduced by Schmidt, t. 
 iii., p. 315. 
 
 * There had been a kind of civil war at Milan 
 for about twenty years before this time, excited by 
 the intemperate zeal of some partisans who en- 
 deavoured to execute the papal decrees against ir- 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 283 
 
 at his submission to Gregory, whom they 
 affected to consider as a usurper of the 
 papal chair, they now closed their gates 
 against the emperor, and spoke openly 
 of deposing him. In this singular posi- 
 tion between opposite dangers, Henry 
 retrod his late steps, and broke off his 
 treaty with the pope; preferring, if he 
 must fall, to fall as the defender rather 
 than the betrayer of his imperial rights. 
 The rebellious princes of Germany chose 
 another king, Rodolph, duke of Swabia, 
 on whom Gregory, after some delay, be- 
 stowed the crown, with a Latin verse, 
 importing that it was given by virtue of 
 the original commission of St. Peter.* 
 But the success of this pontiff in his 
 immediate designs was not answerable 
 to his intrepidity. Henry both subdued 
 the German rebellion, and carried on the 
 war with so much vigour, or rather so 
 little resistance, in Italy, that he was 
 crowned in Rome by the antipope Gui- 
 bert, whom he had raised in a council of 
 his partisans to the government of the 
 church instead of Gregory. The latter 
 found an asylum under the protection of 
 Roger Guiscard at Salerno, where he 
 Dispute died an exile. His mantle, how- 
 aboutin- ever, descended upon his suc- 
 vestitures. cessorSj especially Urban II. and 
 Paschal II., who strenuously persevered 
 in the great contest for ecclesiastical in- 
 dependence ; the former with a spirit and 
 policy worthy of Gregory VII., the latter 
 with steady but disinterested prejudice. f 
 
 regular clerks by force. The history of these feuds 
 has been written by two contemporaries, Arnulf 
 and Landulf, published in the fourth volume of 
 Muratori's Scriptores Rerum Italicarum; suffi- 
 cient extracts from which will be found in St. 
 Marc, t. iii., p. 230, dec., and in Muratori's Annals. 
 The Milanese clergy set up a pretence to retain 
 wives, under the authority of their great archbishop, 
 St. Ambrose, who, it seems, has spoken with more 
 indulgence of this practice than most of the fa- 
 thers. Both Arnulf and Landulf favour the mar- 
 ried clerks ; and were perhaps themselves of that 
 description. Muratori. 
 
 Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho. 
 f Paschal II. was so conscientious in his abhor- 
 rence of investitures, that he actually signed an 
 agreement with Henry V., in 1110, whereby the 
 prelates were to resign all the lands and other 
 possessions which they held in fief of the em- 
 peror, on condition of the latter renouncing the 
 right of investiture, which indeed, in such circum- 
 stances, would fall of itself. This extraordinary 
 concession, as may be imagined, was not very sat- 
 isfactory to the cardinals and bishops about Pas- 
 chaPs court, more worldly-minded than himself, 
 nor to those of the emperor's party, whose joint 
 clamours soon put a stop to the treaty. St. Marc, 
 t. iv., p. 976. A letter of Paschal to Anselm 
 (Schmidt, t. iii., p. 304), seems to imply that he 
 thought it better for the church to be without riches, 
 than to enjoy them on condition of doing homage 
 to laymen. 
 
 They raised up enemies against Henry 
 IV. out of the bosom of his family, insti- 
 gating the ambition of two of his sons 
 successively, Conrad and Henry, to min- 
 gle 'in the revolts of Germany. But 
 Rome, under whose auspices the latter 
 had not scrupled to engage in an almost 
 parricidal rebellion, was soon disappoint- 
 ed by his unexpected tenaciousness of 
 that obnoxious prerogative which had 
 occasioned so much of his father's mis- 
 ery. He steadily refused to part with 
 the right of investiture ; and the empire 
 was still committed in open hostility with 
 the church for fifteen years of his reign. 
 But Henry V. being stronger in the sup- 
 port of his German vassals than his father 
 had been, none of the popes with whom 
 he was engaged had the boldness to re- 
 peat the measures of Gregory VII. [A. 
 D. 1122.] At length, each party 
 grown weary of this ruinous tiSty 
 contention, a treaty was agreed concordat 
 upon between the emperor and ofCallxtus 
 Calixtus II., which put an end by com- 
 promise to the question of ecclesiastical 
 investitures. By this compact, the em- 
 peror resigned for ever all pretence to 
 invest bishops by the ring and crosier, 
 and recognised the liberty of elections. 
 But, in return, it was agreed that elec- 
 tions should be made in his presence or 
 that of his officers; and that the new 
 bishop should receive his temporalities 
 from the emperor by the sceptre.* 
 
 Both parties in the concordat at Worms 
 receded from so much of their preten- 
 sions, that we might almost hesitate to 
 determine which is to be considered as 
 victorious. On the one hand, in resto- 
 ring the freedom of episcopal elections, 
 the emperors lost a prerogative of very 
 long standing, and almost necessary to 
 the maintenance of authority over not 
 the least turbulent part of their subjects. 
 And though the form of investiture by 
 the ring and crosier seemed in itself of 
 no importance, yet it had been in effect 
 a collateral security against the election 
 of obnoxious persons. For the empe- 
 rors, detaining this necessary part of the 
 pontificals until they should confer inves- 
 titure, prevented a hasty consecration of 
 the new bishop, after which, the vacancy 
 being legally filled, it would not be decent 
 for them to withhold the temporalities. 
 But then, on the other hand, they pre- 
 served by the concordat their feudal sov- 
 ereignty over the estates of the church, 
 in defiance of the language which had 
 recently been held by its rulers. Greg- 
 
 * St. Marc, t. iv., p. 1093. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 
 178. The latter quotes the Latin words. 
 
284 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 ory VII. had positively declared, in the 
 Lateran council of 1080, that a bishop or 
 abbot receiving investiture from a lay- 
 man should not be reckoned as a prelate.* 
 The same doctrine had been maintained 
 by all his successors, without any limita- 
 tion of their censures to the formality of 
 the ring and crosier. But Calixtus II. 
 himself had gone much farther, and ab- 
 solutely prohibited the compelling eccle- 
 siastics to render any service to laymen 
 on account of their benefices. f It is evi- 
 dent, that such a general immunity from 
 feudal obligations for an order who pos- 
 sessed nearly half the lands in Europe, 
 struck at the root of those institutions 
 by which the fabric of society was prin- 
 cipally held together. This complete in- 
 dependence had been the aim of Grego- 
 ry's disciples ; and, by yielding to the 
 continuance of lay investitures in any 
 shape, Calixtus may, in this point of 
 view, appear to have relinquished the 
 principal object of contention. But as 
 there have been battles, in which though 
 immediate success may seem pretty 
 equally balanced, yet we learn from 
 subsequent effects to whom the intrinsic 
 advantages of victory belonged, so it is 
 manifest from the events that followed 
 the settlement of this great controversy 
 about investitures^ that the see of Rome 
 had conquered. 
 
 The emperors were not the only sov- 
 * ereigns whose practice of investiture ex- 
 cited the hostility of Rome, although they 
 sustained the principal brunt of the war. 
 A similar contest broke out under the 
 pontificate of Paschal II. with Henry I. 
 of England ; for the circumstances of 
 which, as they contain nothing peculiar, 
 I refer to our own historians. It is re- 
 markable, that it ended in a compromise 
 not unlike that adjusted at Worms ; the 
 king renouncing all sort of investitures, 
 while the pope consented that the bishop 
 should do homage for his temporalities. 
 This was exactly the custom of France, 
 where investiture by the ring and cro- 
 sier is said not to have prevailed ;J and 
 it answered the main end of sovereigns 
 by keeping up the feudal dependance of 
 ecclesiastical estates. But the kings of 
 
 * St. Marc, t. iv., p. 774. A bishop of Placentia 
 asserts that prelates dishonoured their order by 
 putting their hands, which held the body and blood 
 of Christ, between those of impure laymen, p. 956. 
 The same expressions are used by others, and are 
 levelled at the form of feudal homage, which, ac- 
 cording to the principles of that age, ought to have 
 been as obnoxious as investiture. 
 
 t Id., p. 1061, 1067. 
 
 i Histoire du Droit public ecclesiastique Fran- 
 5ois, p. 261. I do not fully rely on this authority. 
 
 Castile were more fortunate than the 
 rest ; discreetly yielding to the pride of 
 Rome, they obtained what was essential 
 to their own authority, and have always 
 possessed, by the concession of Urban 
 II., an absolute privilege of nomination 
 to bishoprics in their dominions.* An 
 early evidence of that indifference of the 
 popes towards the real independence of 
 national churches, to which subsequent 
 ages were to lend abundant confirmation. 
 When the emperors had surrendered 
 their pretensions to interfere in i nfroduction 
 episcopal elections, the primi- of capitular 
 tive mode of collecting the suf- electio "s- 
 frages of clergy and laity in conjunction, 
 or at least of the clergy with the laity's 
 assent and ratification, ought naturally to 
 have revived. But in the twelfth centu- 
 ry, neither the people, nor even the gen- 
 eral body of the diocesan clergy, were 
 considered as worthy to exercise this 
 function. It soon devolved, altogether 
 upon the chapters of cathedral churches. f 
 The original of these may be traced very 
 high. In the earliest ages, we find a 
 college of presbytery consisting of the 
 priests and deacons, assistants as a coun- 
 cil of advice, or even a kind of parliament 
 to their bishops. Parochial divisions, 
 and fixed ministers attached to them, 
 were not established till a later period. 
 But the canons, or cathedral clergy, ac- 
 quired afterward a more distinct charac- 
 ter. They were subjected by degrees to 
 certain strict observances, little differing, 
 in fact, from those imposed on monastic 
 orders. They lived at a common table, 
 they slept in a common dormitory, their 
 dress and diet were regulated by peculiar 
 laws. But they were distinguished from 
 monks by the right of possessing individ- 
 ual property, which was afterward ex- 
 tended to the enjoyment of separate preb- 
 
 * F. Paul on Benefices, c. 24. Zurita, Anales 
 de Aragon, t. iv., p. 305. Fleury says that the 
 kings of Spain nominate to bishoprics by virtue of 
 a particular indulgence, renewed by the pope for 
 the life of each prince. Institutions au Droit, t. i., 
 p. 106. 
 
 t Fra Paolo (Treatise on Benefices, c. 24) says, 
 that between 1122 and 1145, it became a rule al- 
 most everywhere established, that bishops should 
 be chosen by the chapter. Schmidt, however, 
 brings a few instances where the consent of the 
 nobility and other laics is expressed, though per- 
 haps little else than a matter of form. Innocent 
 II. seems to have been the first who declared, that 
 whoever had the majority of the chapter in his fa- 
 vour should be deemed duly elected ; and this was 
 confirmed by Otho IV. in the capitulation upon his 
 accession. Hist, des Allemands, t. iv., p. 175. 
 Fleury thinks that chapters had not an exclusive 
 election till the end of the twelfth century. The 
 second Latefan council, in 1139, represses their at- 
 tempts to engross it. Institutions au Droit EC- 
 cles., t. i., p. 100. 
 
CHAP. VII. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 285 
 
 ends or benefices. These strict regula- 
 tions, chiefly imposed by Louis the De- 
 bonair, went into disuse through the re- 
 laxation of discipline ; nor were they ever 
 effectually restored. Meantime the chap- 
 ters became extremely rich ; and as they 
 monopolized the privilege of electing 
 bishops, it became an object of ambition 
 with noble families to obtain canonries 
 for their younger children, as the surest 
 road to ecclesiastical honours and opu- 
 lence. Contrary, therefore, to the gen- 
 eral policy of the church, persons of in- 
 ferior birth have been rigidly excluded 
 from these foundations.* 
 
 The object of Gregory VII. , in attempt- 
 General con- ing to redress those more fla- 
 duct of Gre- grant abuses which for two cen- 
 turies had deformed the face of 
 the Latin church, is not incapable, per- 
 haps, of vindication, though no sufficient 
 apology can be offered for the means he 
 employed. But the disinterested love of 
 reformation, to which candour might as- 
 cribe the contention against investitures, 
 is belied by the general tenour of his con- 
 duct, exhibiting an arrogance without 
 parallel, and an ambition that grasped at 
 universal and unlimited monarchy. He 
 may be called the common enemy of all 
 sovereigns, whose dignity as well as in- 
 dependence mortified his infatuated pride. 
 Thus we find him menacing Philip I. of 
 France, who had connived at the pillage 
 of some Italian merchants and pilgrims, 
 not only with an interdict, but a sentence 
 of deposition.f Thus too he asserts, as 
 a known historical fact, that the kingdom 
 of Spain had formerly belonged, by spe- 
 cial right, to St. Peter ; and by virtue of 
 this imprescriptible claim, he grants to a 
 certain Count de Rouci all territories 
 which he should reconquer from the 
 Moors, to be held in fief from the Holy 
 See by a stipulated rent.}: A similar pre- 
 
 * Schmidt, t. ii., p. 224, 473 ; t. iii., p. 281. En- 
 cyclopedic, Art. Chanoine. F. Paul on Benefices, 
 c. 16. Fleury, 8 me Discours sur 1'Hist. EcclSs. 
 
 t St. Marc, t. iii., p. 628. Fleury, Hist. Eccles., 
 t. xiii., p. 281, 284. 
 
 t The language he employs is worth quoting, as 
 a specimen of his style : Non latere vos credimus, 
 regnum Hispaniae ab antiquo juris sancti Petri 
 fuisse, et adhuc licet diu a paganis sit occupatum, 
 lege tamen justitiae non evacuata, nulli mortalium, 
 sed soli apostolicae sedi ex aequo pertinere. Quod 
 enim auctore Deo semel in proprietates ecclesia- 
 rum just& pervenerit, manente Eo, ab usu quidem, 
 sed ab eafum jure, occasione transeuntis temporis, 
 sine legitima* concessione divelli non poterit. Ita- 
 que Comes Evalus de Roceio, cujus famam apud 
 vos haud obscuram esse putamus, terram illam ad 
 honorem Sti. Petri ingredi, et a paganorum manibus 
 eripere cupiens, hanc concessionem ab apostolica 
 sede obtinuit, ut partem illam, unde paganos suo 
 etudio et adjuncto sibi aliorum auxilio expellere 
 
 tension he makes to the kingdom of Hun- 
 gary, and bitterly reproaches its sover- 
 eign Solomon, who had done homage to 
 the emperor, in derogation of St. Peter, 
 his legitimate lord.* It was convenient 
 to treat this apostle as a great feudal su- 
 zerain, and the legal principles of that age 
 were dexterously applied to rivet more 
 forcibly the fetters of superstition.! 
 
 While temporal sovereigns were op- 
 posing so inadequate a resistance to a 
 system of usurpation contrary to all pre- 
 cedent, and to the common principles of 
 society, it was not to be expected that 
 national churches should persevere in 
 opposing pretensions for which several 
 ages had paved the way. Gregory VII. 
 completed the destruction of their lib- 
 erties. The principles contained in the 
 decretals of Isidore, hostile as they were 
 to ecclesiastical independence, were set 
 aside as insufficient to establish the ab- 
 solute monarchy of Rome. By a con- 
 stitution of Alexander II., during whose 
 pontificate Hildebrand himself was deein- 
 ed the effectual pope, no bishop in the 
 Catholic church was permitted to exer- 
 cise his functions until he had received 
 the confirmation of the Holy See : J a pro- 
 vision of vast importance, through which, 
 beyond perhaps any other means, Rome 
 has sustained, and still .sustains, her tem- 
 poral influence, as well as her ecclesias- 
 tical supremacy. The national churches, 
 long abridged of their liberties by gradual 
 encroachments, now found themselves 
 subject to an undisguised and irresistible 
 despotism. Instead of affording protec- 
 tion to bishops against their metropoli- 
 tans, under an insidious pretence of which 
 the popes of the ninth century had sub- 
 verted the authority of the latter, it be- 
 came the favourite policy of their succes- 
 sors to harass all prelates with citations to 
 Rome. Gregory obliged the metropoli- 
 tans to attend in person for the pallium. || 
 Bishops were summoned even from Eng- 
 land and the northern kingdoms to receive 
 the commands of the spiritual monarch. 
 William the Conqueror having made a 
 
 possit, sub conditions inter nos factae pactionis ex 
 parte Sti. Petri possideret. Labbe*, Concilia, t. x., 
 p. 10. Three instances occur in the Corps Diplo- 
 matique of Dumont, where a duke of Dalmatia (t. 
 i., p. 53), a count of Provence (p. 58), and a count 
 of Barcelona (ibid.), put themselves under the feu- 
 dal superiority and protection of Gregory VII. 
 The motive was sufficiently obvious. 
 
 * St. Marc, t. iii., p. 624, 674. Schmidt, p. 73. 
 
 t The character and policy of Gregory VII. are 
 well discussed by Schmidt, t. iii., p 307. 
 
 t St. Marc, p. 460. 
 
 $ Schmidt, t. iii., p. 80, 322. 
 
 II Id., t. iv., p. 170. 
 
286 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII, 
 
 difficulty about permitting his prelates to 
 obey these citations, Gregory, though in 
 general on good terms with that prince, 
 and treating him with a deference which 
 marks the effect of a firm character in 
 repressing the ebullitions of overbearing 
 pride,* complains of this as a persecution 
 unheard of among pagans. | The great 
 quarrel between Archbishop Anselm and 
 his two sovereigns, William Rufus and 
 Henry I., was originally founded upon a 
 similar refusal to permit his departure 
 for Rome. 
 
 This perpetual control exercised by 
 Authority tne PP es over ecclesiastical, and, 
 of papal in some degree, over temporal 
 legates, affairs, was maintained by means 
 of their legates, at once the ambassa- 
 dors and the lieutenants of the Holy See. 
 Previously to the latter part of the tenth 
 age, these had been sent not frequently 
 and upon special occasions. The lega- 
 tine or vicarial commission had generally 
 been intrusted to some eminent me- 
 tropolitan of the nation within which it 
 was to be exercised ; as the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury was perpetual legate in 
 England. But the special commission- 
 ers, or legates a latere, suspending the 
 pope's ordinary vicars, took upon them- 
 selves an unbounded authority over the 
 national churches, holding councils, pro- 
 mulgating canons, deposing bishops, and 
 issuing interdicts at their discretion. 
 They lived in splendour at the expense 
 of the bishops of the province. This 
 was the more galling to the hierarchy, 
 because simple deacons were often in- 
 vested with this dignity, which set them 
 above primates. As the sovereigns of 
 France and England acquired more cour- 
 age, they considerably abridged this pre- 
 rogative of the Holy See, and resisted the 
 entrance of any legates into their domin- 
 ions without their consent.^ 
 
 From the time of Gregory VII., no pon- 
 tiff thought of awaiting the confirmation 
 of the emperor, as in earlier ages, before 
 he was installed in the throne of St. Pe.- 
 ter. On the contrary, it was pretended 
 that the emperor was himself to be con- 
 firmed by the pope. This had indeed 
 been broached by John VIII. two hundred 
 years before Gregory.^ It was still a doc- 
 
 * St. Marc, p. 628, 781. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 82. 
 
 t Idem, t. iv., p. 768. Collier, p. 252. 
 
 i De Marca, 1. vi., c. 28, 30, 31. Schmidt, t. ii., 
 p. 498 ; t. iii., p. 312, 320. Hist, du Droit Public 
 Eccl. Francois, p. 250. Fleury, 4 me Discours sur 
 1'Hist. Eccles., c. 10. 
 
 <) Vide supra. It appears manifest, that the 
 scheme of temporal sovereignty was only suspend- 
 ed by the disorders of the Roman see in the tenth 
 century. Peter Damian, a celebrated writer of 
 
 trine not calculated for general reception ; 
 but the popes availed themselves of every 
 opportunity which the temporizing policy, 
 the negligence, or bigotry of sovereigns 
 threw into their hands. Lothaire coming 
 to receive the imperial crown at Rome, 
 this circumstance was commemorated by 
 a picture in the Lateran palace, in which, 
 and in two Latin verses subscribed, he 
 was represented as doing homage to the 
 pope.* When Frederick Barbarossa came 
 upon the same occasion, he omitted to 
 hold the stirrup of Adrian IV., 
 who, in his turn, refused to give 
 him the usual kiss of peace ; nor was the 
 contest ended but by the emperor's ac- 
 quiescence, who was content to follow 
 the precedents of his predecessors. The 
 same Adrian, expostulating with Freder- 
 ick upon some slight grievance, remind- 
 ed him of the imperial crown which he 
 had conferred, and declared his willing- 
 ness to bestow, if possible, still greater 
 benefits. But the phrase employed (ma- 
 jora beneficia) suggested the idea of a 
 fief; and the general insolence which 
 pervaded Adrian's letter confirming this 
 interpretation, a ferment arose among 
 the German princes, in a congress of 
 whom this letter was delivered. " From 
 whom then," one of the legates was rash 
 enough to say, " does the emperor hold 
 his crown, except from the pope V which 
 so irritated a prince of Wittelsbach, that 
 he was with difficulty prevented from 
 cleaving the priest's head with his sabre. f 
 Adrian IV. was the only Englishman that 
 ever sat in the papal chair. It might, 
 perhaps, pass for a favour bestowed on 
 his natural sovereign, when he granted 
 to Henry II. the kingdom of Ireland; 
 yet the language of this donation, where- 
 in he asserts all islands to be the exclu- 
 sive property of St. Peter, should not 
 have had a very pleasing sound to an in- 
 sular monarch. 
 I shall not wait to comment on the sup- 
 
 the age of Hildebrand, and his friend, puts these 
 words into the mouth of Jesus Christ, as addressed 
 to Pope Victor II. Ego claves totius universalis 
 ecclesise meae tuis manibus tradidi, et super earn 
 te mini vicarium posui, quam proprii sanguinis ef- 
 fusione redemi. Et si pauca sunt ista, etiam mo- 
 narchias addidi : immo sublato rege de medip to- 
 tius Romani imperil vacantis tibi jura permisi. 
 Schmidt, t. iii., p. 78. 
 
 * Rex venit ante fores, jurans prius urbis ho- 
 
 nores : 
 
 Post homo fit papae, sumit quo dante coronam. 
 Muratori, Annali, A. D. 1157. 
 
 There was a pretext for this artful line. Lo- 
 thaire had received the estate of Matilda in fief 
 from the pope, with a reversion to Henry the 
 Proud, his son-in-law. Schmidt, p. 349. 
 
 f Muratori, ubi supra. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 393. 
 
 ? 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 287 
 
 port given to Becket by Alex- 
 innocent m. ^ nder & IIL [ A . D . H94-1216], 
 
 which must be familiar to the English 
 reader, nor on his speedy canonization ; 
 a reward which the church has always 
 held out to its most active friends, and 
 which may be compared to titles of no- 
 bility granted by a temporal sovereign.* 
 But the epoch when the spirit of papal 
 usurpation was most strikingly displayed 
 was the pontificate of Innocent III. In 
 each of the three leading objects which 
 Rome has pursued, independent sovereign- 
 ty, supremacy over the Christian church, 
 control over the princes of the earth, it 
 was the fortune of this pontiff to conquer. 
 He realized, as we have seen in another 
 place, that fond hope of so many of his 
 predecessors, a dominion over Rome and 
 the central parts of Italy. During his 
 pontificate, Constantinople was taKeii by 
 the Latins ; and, however he might seem 
 to regret a diversion of the crusaders, 
 which impeded the recovery of the Holy 
 Land, he exulted in the obedience of the 
 new patriarch, and the reunion of the 
 Greek church. Never, perhaps, either 
 before or since, was the great eastern 
 schism in so fair a way of being healed ; 
 even the kings of Bulgaria and of Arme- 
 nia acknowledged the supremacy of In- 
 nocent, and permitted his interference 
 with their ecclesiastical institutions. 
 
 The maxims of Gregory VII. were now 
 Hisextraor- matured by more than a hun- 
 dinary pre- dred years, and the right of 
 tensions. trampling upon the necks of 
 kings had been received, at least among 
 churchmen, as an inherent attribute of 
 the papacy. " As the sun and the moon 
 are placed in the firmament" (such is the 
 language of Innocent), " the greater as the 
 light of the day, and the lesser of the 
 night ; thus are* there two powers in the 
 church ; the pontifical, which, as having 
 the charge of souls, is the greater ; and 
 the royal, which is the less, and to which 
 the bodies of men only are intrusted, "f 
 Intoxicated with these conceptions (if 
 we may apply such a word to successful 
 ambition), he thought no quarrel of princes 
 beyond the sphere of his jurisdiction. 
 " Though I cannot judge of the right to a 
 
 * The first instance of a solemn papal canoniza- 
 tion is that of St. Udalric by John XVI., iu 993. 
 However, the metropolitans continued to meddle 
 with this sort of apotheosis till the pontificate of 
 Alexander III., who reserved it, as a choice prerog- 
 ative, to the Holy See. Art de verifier les Dates, 
 t. i., p. 247 and 290. 
 
 t Vita Innocentii Tertii in Muraton, Scriptores 
 Rerum Ital., t. hi., pars i., p. 488. This life is writ- 
 ten by a contemporary. St. Marc, t. v., p. 325. 
 Schmidt, t. iv., p. 227. 
 
 fief," said Innocent to the kings of France 
 and England, " yet it is my province to 
 judge where sin is committed, and my 
 duty to prevent all public scandals." Phil- 
 ip Augustus, who had at that time the 
 worse in his war with Richard, acquies- 
 ced in this sophism ; the latter was more 
 refractory, till the papal legate began 
 to menace him with the rigour of the 
 church.* But the King of England, as 
 well as his adversary, condescended to 
 obtain temporary ends by an impolitic 
 submission to Rome. We have a letter 
 from Innocent to the King of Navarre, 
 directing him, on pain of spiritual censure, 
 to restore some castles which he detain- 
 ed from Richard.f And the latter appears 
 to have entertained hopes of recovering 
 his ransom paid to the emperor and Duke 
 of Austria, through the pope's interfe- 
 rence. | By such blind sacrifices of the 
 greater to the less, of the future to the 
 present, the sovereigns of Europe played 
 continually into the hands of their subtle 
 enemy. 
 
 Though I am not aware that any pope 
 before Innocent III. had thus announced 
 himself as the general arbiter of differen- 
 ces and conservator of the peace through- 
 out Christendom, yet the scheme had 
 been already formed, and the public mind 
 was in some degree prepared to admit it. 
 Gerohus, a writer who lived early in the 
 twelfth century, published a theory of 
 perpetual pacification, as feasible cer- 
 tainly as some that have been planned in 
 later times. All disputes among princes 
 were to be referred to the pope. If either 
 party refused to obey the sentence of 
 Rome, he was to be excommunicated 
 and deposed. Every Christian sovereign 
 was to attack the refractory delinquent, 
 under pain of a similar forfeiture. 
 A project of this nature had not only a 
 magnificence flattering to the ambition 
 of the church, but was calculated to im- 
 pose upon benevolent minds, sickened 
 by the cupidity and oppression of princes. 
 
 * Philippus rex Francise in manu ejus data fide 
 promisit se ad mandatum ipsius pacem vel treugas 
 cum rege Anglise initurum. Ricnardus autem rex 
 Angliae se difficilem ostendebat. Sed cum idem 
 legatus ei cepit rigor em ecdesiasticum intentare, sanio- 
 ri ductus consilio acquievit. Vita Innocentii Ter- 
 tii, t. iii., pars i., p. 503. 
 
 t Innocentii Opera (Coloniae, 1574), p. 124. 
 
 t Id., p. 134. Innocent actually wrote some let- 
 ters for this purpose, but without any effect, nor 
 was he probably at all solicitous about it. P. 139 
 and 141. Nor had he interfered to procure Rich- 
 ard's release from prison : though Eleanor wrote 
 him a letter, in which she asks, " Has not God giv- 
 en you the power to govern nations and kings ?" 
 Velly, Hist, de France, t. iii., p. 382. 
 
 9 Schmidt, t. iv., p. 232. 
 
288 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIL 
 
 No control but that of religion appeared 
 sufficient to restrain the abuses of society ; 
 while its salutary influence had already 
 been displayed both in the Truce of God, 
 which put the first check on the custom 
 of private war, and more recently in the 
 protection afforded to crusaders against 
 all aggression during the continuance of 
 their engagement. But reasonings from 
 the excesses of liberty in favour of arbi- 
 trary government, or from the calamities 
 of national wars in favour of universal 
 monarchy, involve the tacit fallacy, that 
 perfect, or at least superior, wisdom and 
 virtue will be found in the restraining 
 power. The experience of Europe was 
 not such as to authorize so candid an ex- 
 pectation in behalf of the Roman see. 
 
 There were certainly some instances, 
 where the temporal supremacy of Inno- 
 cent III., however usurped, may appear 
 to have been exerted beneficially. He di- 
 rects one of his legates to compel the ob- 
 servance of peace between the kings of 
 Castile and Portugal, if necessary, by ex- 
 communication and interdict.* He en- 
 joins the King of Aragon to restore his 
 coin which he had lately debased, and of 
 which great complaint had arisen in his 
 kingdom.f Nor do I question his sin- 
 cerity in these, or in many other cases 
 of interference with civil government. 
 A great mind, such as Innocent III. un- 
 doubtedly possessed, though prone to 
 sacrifice every other object to ambition, 
 can never be indifferent to the beauty of 
 social order, and the happiness of man- 
 kind. But, if we may judge by the cor- 
 respondence of this remarkable person, 
 his foremost gratification was the display 
 of unbounded power His letters, espe- 
 cially to ecclesiastics, are full of unpro- 
 voked rudeness. As impetuous as Greg- 
 ory VIL, he is unwilling to owe any 
 thing to favour; he seems to anticipate 
 denial, heats himself into anger as he 
 proceeds, and where he commences with 
 solicitation, seldom concludes without a 
 menace. 1 An extensive learning in ec- 
 clesiastical law, a close observation of 
 whatever was passing in the world, an 
 unwearied diligence, sustained his fear- 
 less ambition. With such a temper, and 
 
 * Innocent. Opera, p. 146. t P. 378. 
 
 J Idem, p. 31, 73, 76, &c. &c. 
 
 The following instance may illustrate the char- 
 acter of this pope, and his spirit of governing the 
 whole world, as much as those of a more public 
 nature. He writes to the chapter of Pisa, that 
 one Rubeus, a citizen of that place, had complain- 
 ed to him, that having mortgaged a house and 
 garden for two hundred and fifty-two pounds, on 
 condition that he might redeem it before a fixed 
 day, within which time he had been unavoidably 
 
 with such advantages, he was formidable 
 beyond all his predecessors, and perhaps 
 beyond all his successors. On every 
 side the thunder of Rome broke over the 
 heads of princes. A certain Swero is 
 excommunicated for usurping the crown 
 of Norway. A legate, in passing through 
 Hungary, is detained by the king : Inno- 
 cent writes in tolerably mild terms to 
 this potentate, but fails not to intimate 
 that he might be compelled to prevent his 
 son's succession to the throne . The King 
 of Leon had married his cousin, a princess 
 of Castile. Innocent subjects the king- 
 dom to an interdict. When the clergy 
 of Leon petition him to remove it, be- 
 cause, when they ceased to perform their 
 functions, the laity paid no tithes, and 
 listened to heretical teachers when or- 
 thodox mouths were mute, he consented 
 that cnvine service with closed doors, 
 but not the rites of burial, might be per- 
 formed.* The king at length gave way, 
 and sent back his wife. But a more il- 
 lustrious victory of the same kind was 
 obtained over Philip Augustus, who, hav- 
 ing repudiated Isemburga of Denmark, 
 had contracted another marriage. The 
 conduct of the king, though not without 
 the usual excuse of those times, near- 
 ness of blood, was justly condemned; 
 and Innocent did not hesitate to visit his 
 sins upon the people by a general in- 
 terdict. This, after a short demur from 
 some bishops, was enforced throughout 
 France ; the dead lay unburied, and the 
 living were cut off from the offices of 
 religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took 
 back his divorced wife. The submission 
 of such a prince, not feebly supersti- 
 tious like his predecessor Robert, nor 
 vexed with seditions like the Emperor 
 Henry IV., but brave, firm, and victo- 
 rious, is perhaps the proudest trophy in 
 the scutcheon of Rome. Compared with 
 this, the subsequent triumph of Inno- 
 cent over our pusillanimous John seems 
 cheaply gained, though the surrender of 
 a powerful kingdom into the vassalage 
 of the pope may strike us as a proof of 
 
 prevented from raising the money, thq creditor 
 had now refused to accept it ; and directs them to 
 inquire into the facts, and if they prove truly 
 stated, to compel the creditor by spiritual censures 
 to restore the premises, reckoning their rent during 
 the time of the mortgage as part of the debt, and to 
 receive the remainder. Id., t. ii., p. 17. It must 
 be admitted, that Innocent III. discouraged in gen- 
 eral those vexatious and dilatory appeals from in- 
 ferior ecclesiastical tribunals to the court of Rome, 
 which had gained ground before his time, and es- 
 pecially in the pontificate of Alexander III. 
 
 * Innocent. Opera, t. ii., p. 411. Vita Inno- 
 cent III. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 289 
 
 stupendous baseness on one side, and 
 audacity on the other.* Yet, under this 
 very pontificate, it was not unparallel- 
 ed. Peter II., king of Aragon, received 
 at Rome the belt of knighthood and the 
 royal crown from the hands of Inno- 
 cent III. ; he took an oath of perpetual 
 fealty and obedience to him and his suc- 
 cessors; he surrendered his kingdom, 
 and accepted it again, to be held by an 
 annual tribute, in return for the protec- 
 tion of the apostolic see.f This strange 
 conversion of kingdoms into spiritual 
 fiefs was intended as the price of se- 
 curity from ambitious neighbours, and 
 may be deemed analogous to the change 
 of allodial into feudal, or, more strictly, 
 to that of lay into ecclesiastical tenure, 
 which was frequent during the turbu- 
 lence of the darker ages. 
 
 I have mentioned already, that among 
 the new pretensions advanced by the Ro- 
 man see was that of confirming the 
 election of an emperor. It had, however, 
 been asserted rather incidentally than in 
 a peremptory manner. But the doubtful 
 elections of Philip and Otho, after the 
 death of Henry VI., gave Innocent III. 
 an opportunity of maintaining more pos- 
 itively this pretended right. In a decre- 
 tal epistle addressed to the Duke of Zah- 
 ringen, the object of which is to direct 
 him to transfer his allegiance from Phil- 
 ip to the other competitor, Innocent, after 
 stating the mode in which a regular elec- 
 tion ought to be made, declares the 
 pope's immediate authority to examine, 
 confirm, anoint, crown, and consecrate 
 the elect emperor, provided he shall be 
 worthy ; or to reject him if rendered un- 
 fit by great crimes, such as sacrilege, her- 
 esy, perjury, or persecution of the church ; 
 in default of election, to supply the va- 
 cancy ; or, in the event of equal suffrages, 
 to bestow the empire upon any person at 
 his discretion.^ The princes of Germany 
 
 * The stipulated annual payment of 1000 marks 
 Was seldom made by the kings of England; but 
 one is almost ashamed that it should ever have 
 been so. Henry III. paid it occasionally, when he 
 had any object to attain, and even Edward I. for 
 some years : the latest payment on record is in the 
 seventeenth of his reign. After a long discontin- 
 uance, it was demanded in the fortieth of Edward 
 III. (A. D. 1366), but the parliament unanimously 
 declared that John had no right to subject the king- 
 dom to a superior without their consent ; which 
 put an end for ever to the applications. Pry nne's 
 Constitutions, vol. lii. 
 
 t Zurita, Anales de Aragon, t. i., f. 91. This 
 was not forgotten towards the latter part of the 
 same century, when Peter III. was engaged in the 
 Sicilian war, and served as a pretence for the 
 pope's sentence of deprivation. 
 
 t Decretal., 1. i., tit. 6, c. 34, commonly cited 
 Venerabitem. The rabric cr synopsis of this epis- 
 
 were not much influenced by this hardy 
 assumption, which manifests the temper 
 of Innocent III. and of his court rather 
 than their power. But Otho IV., at his 
 coronation by the pope, signed a capitula- 
 tion, which cut oft" several privileges en-* 
 joyed by the emperors, even since the 
 concordat of Calixtus, in respect of epis-^ 
 copal elections and investitures.* 
 
 The noonday of papal dominion ex- 
 tends from the pontificate of 
 Innocent III. inclusively to j^KS 
 that of Boniface VIII. ; or, teenth cen^ 
 in other words, through the tury> 
 thirteenth century. Rome inspired du- 
 ring this age all the terror of her ancient 
 name. She was once more the mistress 
 of the world, and kings were her vassals* 
 I have already anticipated the two most 
 conspicuous instances when her tempo- 
 ral ambition displayed itself, both of 
 which are inseparable from the civil his- 
 tory of Italy. f In the first of these, her 
 long contention with the house of Swa- 
 bia, she finally triumphed. After his de* 
 position by the council of Lyons, the af- 
 fairs of Frederick II. went rapidly into 
 decay. With every allowance for the 
 enmity of the Lombards, and the jealous- 
 ies of Germany, it must be confessed 
 that the proscription of Innocent IV. and 
 Alexander IV. was the main cause of 
 the ruin of his family. There is, how- 
 ever, no other instance, to the best of my 
 judgment, where the pretended right of 
 deposing kings has been successfully ex- 
 ercised. Martin IV. absolved the sub* 
 jects of Peter of Aragon from their alle^ 
 giance, and transferred his crown to a 
 prince of France ; but they did not cease 
 to obey their lawful sovereign. This is 
 the second instance which the thirteenth 
 century presents of interference on the 
 part of the popes in a great temporal 
 quarrel. As feudal lords of Naples and 
 Sicily, they had indeed some pretext for 
 engaging in the hostilities between the 
 houses of Anjou and Aragon, as well as 
 for their contest with Frederick II. But 
 the pontiffs of that age, improving upon 
 the system of Innocent III., and san- 
 guine with past succesSj aspired to ren- 
 
 tle asserts the pope's right electum imperatorem 
 examinare, approbare, et inungere, cohsecrare et 
 coronare, si est dignus ; vel rejicere si est indignus, 
 ut quia sacrilegus, excommumcatus, tyrannus, fa- 
 tuus et haereticus, paganus, perjurus, vel ecclesiae 
 persecutor. Et electoribus nolentibus eligere, Pa- 
 pa supplet. Et data paritate vocum eligentium, 
 nee accedente maipre concordia, Papa potest grati- 
 ficari cui vult. The epistle itself is, if possible, 
 more strongly expressed. 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 149, 175. 
 
 t 8ee above, chapter Hi, 
 
290 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 der every European kingdom formally 
 dependant upon the See of Rome. Thus 
 Boniface VIII., at the instigation of some 
 emissaries from Scotland, claimed that 
 monarchy as paramount lord, and inter- 
 posed, though vainly, the sacred panoply 
 of ecclesiastical rights to rescue it from 
 the arms of Edward I.* 
 
 This general supremacy effected by the 
 . Roman church over mankind in 
 v> the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies, derived material support from the 
 promulgation of the canon law. The 
 foundation of this jurisprudence is laid 
 in the decrees of councils, and in the re- 
 scripts or decretal epistles of popes to 
 questions propounded upon emergent 
 doubts relative to matters of discipline 
 and ecclesiastical economy. As the ju- 
 risdiction of the spiritual tribunals in- 
 creased, and extended to a variety of per- 
 sons and causes, it became almost neces- 
 sary to establish a uniform system for 
 the regulation of their decisions. After 
 several minor compilations had appeared, 
 Gratian, an Italian monk, published, about 
 the year 1140, his Decretum, or general 
 collection of canons, papal epistles, and 
 sentences of fathers, arranged and digest- 
 ed into titles and chapters, in imitation of 
 the Pandects, which very little before had 
 begun to be studied again with great dili- 
 gence. This work of Gratian, though it 
 seems rather an extraordinary perform- 
 ance for the age when it appeared, has 
 been censured for notorious incorrect- 
 ness as well as inconsistency, and espe- 
 cially for the authority given in it to the 
 false decretals of Isidore, and conse- 
 quently to the papal supremacy. It fell, 
 however, short of what was required in 
 the progress of that usurpation. Greg- 
 ory IX. caused the five books of Decre- 
 tals to be published by Raimond de Pen- 
 nafort in 1234. These consist almost 
 entirely of rescripts issued by the later 
 popes, especially Alexander III., Inno- 
 cent III., Honorius III., and Gregory him- 
 self. They form the most essential part 
 of the canon law, the Decretum of Gra- 
 tian being comparatively obsolete. In 
 these books we find a regular and co- 
 pious system of jurisprudence, derived 
 in a great measure from the civil law, 
 but with considerable deviation, and pos- 
 sibly improvement. Boniface VIII. add- 
 ed a sixth part, thence called the Sext, 
 itself divided into five books, in the na- 
 ture of a supplement to the other five, 
 of which it follows the arrangement, 
 and composed of decisions promulgated 
 
 * Dalrymple's Annals of Scotland, vol. i., p. 267. 
 
 since the pontificate of Gregory IX. 
 New constitutions were subjoined by 
 Clement V. and John XXII., under the 
 name of Clementines and Extravagantes 
 Joannis ; and a few more of later pontiffs 
 are included in the body of canon law, 
 arranged as a second supplement after 
 the manner of the Sext, and called Ex- 
 travagantes Communes. 
 
 The study of this code became of 
 course obligatory upon ecclesiastical 
 judges. It produced a new class of 
 legal practitioners, or canonists ; of 
 whom a great number added, like their 
 brethren the civilians, their illustrations 
 and commentaries, for which the obscu- 
 rity and discordance of many passages, 
 more especially in the Decretum, gave 
 ample scope. From the general analogy 
 of the canon law to that of Justinian, the 
 two systems became, in a remarkable 
 manner, collateral and mutually inter- 
 twined, the tribunals governed by either 
 of them borrowing their rules of decision 
 from the other in cases where their pecu- 
 liar jurisprudence is silent or of dubious 
 interpretation.* But the canon law was 
 almost entirely founded upon the legisla- 
 tive authority of the pope ; the decretals 
 are in fact but a new arrangement of the 
 bold epistles of the most usurping pon- 
 tiffs, and especially of Innocent III., with 
 titles or rubrics, comprehending the sub- 
 stance of each in the compiler's language. 
 The superiority of ecclesiastical to tem- 
 poral power, or at least the absolute in- 
 dependence of the former, may be con- 
 sidered as a sort of key-note which regu- 
 lates every passage in the canon law.f 
 It is expressly declared, that subjects 
 owe no allegiance to an excommunica- 
 ted lord, if after admonition he is not rec- 
 onciled to the church.}: And the rubric 
 prefixed to the declaration of Frederick 
 II. 's deposition in the council of Lyons 
 asserts that the pope may dethrone the 
 emperor for lawful causes. $ These ru- 
 
 * Duck, De Usu Juris Civilis, 1. i., c. 8. 
 
 f Constitutiones principum ecclesiasticis con- 
 stitutionibus non preeminent, sed obsequuntur. 
 Decretum, distinct. 10. Statutum generale laico- 
 rum ad ecclesias vel ad ecclesiasticas personas, vel 
 eorum bonain earum praejudicium non extehditur. 
 Decretal., 1. i., tit. 2, c. 10. Quaecunquea principi- 
 bus in ordinibus vel in ecclesiasticis rebus decreta 
 inveniuntur, nullius auctoritatis esse monstrantur. 
 Decretum, distinct. 96. 
 
 J Domino excommunicato manente, subditrfidel- 
 itatem non debent ; et si longo tempore in ea per- 
 stiterint, et monitus non pareat ecclesise, ab ejus 
 debito absolvuntur. Decretal., 1. v., tit. 37, c. 13. 
 I must acknowledge, that the decretal epistle of 
 Honorius III. scarcely warrants this general propo- 
 sition of the rubric, though it seems to lead to it 
 
 Papa imperatorem deponere potest ex causfs 
 legitimis, 1. ii., tit. 13, c. 2. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 291 
 
 brics to the decretals are not perhaps o 
 direct authority as part of the law ; bu 
 they express its sense, so as to be fairl 
 cited instead of it.* By means of he 
 new jurisprudence, Rome acquired in ev 
 ery country a powerful body of advocates 
 who, though many of them were laymen 
 would, with the usual bigotry of lawyers 
 defend every pretension or abuse t 
 which their received standard of authori 
 ty gave sanction. f 
 I /Next to the canon law, I should reck 
 Mendicant on the institution of the mendi 
 orders. cant orders among those circum 
 stances which principally contributed tc 
 the aggrandizement of Rome. By the 
 acquisition, and in some respects the 
 enjoyment, or at least ostentation of 
 immense riches, the ancient monastic 
 orders had forfeited much of the public 
 esteem. J Austere principles as to the 
 obligation of evangelical poverty were 
 inculcated by the numerous sectaries of 
 that age, and eagerly received by the 
 people, already much alienated from an 
 established hierarchy. No means ap- 
 peared so efficacious to counteract this 
 effect, as the institution of religious so- 
 cieties, strictly debarred from the insidi- 
 ous temptations of wealth. Upon this 
 principle were founded the orders of 
 Mendicant Friars, incapable, by the rules 
 of their foundation, of possessing estates, 
 and maintained only by alms and pious 
 remunerations. Of these the two most 
 celebrated were formed by St. Dominic 
 and St. Francis of Assisa, and established 
 by the authority of Honorius III. in 1216 
 and 1223. These great reformers, who 
 have produced so extraordinary an effect 
 upon mankind, were of very different 
 
 * If I understand a bull of Gregory XIII., pre- 
 fixed to his recension of the canon law, he con- 
 firms the rubrics or glosses along with the text ; 
 but I cannot speak with certainty as to his mean- 
 ing. 
 
 t For the canon law, I have consulted, besides 
 the Corpus Juris Canonici, Tiraboschi, Storia 
 d'ella Litteratura, t. iv. and v. ; Giannone, 1. xiv., 
 c. 3 ; 1. xix., c. 3 ; 1. xxii., c. 8. Fleury, Institu- 
 tions au Droit Ecclesiastique, t. i., p. 10, and 5 me 
 Discours sur 1'Histoire Eccles. Duck, De Usu 
 Juris Civilis, 1. i., c. 8. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 39. F. 
 Paul, Treatise of Benefices, c. 31. I fear that my 
 few citations from the canon law are not made scien- 
 tifically ; the proper mode of reference is to the first 
 word ; but the book and title are rather more con- 
 venient ; and there are not many readers in Eng- 
 land who will detect this impropriety. 
 
 t It would be easy to bring evidence from the 
 writings of every successive century to the general 
 yiciousness of the regular clergy, whose memory 
 it is sometimes the fashion to treat with respect. 
 See particularly Muratori, Dissert. 65, and Fleury, 
 8 me Discours. The latter observes that their great 
 wealth was the cause cf this relaxation in disci- 
 pline. 
 
 T2 
 
 characters ; the one, active and ferocious, 
 had taken a prominent part in the crusade 
 against the unfortunate Albigeois, and 
 was among the first who bore the terrible 
 name of inquisitor; while the other, a 
 harmless enthusiast, pious and sincere, 
 but hardly of sane mind, was much rather 
 accessary to the intellectual than to the 
 moral degradation of his species. Vari- 
 ous other mendicant orders were insti- 
 tuted in the thirteenth century ; but most 
 of them were soon suppressed, and be- 
 sides the two principal, none remain but 
 the Augustin and the Carmelites.* 
 
 These new preachers were received 
 with astonishing approbation by the laity, 
 whose religious zeal usually depends a 
 good deal upon their opinion of sincerity 
 and disinterestedness in their pastors. 
 And the progress of the Dominican and 
 Franciscan friars in the thirteenth centu- 
 ry bears a remarkable analogy to that of 
 our English Methodists. Not deviating 
 from the faith of the church, but profes- 
 sing rather to teach it in greater puri- 
 ty, and to observe her ordinances with 
 greater regularity, while they imputed 
 supineness and corruption to the secular 
 clergy, they drew round their sermons a 
 multitude of such listeners as in all ages 
 are attracted by similar means. They 
 Dractised all the stratagems of itinerancy, 
 Dreaching in public streets, and adminis- 
 ering the communion on a portable al- 
 ,ar. Thirty years after their institution, 
 an historian complains that the parish 
 'hurches were deserted ; that none con- 
 essed except to these friars; in short, 
 hat the regular discipline was subverted. f 
 This uncontrolled privilege of performing 
 acerdotal functions, which their modern 
 antitypes assume for themselves, was 
 3onceded to the mendicant orders by the 
 "avow of Rome. Aware of the powerful 
 upport they might receive in turn, the 
 >ontiffs of the thirteenth century accu- 
 nulated benefits upon the disciples of 
 Francis and Dominic. They were ex- 
 mpted from episcopal authority; they 
 vere permitted to preach or hear confes- 
 ions without leave of the ordinary,! to 
 ccept of legacies, and to inter in their 
 marches. Such privileges could not be 
 
 * Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History. Fleury, 
 ne Discours. Crevier, Histoire de 1'Universite de 
 aris, t. i., p. 318. 
 
 t Matt. Paris, p. 607. 
 
 i Another reason for preferring the friars is given 
 y Archbishop Peckham ; quoniam casus episco- 
 ales reservati episcopis ab homine, yel a jure, 
 ommuniter a Deum timentibus episcopis ipsis fra- 
 ibus committuntur, et non presbyteris, quorum sim* 
 'ioitas non sufficit aliia dirieendif. Wilkins, Con- 
 
 lia, t. ii., p. 169. 
 
292 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 granted without resistance from the other 
 clergy; the bishops remonstrated, the 
 university of Paris maintained a stren- 
 uous opposition; but their reluctance 
 served only to protract the final decision. 
 Boniface VIII. appears to have peremp- 
 torily established the privileges and im- 
 munities of the mendicant orders in 
 1295.* 
 
 It was naturally to be expected that 
 the objects of such extensive favours 
 would repay their benefactors by a more 
 than usual obsequiousness and alacrity 
 in their service. Accordingly, the Do- 
 minicans and Franciscans vied with each 
 other in magnifying the papal supremacy. 
 Many of these monks became eminent 
 in canon law and scholastic theology. 
 The great lawgiver of the schools, 
 Thomas Aquinas, whose opinions the 
 Dominicans especially treat as almost 
 infallible, went into the exaggerated prin- 
 ciples of his age in favour of the see of 
 Rome.f And as the professors of those 
 sciences took nearly all the learning and 
 logic of the times to their own share, it 
 was hardly possible to repel their argu- 
 ments by any direct reasoning. But this 
 partiality of the new monastic orders to 
 the popes must chiefly be understood to 
 apply to the thirteenth century, circum- 
 stances occurring in the next which 
 gave in some degree a different complex- 
 ion to their dispositions in respect of the 
 Holy See. 
 
 We should not overlook, among the 
 Papal dis- causes that contributed to the 
 pensations dominion of the popes, their 
 mage. p rerO g a ti ve o f dispensing with 
 ecclesiastical ordinances. The most re- 
 markable exercise of this was as to the 
 canonical impediments of matrimony. 
 Such strictness as is prescribed by the 
 Christian religion with respect to divorce 
 was very unpalatable to the barbarous 
 nations. They, in fact, paid it little re- 
 gard; under the Merovingian dynasty, 
 even private men put away their wives! 
 
 * ^Crevier, Hist, de 1'Universite de Paris, t. i. et 
 t. ii., passim. -sFleury, ubi supra. Hist, du Droit 
 EccUsiastique Francois, t. i., p. 394, 396, 446. 
 Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i., p. 437, 448. 
 452. Wood's Antiquities of Oxford, vol. i., p. 376, 
 480 (Gutch's edition). 
 
 t It was maintained by the enemies of the men- 
 dicants, especially William St. Amour, that the 
 pope could not give them a privilege to preach or 
 perform the other duties of the parish priests. 
 Thomas Aquinas answered, that a bishop might 
 perform any spiritual functions within his diocess, 
 or commit the charge to another instead, and that 
 the pope being to the whole church what a bishop 
 is to his diocess, might do the same everywhere. 
 Crevier, t. i., p. 474. 
 
 t Marculfi Formula, 1. ii., c 30 
 
 at pleasure. In many capitularies of 
 Charlemagne, we find evidence of the 
 prevailing license of repudiation and 
 even polygamy.* The principles which 
 the church inculcated were in appearance 
 the very reverse of this laxity ; yet they 
 led indirectly to the same effect. Mar- 
 riages were forbidden, not merely within 
 the limits which nature, or those inveter- 
 ate associations which we call nature, 
 have rendered sacred, but as far as the 
 seventh degree of collateral consanguin- 
 ity, computed from a common ancestor.f 
 Not only was affinity, or relationship by 
 marriage, put upon the same footing as 
 that by blood, but a fantastical connex- 
 ion, called spiritual affinity, was invented, 
 in order to prohibit marriage between a 
 sponsor and godchild. A union, however 
 innocently contracted, between parties 
 thus circumstanced, might at anytime be 
 dissolved, and their subsequent cohabita- 
 tion forbidden ; though their children, I 
 believe, in cases where there had been 
 no knowledge of the impediment, were 
 not illegitimate. One readily apprehends 
 the facilities of abuse to which all this 
 led ; and history is full of dissolutions of 
 marriage, obtained by fickle passion or 
 cold-hearted ambition, to which the 
 church has not scrupled to pander on 
 some suggestion of relationship. It is 
 so difficult to conceive, I do not say any 
 reasoning, but any honest superstition, 
 which could have produced those mon- 
 strous regulations, that I was at first in- 
 clined to suppose them designed to give, 
 by a side wind, that facility of divorce 
 which a licentious people demanded, but 
 
 * Although a man might not marry again when 
 his wife had taken the veil, he was permitted to do 
 so if she was infected with the leprosy. Compare 
 Capitularia Pippini, A. D. 752 and 755. If a wom- 
 an conspired to murder her husband, he might re- 
 marry. Idem, A. D. 753. A large proportion of 
 Pepin's laws relate to incestuous connexions and 
 divorces. One of Charlemagne seems to imply 
 that polygamy was not unknown even among 
 priests. Si sacerdotes plures uxores habuerint, 
 sacerdotio priventur; quia ssecularibus deteriores 
 sunt. Capitul., A. D. 769. This seems to imply 
 that their marriage with one was allowable, which 
 nevertheless is contradicted by other passages in 
 the Capitularies. 
 
 t See the canonical computation explained in 
 St. Marc, t. iii., p. 376. Also in Blackstone's Law 
 Tracts, Treatise on Consanguinity. In the elev- 
 enth century, an opinion began to gain ground in 
 Italy that third cousins might marry, being in the 
 seventh degree according to the civil law. Peter 
 Damian, a passionate abetter of Hildebrand and 
 his maxims, treats this with horror, and calls it a 
 heresy. Fleury, t. xiii., p. 152. St. Marc, ubi su- 
 pra. This opinion was supported by a reference 
 to the Institutes of Justinian ; a proof, among sev- 
 eral others, how much earlier that book was known 
 than is vulgarly supposed. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 293 
 
 the church could not avowedly grant. 
 This refinement would however be un- 
 supported by facts. The prohibition is 
 very ancient, and was really derived from 
 the ascetic temper which introduced so 
 many other absurdities.* It was not un- 
 til the twelfth century that either this or 
 any other established rules of discipline 
 were supposed liable to arbitrary dispen- 
 sation; at least the stricter churchmen 
 had always denied that the pope could 
 infringe canons, nor had he asserted any 
 right to do so.f But Innocent III. laid 
 down as a maxim, that out of the pleni- 
 tude of his power he might lawfully dis- 
 pense with the law ; and accordingly 
 granted, among other instances of this 
 prerogative, dispensations from impedi- 
 ments of marriage to the Emperor Otho 
 I V.J Similar indulgences were given by 
 his successors, though they did not be- 
 come usual for some ages. The fourth 
 Lateran Council, in 1215, removed a great 
 part of the restraint, by permitting mar- 
 riages beyond the fourth degree, or what 
 we call third cousins ; and dispensations 
 have been made more easy, when it was 
 discovered that they might be converted 
 into a source of profit. They served a 
 more important purpose by rendering it 
 necessary for the princes of Europe, who 
 seldom could marry into one another's 
 houses without transgressing the canon- 
 ical limits, to keep on good terms with 
 the court of Rome, which, in several in- 
 stances that have been mentioned, ful- 
 minated its censures against sovereigns 
 who lived without permission in what 
 was considered an incestuous union. 
 
 The dispensing power of the popes 
 Disoensa- was exerte d m several cases of 
 tions en fro"m a temporal nature, particularly 
 promissory i n the legitimation of children, 
 for purposes-even of succession. 
 This Innocent III. claimed as an indirect 
 consequence of his right to remove the 
 canonical impediment which bastardy of- 
 
 * Gregory I. pronounces matrimony to be un- 
 lawful as far as the seventh degree ; and even, if I 
 understand his meaning, as long as any relation- 
 ship could be traced ; which seems to have been 
 the maxim, of strict theologians, though not abso- 
 lutely enforced. Du Cange, v. Generatio. Fleu- 
 ry, Hist. Eccles., t. ix., p. 211. 
 
 f De Marca, 1. iii., cc. 7, 8, 14. Schmidt, t. iv., 
 p. 235. Dispensations were originally granted only 
 as to canonical penances, but not prospectively to 
 authorize a breach of discipline. Gratian asserts 
 that the pope is not bound by the canons ; in 
 which, Fleury observes, he goes beyond the False 
 Decretals. Septieme Discours, p. 291. 
 
 t Secundilm plenitudinem potestatis de jurepos- 
 sumus supra jus dispensare. Schmidt, t, iv,, p, 
 235. 
 
 $ Fleury, Institutions au Droit Ecclesiastique, t. 
 i., p. 296. 
 
 fered to ordination; since it would be 
 monstrous, he says, that one who is le- 
 gitimate for spiritual functions should 
 continue otherwise in any civil matter.* 
 But the most important and mischievous 
 species of dispensations, was from the 
 observance of promissory oaths. Two 
 principles are laid down in the decretals ; 
 that an oath disadvantageous to the 
 church is not binding ; and that one ex- 
 torted by force was of slight obligation, 
 and might be annulled by ecclesiastical 
 authority.! As the first of these maxims 
 gave the most unlimited privilege to the 
 popes of breaking all faith Of treaties 
 which thwarted their interest or passion, 
 a privilege which they continually exer- 
 cised,! so tfte second was equally con- 
 venient to princes, weary of observing 
 engagements towards their subjects or 
 their neighbours. They reclaimed with 
 a bad grace against the absolution of their 
 people from allegiance by an authority to 
 which they did not scruple to repair in 
 order to bolster up their own perjuries. 
 
 * Decretal., 1. iv., tit. 17, c. 13. 
 
 t Juramentum contra utilitatem ecclesiasticam 
 praestitum non tenet. Decretal., 1. ii., tit. 24, c. 27, 
 et Sext.,1. i., tit. 11, c. 1. A juramento per metum 
 extorto ecclesia solet absolvere, et ejus transgres- 
 sores ut peccantes mortaliter non punientur. Eo- 
 dem lib. et tit., c. 15. The whole of this title in 
 the decretals upon oaths seems to have given the 
 first opening to the lax casuistry of succeeding 
 times. 
 
 t Take one instance out of many. Piccinino, 
 the famous condottiere of the fifteenth century, 
 had promised not to attack Francis Sforza, at that 
 time engaged against the pope. Eugenius IV. (the 
 same excellent person who had annulled the com- 
 pactata with the Hussites, releasing those who 
 had sworn to them, and who afterward made the 
 King of Hungary break his treaty with Amurath 
 II.), absolves him from this promise, on the express 
 ground that a treaty disadvantageous to the church 
 ought not to be kept. Sismondi, t. ix., p. 196. The 
 church, in that age, was synonymous with the pa- 
 pal territories in Italy. 
 
 It was in conformity to this sweeping principle 
 of ecclesiastical utility, that Urban VI. made the 
 following solemn and general declaration against 
 keeping faith with heretics. Attendentes quod hu- 
 jusmodi confoederationes, colligationes, et ligae seu 
 conventiones factae cum hujusmodi haereticis seu 
 schismaticis postquam tales effect! erant, sunt te- 
 merariae; illicitae, et ipso jure nullae (etsi forte 
 ante ipsorum lapsum in schisma, seu haeresin ini- 
 tae, seu factae fuissent), etiam si forent juramento 
 vel fide data firimtae, aut confirmations apostolicd 
 vel quacunque firmitate alia roboratse, postquam 
 tales, ut praemittitur, sunt effecti, Rymer, t. vii., 
 p. 352. 
 
 It was of little consequence that all divines arid 
 sound interpreters of canon law maintain that the 
 pope cannot dispense with the divine or moral law, 
 as De Marca tells us, 1. iii., c. 15, though he ad- 
 mits that others of less sound judgment assert the 
 contrary ; as was common enough, I believe, 
 among the Jesuits at the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century. His power of interpreting the law 
 was of itself a privilege of dispensing with it. 
 
294 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 >. VII. 
 
 Thus Edward I., the strenuous asserter 
 of his temporal rights, and one of the first 
 who opposed a barrier to the encroach- 
 ments of the clergy, sought at the hands 
 of Clement V. a dispensation from his 
 oath to observe the great statute against 
 arbitrary taxation. 
 
 In all the earlier stages of papal domin- 
 ion, the supreme head of the church had 
 Encroach- been her guardian and protec- 
 iwDMontiM tor; and this beneficent charac- 
 freedom of e ter appeared to receive its con- 
 elections, summation in the result of that 
 arduous struggle which restored the an- 
 cient practice of free election to ecclesi- 
 astical dignities. Not long however after 
 this triumph had been obtained, the popes 
 began by little and little to interfere with 
 the regular constitution. Their first step 
 was conformable indeed to the prevailing 
 system of spiritual independence. By 
 the concordat of Calixtus, it appears that 
 the decision of contested elections was 
 reserved to the emperor, assisted by the 
 metropolitans and suffragans. In a few 
 cases during the twelfth century, this im- 
 perial prerogative was exercised, though 
 not altogether undisputed.* But it was 
 consonant to the prejudices of that age 
 to deem the supreme pontiff a more nat- 
 ural judge, as in other cases of appeal. 
 The point was early settled in England, 
 where a doubtful election to the arch- 
 bishopric of York, under Stephen, was 
 referred to Rome, and there kept five 
 years in litigation.! Otho IV. surrender- 
 ed this among other rights of the empire 
 to Innocent III. by his capitulation ;| and 
 from that pontificate the papal jurisdic- 
 tion over such controversies became 
 thoroughly recognised. But the real aim 
 of Innocent, and perhaps of some of his 
 predecessors, was to dispose of bishop- 
 rics, under pretext of determining con- 
 tests, as a matter of patronage. So many 
 And on rules were established, so many 
 rights of pat- formalities required by their 
 constitutions, incorporated af- 
 terward into the canon law, that the court 
 of Rome might easily find means of annul- 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iii., p. 299 ; t. iv., p. 149. Accord- 
 ing to the concordat, elections ought to be made in 
 the presence of the emperor or his officers ; but 
 the chapters contrived to exclude them by degrees, 
 though not perhaps till the thirteenth century. 
 Compare Schmidt, t. iii., p. 296 ; t. iv., p. 146. 
 
 f Henry's Hist, of England, vol. v., p. 324. Lyt- 
 tleton's Henry II., vol. i., p. 356. 
 
 J Schmidt, t. iv., p. 149. One of these was the 
 spolium, or moveable estate of a bishop, which the 
 emperor was used to seize upon his decease, p. 154. 
 It was certainly a very leonine prerogative ; but the 
 popes did not fail at a subsequent time to claim it 
 for themselves. Fleury, Institutions au Droit, t. i., 
 p. 425." J<enfant, Concede Constance, t. ii.,p. 130. 
 
 ling what had been done by the chapter, 
 and bestowing the see on a favourite 
 candidate.* The popes soon assumed 
 not only a right of decision, but of devo- 
 lution ; that is, of supplying the want of 
 election, or the unfitness of the elected, 
 by a nomination of their own.f Thus, 
 Archbishop Langton, if not absolutely 
 nominated, was at least chosen in an in- 
 valid and compulsory manner, by the 
 order of Innocent III. ; as we may read 
 in our English historians. And several 
 succeeding archbishops of Canterbury 
 equally owed their promotion to the pa- 
 pal prerogative. Some instances of the 
 same kind occurred in Germany, and it 
 became the constant practice in Naples. ; 
 While the popes were thus artfully de- 
 priving the chapters of their right of elec- 
 tion to bishoprics, they interfered in a 
 more arbitrary manner with the 
 collation of inferior benefices. 
 This began, though in so insensible a man- 
 ner as to deserve no notice but for its con- 
 sequences, with Adrian IV., who request- 
 ed some bishops to confer the next bene- 
 fice that should become vacant on a par- 
 ticular clerk. Alexander III. used to 
 solicit similar favours. || These recom* 
 mendatory letters were called mandats. 
 But though such requests grew more fre- 
 quent than was acceptable to patrons, 
 they were preferred in moderate lan- 
 guage, and could not decently be refused 
 to the apostolic chair. Even Innocent 
 III. seems in general to be aware that he 
 is not asserting a right ; though in one in- 
 stance I have observed his violent tem- 
 per break out against the chapter of Poi- 
 tiers, who had made some demur to the 
 appointment of his clerk, and whom he 
 threatens with excommunication and in- 
 terdict.^ But, as we find in the history 
 of all usurping governments, time changes 
 anomaly into system, and injury into 
 right; examples beget custom, and cus- 
 tom ripens into law ; and the doubtful pre- 
 cedent of one generation becomes the fun- 
 damental maxim of another. Honorius 
 
 * F. Paul, c. 30. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 177, 247. 
 
 t Thus we find it expressed, as captiously as 
 words could be devised, in the decretals,- 1. i., tit. 
 6, c. 22. Electus a majori et saniori parte capituli, 
 si est, et erat idoneus tempore electionis, confirma- 
 bitur : si autem erit indignus in ordinibus scienti& 
 vel aetate, et fuit scienter electus, electus a minori 
 parte, si est dignus, confirmabitur. 
 
 A person canonically disqualified when presented 
 to the pope for confirmation was said to be postula- 
 tiis, not electus. 
 
 J Giannone, 1. xiv., c. 6 ; 1. xix., c. 5. 
 
 <j St. Marc, t. v., p. 41. Art de verifier les Dates, 
 t. i., p. 288. Encyclopedic, Art. Mandats. 
 
 I! Schmidt, t. iv., p. 239. 
 
 IT Innocent III., Opera, p. 50?. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 295 
 
 III. requested that two prebends in eve- 
 ry church might be preserved for the 
 Holy See; but neither the bishops of 
 France nor England, to whom he pre- 
 ferred this petition, were induced to com- 
 ply with it.* Gregory IX. pretended to 
 act generously in limiting himself to a 
 single expectative, or letter directing a 
 particular clerk to be provided with a 
 benefice in every church.f But his prac- 
 tice went much farther. No country 
 was so intolerably treated by this pope 
 and his successors as England, through- 
 out the ignominious reign of Henry III. 
 Her church seemed to have been so 
 richly endowed only as the free pasture 
 of Italian priests, who were placed, by 
 the mandatory letters of Gregory IX. and 
 Innocent IV., in all the best benefices. 
 If we may trust a solemn remonstrance in 
 the name of the whole nation, they drew 
 from England, in the middle of the thir- 
 teenth century, sixty or seventy thou- 
 sand marks every year; a sum far ex- 
 ceeding the royal revenue. J This was 
 asserted by the English envoys at the 
 council of Lyons. But the remedy was 
 not to be sought in remonstrances to the 
 court of Rome, which exulted in the 
 success of its encroachments. There 
 was no defect of spirit in the nation to 
 oppose a more adequate resistance ; but 
 the individual upon the throne sacrificed 
 the public interest sometimes through 
 habitual timidity, sometimes through silly 
 ambition. If England, however, suffered 
 more remarkably, /et other countries 
 were far from being untouched. A Ger- 
 man writer, about the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, mentions a cathedral 
 where, out of about thirty-five vacancies 
 of prebends that had occurred within 
 twenty years, the regular patron had 
 filled only two. The case was not very 
 different in France, where the continual 
 usurpations of the popes are said to have 
 produced the celebrated Pragmatic Sanc- 
 tion of St. Louis. This edict, which is 
 not of undisputed authority, contains 
 three important provisions ; namely, that 
 all prelates and other patrons shall enjoy 
 their full rights as to the collation of 
 benefices, according to the canons ; that 
 churches shall possess freely their rights 
 of election ; and that no tax or pecuniary 
 exaction shall be levied by the pope, 
 without consent of the king and of the 
 national church. || We do not find, how- 
 
 * Matt. Paris, p. 267. De Marca, 1. iv., c. 9. 
 
 t F. Paul on Benefices, c. 30. 
 
 t M. Paris, p. 579, 740. 
 
 6 Schmidt, t. vi., p. 104. 
 
 II Ordonnances des Rois de France, t. i., p. 97. 
 
 ever, that the French government acted 
 up to the spirit of this ordinance, if it be 
 genuine ; and the Holy See continued to 
 invade the rights of collation with less 
 ceremony than they had hitherto used. 
 Clement IV. published a bull in 1266, 
 which, after asserting an absolute pre- 
 rogative of the supreme pontiff to dispose 
 of all preferments, whether vacant or in 
 reversion, confines itself in the enacting 
 words to the reservation of such benefi- 
 ces as belong to persons dying at Rome 
 (vacantes in curia).* These had for 
 some time been reckoned as a part of 
 the pope's special patronage ; and their 
 number, when all causes of importance 
 were drawn to his tribunal, when metro- 
 politans were compelled to seek their 
 pallium in person, and even by a recent 
 constitution, exempt abbots to repair to 
 Rome for confirmation,! not to mention 
 the multitude who flocked thither as mere 
 courtiers and hunters after promotion, 
 must have been very considerable. Bon- 
 iface VIII. repeated this law of Clement 
 IV. in a still more positive tone;}: and 
 Clement V. laid down as a maxim, that 
 the pope might freely bestow, as univer- 
 sal patron, all ecclesiastical benefices. $ 
 In order to render these tenable by their 
 Italian courtiers, the canons against plu- 
 ralities and nonresidence were dispensed 
 with; so that individuals were said to 
 have accumulated fifty or sixty prefer- 
 ments. || It was a consequence provisions, 
 from this extravagant princi- reserves, &c. 
 pie, that the pope might prevent the or- 
 dinary collator upon a vacancy ; and as 
 this could seldom be done with sufficient 
 expedition in places remote from his 
 court, that he might make reversionary 
 grants during the life of an incumbent, 
 
 There are several material objections to the au- 
 thenticity of this edict, and in particular that we do 
 not find the king to have had any previous differ* 
 ences with the see of Rome ; on the contrary, he 
 was just indebted to Clement IV. for bestowing 
 the crown of Naples on his brother, the Count of 
 Provence. Velly has defended it, Hist, de France, 
 t. vi., p. 57, and in the opinion of the learned Ben- 
 edictine editors of L'Art de verifier les Dates, t. i., 
 p. 585, cleared up all difficulties as to its genuine- 
 ness. In fact, however, the Pragmatic Sanction 
 of St. Louis stands by itself, and can only be con- 
 sidered as a protestation against abuses which it 
 was still impossible to suppress. 
 
 * Sext. Decretal., 1. iii., t. iv., c. 2. F. Paul on 
 Benefices, c. 35. This writer thinks the privilege 
 of nominating benefices vacant in curia to have 
 been among the first claimed by the popes, even 
 before the usage of mandats, c. 30. 
 
 t Matt. Paris, p. 817. 
 
 J Sext. Decretal., 1. iii., t. iv., c. 3. He extend- 
 ed the vacancy in curia to all places within two 
 days' journey of the papal court. 
 
 $ F. Paul, c. 35. 
 
 || Id., c. 33, 34, 35. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 104, 
 
296 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 or reserve certain benefices specifically 
 for his own nomination. 
 
 The persons as well as estates of eccle- 
 Papaitaxa- siastics were secure from arbi- 
 tion of the trary taxation in all the king- 
 clergy, doms founded upon the ruins of 
 the empire, both by the common liberties 
 of freemen, and more particularly by their 
 own immunities and the horror of sacri- 
 lege.* Such at least was their legal secu- 
 rity, whatever violence might occasion- 
 ally be practised by tyrannical princes. 
 But this exemption was compensated by 
 annual donatives, probably to a large 
 amount, which the bishops and monaste- 
 ries were accustomed, and as it were 
 compelled, to make to their sovereigns.! 
 They were subject also, generally speak- 
 ing, to the feudal services and prestations. 
 Henry I. is said to have extorted a sum 
 of money from the English church.! 
 But the first eminent instance of a gen- 
 eral tax required from the clergy was 
 the famous Saladine tithe ; a tenth of all 
 moveable estate, imposed by the kings 
 of France and England upon all their 
 subjects, with the consent of their great 
 councils of prelates and barons, to de- 
 fray the expense of their intended cru- 
 sade. Yet even this contribution, though 
 called for by the imminent peril of the 
 Holy Land after the capture of Jerusa- 
 lem, was not paid without reluctance ; the 
 clergy doubtless anticipating the future 
 extension of such a precedent. Many 
 years had not elapsed when a new de- 
 mand was made upon them, but from 
 a different quarter. Innocent III. (the 
 name continually recurs when we trace 
 the commencement of a usurpation) im- 
 posed, in 1199, upon the whole church, a 
 tribute of one fortieth of moveable estate, 
 to be paid to his own collectors; but 
 strictly pledging himself that the money 
 should only be applied to the purposes 
 of a crusade. || This crusade ended, as 
 is well known, in the capture of Con- 
 stantinople. But the word had lost much 
 of its original meaning; or rather that 
 meaning had been extended by ambition 
 and bigotry. Gregory IX. preached a 
 crusade against the Emperor Frederick, 
 in a quarrel which only concerned his 
 temporal principality ; and the church of 
 England was taxed by his authority to 
 carry on this holy war.^f After some op- 
 
 * Muratpri, Dissert. 70. Schmidt, t. iii., p. 211. 
 t Id., Ibid. Du Cange, v. Dona, 
 j Eadmer, p. 83. 
 
 $ Schmidt, t. iv., p. 212. Lyttleton's Henry II., 
 vol. iii., p. 472. Velly, t. iii., p. 316. 
 I! Innocent. Opera, p. 266. 
 IT M. Paris, p. 47t). It was hardly possible for 
 
 position the bishops submitted ; and from 
 that time no bounds were set to the rapa- 
 city of papal exactions. The usurers of 
 Cahors and Lombardy, residing in Lon- 
 don, took up the trade of agency for the 
 pope ; and in a few years he is said, 
 partly by levies of money, partly by the 
 revenues of benefices, to have plundered 
 the kingdom of 950,000 marks; a sum 
 equivalent, I think, to not less than fif- 
 teen millions sterling at present. Inno- 
 cent IV., during whose pontificate the 
 tyranny of Rome, if we consider her tem- 
 poral and spiritual usurpations together, 
 reached perhaps its zenith, hit upon the 
 device of ordering the English prelates 
 to furnish a certain number of men-at- 
 arms to defend the church at their ex- 
 pense. This would soon have been com- 
 muted into a standing escuage instead of 
 military service.* But the demand was 
 perhaps not complied with, and we do 
 not find it repeated. Henry III.'s pu- 
 sillanimity would not permit any effect- 
 ual measure to be adopted ; and indeed he 
 sometimes shared in the booty, and was 
 indulged with the produce of taxes im- 
 posed upon his own clergy to defray the 
 cost of his projected war against Sicily, t 
 A nobler example was set by the kingdom 
 of Scotland : Clement IV. having, in 
 1267, granted the tithes of its ecclesias- 
 tical revenues for one of his mock cru- 
 sades, King Alexander III., with the con- 
 currence of the church, stood up against 
 this encroachment, and refused the legate 
 permission to enter his dominions. J Tax- 
 
 the clergy to make any effective resistance to the 
 pope, without unravelling a tissue which they had 
 been assiduously weaving. One English prelate 
 distinguished himself in this reign by his strenu- 
 ous protestation against all abuses of the church. 
 This was Robert Grosstete, bishop of Lincoln, who 
 died in 1253, the most learned Englishman of his 
 time, and the first who had any tincture of Greek 
 literature. Matthew Paris gives him a high char- 
 acter, which he deserved for his learning and in- 
 tegrity ; one of his commendations is for keeping 
 a good table. But Grosstete appears to have been 
 imbued in a great degree with the spirit of his age 
 as to ecclesiastical power, though unwilling to 
 yield it up to the pope : and it is a strange thing to 
 reckon him among the precursors of the Reforma- 
 tion. M. Paris, p. 754. Berington's Literary His- 
 tory of the Middle Ages, p. 378. 
 
 * M. Paris, p. 613. It would be endless to mul- 
 tiply proofs from Matthew Paris, which indeed 
 occur in almost every page. His laudable zeal 
 against papal tyranny, on which some Protestant 
 writers have been so pleased to dwell, was a little 
 stimulated by personal feelings for the abbey of St. 
 Alban's ; and the same remark is probably applica- 
 ble to his love of civil liberty. 
 
 t Rymer, t. i., p. 599, &c. The substance of 
 English ecclesiastical history during the reign of 
 Henry III. may be collected from Henry, and still 
 better from Collier. 
 
 J Dalryniple's Annala of Scotland, vol. i. o 179. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 297 
 
 ation of the clergy was not so outra- 
 geous in other countries ; but the popes 
 granted a tithe of benefices to St. Louis 
 for each of his own crusades, and also 
 for the expedition of Charles of Anjou 
 against Manfred.* In the council of 
 Lyons, held by Gregory X. in 1274, a 
 general tax of the same proportion was 
 imposed on all the Latin church, for the 
 pretended purpose of carrying on a holy 
 war.f 
 These gross invasions of ecclesiastical 
 
 property, however submissively 
 toward^ the endured, produced a very gen- 
 court of eral disaffection towards the 
 
 court of Rome. The reproach 
 of venality and avarice was not indeed 
 cast for the first time upon the sovereign 
 pontiffs ; but it had been confined in ear- 
 lier ages to particular instances, not 
 affecting the bulk of the Catholic church. 
 But, pillaged upon every slight pretence, 
 without law and without redress, the 
 clergy came to regard their once pater- 
 nal monarch as an arbitrary oppressor. 
 All writers of the thirteenth and follow- 
 ing centuries complain in terms of un- 
 measured indignation, and seem almost 
 ready to reform the general abuses of 
 the church. They distinguished, how- 
 ever, clearly enough between the abuses 
 which oppressed them and those which 
 it was their interest to preserve, nor had 
 the least intention of waiving their own 
 immunities and authority. But the laity 
 came to more universal conclusions. A 
 spirit of inveterate hatred grew up among 
 them, not only towards the papal tyranny, 
 but the whole system of ecclesiastical 
 independence. The rich envied and 
 longed to plunder the estates of the su- 
 perior clergy ; the poor learned from the 
 Waldenses and other sectaries to deem 
 such opulence incompatible with the 
 character of evangelical ministers. The 
 itinerant minstrels invented tales to sat- 
 irise vicious priests, which a predis- 
 posed multitude eagerly swallowed. If 
 the thirteenth century was an age of 
 more extravagant ecclesiastical preten- 
 sions than any which had preceded, it 
 was certainly one in which the disposi- 
 tion to resist them acquired great con- 
 sistence. 
 
 To resist had indeed become strictly 
 Process of necessai Ti if tne temporal gov- 
 
 ernments of Christendom would 
 - occupy any better station than 
 
 that of officers to the hierarchy. 
 I have traced already the first stage of 
 
 
 * Velly, t. iv., p. 343 ; t. v., p. 343 ; t. vi., p. 47. 
 t Idem, t. vi., p. 3O8. St. Marc, t vi., p. 347. 
 
 that ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which, 
 through the partial indulgence of sover- 
 eigns, especially Justinian and Charle- 
 magne, had become nearly independent 
 of the civil magistrate. Several ages of 
 confusion and anarchy ensued, during 
 which the supreme regal authority was 
 literally suspended in France, and not 
 much respected in some other countries. 
 It is natural to suppose that ecclesiasti- 
 cal jurisdiction, so far as even that was 
 regarded in such barbarous times, would 
 be esteemed the only substitute for coer- 
 cive law, and the best security against 
 wrong. But I am not aware that it ex- 
 tended itself beyond its former limits till 
 about the beginning of the twelfth cen- 
 tury. From that time it rapidly en- 
 croached upon the secular tribunals, and 
 seemed to threaten the usurpation of an 
 exclusive supremacy over all persons and 
 causes. The bishops gave the tonsure 
 indiscriminately, in order to swell the 
 list of their subjects. This sign of a 
 clerical state, though below the lowest 
 of their seven degrees of ordination, im- 
 plying no spiritual office, conferred the 
 privileges and immunities of the profes- 
 sion on all who wore an ecclesiastical 
 habit, and had only once been married.* 
 Orphans and widows, -the stranger and 
 the poor, the pilgrim and the leper, under 
 the appellation of persons in distress 
 (miserabiles personae), came within the 
 peculiar cognizance and protection of the 
 church; nor could they be sued before 
 any lay tribunal. And the whole body 
 of crusaders, or such as merely took the 
 vow of engaging in a crusade, enjoyed 
 the same clerical privileges. 
 
 But where the character of the litigant 
 parties could not, even with this large 
 construction, be brought within their pale, 
 the bishops found a pretext for their juris- 
 diction in the nature of the dispute. Spir- 
 itual causes alone, it was agreed, could 
 appertain to the spiritual tribunal. But 
 the word was indefinite; and according 
 to the interpreters of the twelfth century, 
 the church was always bound to prevent 
 and chastise the commission of sin. By 
 this sweeping maxim, which we have 
 
 * Clerici qui cum unicis et virginibus contraxe- 
 mnt, si tonsuram et vestes deferant clericales, privi- 
 
 legium retineant praesenti declaramus edicto, 
 
 hujusmodi clericos conjugates pro commissis ab iis 
 excessibus veldelictis, trahi non posse criminaliter 
 aut civiliter ad judicium saeculare. Bpnifacius 
 Octavus, in Sext. Decretal., 1. iii., tit. ii., c. i. Philip 
 the Bold, however, had subjected these married 
 clerks to taxes, and later ordinances of the French 
 kings rendered them amenable to temporal juris- 
 diction ; from which, in Naples, by various provis- 
 ions of the Angevin line, they always continued 
 free Giannone, 1. xix., c. 5. 
 
298 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 seen Innocent III. apply to vindicate his 
 control over national quarrels, the com- 
 mon differences of individuals, which gen- 
 erally involve some charge of wilful inju- 
 ry, fell into the hands of a religious judge. 
 One is almost surprised to find that it did 
 not extend more universally, and might 
 praise the moderation of the church. 
 Real actions, or suits relating to the prop- 
 erty of land, w'ere always the exclusive 
 province of the lay court, even where a 
 clerk was the defendant.* But the ec- 
 clesiastical tribunals took cognizance of 
 breaches of contract, at least where an 
 oath had been pledged, and of personal 
 trusts. f They had not only an exclusive 
 jurisdiction over questions immediately 
 matrimonial, but a concurrent one with 
 the civil magistrate in France, though 
 never in England, over matters incident 
 to the nuptial contract, as claims of mar- 
 riage portion and of dower.| They took 
 the execution of testaments into their 
 hands, on account of the legacies to pious 
 uses which testators were advised to be- 
 queath. In process of time, and under 
 favourable circumstances, they made still 
 greater strides. They pretended a right 
 to supply the defects, the doubts, or the 
 negligence of temporal judges ; and in- 
 vented a class of mixed causes, whereof 
 the lay or ecclesiastical jurisdiction took 
 possession according to priority. Besides 
 this extensive authority in civil disputes, 
 they judged of some offences, which natu- 
 rally belong to the criminal law, as well as 
 of some others, which participate of a civ- 
 il and criminal nature. Such were perju- 
 ry, sacrilege, usury, incest, and adultery ;|| 
 from the punishment of all which the sec- 
 ular magistrate refrained, at least in Eng- 
 land, after they had become the prov- 
 ince of a separate jurisdiction. Excom- 
 
 * Decretal., 1. ii., t. ii. Ordonnances des Rois, t. 
 i., p. 40 (A. D. 1189). In the council of Lambeth, 
 in 1261, the bishops claim a right to judge inter 
 clericos suos, vel inter laicos conquerentes et cler- 
 icos defendentes, in personalibus actionibus super 
 contractibus, aut delictis, aut quasi, i. e. quasi de- 
 lictis. Wilkins, Concilia, t. i., p. 747. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, p. 319 (A. D. 1290). 
 
 % Idem, p. 40, 121, 220, 319. 
 
 $ Id., p. 319. Glanvil, 1. vii., c. 7. Sancho IV. 
 gave the same jurisdiction to the clergy of Castile, 
 Teoria de las Cortes, t. iii., p. 20 ; and in other re- 
 spects followed the example of his father Alfonso 
 X. in favouring their encroachments. The church 
 of Scotland seems to have had nearly the same ju- 
 risdiction as that of England. Pinkerton's Histo- 
 ry of Scotland, vol. i,, p. 173. 
 
 I! It was a maxim of the canon, as well as the 
 common law, that no person should be punished 
 twice for the same offence ; therefore, if a clerk had 
 been degraded, or a penance imposed on a lay- 
 man, it was supposed unjust to proceed against 
 him in a temporal court, 
 
 munication still continued the only chas- 
 tisement which the church could directly 
 inflict. But the bishops acquired a right 
 of having their own prisons for lay of- 
 fenders,* and the monasteries were the 
 appropriate prisons of clerks. Their 
 sentences of excommunication were en- 
 forced by the temporal magistrate by 
 imprisonment or sequestration of ef- 
 fects; in some cases by confiscation or 
 death.f 
 
 The clergy did not forget to secure 
 along with this jurisdiction their And immu- 
 own absolute exemption from nitv - 
 the criminal justice of the state. This, 
 as I have above mentioned, had been 
 conceded to them by Charlemagne ; but 
 how far the same privilege existed in 
 countries not subject to his empire, such 
 as England, or even in France and Ger- 
 many during the three centuries after his 
 reign, is what I am not able to assert. 
 The False Decretals contain some pas- 
 sages in favour of ecclesiastical immuni- 
 ty, which Gratian repeats in his collec- 
 tion.J About the middle of the twelfth 
 century the principle obtained general 
 reception, and Innocent III. decided it to 
 be an inalienable right of the clergy, 
 whereof they could not be divested even 
 by their own consent. $ Much less were 
 any constitutions of princes, or national 
 usages, deemed of force to abrogate such 
 an important privilege. || These, by the 
 canon law, were invalid when they affect- 
 ed the rights and liberties of holy church.'ff 
 But the spiritual courts were charged 
 with scandalously neglecting to visit the 
 most atrocious offences of clerks with 
 ^__ 
 
 * Charlemagne is said by Giannone to have per- 
 mitted the bishops to have prisons of their own, 1. 
 vi., c. 7. 
 
 t Giannone, 1. xix., c. 5, t. iii. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 
 195 ; t. vi., p. 125. Fleury, 7 Discours, Mem. de 
 1'Acad. des Inscript, t. xxxix., p. 603. Ecclesiasti- 
 cal jurisdiction not having been uniform in differ 
 ent ages and countries, it is difficult, without much 
 attention, to distinguish its general and permanent 
 attributes from those less completely established. 
 Its description, as given in the Decretals, lib. ii., tit. 
 ii., De foro competenti, does not support the pre- 
 tensions made by the canonists, nor come up to 
 the sweeping definition of ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
 tion by Boniface VIII. in the Sext., 1. iii., tit. xxiii., 
 c. 40, sive ambae partes hoc voluerint, sive una 
 super causis ecclesiasticis, sive quae ad forum ec- 
 clesiasticum ratione personarum, negotiorum, vel 
 rerum de jure vel de antiqua consuetudine perti- 
 nere noscuntur. 
 
 J Fleury, 7 me Discours. 
 
 <j Idem. Institutions au Droit Eccles., t. ii., p. 8. 
 
 || In criminalibus causis in nullo casu possunt 
 clerici ab aliquo quam ab ecclesiastico judice con- 
 demnari, etiamsi consuetudo regia habeat ut fures 
 a judicibus sascularibus judicentur. Decretal.,, 1, i., 
 tit. i., c. 8. 
 
 V Decret., distinct. 9a 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 299 
 
 such punishment as they could inflict. 
 The church could always absolve from her 
 own censures ; and confinement in a mon- 
 astery, the usual sentence upon crimi- 
 nals, was frequently slight and temporary. 
 Several instances are mentioned of hei- 
 nous outrages tfrat remained nearly un- 
 punished through the shield of ecclesias- 
 tical privilege.* And as the temporal 
 courts refused their assistance to a rival 
 jurisdiction, the clergy had no redress for 
 their own injuries, and even the murder 
 of a priest at one time, as we are told, 
 was only punishable by excommunica- 
 tion, f 
 
 Such an incoherent medley of laws 
 Endeavours and magistrates, upon the sym- 
 made to re- metrical arrangement of which 
 r n S iVnd n a11 social economy mainly de- 
 pends, could not fail to produce 
 a violent collision. Every sovereign was 
 interested in vindicating the authority 
 of the constitutions which had been 
 formed by his ancestors, or by the people 
 whom he governed. But the first who 
 undertook this arduous work, the first 
 who appeared openly against ecclesias- 
 tical tyranny, was our Henry II. The 
 Anglo-Saxon church, not so much con- 
 nected as some others with Rome, and 
 enjoying a sort of barbarian immunity 
 from the thraldom of canonical discipline, 
 though rich, and highly respected by a 
 devout nation, had never, perhaps, de- 
 sired the thorough independence upon 
 secular jurisdiction at which the con- 
 tinental hierarchy aimed. William the 
 Conqueror first separated the ecclesias- 
 tical from the civil tribunal, and forbade 
 the bUfcops to judge of spiritual causes 
 in the hundred court. | His language is, 
 however, too indefinite to warrant any 
 
 * Collier, vol. i., p. 351. It is laid down in the 
 canon laws that a layman cannot be a witness in a 
 criminal case against a clerk. Decretal., 1. ii., tit. 
 xx., c. 14. 
 
 t Lyttleton's Henry II., vol. iii., p. 332. This 
 must be restricted to that period of open hostility 
 between the church and state. 
 
 $. Ut nullus episcopus vel archidiaconus de legi- 
 bus episcopalibus amplius in Hundret placita ten- 
 cant, nee causam quae ad regimen animarum perti- 
 net, ad judicium saecularium hominum adducant. 
 Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxon., 230. 
 
 Before the conquest, the bishop and earl sat to- 
 gether in the court of the county or hundred ; and, 
 as we may infer from the tenour of this charter, ec- 
 clesiastical matters were decided loosely, and rather 
 by the common law than according to the canons. 
 This practice had been already forbidden by some 
 canons enacted under Edgar, id., p. 83 ; but appa- 
 rently with little effect, The separation of the civil 
 and ecclesiastical tribunals was not made in Den- 
 mark till the reign of Nicolas, who ascended the 
 throne in 1105. Langebek, Script. Rer. Danic., 
 t. iv., p. 380. Others refer the law to St. Canut, 
 about 1080, t. ii., p. 209, 
 
 decisive proposition as to the nature of 
 such causes ; probably tlrey had not yet 
 been carried much beyond their legiti- 
 mate extent. Of clerical exemption from 
 the secular arm, we find JIG earlier notice 
 than in the coronation oath of Stephen ; 
 which, though vaguely expressed, may 
 be construed to include it.* But I am 
 not certain that the law of England had 
 unequivocally recognised that claim at 
 the time of the constitutions of Cla- 
 rendon. It was at least an innova- 
 tion, which the legislature might with- 
 out scruple or transgression of justice 
 abolish. Henry II., in that famous stat- 
 ute, attempted in three respects to limit 
 the jurisdiction assumed by the church; 
 asserting for his own judges the cogni- 
 zance of contracts, however confirmed 
 by oath, and of rights of advowson, and 
 also that of offences committed by clerks, 
 whom, as it is gently expressed, after 
 conviction or confession the church ought 
 not to protect.f These constitutions 
 were the leading subject of difference 
 between the king and Thomas Becket. 
 Most of them were annulled by the 
 pope, as derogatory to ecclesiastical 
 liberty. It is not improbable, however, 
 that if Louis VII. had played a more 
 dignified part, the See of Rome, which 
 an existing schism rendered dependant 
 upon the favour of those two monarchs, 
 might have receded in some measure 
 from her pretensions. But France im- 
 plicitly giving way to the encroachments 
 of ecclesiastical power, it became impos- 
 sible for Henry completely to withstand 
 them. 
 
 The constitutions of Clarendon, how- 
 ever, produced some effect, and, in the 
 reign of Henry III., more unremitted and 
 successful efforts began to be made to 
 maintain the independence of temporal 
 government. The judges of the king's 
 court had until that time been them- 
 selves principally ecclesiastics, and con- 
 sequently tender of spiritual privileges. t 
 But now, abstaining from the exercise of 
 temporal jurisdiction, in obedience to the 
 strict injunctions of their canons,^ the 
 clergy gave place to common lawyers, 
 professors of a system very discordant 
 from their own. These soon began to 
 
 * Ecclesiasticarum personarum et omnium cleri- 
 cprum, et rerum eorum justitiam et potestatem, et 
 distributionem honorum ecclesiasticorum, in manu 
 episcoporum esse perhibeo, et confirmo. Wilkins, 
 Leges Anglo-Saxon., p. 310. 
 
 t Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxon., p. 323. Lyttle- 
 ton's Henry II., Collier, &c. 
 
 J Dugdale's Origines Juridicales, c. 8. 
 
 $ Decretal., 1. i., tit. xxxvii., c. 1. Wilkins, Coju 
 cilia, t. ii., p. 4. 
 
300 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 assert the supremacy of their jurisdiction 
 by issuing writs of prohibition, when- 
 ever the ecclesiastical tribunals passed 
 the boundaries which approved use had 
 established.* Little accustomed to such 
 control, the proud hierarchy chafed under 
 the bit; several provincial synods re- 
 claim against the pretensions of laymen 
 to judge the anointed ministers, whom 
 they were bound to obey;f the cogni- 
 zance of rights of patronage and breaches 
 of contract is boldly asserted ;J but firm 
 and cautious, favoured by the nobility, 
 though not much by the king, the judges 
 receded not a step, and ultimately fixed 
 a barrier which the church was forced 
 to respect.^ In the ensuing reign of 
 Edward I., an archbishop acknowledges 
 the abstract right of the king's bench to 
 issue prohibitions ;|| and the statute en- 
 titled Circumspecte agatis, in the thir- 
 teenth year of that prince, while by its 
 mode of expression it seems designed to 
 guaranty the actual privileges of spirit- 
 ual jurisdiction, had a tendency, espe- 
 cially with the disposition of the judges, 
 to preclude the assertion of some which 
 are not therein mentioned. Neither the 
 right of advowson nor any temporal con- 
 tract is specified in this act as pertain- 
 ing to the church ; and accordingly the 
 temporal courts have ever since main- 
 tained an undisputed jurisdiction over 
 them.^[ They succeeded also partially 
 
 * Prynne has produced several extracts from the 
 pipe-rolls of Henry II., where a person has been 
 fined quia placitavit de laico feodo in curia chris- 
 tianitatis. And a bishop of Durham is fined five 
 hundred marks quia tenuit placitum de advocatione 
 cujusdam ecclesias in curia christianitatis. Epistle 
 dedicatory to Prynne's Records, vol. iii. Glanvil 
 gives the form of a writ of prohibition to the spirit- 
 ual court for inquiring de feodo laico; for it had 
 jurisdiction over lands in frankalmoign. This is 
 conformable to the constitutions of Clarendon, and 
 shows that they were still in force ; though Col- 
 lier has the assurance to say, that they were re- 
 pealed soon after Becket's death, supporting this 
 also by a false quotation from Glanvil. Ecclesi- 
 ast. Hist., vol. i., p. 380. Lyttleton's Henry II., 
 vol. iii., p. 97. 
 
 1 Cum judicandi Christos domini nulla sit laicis 
 attributa potestas, apud quos manet necessitas ob- 
 sequendi. Wilkins, Concilia, t. i., p. 747. 
 
 I Id. ibid. ; et t. ii., p. 90. 
 
 <) Vide Wilkins, Concilia, t. ii., passim. 
 
 II Licet prohibitions hujusmodi a curia chris- 
 tianissimi regis nostri just& proculdubio, ut dixi- 
 mus, concedantur. Idem, t. ii., p. 100, and p. 115. 
 Yet after such an acknowledgment by Archbishop 
 Peckham, in the height of ecclesiastical power, 
 and after a practice deducible from the age of 
 Henry II., some Protestants, as Archbishop Ban- 
 croft (2 Inst., 609) ; Gibson (preface to Codex 
 Jut. Eccl.); Collier (Ecclesiast. Hist., vol. i., p. 
 522), have complained that the court of king's 
 bench should put any limits to their claims of spir- 
 itual jurisdiction. 
 
 f The statute Circumspect^ agatis, for it is ac- 
 
 in preventing the impunity of crimes 
 perpetrated by clerks. It was enacted 
 by the statute of Westminster, in 1275, 
 or rather a construction was put upon 
 that act, which is obscurely worded, that 
 clerks endicted for felony should not be 
 delivered to their ordinary until an in- 
 quest had been taken of the matter of ac- 
 cusation ; and if they were found guilty, 
 that their real and personal estate should 
 be forfeited to the crown. In later times, 
 the clerical privilege was not allowed till 
 the party had pleaded to the endictment, 
 and been duly convict, as is the practice 
 at present.* 
 
 The civil magistrates of France did not 
 by any means exert themselves Lesg V j g . 
 so vigorously for their emancipa- orons m 
 tion. The same, or rather worse France> 
 usurpations existed, and the same com- 
 plaints were made, under Philip Augus- 
 tus, St. Louis, and Philip the Bold ; but 
 the laws of those sovereigns tend much 
 more to confirm than to restrain eccle- 
 siastical encroachments.! Some limita- 
 tions were attempted by the secular 
 courts; and an historian gives us the 
 terms of a confederacy among the French 
 nobles, in 1246, binding themselves by 
 oath not to permit the spiritual judges to 
 take cognizance of any matter, except 
 heresy, marriage, and usury. J Unfortu- 
 nately, Louis IX. was almost as little 
 disposed as Henry III. to shake off the 
 yoke of ecclesiastical dominion. But 
 other sovereigns in the same period, from 
 various motives, were equally submis- 
 sive. Frederick II. explicitly adopts fhe 
 exemption of clerks from criminal as 
 
 knowledged as a statute, though not drawn up in 
 the form of one, is founded upon an answer of Ed- 
 ward I. to the prelates who had petitioned for some 
 modification of prohibitions. Collier, always prone 
 to exaggerate church authority, insinuates that the 
 jurisdiction of the spiritual court over breaches of 
 contract, even without oath, is preserved by this 
 statute ; but the express words of the king show 
 that none whatever was intended ; and the arch- 
 bishop complains bitterly of it afterward. Wil- 
 kins, Concilia, t. ii., p. 118. Collier's Ecclesiast. 
 History, vol. i., p. 487. So far from having any 
 cognizance of civil contracts not confirmed by 
 oath, to which I am not certain that the, church 
 ever pretended in any country, the spiritual court 
 had no jurisdiction at all even where an oath had 
 intervened, unless there was a deficiency of proof 
 by writing or witnesses. Glanvil, 1. x., c. 12. 
 Constitut. Clarendon., art. 15. 
 
 * 2 Inst., p. 163. 
 
 t It seems deducible from a law of Philip Au- 
 gustus, Ordonnances des Rois, t. i., p. 39, that a 
 clerk convicted of some heinous offences might be 
 capitally punished after degradation ; yet a subse- 
 quent ordinance, p. 43, renders this doubtful ; and 
 the theory of clerical immunity became afterward 
 more fully established. 
 
 t Matt. Paris, p. 629. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER 
 
 301 
 
 well as civil jurisdiction of seculars.* 
 And Alfonso X. introduced the same sys- 
 tem in Castile ; a kingdom where neither 
 the papal authority nor the independence 
 of the church had obtained any legal rec- 
 ognition until the promulgation of his 
 code, which teems with all the principles 
 of the canon law.f It is almost needless 
 to mention that all ecclesiastical powers 
 and privileges were incorporated with 
 the jurisprudence of the kingdom of Na- 
 ples, which, especially after the acces- 
 sion of the Angevin line, stood in a pe- 
 culiar relation of dependance upon the 
 Holy See.J 
 
 The vast acquisitions of landed wealth 
 
 Restraints made f r man y a 6S ^ bish P s ' 
 
 on aiiena- chapters, and monasteries, began 
 tionsin a t length to excite the jealousy 
 n - of sovereigns. They perceived 
 that, although the prelates might send 
 their stipulated proportion of vassals into 
 the field, yet there could not be that ac- 
 tive co-operation which the spirit of feu- 
 dal tenures required, and that the nation- 
 al arm was palsied by the diminution of 
 military nobles. Again, the reliefs upon 
 succession, and similar dues upon aliena- 
 tion, incidental to fiefs, were entirely lost 
 when they came into the hands of these 
 undying corporations, to the serious in- 
 jury of the feudal superior. Nor could 
 it escape reflecting men, during the con- 
 test about investitures, that, if the church 
 peremptorily denied the supremacy of the 
 state over her temporal wealth, it was 
 but a just measure of retaliation, or rather 
 self-defence, that the state should restrain 
 her further acquisitions. Prohibitions of 
 gifts in mortmain, though unknown to 
 the lavish defbtion of the new kingdoms, 
 had been established by some of the Ro- 
 
 * Statuimus, ut nullus ecclesiasticam personam, 
 in criminali quaestione vel civili, trahere ad judici- 
 umsaeculare praesumat. Ordonnances des Rois de 
 France, t. i., p. 611, where this edict is recited and 
 approved by Louis Hutin. Philip the Bold had 
 obtained leave from the pope to arrest clerks ac- 
 cused of heinous crimes, on condition of remitting 
 them to the bishop's court for trial. Hist, du 
 Droit. Eccl. Franc.., t. i., p. 426. A council at 
 Bourges, held in 1276, had so absolutely condemned 
 all interference of the secular power with clerks, 
 that the king was obliged to solicit this moderate 
 favour, p. 421. 
 
 t Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico sobre las 
 siete partidas, c. 320, &c. Hist, du Droit Eccles. 
 Francj., t. :L p. 442. 
 
 t GiannOTie, 1. xix., c. v. ; 1. xx., c. 8. One provis- 
 ion of Robert, king of Naples, is remarkable : it ex- 
 tends the immunity of clerks to their concubines. 
 Ibid. 
 
 Villani strongly censures a law made at Flor- 
 ence, in 1345, taking away the personal immunity 
 of clerks in criminal cases. Though the state could 
 make such a law, he says, it had no right to do so 
 againat the liberties of holy church, 1. xii., c. 43. 
 
 man emperors, to check the overgrown 
 wealth of the hierarchy.* The first at- 
 tempt at a limitation of this description 
 in modern times was made by Frederick 
 Barbarossa, who, in 1158, enacted that no 
 fief should be transferred either to the 
 church or otherwise, without the permis- 
 sion of the superior lord. Louis IX. in- 
 serted a provision of the same kind in his 
 establishments.! Castile had also laws of 
 a similar tendency.! A license from the 
 crown is said to have been necessary in 
 England before the conquest for aliena- 
 tions in mortmain ; but, however that may 
 be, there seems no reason to imagine 
 that any restraint was put upon them by 
 the common law before Magna Charta ; 
 a clause of which statute was construed 
 to prohibit all gifts to religious houses 
 without the consent of the lord of the fee. 
 And by the 7th Edward L, alienations in 
 mortmain are absolutely taken away; 
 though the king might always exercise 
 his prerogative of granting a license, 
 which was not supposed to be effected by 
 the statute. $ 
 
 It must appear, I think, to every care- 
 ful inquirer, that the papal author- Boniface 
 ity, though manifesting outward- vm - 
 ly more show of strength every year, had 
 been secretly undermined, and lost a 
 great deal of its hold upon public opinion, 
 before the accession of Boniface VIII., 
 in 1294, to the pontifical throne. The 
 clergy were rendered sullen by demands 
 of money, invasions of the legal right of 
 patronage, and unreasonable partiality to 
 the mendicant orders ; a part of the men- 
 dicants themselves had begun to de- 
 claim against the corruptions of the pa- 
 pal court ; while the laity, subjects alike 
 and sovereigns, looked upon both the 
 head and the members of the hierarchy 
 with j'ealousy and dislike. Boniface, full 
 of inordinate arrogance and ambition, 
 and not sufficiently sensible of this grad- 
 ual change in human opinion, endeavour- 
 ed to strain to a higher pitch the despot- 
 ic pretensions of former pontiffs. As 
 Gregory VII. appears the most usurping 
 of mankind till we read the history of In- 
 nocent ILL, so Innocent III. is thrown 
 into shade by the superior audacity of 
 Boniface VIII. But independently of the 
 less favourable dispositions of the public, 
 he wanted the most essential quality for 
 an ambitious pope, reputation for integri- 
 
 * Giannone, 1. iii. 
 
 t Ordonnances des Rois, p. 213. See too p. 303 
 and alibi. Du Cange, v. Manus morta. Amortis- 
 siment, in Denisart, and other French law-books. 
 Fleury, Instit. au Droit., t. i., p. 350. 
 
 t Marina, Ensayo sobre las siete partidas, c. 235. 
 
 <j 2 Inst., p. 74. Blackstone, vol. ii., c. 18. 
 
302 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 ty. He was suspected of having procu- 
 red through fraud the resignation of his 
 predecessor Celestine V., and his harsh 
 treatment of that worthy man afterward 
 seems to justify the reproach. His ac- 
 tions, however, display the intoxication 
 of extreme self-confidence. If we may 
 credit some historians, he appeared at 
 the Jubilee in 1300, a festival successful- 
 ly instituted by himself to throw lustre 
 around his court and fill his treasury,* 
 dressed in imperial habits, with the two 
 swords borne before him, emblems of his 
 temporal as well as spiritual dominion 
 over the earth.f 
 
 It was not long after his elevation to 
 His disputes ^ e pontificate before Boniface 
 with the displayed his temper. The two 
 King of most powerful sovereigns of 
 Europe, Philip the Fair and Ed- 
 ward the First, began at the same mo- 
 ment to attack in a very arbitrary man- 
 ner the revenues of the church. The Eng- 
 lish clergy had, by their own voluntary 
 grants, or at least those of the prelates 
 in their name, paid frequent subsidies to 
 the crown, from the beginning of the 
 reign of Henry III. They had nearly, in 
 effect, waived the ancient exemption, and 
 retained only the common privilege of 
 English freemen to tax themselves in a 
 constitutional manner. But Edward I. 
 came upon them with demands so fre- 
 quent and exorbitant, that they were com- 
 pelled to take advantage of a bull issued 
 by Boniface, forbidding them to pay any 
 contribution to the state. The king dis- 
 regarded every pretext, and, seizing their 
 goods into his hands, with other tyran- 
 nical proceedings, ultimately forced them 
 to acquiesce in his extortion. It is re- 
 markable, that the pope appears to have 
 been passive throughout this contest of 
 Edward I. with his clergy. But it was 
 And of far otherwise in France. Philip 
 France. t ne F a j r h a( j imposed a tax on the 
 
 * The Jubilee was a centenary commemoration, 
 in honour of St. Peter and St. Paul, established 
 by Boniface VIII. on the faith of an imaginary pre- 
 cedent a century before. The period was soon re- 
 duced to fifty years, and from thence to twenty- 
 five, as it still continues. The court of Rome, at 
 the next jubilee, will, however, read with a sigh the 
 description given of that in 1300. Papa innumera- 
 bilem pecuniam ab iisdem recepit, quiadie et nocte 
 duo clerici stabant ad altare Sancti Pauli, tenentes 
 in eorum manibus rastellos, rastellantes pecuniam 
 infinitarn. Muratori. Plenary indulgences were 
 granted by Boniface to all who should keep their 
 jubilee at Rome, and I suppose are still to be had 
 on the same terms. Matteo Villam gives a curi- 
 ous account of the throng at Rome in 1350. 
 
 t Giannone, 1. xxi., c. 3. Velly, t. vii., p. 149. 
 I have not observed any good authority referred to 
 for this fact, which is however in the character of 
 Boniface. 
 
 ecclesiastical order without their consent, 
 a measure perhaps unprecedented, yet 
 not more odious than the similar exac- 
 tions of the King of England. Irritated 
 by some previous differences, the pope 
 issued his bull, known by the initial words 
 Clericis laicos, absolutely forbidding the 
 clergy of every kingdom to pay, under 
 whatever pretext of voluntary grant, gift, 
 or loan, any sort of tribute to their gov- 
 ernment without his especial permission. 
 Though France was not particularly na- 
 med, the king understood himself to be 
 intended, and took his revenge by a pro- 
 hibition to export money from the king- 
 dom. This produced angry remonstran- 
 ces on the part of Boniface ; but the Gal- 
 lican church adhered so faithfully to the 
 crown, and showed indeed so much wil- 
 lingness to be spoiled of their money, that 
 he could not insist upon the most unrea- 
 sonable propositions of his bull, and ulti- 
 mately allowed that the French clergy 
 might assist their sovereign by voluntary 
 contributions, though not by way of tax. 
 For a very few years after these cir- 
 cumstances, the pope and King of France 
 appeared reconciled to each other ; and 
 the latter even referred his disputes with 
 Edward I. to the arbitration of Boniface, 
 " as a private person, Benedict of Gaeta 
 (his proper name), and not as pontiff; 1 ' an 
 almost nugatory precaution against his 
 encroachment upon temporal authority.* 
 But a terrible storm broke out in the first 
 year of the fourteenth century. A bish- 
 op of Pamiers, who had been sent as le- 
 gate from Boniface with some complaint, 
 displayed so much insolenc^~ahd such 
 disrespect towards the kin^ that Philip, 
 considering him as his own subject, was 
 provoked to put him under arrest with 
 a view to institute a criminal process. 
 Boniface, incensed beyond measure at 
 this violation of ecclesiastical and lega- 
 tine privileges, published several bulls 
 addressed to the king and clergy of 
 
 * Walt. Hemingford, p. 150. The award of 
 Boniface, which he expresses himself to make both 
 as pope and Benedict of Gaeta, is published in Ry- 
 mer, t. ii., p. 819, and is very equitable. Never- 
 theless, the French historians agree to charge him 
 with partiality towards Edward, and mention sev- 
 eral proofs of it, which do not appear in the bull it- 
 self. Previous to its publication, it was allowable 
 enough to follow common fame ; but Velly, a wri- 
 ter always careless and not always honest, has re- 
 peated mere falsehoods from Mezeray and Baillet, 
 while he refers to the instrument itself in Rymer, 
 which disproves them. Hist, de France, t. vii., p. 
 139. M. Gaillard, one of the most candid critics in 
 history that France ever produced, pointed out the 
 error of her common historians in the Mem. de 
 l'Acade"mie des Inscriptions, t. xxxix , p. 642 ; end 
 the editors of L'Art de verifier le* Dates have also 
 rectified it 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 303 
 
 France, charging the former with a vari- 
 ety of offences, some of them not at all 
 concerning the church, and commanding 
 the latter to attend a council which he 
 had summoned to meet at Rome. In one 
 of these instruments, the genuineness of 
 which does not seem liable to much ex- 
 ception, he declares in concise and clear 
 terms that the king was subject to him in 
 temporal as well as spiritual matters. 
 This proposition had not hitherto been 
 explicitly advanced, and it was now too 
 late to advance it. Philip replied by a 
 short letter in the rudest language, and 
 ordered his bulls to be publicly burnt at 
 Paris. Determined, however, to show 
 the real strength of his opposition, he 
 summoned representatives from the three 
 orders of his kingdom. This is common- 
 ly reckoned the first assembly of the 
 States-General. The nobility and com- 
 mons disclaimed with firmness the tem- 
 poral authority of the pope, and conveyed 
 their sentiments to Rome through letters 
 addressed to the college of cardinals. 
 The clergy endeavoured to steer a mid- 
 dle course, and were reluctant to enter 
 into an engagement not to obey the 
 pope's summons ; yet they did not hesi- 
 tate unequivocally to deny his temporal 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 The council, however, opened at Rome ; 
 and, notwithstanding the king's absolute 
 prohibition, many French prelates held 
 themselves bound to be present. In this 
 assembly Boniface promulgated his fa- 
 mous constitution, denominated Unam 
 Sanctam. The church is one body, he 
 therein declares, and has one head. Un- 
 der its command are two swords, the one 
 spiritual, and the other temporal ; that to 
 be used by the supreme pontiff himself; 
 this by kings and knights, by his license, 
 and at his will. But the lesser sword 
 must be subject to the greater, and the 
 temporal to the spiritual authority. He 
 concludes by declaring the subjection of 
 every human being to the See of Rome 
 to be an article of necessary faith.* An- 
 other bull pronounces all persons of what- 
 ever rank obliged to appear when person- 
 ally cited before the audience or apostol- 
 ical tribunal of Rome ; " since such is our 
 pleasure, who, by divine permission, rule 
 
 * Uterque est in potestate ecclesiae, spiritalis, 
 scilicet gladius et materials. Sed is quidem pro 
 ecclesia, ille vero ab ecclesia. exercendus : ille sa- 
 cerdotis, is manu regum ac militum, sed ad nutum 
 et patientiam sacerdotis. Oportet autem gladium 
 esse sub gladio, et temporalem auctoritatem spiri- 
 tali subjici potestati. Porro subesse Romano pon- 
 tifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus, 
 defmimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de neces- 
 sitate fidei. Extravagant., 1. i., tit. viii., c. 1. 
 
 the world." Finally, as the rupture with 
 Philip grew more evidently irreconcila- 
 ble, and the measures pursued by that 
 monarch more hostile, he not only ex- 
 communicated him, but offered the crown 
 of France to the Emperor Albert I. This 
 arbitrary transference of kingdoms was, 
 like many other pretensions of that age, 
 an improvement upon the right of depo- 
 sing excommunicated sovereigns. Greg- 
 ory VII. would not have denied that a 
 nation, released by his authority from its 
 allegiance, must re-enter upon its origi- 
 nal right of electing a new sovereign. But 
 Martin IV. had assigned the crown of Ar- 
 agon to Charles of Valois ; the first in- 
 stance, I think, of such a usurpation of 
 power, but which was defended by the 
 homage of Peter II., who had rendered 
 his kingdom feudally dependant, like Na- 
 ples, upon the Holy See.* Albert, felt no 
 eagerness to realize the liberal promises 
 of Boniface ; who was on the point of is- 
 suing a bull, absolving the subjects of 
 Philip from their allegiance, and declaring 
 his forfeiture, when a very unexpected 
 circumstance interrupted all his projects. 
 It is not surprising, when we consider 
 how unaccustomed men were in those 
 ages to disentangle the artful sophisms, 
 and detect the falsehoods in point of fact, 
 whereon the papal supremacy had been 
 established, that the King of France 
 should not have altogether pursued the 
 course most becoming his dignity and the 
 goodness of his cause. He gave too 
 much the air of a personal quarrel with 
 Boniface to what should have been a res- 
 olute opposition to the despotism of 
 Rome. Accordingly, in an assembly of 
 his states at Paris, he preferred virulent 
 charges against the pope, denying him to 
 have been legitimately elected, imputing 
 to him various heresies, and ultimately 
 appealing to a general council and a law- 
 ful head of the church. These measures 
 were not very happily planned : and ex- 
 
 * Innocent IV. had, however, in 1245, appointed 
 one Bolon, brother to Sancho II., king of Portugal, 
 to be a sort of coadjutor in the government of 
 that kingdom, enjoining the barons to honour him 
 as their sovereign, at the same time declaring that 
 he did not intend to deprive the king, or his lawful 
 issue, if he should have any, of the kingdom. But 
 this was founded on the request of the Portuguese 
 nobility themselves, who were dissatisfied with 
 Sancho's administration. Sext. Decretal., 1. i., tit. 
 viii., c. 2. Art de Verifier les Dates, t. i., p. 778. 
 
 Boniface invested James II. of Aragon with the 
 crown of Sardinia, over which, however, the See 
 of Rome had always pretended to a superiority by 
 virtue of the concession (probably spurious) of Lou- 
 is the Debonair. He promised Frederick, king of 
 Sicily, the empire of Constantinople, which, I sup- 
 pose, was not a fief of the Holy Seo. Giannone, 
 1. xxi., c. 3. 
 
304 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIL 
 
 perience had always shown, that Europe 
 would not submit to change the common 
 chief of her religion for the purposes of 
 a single sovereign. But Philip succeed- 
 ed in an attempt apparently more bold 
 and singular. Nogaret, a minister who 
 had taken an active share in all the pro- 
 ceedings against Boniface, was secretly 
 despatched into Italy, and, joining with 
 some of the Colonna family, proscribed 
 as Ghibelins, and rancorously persecuted 
 by the pope, arrested him at Anagnia, a 
 town in the neighbourhood of Rome, to 
 which he had gone without guards. This 
 violent action was not, one would ima- 
 gine, calculated to place the king in an 
 advantageous light ; yet it led accidental- 
 ly to a favourable termination of his dis- 
 pute. Boniface was soon rescued by the 
 inhabitants of Anagnia ; but rage bro'ught 
 on a fever, which ended in his death ; and 
 the first act of his successor, Benedict 
 XL, was to reconcile the King of France 
 to the Holy See.* 
 
 The sensible decline of the papacy is 
 to be dated from the pontificate of Bon- 
 iface VIII. , who had strained its author- 
 ity to a higher pitch than any of his pre- 
 decessors. There is a spell wrought by 
 uninterrupted good fortune, which cap- 
 tivates men's understanding, and per- 
 suades them, against reasoning and anal- 
 ogy, that violent power is immortal and 
 irresistible. The spell is broken by the 
 first change of success. We have seen 
 the working and the dissipation of this 
 charm with a rapidity to which the events 
 of former times bear as remote a rela- 
 tion as the gradual processes of nature to 
 her deluges and her volcanoes. In tra- 
 cing the papal empire over mankind, we 
 have no such marked and definite crisis 
 of revolution. But slowly, like the re- 
 treat of waters, or the stealthy pace of 
 old age, that extraordinary power over 
 human opinion has been subsiding for 
 five centuries. I have already observed, 
 that the symptoms of internal decay may 
 be traced farther back. But as the re- 
 trocession of the Roman terminus under 
 Adrian gave the first overt proof of de- 
 cline in the ambitious energies of that 
 empire, so the tacit submission of the 
 successors of Boniface VIII. to the King 
 of France might have been hailed by 
 Europe as a token that their influence 
 was beginning to abate. Imprisoned, in- 
 sulted, deprived eventually of life by the 
 violence of Philip, a prince excommuni- 
 cated, and who had gone all, lengths in 
 
 * Velly, Hist, de France, t. vil, p. 109-258. Cre- 
 vier, Hist, de rUniv*rsit6 d Paris, t. ii., p. 170> 
 
 defying and despising the papal jurisdic- 
 tion, Boniface had every claim to be 
 avenged by the inheritors of the same 
 spiritual dominion. When Benedict XL 
 rescinded the bulls of his predecessor, 
 and admitted Philip the Fair to commu- 
 nion without insisting on any concessions, 
 he acted perhaps prudently, but gave a 
 fatal blow to the temporal authority of 
 Rome. 
 
 [A. D. 1305.] Benedict XL lived but a 
 few months, and his successor, Removal of 
 Clement V., at the instigation, papal court 
 as is commonly supposed, of toAvi g non - 
 the King of France, by whose influence 
 he had been elected, took the extraordi- 
 nary step of removing the papal chair to 
 Avignon. In this city it remained for 
 more than seventy years ; a period which 
 Petrarch and other writers of Italy com- 
 pare to that of the Babylonish captivity. 
 The majority of the cardinals was always 
 French, and the popes were uniformly 
 of the same nation. Timidly dependant 
 upon the court of France, they neglected 
 the interests, and lost the affections of 
 Italy. Rome, forsaken by her sovereign, 
 nearly forgot her allegiance; what re- 
 mained of papal authority in the ecclesi- 
 astical territories was exercised by car- 
 dinal legates, little to the honour or ad- 
 vantage of the Holy See. Yet the series 
 of Avignon pontiffs were far from in- 
 sensible to Italian politics. These occu- 
 pied, on the contrary, the greater part of 
 their attention. But engaging in them 
 from motives too manifestly selfish, and 
 being regarded as a sort of foreigners 
 from birth and residence, they aggra- 
 vated that unpopularity and bad reputa- 
 tion which from various other causes 
 attached itself to their court. 
 
 Though none of the supreme pontiffs 
 after Boniface VIII. ventured 
 upon such explicit assumptions pope* with 
 of a general jurisdiction over Louis of 
 sovereigns by divine right as he 
 had made in his controversy with Philip, 
 they maintained one memorable struggle 
 for temporal power against the Emperor 
 Louis of Bavaria. Maxims long boldly 
 repeated without contradiction, and in- 
 grafted upon the canon law, passed al- 
 most for articles of faith among the 
 clergy, and those who trusted in them ; 
 and, in despite of all ancient authorities, 
 Clement V. laid it down, that the popes, 
 having transferred the Roman empire 
 from the Greeks to the Germans, and 
 delegated the right of nominating an 
 emperor to certain electors, still reserved 
 the prerogative of approving the choice, 
 and of receiving from its subject upon his- 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER, 
 
 805 
 
 coronation an oath of fealty and obedi- 
 ence.* This had a regard to Henry VII. 
 who denied that his oath bore any such 
 interpretation, and whose measures, much 
 to the alarm of the court of Avignon, 
 were directed towards the restoration of 
 his imperial rights in Italy. Among other 
 things, he conferred the rank of vicar of 
 the empire upon Matteo Visconti, lord 
 of Milan. The popes had for some time 
 pretended to possess that vicariate, du- 
 ring a vacancy of the empire ; and after 
 Henry's death, insisted upon Visconti's 
 surrender of the title. Several circum- 
 
 stances, for which I refer to the political |^iave been reconciled, if he had not feared 
 
 historians of Italy, produced a war be- 
 tween the pope's legate and the Visconti 
 family. The Emperor Louis sent assist- 
 ance to the latter, as heads of the Ghib- 
 elin or imperial party. This interference 
 cost him above twenty years of trouble. 
 John XXII., a man as passionate and 
 ambitious as Boniface himself, immedi- 
 ately published a bull, in which he assert- 
 ed the right of administering the empire 
 during its vacancy (even in Germany, as 
 it seems from the generality of his ex- 
 pression), as well as of deciding in a 
 doubtful choice of the electors, to apper- 
 tain to the Holy See ; and commanded 
 Louis to lay down his pretended author- 
 ity, until the supreme jurisdiction should 
 determine upon his election. Louis's 
 election had indeed been questionable ; 
 but that controversy was already settled 
 in the field of Muhldorf, where he had 
 obtained a victory over his competitor 
 the Duke of Austria ; nor had the pope 
 ever interfered to appease a civil war 
 during several years that Germany had 
 been internally distracted by the dispute. 
 [A. D. 1323.] The emperor, not yielding 
 to this peremptory order, was excommu- 
 nicated ; his vassals were absolved from 
 their oath of fealty, and all treaties of 
 alliance between him and foreign princes 
 annulled. Germany, however, remained 
 firm ; and if Louis himself had manifest- 
 ed more decision of mind and uniformity 
 in his conduct, the court of Avignon must 
 have signally failed in a contest, from 
 
 * Roman! principes, &c Romano ponti- 
 
 fici, a quo approbationern personae ad imperialis 
 celsitudmis apicetn assumendae, necnonunctionem, 
 consecrationem et imperil coronam accipiunt, sua 
 submittere capita non reputarunt indignum, seque 
 illi et eidem ecclesiae, quae a Graecis imperium tran- 
 stulit in Germanos, et a qua, ad certos eorum prin- 
 cipes jus et potestas eligendi regem, in imperato- 
 rem postmodum promovendum, pertinet, adstrin- 
 gere vinculo juramenti, &c. Clement., 1. ii., tit. ix. 
 The terms of the oath, as recited in this constitu- 
 tion, do not warrant the pope's interpretation, but 
 imply only that the emperor shall be the advocate 
 cr defender of the church. 
 
 u 
 
 which it did not in fact come out very 
 successful. But while at one time he 
 went intemperate lengths against John 
 XXII., publishing scandalous accusations 
 in an assembly of the citizens of Rome, 
 and causing a Franciscan friar to be 
 chosen in his room, after an irregular 
 sentence of deposition, he was always 
 anxious to negotiate terms of accommo- 
 dation, to give up his own active parti- 
 sans, and to make concessions the most 
 derogatory to his independence and dig- 
 nity. From John, indeed, he had nothing 
 to expect ; but Benedict XII. would gladly 
 
 the kings of France and Naples, political 
 adversaries of the emperor, who kept 
 the Avignon popes in a sort of servitude. 
 His successor, Clement VI., inherited the 
 implacable animosity of John XXII. to- 
 wards Louis, who died without obtaining 
 the absolution he had long abjectly soli- 
 cited.* 
 
 Though the want of firmness in this 
 emperor's character gave some- g iritofrei 
 times a momentary triumph to sistance to* 
 the popes, it is evident that their P a P. al usur - 
 authority lost ground during the P atlons - 
 continuance of this struggle. Their right 
 of confirming imperial elections was ex- 
 pressly denied by a diet held at Frank- 
 fort, in 1338, which established as a fun- 
 damental principle that the imperial dig- 
 nity depended upon God alone, and that 
 whoever should be chosen by a majority 
 of the electors became immediately both 
 king and emperor, with all prerogatives 
 of that station, and did not require the 
 approbation of the pope.f This law, con- 
 firmed as it was by subsequent usage, 
 emancipated the German empire, which 
 was immediately concerned in opposing 
 the papal claims. But some who were 
 actively engaged in these transactions 
 took more extensive views, and assailed 
 the whole edifice of temporal power 
 which the Roman see had been con- 
 structing for more than two centuries. 
 
 Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. iv,, p. 446, 
 536, seems the best modern authority for this con- 
 .est between the empire and papacy. See also 
 Struvius, Corp. Hist. German., p. 591. 
 f Quod imperialis dignitas et potestas immediate 
 
 x solo Deo, et quod de jure et imperil consuetudi- 
 ne antiquitus approbate postquam aliquis eligitur 
 
 n imperatorem sive regem ab electonbus imperil 
 concorditer, vel major! parte eorundem, statim ex 
 sold electione est rex verus et imperator Roman- 
 orum censendus et npminandus, et eidem debet ab 
 omnibus imperio subjectis obediri, et administrandi 
 jura imperil, et caetera faciendi, quae ad imperato- 
 rem verum pertinent, plenariam habet potestatem, 
 nee Papae sive sedis apostolicae aut alicujus alteri- 
 us approbatione, confirmatione, auctoritate indiget 
 vel consensu. Schmidt, p. 513. 
 
306 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP, V1L 
 
 Several men of learning, among whom 
 Dante, Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua, 
 are the most conspicuous, investigated 
 the foundations of this superstructure, 
 and exposed their insufficiency,* Liter- 
 ature, too long the passive handmaid of 
 spiritual despotism, began to assert her 
 nobler birthright of ministering to liberty 
 and truth. Though the writings of these 
 opponents of Rome are not always rea- 
 soned upon very solid principles, they at 
 least taught mankind to scrutinize what 
 had been received with implicit respect, 
 and prepared the way for more philosoph- 
 ical discussions. About this time a new 
 class of enemies had unexpectedly risen 
 up against the rulers of the church. 
 These were a part of the Franciscan or- 
 der, who had seceded from the main 
 body on account of alleged deviations 
 from the rigour of their primitive rule. 
 Their schism was chiefly founded upon 
 a quibble about the right of property in 
 things consumable, which they maintain- 
 ed to be incompatible with the absolute 
 poverty prescribed to them. This friv- 
 olous sophistry was united with the wild- 
 est fanaticism; and as John XXII. at- 
 tempted to repress their follies by a cruel 
 persecution, they proclaimed aloud the 
 corruption of the church, fixed the name 
 of antichrist upon the papacy, and warm- 
 ly supported the Emperor Louis through- 
 out all his contention with the Holy See.f 
 Meanwhile the popes who sat at Avig- 
 Rapacity of non continued to invade with 
 Avignon surprising rapaciousness the 
 popes. patronage and revenues of the 
 church. The mandats or letters directing 
 a particular clerk to be preferred seems 
 to have given place in a great degree to 
 the more effectual method of appropria- 
 ting benefices by reservation or provis- 
 ion, which was carried to an enormous 
 extent in the fourteenth century. John 
 XXIL, the most insatiate of pontiffs, re- 
 
 * Giannone, 1. xxii., c. 8. Schmidt, t. vi., p. 152. 
 Dante was dead before these events, but his prin- 
 ciples were the same. Ockham had already ex- 
 erted his talents in the same cause by writing, in 
 behalf of Philip IV. against Boniface, a dialogue 
 between a knight and a clerk on the temporal su- 
 premacy of the church. This is published among 
 other tracts of the same class in Goldastus, Monar- 
 chia Imperil, p. 13. This dialogue is translated 
 entire in the Songe du Vergier, a more celebrated 
 performance, ascribed to Raoul de Presles under 
 Charles V. 
 
 t The schism of the rigid Franciscans or Fratri- 
 celli is one of the most singular parts of ecclesias- 
 tical history, and had a material tendency both tc 
 depress the temporal authority of the papacy, anc 
 to pave the way for the Reformation. It is full) 
 treated by Mosheim, cent. 13 and 14 ; and by Cre 
 vier, Hist, de I'Universit^ de Paris, t. ii., p. 233- 
 264, &c. 
 
 served to himself all the bishoprics in 
 Christendom.* Benedict XII. assumed 
 he privilege for his own life of disposing 
 )f all benefices vacant by cession, depri- 
 vation, or translation. Clement VI. nat- 
 urally thought that his title was equally 
 good with his predecessor's, and contin- 
 ued the same right for his own time; 
 which soon became a permanent rule of 
 he Roman chancery.f Hence the ap- 
 )ointment of a prelate to a rich bishopric 
 was generally but the first link in a chain 
 f translation, which the pope could reg- 
 ulate according to his interest. Another 
 Capital innovation was made by John 
 XXII. in the establishment of the famous 
 ax called annates, or first fruits of ec- 
 clesiastical benefices, which he imposed 
 for his own benefit. Thes^ were one 
 year's value, estimated according to a- 
 ixed rate in the books of the Roman 
 chancery, and payable to the papal col- 
 ectors throughout Europe. J .Various 
 other devices were invented to obtain 
 money, which these degenerate popes^ 
 abandoning the magnificent schemes of 
 heir predecessors, were content to seek 
 as their principal object. John XXII. is 
 said to have accumulated an. almost in- 
 credible treasure, exaggerated perhaps 
 }y the ill-will of his contemporaries ;^ 
 but it may be doubted whether even his- 
 avarice reflected greater dishonour 011 
 the church than the licentious profuse- 
 ness of Clement VI. |[ 
 
 These exactions were too much en- 
 couraged by the kings of France, who 
 participated in the plunder, or at least re- 
 quired the mutual assistance of the popes 
 for their own imposts on the clergy. 
 John XXII. obtained leave of Charles 
 
 * Fleury, Institutions, &c., t.i., p. 368. F. Paul 
 on Benefices, c. 37. 
 
 t F. Paul, c. 38. Translations of bishops had 
 been made by the authority of the metropolitan, 
 till Innocent III. reserved this prerogative to the 
 Holy See. De Marca, 1. vi., c. 8. 
 
 t F. Paul, c. 38. Fleury, p. 424. De Marca, 1. 
 vi., c. 10. Pasquier, 1. iii., c. 28. The popes had 
 long been in the habit of receiving a pecuniary gra- 
 tuity when they granted the pallium to an archbish- 
 op, though this was reprehended by strict men, and 
 even condemned by themselves. De Marca, ibid. 
 It is noticed as a remarkable thing of Innocent IV., 
 that he gave the pall to a German archbishop 
 without accepting any thing. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 
 172. The original and nature of annates is co- 
 piously treated in Lenfant, Concile de Constance, 
 
 t. ii., p. 133. 
 
 G. Villani pt 
 wh'ich it is hardly possible to believe. The Ital- 
 
 Villani puts this at 25,000,000 of florins, 
 
 ians were credulous enough to listen to any report 
 against the popes of Avignon. L. xi., c. 20. Gian- 
 none, 1. xxii., c. 8. 
 
 || For the corruption of morals at Avignon during 
 the secession, see De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. 
 i., p. 70, and several other passages. 
 
CttAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 307 
 
 the Fair to levy a tenth of ecclesiastical 
 revenues;* and Clement VI., in return, 
 granted two tenths to Philip of Valoi 
 for the expenses of his war. A similar 
 tax was raised by the same authority 
 towards the ransom of John.f These 
 were contributions for national purposes 
 unconnected with religion, which the 
 popes had never before pretended to 
 impose, and which the king might prop- 
 erly have levied with the consent of his 
 clergy, according to the practice of Eng- 
 land. But that consent might not always 
 be obtained with ease, and it seemed a 
 more expeditious method to call in the 
 authority of the pope. A manlier spirit 
 was displayed by our ancestors. It was 
 the boast of England to have placed the 
 first legal barrier to the usurpations of 
 Rome, if we except the dubious and insu- 
 lated Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis, 
 from which the practice of succeeding 
 ages in France entirely deviate. The 
 English barons had, in a' letter addressed 
 to Boniface VIII., absolutely disclaimed 
 his temporal supremacy over their crown, 
 which he had attempted to set up by in- 
 termeddling in the quarrel of Scotland. J 
 This letter, it is remarkable, is nearly 
 co-incident in point of time with that of 
 the French nobility; and the two com- 
 bined may be considered as a joint pro- 
 testation of both kingdoms, and a testi- 
 mony to the general sentiment among 
 the superior ranks of the laity. A very 
 few years afterward, the parliament of 
 Carlisle wrote a strong remonstrance to 
 Clement V. against the system of pro- 
 visions and other extortions, including 
 that of first fruits, which it was rumour- 
 ed, they say, he was meditating to de- 
 mand. But the court of Avignon was 
 not to be moved by remonstrances ; and 
 the feeble administration of Edward II. 
 gave way to ecclesiastical usurpations at 
 home as well as abroad. || His magnani- 
 mous son took a bolder line. After com- 
 
 * Continuator Gul. de Nangis, in Spicilegio 
 d'Achery, t. iii., p. 86 (folio ed.), ita miseram eccle- 
 siam, says this monk, unus tondet, alter excoriat. 
 
 f Fleury, Institut. au Droit eecle'siastique, t. ii., 
 p. 245. Villaret, t. ix., p. 431. It became a regular 
 practice for the king to obtain the pope's consent 
 to lay a tax on his clergy ; though he sometimes 
 applied first to themselves. Gamier, t. xx., p. 141. 
 
 t Rymer, t. ii., p. 373. Collier, vol. i., p. 725. 
 
 <j Rotuli Parliamenti, vol. i., p. 204. This pas- 
 sage, hastily read, has led Collier and other English 
 writers, such as Henry and Blackstone, into the 
 supposition that annates were imposed by Clem- 
 ent V. But the concurrent testimony of foreign 
 authors refers this tax to John XXII., as the canon 
 law also shows. Extravagant. Communes, 1. iii., 
 tit. ii., c. 11. 
 
 I! The statute called Articuli cleti, in 1316, was 
 U2 
 
 plaining ineffectually to Clement VI. of 
 the enormous abuse which reserved 
 almost all English benefices to the pope, 
 and generally for the benefit of aliens,* 
 he passed in 1350 the famous statute of 
 provisors. This act, reciting one suppo- 
 sed to have been made at the parliament 
 of Carlisle, which, however, does not ap- 
 pear,! and complaining in strong language 
 of the mischief sustained through con- 
 tinual reservations of benefices, enacts 
 that all elections and collations shall be 
 free, according to law, and that, in case 
 any provision or reservation should be 
 made by the court of Rome, the king 
 should for that turn have the collation 
 of such benefice, if it be of ecclesiastical 
 election or patronage. J This devolution 
 to the crown, which seems a little arbi- 
 trary, was the only remedy that could be 
 effectual against the connivance and ti- 
 midity of chapters and spiritual patrons. 
 We cannot assert that a statute so nobly 
 planned was executed with equal stead- 
 iness. Sometimes by royal dispensa- 
 tion, sometimes by neglect or evasion, 
 the papal bulls of provision were still 
 obeyed, though fresh laws were enacted 
 to the same effect as the former. It was 
 found on examination in 1367, that some 
 clerks enjoyed more than twenty benefi- 
 ces by the pope's dispensation. And 
 the parliaments both of this and of Rich- 
 ard II. 's reign invariably complain of the 
 disregard shown to the statutes of provi- 
 sors. This led to other measures, which 
 I shall presently mention. 
 
 The residence of the popes at Avignon 
 gave very general offence to Eu- Return of 
 rope, and they could not them- Popea to 
 selves avoid perceiving the dis- Rome - 
 advantage of absence from their proper 
 diocess, the city of St. Peter, the source 
 of all their claims to sovereign authority. 
 But Rome, so long abandoned, offered 
 but an inhospitable reception ; Urban V. 
 
 directed rather towards confirming than limiting 
 the clerical immunity in criminal cases. 
 
 * Collier, p. 546. 
 
 t It is singular that Sir E. Coke should assert 
 that this^act recites, and is founded upon the stat- 
 ute 35 E. L, De asportatis religiosorum (2 Inst., 
 580) ; whereas there is not the least resemblance 
 "n the words, and very little, if any, in the sub- 
 stance. Blackstone, in consequence, mistakes the 
 nature of that act of Edward I., and supposes it 
 to have been made against papal provisions, to 
 which I do not perceive even an allusion. Whether 
 any such statute was really made in the Carlisle 
 parliament of 35 E. I., as is asserted both in 
 25 E. III., and in the roll of another parliament, 
 17 E. III. (Rot. Par!., t. ii., p. 144), is hard to de- 
 cide ; and perhaps those who examine this point 
 will have to choose between wilful suppression 
 and wilful interpolation. 
 
 t 25 E. HI., etat. 6. $ Collier, p. 568. 
 
308 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Vtt, 
 
 returned to Avignon, after a short exper- 
 iment of the capital ; and it was not till 
 1376 that the promise, often repeated 
 and long delayed, of restoring the papal 
 chair to the metropolis of Christendom, 
 was ultimately fulfilled by Gregory XI. 
 His death, which happened soon after- 
 ward, prevented, it is said, a second 
 flight that he was preparing. This was 
 followed by the great schism, one of the 
 most remarkable events in ecclesiastical 
 history. It is a difficult and by no means 
 Contested an interesting question to deter- 
 eiection of mme the validity of that contest- 
 andcie- ed election which distracted the 
 ment vii. Latin church for so many years. 
 [A. D. 1377.] All contemporary testimo- 
 nies are subject to the suspicion of partial- 
 ity in a cause where no one was permitted 
 to be neutral. In one fact, however, there 
 is a common agreement, that the cardinals, 
 of whom the majority were French, hav- 
 ing assembled in conclave for the elec- 
 tion of a successor to Gregory XL, were 
 disturbed by a tumultuous populace, who 
 demanded with menaces a Roman, or, at 
 least, an Italian pope. This tumult ap- 
 pears to have been sufficiently violent to 
 excuse, and in fact did produce, a con- 
 siderable degree of intimidation. After 
 some time, the cardinals made choice of 
 the Archbishop of Bari, a Neapolitan, who 
 assumed the name of Urban VI. His 
 election satisfied the populace, and tran- 
 quillity was restored. The cardinals an- 
 nounced their choice to the absent mem- 
 bers of their college, and behaved to- 
 wards Urban as their pope for several 
 weeks. But his uncommon harshness 
 of temper giving them offence, they 
 withdrew to a neighbouring town, and 
 protesting that his election had been 
 compelled by the violence of the Roman 
 populace, annulled the whole proceeding, 
 and chose one of their own number, who 
 took the pontifical name of Clement VII. 
 Such are the leading circumstances which 
 produced the famous schism. Constraint 
 is so destructive of the essence of elec- 
 tion, that suffrages given through actual 
 intimidation ought, I think, to be held in- 
 valid, even without minutely inquiring 
 whether the degree of illegal force was 
 such as might reasonably overcome the 
 constancy of a firm mind. It is improb- 
 able that the free votes of the cardinals 
 would have been bestowed on the Arch- 
 bishop of Bari; and I should not feel 
 much hesitation in pronouncing his elec- 
 tion to have been void. But the sacred 
 college unquestionably did not use the 
 earliest opportunity of protesting against 
 the violence they had suffered ; and we 
 
 may infer almost with certainty, that if 
 Urban's conduct had been more accepta- 
 ble to that body, the world would have 
 heard little of the transient riot at his 
 election. This however opens a deli- 
 cate question in jurisprudence ; namely, 
 under what circumstance acts, not only 
 irregular, but substantially invalid, are 
 capable of receiving a retro-active con- 
 firmation by the acquiescence and ac- 
 knowledgment of parties concerned to 
 oppose them. And upon this, I con- 
 ceive, the great problem of legitimacy 
 between Urban and Clement will be 
 found to depend.* 
 
 Whatever posterity may have judged 
 about the pretensions of these The Great 
 competitors, they at that time schism. 
 shared the obedience of Europe in near- 
 ly equal proportions. Urban remained at 
 Rome ; Clement resumed the station of 
 Avignon. To the former adhered Italy, 
 the empire, England, and the nations of 
 the north ; the latter retained in his alle- 
 giance France, Spain, Scotland, and Si- 
 cily. Fortunately for the church, no 
 question of religious faith intermixed it- 
 self with this schism ; nor did any other 
 impediment to reunion exist, than the 
 obstinacy and selfishness of the contend- 
 ing parties. As it was impossible to 
 come to any agreement on the original 
 merits, there seemed to be no means of 
 healing the wound but by the abdication 
 of both popes and a fresh undisputed 
 election. This was the general wish of 
 Europe, but urged with particular zeal by 
 the court of France, and, above all, by the 
 university of Paris, which esteems this 
 period the most honourable in her annals. 
 The cardinals however of neither obedi- 
 ence would recede so far from their par- 
 ty as to suspend the election of a succes- 
 sor upon a vacancy of the pontificate, 
 which would have at least removed one 
 half of the obstacle. The Roman con- 
 clave accordingly placed three pontiffs 
 successively, Boniface IX., Innocent VI. , 
 and Gregory XII., in the seat of Urban 
 VI. ; and the cardinals at Avignon, upon 
 the death of Clement, in 1394, elected 
 Benedict XIII. (Peter de Luna), famous 
 for his inflexible obstinacy in prolonging 
 the schism. He repeatedly promised to 
 
 * Lenfant has collected all the original testimo- 
 nies on both sides in the first book of his Concile 
 de Pise. No positive decision has ever been made 
 on the subject, but the Roman popes are numbered 
 in the commonly received list, and those of Avignon 
 are not. The modern Italian writers express no 
 doubt about the legitimacy of Urban ; the French 
 at most intimate that Clement's pretensions were 
 not to be wholly rejected. But I am saying too 
 much on a question so utterly unimportant. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 309 
 
 sacrifice his dignity for the sake of union. 
 But there was no subterfuge to which 
 this crafty pontiff had not recourse in or- 
 der to avoid compliance with his word, 
 though importuned, threatened, and even 
 besieged in his palace at Avignon. Fa- 
 tigued by his evasions, France withdrew 
 her obedience, and the Gallican church 
 continued for a few years without ac- 
 knowledging any supreme head. But this 
 step, which was rather the measure of 
 the university at Paris than of the nation, 
 it seemed advisable to retract ; and Ben- 
 edict was again obeyed, though France 
 continued to urge his resignation. A 
 second subtraction of obedience, or at 
 least declaration of neutrality, was re- 
 solved upon, as preparatory to the con- 
 vocation of a general council. On the 
 other hand, those who sat at Rome dis- 
 played not less insincerity. Gregory 
 XII. bound himself by oath on his acces- 
 sion to abdicate when it should appear 
 necessary. But while these rivals were 
 loading each other with the mutual re- 
 proach of schism, they drew on them- 
 selves the suspicion of at least a virtual 
 collusion in order to retain their respect- 
 ive stations. At length the cardinals of 
 both parties, wearied with so much dis- 
 simulation, deserted their masters, and 
 summoned a general council to meet at 
 Pisa.* 
 
 [A. D. 1409.] The council assembled at 
 Council Pisa deposed both Gregory and 
 of Pisa; Benedict, without deciding in any 
 respect as to their pretensions, and elect- 
 ed Alexander V. by its own supreme au- 
 thority. This authority, however, was 
 not universally recognised ; the schism, 
 instead of being healed, became more 
 desperate ; for, as Spain adhered firmly 
 to Benedict, and Gregory was not with- 
 out supporters, there were now three 
 contending pontiffs in the church. A 
 general council was still, however, the 
 favourite, and indeed the sole remedy; 
 and John XXIII., successor of Alexander 
 of con- V., was reluctantly prevailed upon, 
 stance; or perhaps trepanned into convo- 
 king one to meet at Constance. [A. D. 
 1414.] In this celebrated assembly he 
 was himself deposed ; a sentence which 
 he incurred by that tenacious clinging to 
 his dignity, after repeated promises to 
 abdicate, which had already proved fatal 
 to his competitors. The deposition of 
 John, confessedly a legitimate pope, may 
 strike us as an extraordinary measure. 
 But, besides the opportunity it might af- 
 
 * Villaret. Lenfant, Concile de Pise. Crevier, 
 Hist, de TUniversite de Paris, t. iii. 
 
 ford of restoring union, the council found 
 a pretext for this sentence in his enor- 
 mous vices, which indeed they seem to 
 have taken upon common fame without 
 any judicial process. The true motive, 
 however, of their proceedings against 
 him, was a desire to make a signal dis- 
 play of a new system, which had rapidly 
 gained ground, and which I may venture 
 to call the whig principles of the Catholic 
 church. A great question was at issue, 
 whether the polity of that establishment 
 should be an absolute, or an exceedingly 
 limited monarchy. The papal tyranny, 
 long endured and still increasing, had ex- 
 cited an active spirit of reformation which 
 the most distinguished ecclesiastics of 
 France and other countries encouraged. 
 They recurred, as far as their knowledge 
 allowed, to a more primitive discipline 
 than the canon law, and elevated the su- 
 premacy of general councils. But in the 
 formation of these they did not scruple 
 to introduce material innovations. The 
 bishops have usually been considered the 
 sole members of ecclesiastical assem- 
 blies. At Constance, however, sat and 
 voted not only the chiefs of monasteries, 
 but the ambassadors of all Christian 
 princes, the deputies of universities, with 
 a multitude of inferior theologians, and 
 e^%n doctors of law.* These were nat- 
 urally accessible to the pride of sudden 
 elevation, which enabled them to con- 
 trol the strong, and humiliate the lofty. 
 In addition to this, the adversaries of the 
 court of Rome carried another not less 
 important innovation. The Italian bish- 
 ops, almost universally in the papal inter- 
 ests, were so numerous, that, if suffrages 
 had been taken by the head, their pre- 
 ponderance would have impeded any 
 measures of transalpine nations towards 
 reformation. It was determined, there- 
 fore, that the council should divide itself 
 into four nations, the Italian, the German, 
 the French, and the English ; each with 
 equal rights, and that every proposition 
 having been separately discussed, the 
 majority of the four should prevail, f This 
 
 * Lenfant, Concile de Constance, t. i., p. 107 
 (edit. 1727). Crevier, t. iii., p. 405. It was agreed 
 that the ambassadors could not vote upon articles 
 of faith, but only on questions relating to the set- 
 tlement of the church. But the second order of 
 ecclesiastics were allowed to vote generally. 
 
 t This separation of England, as a coequal limb 
 of the council, gave great umbrage to the French, 
 who maintained that, like Denmark and Sweden, 
 it ought to have been reckoned along with Germa- 
 ny. The English deputies came down with a pro- 
 fusion of authorities to prove the antiquity of their 
 monarchy, for which they did not fail to put in re 
 quisition the immeasurable pedigrees of Ireland. 
 Joseph of Arimathea, who planted Christianity and 
 
310 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 revolutionary spirit was very unaccepta- 
 ble to the cardinals, who submitted re- 
 luctantly, and with a determination that 
 did not prove altogether unavailing, to 
 save their papal monarchy by a dexter- 
 ous policy. They could not, however, 
 prevent the famous resolutions of the 
 fourth and fifth sessions, which declare 
 that the council has received by divine 
 right an authority to which every rank, 
 even the papal, is obliged to submit, in 
 matters of faith, in the extirpation of the 
 present schism, and in the reformation of 
 the church both in its head and its mem- 
 bers ; and that every person, even a pope, 
 who shall obstinately refuse to obey that 
 council, or any other lawfully assembled, 
 is liable to such punishment as shall be 
 necessary.* These decrees are the great 
 pillars of that moderate theory with re- 
 spect to the papal authority which dis- 
 tinguished the Gallican church, and is 
 embraced, I presume, by almost all lay- 
 men and the major part of ecclesiastics 
 on this side of the Alps. They embar- 
 rass the more popish churchmen as the 
 Revolution does our English tories ; 
 some boldly impugn the authority of the 
 council of Constance, while others chi- 
 cane upon the interpretation of its de- 
 crees. Their practical importance is not, 
 indeed, direct; universal councils exist 
 only in possibility ; but the acknowledg- 
 ment of a possible authority paramount 
 to the see of Rome has contributed, 
 among other means, to check its usur- 
 pations. 
 
 The purpose for which these general 
 councils had been required, next to that of 
 healing the schism, was the reformation 
 of abuses. All the rapacious exactions, 
 all the scandalous venality of which Eu- 
 rope had complained, while unquestioned 
 pontiffs ruled at Avignon, appeared light 
 in comparison of the practices of both 
 rivals during the schism. Tenths repeat- 
 edly levied upon the clergy, annates rig- 
 orously exacted and enhanced by new 
 valuations, fees annexed to the complica- 
 ted formalities of the papal chancery, 
 were the means by which each half of 
 the church was compelled to reimburse 
 
 his stick at Glastonbury, did his best to help the 
 cause. The recent victory of Azincourt, I am in- 
 clined to think, had more weight with the council. 
 Lenfant, t. ii., p. 46. 
 
 At a time when a very different spirit prevailed, 
 the English bishops under Henry II. and Henry 
 III. had claimed as a right, that no more than four 
 of their number should be summoned to a general 
 council. Hoveden, p. 320; Carte, vol. ii., p. 84. 
 This was like boroughs praying to be released from 
 sending members to parliament. 
 
 * Idem, p. 164. Crevier, t. iii., p. 417. 
 
 its chief for the subtraction of the other's 
 obedience. Boniface IX., one of the Ro- 
 man line, whose fame is a little worse 
 than that of his antagonists, made a gross 
 traffic of his patronage ; selling the privi- 
 leges of exemption from ordinary juris- 
 diction, of holding benefices in commen- 
 dam, and other dispensations invented for 
 the benefit of the Holy See.* Nothing 
 had been attempted at Pisa towards ref- 
 ormation. At Constance the majority 
 were ardent and severe ; the representa- 
 tives of the French, German, and English 
 churches met with a determined and, as 
 we have seen, not always unsuccessful 
 resolution to assert their ecclesiastical 
 liberties. They appointed a committee 
 of reformation, whose recommendations, 
 if carried into effect, would have annihi- 
 lated almost entirely that artfully con- 
 structed machinery by which Rome had 
 absorbed so much of the revenues and 
 patronage of the church. But men in- 
 terested in perpetuating these abuses, es- 
 pecially the cardinals, improved the ad- 
 vantages which a skilful government al- 
 ways enjoys in playing against a popular 
 assembly. They availed themselves of 
 the jealousies arising out of the division 
 of the council into nations, which exteri- 
 or political circumstances had enhanced. 
 France, then at war with England, whose 
 pretensions to be counted as a fourth na- 
 tion she had warmly disputed, and not 
 well disposed towards the Emperor Si- 
 gismund, joined with the Italians against 
 the English and German members of the 
 council in a matter of the utmost impor- 
 tance, the immediate election of a pope 
 before the articles of reformation should 
 be finally concluded. These two nations, 
 in return, united with the Italians to 
 choose the Cardinal Colpnna, against the 
 advice of the French divines, who object- 
 ed to any member of the sacred college. 
 The court of Rome were gainers in both 
 questions. Martin V., the new pope, 
 soon evinced his determination to elude 
 any substantial reform. After publishing 
 a few constitutions tending to redress 
 some of the abuses that had arisen during 
 the schism, he contrived to make -separate 
 conventions with the several nations, and 
 as soon as possible dissolved the council. f 
 By one of the decrees passed at Con- 
 stance, another general council was to be 
 
 * Lenfant, Hist, du Concile de Pise, passim. 
 Crevier, Villaret, Schmidt, Collier. 
 
 f Lenfant, Concile de Constance. The copious- 
 ness as well as impartiality of this work justly ren- 
 der it an almost exclusive authority. Crevier 
 (Hist, de 1'Universite de Paris, t. iii.) has given a 
 good abridgment ; and Schmidt (Hist, des Alle- 
 mands, t, v.) is worthy of attention. 
 

 CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 311 
 
 assembled in five years, a second at the 
 end of seven more, and from that time a 
 similar representation of the church was 
 to meet every ten years. Martin V. ac- 
 cordingly convoked a council at Pavia, 
 which, on account of the plague, was 
 transferred to Siena ; but nothing of im- 
 portance was transacted by this assem- 
 
 of Basle bl y<* t A ' D 1433 -1 That which 
 
 he summoned seven years after- 
 ward to the city of Basle had very differ- 
 ent results. The pope, dying before the 
 meeting of this council, was succeeded 
 by Eugenius IV., who, anticipating the 
 spirit of its discussions, attempted to 
 crush its independence in the outset by 
 transferring the place of session to an 
 Italian city. No point was reckoned so 
 material in the contest between the 
 popes and reformers, as whether a coun- 
 cil should sit in Italy or beyond the Alps. 
 The council of Basle began, as it pro- 
 ceeded, in open enmity to the court of 
 Rome. Eugenius, after several years 
 had elapsed in more or less hostile dis- 
 eussions, exerted his prerogative of remo- 
 ving the assembly to Ferrara, and from 
 thence to Florence. For this he had a 
 specious pretext in the negotiation, then 
 apparently tending to a prosperous issue, 
 for the reunion of the Greek church ; a 
 triumph, however transitory, of which his 
 council at Florence obtained the glory. 
 On the other hand, the assembly at Basle, 
 though much weakened by the defection 
 of those who adhered to Eugenius, enter- 
 ed into compacts with the Bohemian in- 
 surgents m^re essential to the interests 
 of the church than any union with the 
 Greeks, and completed the work begun 
 at Constance by abolishing the annates, 
 the reservations of benefices, and other 
 abuses of papal authority. In this it re- 
 ceived the approbation of most princes ; 
 but when, provoked by the endeavours of 
 the pope to frustrate its decrees, it pro- 
 ceeded so far as to suspend and even to 
 depose him, neither France nor Germany 
 concurred in the sentence. Even the 
 council of Constance had not absolutely 
 asserted a right of deposing a lawful 
 pope, except in case of heresy, though 
 their conduct towards John could not 
 otherwise be justified.! This question 
 
 * Lenfant, Guerre des Hussites, t. i., p. 223. 
 
 t The council of Basle endeavoured to evade this 
 difficulty by declaring Eugenius a relapsed heretic. 
 Lenfant, Guerre des Hussites, t. ii., p. 98. But 
 as the church could discover no heresy in his disa- 
 greement with that assembly, the sentence of de- 
 position gained little strength by this previous de- 
 cision. The bishops were unwilling to take this 
 violent step against Eugenius ; but the minor theo 
 
 indeed of ecclesiastical public law seems 
 to be still undecided. The fathers of Basle 
 acted however with greater intrepidity 
 than discretion, and not perhaps sensible 
 of the change that was taking place in 
 public opinion, raised Amadeus, a retired 
 duke of Savoy, to the pontifical dignity, 
 by the name of Felix V. They thus re- 
 newed the schism, and divided the obe- 
 dience of the Catholic church for a few 
 years. The empire, however, as well as 
 France, observed a singular and not very 
 consistent neutrality respecting Eugenius 
 as lawful pope, and the assembly at Basle 
 as a general council. England warmly 
 supported Eugenius, and even adhered 
 to his council at Florence ; Aragon and 
 some countries of smaller note acknowl- 
 edged Felix. But the partisans of Basle 
 became every year weaker ; and Nicolas 
 V., the successor of Eugenius, found no 
 great difficulty in obtaining the cession of 
 Felix, and terminating this schism. This 
 victory of the court of Rome over the 
 council of Basle nearly counterbalanced 
 the disadvantageous events at Constance, 
 and put an end to the project of fixing 
 permanent limitations upon the head of 
 the church by means of general coun- 
 cils. Though the decree that prescribed 
 the convocation of a council every ten 
 years was still unrepealed, no absolute 
 monarchs have ever more dreaded to 
 meet the representatives of their people, 
 than the Roman pontiffs have abhorred 
 the name of those ecclesiastical synods ; 
 once alone, and that with the utmost re- 
 luctance, has the Catholic church been 
 convoked since the council of Basle ; but 
 the famous assembly to which I allude 
 does not fall within the scope of my pres- 
 ent undertaking.* 
 
 It is a natural subject of speculation, 
 what would have been the effects of these 
 universal councils, which were so popu- 
 lar in the fifteenth century, if the decree 
 passed at Constance for their periodical 
 assembly had been regularly observed? 
 Many Catholic writers, of the moderate 
 or cisalpine school, have lamented their 
 disuse, and ascribed to it that irreparable 
 
 logians, the democracy of the Catholic church, 
 whose right of suffrage seems rather an anomalous 
 infringement of episcopal authority, pressed it with 
 much heat and rashness. See a curious passage 
 on this subject in a speech of the Cardinal of Aries. 
 Lenfant, t. ii., p. 225. 
 
 * There is not, I believe, any sufficient history of 
 the council of Basle. Lenfant designed to write it 
 from the original acts, but, finding his health de- 
 cline, intermixed some rather imperfect notices of 
 its transactions with his history of the Hussite war, 
 which is commonly quoted under the title of His- 
 tory of the Council of Basle. Schmidt, Crevier, 
 Villaret, are still my other authorities. 
 
312 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 breach which the Reformation has made 
 in the fabric of their church. But there 
 is almost an absurdity in conceiving their 
 permanent existence. What chymistry 
 could have kept united such heterogene- 
 ous masses, furnished with every prin- 
 ciple of mutual repulsion ? Even in early 
 times, when councils, though nominally 
 general, were composed of the subjects 
 of the Roman empire, they had been 
 marked by violence and contradiction: 
 what then could have been expected 
 from the delegates of independent king- 
 doms, whose ecclesiastical polity, what- 
 ever may be said of the spiritual unity 
 of the church, had long been far too inti- 
 mately blended with that of the state, to 
 admit of any general control without its 
 assent? Nor, beyond the zeal, unques- 
 tionably sincere, which animated their 
 members, especially at Basle, for the ab- 
 olition of papal abuses, is there any thing 
 to praise in their conduct, or to regret 
 in their cessation. The statesman, who 
 dreaded the encroachments of priests upon 
 the civil government, the Christian, who 
 panted to see his rites and faith purified 
 from the corruption of ages, found no 
 hope of improvement in these councils. 
 They took upon themselves the preten- 
 sions of the popes whom they attempt- 
 ed to supersede. By a decree of the fa- 
 thers at Constance, all persons, including 
 princes, who should oppose any obstacle 
 to a journey undertaken by the Emperor 
 Sigismund, in order to obtain the cession 
 of Benedict, are declared excommuni- 
 cated, and deprived of their dignities, 
 whether secular or ecclesiastical.* Their 
 condemnation of Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague, and the scandalous breach of 
 faith which they induced Sigismund to 
 commit on that occasion, are notorious. 
 But perhaps it is not equally so, that this 
 celebrated assembly recognised by a 
 solemn decree the flagitious principle 
 which it had practised, declaring that 
 Huss was unworthy, through his obsti- 
 nate adherence to heresy, of any privi- 
 lege ; nor ought any faith or promise to 
 be kept with him, by natural, divine, or 
 human law, to the prejudice of the Cath- 
 olic religion.f It will be easy to esti- 
 
 * Lenfant, t. i., p. 439. 
 
 t Nee aliqua sibi fides aut promissio, de jure 
 natural!, divinp, et humano fuerit in prejudicium 
 Catholicse fidei obseryanda. Lenfant, t. i., p. 491. 
 
 This proposition is the great disgrace of the 
 council in the affair of Huss. But the violation 
 of his safe-conduct being a famous event in eccle- 
 siastical history, and which has been very much 
 disputed with some degree of erroneous statement 
 on both sides, it may be proper to give briefly an 
 impartial summary. 1. Huss came to Constance 
 
 mate the claims of this congress of theo- 
 logians to our veneration, and to weigh the 
 retrenchment of a few abuses against the 
 formal sanction of an atrocious maxim. 
 
 It was not, however, necessary for any 
 government of tolerable energy to seek 
 the reform of those abuses which affected 
 the independence of national churches, 
 and the integrity of their regular disci- 
 pline, at the hands of a general council. 
 Whatever difficulty there might be in 
 overturning the principles founded on the 
 decretals of Isidore, and sanctioned by the 
 prescription of many centuries, the more 
 flagrant encroachments of papal tyranny 
 were fresh innovations, some within the 
 actual generation, others easily to be 
 traced up, and continually disputed. The 
 principal European nations determined, 
 with different degrees indeed of energy, 
 to make a stand against the despotism 
 of Rome. In this resistance England 
 was not only the first engaged, but the 
 most consistent ; her free parliament pre- 
 venting, as far as the times permitted, 
 that wavering policy to which a court is 
 liable. We have already seen that a 
 foundation was laid in the statute of pro- 
 visors under Edward III. In the next 
 reign, many other measures tending to 
 repress the interference of Rome were 
 adopted ; especially the great statute of 
 premunire, which subjects all persons 
 bringing papal bulls for translation of 
 bishops and other enumerated purposes 
 into the kingdom to the penalties of 
 
 with a safe-conduct of the emperof, very loosely 
 worded, and not directed to any individuals. 
 Lenfant, t. i., p. 59. 2. This pass, however, was 
 binding upon the emperor himself, and was so 
 considered by him, when he remonstrated against 
 the arrest of Huss. Id., p. 73, 83. 3. It was not 
 binding on the council, who possessed no tempo- 
 ral power, but had a right to decide upon the ques- 
 tion of heresy. 4. It is not manifest by what civil 
 authority Huss was arrested, nor can I determine 
 how far the imperial safe-conduct was a legal pro- 
 tection within the city of Constance. 5. Sigis- 
 mund was persuaded to acquiesce in the capital 
 punishment of Huss, and even to make it his own 
 act (Lenfant, p. 409) ; by which he manifestly 
 broke his engagement. 6. It is evident that in 
 this he acted by the advice and sanction of the 
 council, who thus became accessary to the guilt 
 of his treachery. 
 
 The great moral to be drawn from the story of 
 John Huss's condemnation is, that no breach of 
 faith can be excused by our opinion of ill desert in 
 the party, or by a narrow interpretation of our own 
 engagements. Every capitulation ought to be con- 
 strued favourably for the weaker side. In such 
 cases it is emphatically true, that if the letter 
 killeth, the spirit should give life, 
 
 Gerson, the most eminent theologian of his age, 
 and the coryphaeus of the party that opposed the 
 transalpine principles, was deeply concerned in 
 this atrocious business. Crevier, p. 432, 
 
CHAP, VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 313 
 
 forfeiture and perpetual imprisonment 
 This act received, and probably was de- 
 signed to receive, a larger interpretation 
 than its language appears to warrant. 
 Combined with the statute of provisors, 
 it put a stop to the pope's usurpation of 
 patronage, which had empoverished the 
 church and kingdom of England for nearly 
 two centuries. Several attempts were 
 made to overthrow these enactments; 
 the first parliament of Henry IV. gave a 
 very large power to the king over the 
 statute of provisors, enabling him even 
 to annul it at his pleasure. f This, how- 
 ever, does not appear in the statute-book. 
 Henry, indeed, like his predecessors, ex- 
 ercised rather largely his prerogative of 
 dispensing with the law against papal 
 provisions; a prerogative which, as to 
 this point, was itself taken away by an 
 act of his own, and another of his son 
 Henry V.J But the statute always stood 
 unrepealed ; and it is a satisfactory proof 
 of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the 
 legislature, that in the concordat made 
 by Martin V. at the council of Constance 
 with the English nation, we find no men- 
 tion of reservation of benefices, of anna- 
 tes, and the other principal grievances 
 of that age ;fy our ancestors disdaining to 
 accept by compromise with the pope any 
 modification or even confirmation of their 
 statute law. They had already restrain- 
 ed another flagrant abuse, the increase 
 of first fruits by Boniface IX. ; an act of 
 Henry IV. forbidding any greater sum to 
 be paid on that account than had been 
 formerly accustomed. || 
 
 It will appear evident to every person 
 influence of acquainted with the contempo- 
 Wiciiffe's rary historians and the pro- 
 ceedings of parliament, that be- 
 sides partaking in the general resentment 
 of Europe against the papal court, Eng- 
 land was under the influence of a pecu- 
 liar hostility to the clergy, arising from 
 the dissemination of the principles of 
 Wicliffe.^]" All ecclesiastical possessions 
 were marked for spoliation by the system 
 
 * 16 Ric. II., c. 5. 
 
 t Rot. Par!., vol. iii., p. 428. 
 
 J 7 H. IV., c. 8 ; 3 H. V., c. 4. Martin V. pub- 
 lished an angry bull against the " execrable stat- 
 ute" of premunire, enjoining Archbishop Chiche- 
 ley to procure its repeal. Collier, p. 653. Chi- 
 cheley did all in his power ; but the commons were 
 always inexorable on this head, p. 636: and the 
 archbishop even incurred Martin's resentment by 
 it. Wilkins, Concilia, t. iii., p. 483. 
 
 $ Lenfant, t. ii., p. 444. || 6 H. IV., c. 1. 
 
 IT See, among many other passages, the articles 
 exhibited by the Lollards to parliament against the 
 clergy, in 1394. Collier gives the substance of 
 them, and they are noticed by Henry : but they 
 are at full length in Wilkins, t. iii., p. 221. 
 
 of this reformer ; and the House of Com- 
 mons more than once endeavoured to 
 carry it into effect, pressing Henry IV. 
 to seize the temporalities of the church 
 for public exigences.* This recommend- 
 ation, besides its injustice, was not likely 
 to move Henry, whose policy had been 
 to sustain the prelacy against their new 
 adversaries. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
 was kept in better control than former- 
 ly by the judges of common law, who, 
 through rather a strained construction of 
 the statute of premunire, extended its 
 penalties to the spiritual courts when 
 they transgressed their limits. f The 
 privilege of clergy in criminal cases still 
 remained ; but it was acknowledged not 
 to comprehend high treason.! 
 
 Germany, as well as England, was dis- 
 appointed of her hopes of gen- concordats 
 eral reformation by the Italian ofAschaf- 
 party at Constance ; but she did fen ^ r &- 
 not supply the want of the council's de- 
 crees with sufficient decision. A con- 
 cordat with Martin V. left the pope in 
 possession of too great a part of his re- 
 cent usurpations. This, however, was 
 repugnant to the spirit of Germany, which 
 called for a more thorough reform with 
 all the national roughness and honesty. 
 The diet of Mentz, during the continuance 
 
 * Walsingham, p. 371, 379. Rot. Parl., 11 H. IV., 
 vol. iii., p. 645. The remarkable circumstances 
 detailed by Walsingham in the former passage are 
 not corroborated by any thing in the records. But 
 as it is unlikely that so particular a narrative 
 should have no foundation, Hume has plausibly 
 conjectured that the roll has been wilfully mutila- 
 ted. As this suspicion occurs in other instances, 
 it would be desirable to ascertain, by examination 
 of the original rolls, whether they bear any exter- 
 nal marks of injury. The mutilators, however, if 
 such there were, have left a great deal. The rolls 
 of Henry IV. and V.'s parliaments are quite full of 
 petitions against the clergy. 
 
 t 3 Inst., p. 121. Collier, vol. i., p. 668. 
 
 i 2 Inst., p. 634, where several instances of priests 
 executed for coining and other treasons are addu- 
 ced. And this may also be inferred from 25 E. III., 
 stat. 3, c. 4 ; and from 4 H. IV., c. 3. Indeed, the 
 benefit of clergy has never been taken away by 
 statute from high treason. This renders it improb- 
 able that Chief-justice Gascoyne should, as Carte 
 tells us, vol. ii., p. 664, have refused to try Arch- 
 bishop Scrope for treason, on the ground that no 
 one could lawfully sit in judgment on a bishop for 
 his life. Whether he might have declined to try 
 him as a peer, is another question. The pope ex- 
 communicated all who were concerned in Scrope's 
 death, and it cost Henry a large sum to obtain ab- 
 solution. But Boniface IX. was no arbiter of the 
 English law. Edward IV. granted a strange char- 
 ter to the clergy, not only dispensing with the stat- 
 utes of premunire, but absolutely exempting them 
 from temporal jurisdiction in cases of treason as 
 well as felony. Wilkins, Concilia, t. iii., p. 583. 
 Collier, p. 678. This, however, being an illegal 
 grant, took no effect, at least after his death. 
 
 <j Lenfant, t. ii., p. 428. Schmidt, t. v., p. 131. 
 
314 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 of the council of Basle, adopted all those 
 regulations hostile to the papal interests 
 which occasioned the deadly quarrel be- 
 tween that assembly and the court of 
 Rome.* But the German empire was be- 
 trayed by Frederick III., and deceived 
 by an accomplished but profligate states- 
 man, his secretary, ^Eneas Sylvius. Fresh 
 concordats, settled at. Aschaffenburg, in 
 1448, nearly upon the footing of those 
 concluded with Martin V., surrendered 
 great part of the independence for which 
 Germany had contended. The pope re- 
 tained his annates, or at least a sort of 
 tax in their place ; and instead of reserv- 
 ing benefices arbitrarily, he obtained the 
 positive right of collation during six al- 
 ternate months of every year. Episco- 
 pal elections were freely restored to the 
 chapters, except in case of translation, 
 when the pope still continued to nomi- 
 nate ; as he did also, if any person, ca- 
 nonically unfit, were presented to him 
 for confirmation.! Such is the concordat 
 of Aschaffenburg, by which the Catholic 
 principalities of the empire have always 
 been governed, though reluctantly ac- 
 quiescing in its disadvantageous provis- 
 ions. Rome, for the remainder of the 
 fifteenth century, not satisfied with the 
 terms she had imposed, is said to have 
 continually encroached upon the right of 
 election. J But she purchased too dearly 
 her triumph over the weakness of Fred- 
 erick III., and the hundred grievances of 
 Germany, presented to Adrian VI. by the 
 diet of Nuremberg, in 1522, manifested 
 the workings of a long-treasured resent- 
 ment, that had made straight the path 
 before the Saxon reformer. 
 
 I have already taken notice that the 
 
 Castilian church was in the first 
 croach-"" a g es f tnat monarchy nearly in- 
 ments on dependent of Rome. But, after 
 Castile f man y gradual encroachments, the 
 
 code of laws promulgated by Al- 
 fonso X. had incorporated a great part 
 of the decretals, and thus given the papal 
 
 * Schmidt, t. v., p. 221. Lenfant. 
 
 t Schmidt, t. v., p. 250; t. vi, p. 94, &c. He 
 observes that there is three times as much money 
 at present as in the fifteenth century ; if, therefore, 
 the annates are now felt as a burden, what must 
 they have been ? p. 113. To this Rome would an- 
 swer: if the annates were but sufficient for the 
 pope's maintenance at that time, what must they 
 be now ? 
 
 \ Schmidt, p. 98. ^neas Sylvius, Epist. 369 
 and 371 ; and De Moribus Germanorum, p. 1041, 
 1061. Several little disputes with the pope indi- 
 cate the spirit that was fermenting in Germany 
 throughout the fifteenth century. But this is the 
 proper subject of a more detailed ecclesiastical his- 
 tory, and should form an introduction to that of 
 the Reformation. 
 
 jurisprudence an authority which it no- 
 where else possessed in national tribu- 
 nals.* That richly-endowed hierarchy 
 was a tempting spoil. The popes filled 
 up its benefices by means of expectatives 
 and reserves with their own Italian de- 
 pendants. We find the cortes of Palen- 
 cia, in 1388, complaining that strangers 
 are beneficed in Castile, through which 
 the churches are ill supplied, and native 
 scholars cannot be provided, and re- 
 questing the king to take such measures 
 in relation to this as the kings of France, 
 Aragon, and Navarre, who do not permit 
 any but natives to hold benefices in their 
 kingdoms. The king answered to this 
 petition that he would use his endeavours 
 to that end.f And this is expressed with 
 greater warmth by a cortes of 1473, who 
 declare it to be the custom of all Chris- 
 tian nations that foreigners should not be 
 promoted to benefices, urging the dis- 
 couragement of native learning, the de- 
 cay of charity, the bad performance of re- 
 ligious rites, and other evils arising from 
 the nonresidence of beneficed priests, 
 and request the king to notify to the court 
 of Rome that no expectative or provis- 
 ion in favour of foreigners can be receiv- 
 ed in future.J This petition seems to 
 have passed into a law ; but I am ignorant 
 of the consequences. Spain certainly 
 took an active part in restraining the 
 abuses of pontifical authority at the coun- 
 cils of Constance and Basle ; to which I 
 might add the name of Trent, if that as- 
 sembly were not beyond my province. 
 
 France, dissatisfied with the abortive 
 termination of her exertions du- Checks on 
 ring the schism, rejected the con- pap ai au- 
 cordat offered by Martin V. , which ">j]y in 
 held out but a promise of im- 
 perfect reformation. $ She suffered in 
 consequence the papal exactions for some 
 years, till the decrees of the council of 
 Basle prompted her to more vigorous ef- 
 forts for independence, and Charles VII. 
 enacted the famous Pragmatic Sanction 
 of Bourges.JI This has been deemed a 
 sort of Magna Charta of the Gallican 
 church ; for though the law was speedily 
 abrogated, its principle has remained fixed 
 as the basis of ecclesiastical liberties. 
 By the Pragmatic Sanction a general 
 council was declared superior to the pope ; 
 
 * Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico, c. 320, &c. 
 
 t Idem, Teoria de las Cortes, t. iii., p. 126. 
 
 t Idem, t. ii., p. 364. Mariana, Hist. Hispan., 
 1. xix., c. 1. 
 
 6 Villaret, t. xv., p. 126. 
 
 || Idem, p. 263. Hist, du Droit Public Eccle"s. 
 Francois, t. ii., p. 234. Fleury, Institutions au Droit. 
 Crevier, t. iy., p. 100. Pasquier, Recherches de la 
 France, 1. iii., c. 27. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 
 
 315 
 
 elections of bishops were made free from 
 all control; mandats or grants in ex- 
 pectancy, and reservations of benefices 
 were taken away ; first fruits were abol- 
 ished. This defalcation of wealth, which 
 had now become dearer than power, 
 could not be patiently borne at Rome. 
 Pius II., the same ./Eneas Sylvius who 
 had sold himself to oppose the council 
 of Basle, in whose service he had been 
 originally distinguished, used every en- 
 deavour to procure the repeal of this or- 
 dinance. With Charles VII. he had no 
 success ; but Louis XL, partly out of 
 blind hatred to his father's memory, 
 partly from a delusive expectation that 
 the pope would support the Angevin fac- 
 tion in Naples, repealed the Pragmatic 
 Sanction.* This may be added to other 
 proofs that Louis XL, even according to 
 the measures of worldly wisdom, was 
 not a wise politician. His people judged 
 from better feelings; the parliament of 
 Paris constantly refused to enregister the 
 revocation of that favourite law, and it 
 continued in many respects to be acted 
 upon until the reign of Francis I.f At 
 the States-General of Tours, in 1484, the 
 inferior clergy, seconded by the two other 
 orders, earnestly requested that the Prag- 
 matic Sanction might be confirmed ; but 
 the prelates were timid or corrupt, and 
 the Regent Anne was unwilling to risk a 
 quarrel with the Holy See.J This un- 
 settled state continued, the Pragmatic 
 Sanction neither quite enforced nor quite 
 repealed, till Francis L, having accom- 
 modated the differences of his predeces- 
 sor with Rome, agreed upon a final con- 
 cordat with Leo X., the treaty that sub- 
 sisted for almost three centuries between 
 the papacy and the kingdom of France. 
 Instead of capitular election or papal pro- 
 vision, a new method was devised for 
 filling the vacancies of episcopal sees. 
 The king was to nominate a fit person, 
 whom the pope was to collate. The 
 one obtained an essential patronage, the 
 other preserved his theoretical suprem- 
 acy. Annates were restored to the pope ; 
 a concession of great importance. He 
 gave up his indefinite prerogative of re- 
 serving benefices, and received only a 
 small stipulated patronage. This con- 
 vention met with strenuous opposition in 
 France ; the parliament of Paris yielded 
 
 * Villaret and Gamier, t. xvi. Crevier, t. iv., p. 
 256, 274. 
 
 t Gamier, t. xvi., p. 432 ; t. xvii., p. 222, et alibi. 
 Crevier, t. iv., p. 318, et alibi. 
 
 t Gamier, t. xix., p. 216 and 321. 
 
 $ Idem, t. xxiii., p. 151. Hist, du Droit Public 
 Eccle"s. Fr., t. ii., p. 243. Fleury, Institutions au 
 Droit, t. i., p. 107. 
 
 only to force ; the university hardly stop- 
 ped short of sedition ; the zealous Galil- 
 eans have ever since deplored it as a 
 fatal wound to their liberties. There is 
 much exaggeration in this, as far as the 
 relation of the Gallican church to Rome 
 is concerned; but the royal nomination 
 to bishoprics impaired of course the in- 
 dependence of the hierarchy. Whether 
 this prerogative of the crown were upon 
 the whole beneficial to France, is a prob- 
 lem that I cannot affect to solve ; in this 
 country there seems little doubt that 
 capitular elections, which the statute of 
 Henry VIII. had reduced to a name, 
 would long since have degenerated into 
 the corruption of close boroughs; but 
 the circumstances of the Gallican estab- 
 lishment may not have been entirely sim- 
 ilar, and the question opens a variety of 
 considerations that do not belong to my 
 present subject. 
 
 From the principles established during 
 the schism, and in the Pragmatic Liberties 
 Sanction of Bourges, arose the of the 
 far-famed liberties of the Gallican ^JS n 
 church, which honourably distin- 
 guished her from other members of the 
 Roman communion. These have been 
 referred by French writers to a much ear- 
 lier era ; but, except so far as that coun- 
 try participated in the ancient ecclesias- 
 tical independence of all Europe, before 
 the papal encroachments had subverted 
 it, I do not see that they can be properly 
 traced above the fifteenth century. Nor 
 had they acquired, even at the expiration 
 of that age, the precision and consistency 
 which was given in later times by the 
 constant spirit of the parliaments and 
 universities, as well as by the best ec- 
 clesiastical authors, with little assistance 
 from the crown, which, except in a few 
 periods of disagreement with Rome, has 
 rather been disposed to restrain the more 
 zealous Gallicans. These liberties, there- 
 fore, do not strictly fall within my limits ; 
 and it will be sufficient to observe that 
 they depended upon two maxims ; one, 
 that the pope does not possess any direct 
 or indirect temporal authority ; the other, 
 that his spiritual jurisdiction can only be 
 exercised in conformity with such parts 
 of the canon law as are received by the 
 kingdom of France. Hence the Gallican 
 church rejected a great part of the Sext 
 and Clementines, and paid little regard to 
 modern papal bulls, which in fact obtain- 
 ed validity only by the king's approba- 
 tion.* 
 
 * Fleury, Institutions au Droit, t. ii.,p. 226, &c., 
 and Discours sur les Liberia's de PEglise Galli- 
 cane. The last editors of this dissertation go far 
 
316 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VII. 
 
 The pontifical usurpations which were 
 Ecclesiastical thus restrained, affected, at 
 jurisdiction least in their direct operation, 
 ned - rather the church than the 
 state ; and temporal governments would 
 only have been half emancipated, if their 
 national hierarchies had preserved their 
 enormous jurisdiction.* England, in this 
 also, began the work, and had made a 
 considerable progress, while the mistaken 
 piety or policy of Louis IX. and his suc- 
 cessors had laid France open to vast en- 
 croachments. The first method adopted 
 in order to check them was rude enough ; 
 by seizing the bishop's effects when he 
 exceeded his jurisdiction.! This jurisdic- 
 tion, according to the construction of 
 churchmen, became perpetually larger: 
 even the reforming council of Constance 
 give an enumeration of ecclesiastical 
 causes far beyond the limits acknowledg- 
 ed in England, or perhaps in France. J 
 But the parliament of Paris, instituted in 
 1304, gradually established a paramount 
 authority over ecclesiastical as well as 
 civil tribunals. Their progress was in- 
 deed very slow. At a famous assembly 
 in 1329 before Philip of Valois, his advo- 
 cate-general, Peter de Cugnieres, pro- 
 nounced a long harangue against the ex- 
 cesses of spiritual jurisdiction. This is a 
 curious illustration of that branch of legal 
 and ecclesiastical history. It was an- 
 
 beyqnd Fleury, and perhaps reach the utmost point 
 in limiting the papal authority which a sincere 
 member of that communion can attain. See notes, 
 p. 417 and 445. 
 
 * It ought always to be remembered, that ecclesi- 
 astical, and not merely papal, encroachments are 
 what civil governments and the laity in general 
 have had to resist ; a point which some very zeal- 
 ous opposers of Rome have been willing to keep 
 out of sight. The latter arose out of the former, 
 and, perhaps, were in some respects less objection- 
 able. But the true enemy is what are called High- 
 church principles ; be they maintained by a pope, 
 a bishop, or a presbyter. Thus Archbishop Strat- 
 ford writes to Edward III. : Duo sunt, quibus prin- 
 cipaliterregitur mundus, sacra pontifical's auctori- 
 tas, et regalis ordinata potestas : in quibus est pon- 
 dus tanto gravius et sublimius sacerdotum, quanto 
 et de regibus illi in divino reddituri sunt examine 
 rationem : et ideo scire debet regia celsitudo ex il- 
 lorum vos dependere judicio, non illos ad vestram 
 dirigi posse voluntatem. Wilkins, Concilia, t. ii., 
 p. 663. This amazing impudence towards such a 
 prince as Edward did not succeed; but it is in- 
 teresting to follow the track of the star which was 
 now rather receding, though still fierce. 
 
 f De Marca, De Concordantia, 1. iv., c. 18. 
 
 J Id., c. 15. Lenfant, Cone, de Constance, t. ii., 
 
 E. 331. De Marca, 1. iv., c. 15, gives us passages 
 rom one Durandus, about 1309. complaining that 
 the lay judges invaded ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 
 and reckoning the cases subject to the latter, un- 
 der which he includes feudal and criminal causes 
 in some circumstances, and also those in which 
 the temporal judges are in doubt ; si quid ambigu- 
 um inter judices saeculares oriatur. 
 
 swered at large by some bishops, and the 
 king did not venture to take any active 
 measures at that time.* Several regula- 
 tions were however made in the four- 
 teenth century, which took away the ec- 
 clesiastical cognizance of adultery, of the 
 execution of testaments, and other causes 
 which had been claimed by the clergy, f 
 Their immunity in criminal matters was 
 straitened by the introduction of privileged 
 cases, to which it did not extend ; such 
 as treason, murder, robbery, and other 
 heinous offences.:}; The parliament began 
 to exercise a judicial control over episco- 
 pal courts. It was not, however, till the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century, ac- 
 cording to the best writers, that it devised 
 its famous form of procedure, the appeal 
 because of abuse. This, in the course 
 of time, and through the decline of eccle- 
 siastical power, not only proved an ef- 
 fectual barrier against encroachments of 
 spiritual jurisdiction, but drew back again 
 to the lay court the greater part of those 
 causes which by prescription, and indeed 
 by law, had appertained to a different cog- 
 nizance. Thus testamentary, and even 
 in a great degree matrimonial causes, 
 were decided by the parliament ; and in 
 many other matters, that body, being the 
 judge of its own competence, narrowed, 
 by means of the appeal because of abuse, 
 the boundaries of the opposite jurisdic- 
 tion.! This remedial process appears to 
 have been more extensively applied than 
 our English writ of prohibition. The latter 
 merely restrains the interference of the 
 ecclesiastical courts in matters which the 
 law has not committed to them. But the 
 parliament of Paris considered itself, I 
 apprehend, as conservator of the liberties 
 and discipline of the Gallican church ; and 
 interposed the appeal because of abuse, 
 whenever the spiritual court, even in its 
 proper province, transgressed the canoni- 
 cal rules by which it ought to be govern- 
 ed.l 
 
 * Velly, t. via., p. 234. Fleury, Institutions, t. 
 ii., p. 12. Hist, du Droit Eccles. Fran?., t. ii., p. 86. 
 
 t Villaret, t. xi., p. 182. 
 
 j Fleury, Institutions au Droit, t. ii., p. 138. In 
 the famous case of Balue, a bishop and cardinal, 
 whom Louis XI. detected in a treasonable intrigue, 
 it was contended by the king that he had a right to 
 punish him capitally. Du Clos, Vie de Louis XI., 
 t. i., p. 422. Gamier, Hist, de France, t. xvii., p. 
 330. Balue was confined for many years in a small 
 iron cage, which till lately was shown in the castle 
 of Loches. 
 
 Pasquier, 1. iii., c. 33. Hist, du Droit EccliSs. 
 Francois, t. ii., p. 119. Fleury, Institutions au 
 Droit Eccles. Francois, t. ii., p. 221. De Marca, 
 De Concordantia Sacerdotii et Imperii, 1. iv., c. 19. 
 The last author seems to carry it rather higher. 
 
 il Fleury, Institutions, t. ii., p, 42, &c. 
 
 ^ De Marca, De Concordantifc, 1. iv., c. 9. Fleu- 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POWER, 
 
 317 
 
 While the bishops of Rome were losing 
 their general influence over Eu- 
 pa e S n fnfli. rope, they did not gain more es- 
 ence in ita- timation in Italy. It is indeec 
 a problem of some difficulty 
 whether they derived any substantial 
 advantage from their temporal principali- 
 ty. For the last three centuries, it has 
 certainly been conducive to the mainte- 
 nance of their spiritual supremacy, which 
 in the complicated relations of policy 
 might have been endangered by their be- 
 coming the subjects of any particular 
 sovereign. But I doubt whether their 
 real authority over Christendom in the 
 middle ages was not better preserved by 
 a state of nominal dependance upon the 
 empire, without much effective control 
 on one side, or many temptations to 
 worldly ambition on the other. That 
 covetousness of temporal sway which, 
 having long prompted their measures of 
 usurpation and forgery, seemed, from the 
 time of Innocent III. and Nicolas III., 
 to reap its gratification, impaired the 
 more essential parts of the papal author- 
 ity. In the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies, the popes degraded their character 
 by too much anxiety about the politics of 
 Italy. The veil woven by religious awe 
 was rent asunder, and the features of or- 
 dinary ambition appeared without dis- 
 guise. For it was no longer that magnif- 
 icent and original system of spiritual 
 power, which made Gregory VII., even 
 in exile, a rival of the emperor, which 
 held forth redress where the law could 
 not protect, and punishment where it 
 could not chastise, which fell in some- 
 times with superstitious feeling, and 
 sometimes with political interest. Many 
 might believe that the pope could depose 
 a schismatic prince, who were disgusted 
 at his attacking an unoffending neighbour. 
 As the cupidity of the clergy in regard to 
 worldly estate had lowered their charac- 
 ter everywhere, so the similar conduct 
 of their head undermined the respect felt 
 for him in Italy. The censures of the 
 church, those excommunications and in- 
 terdicts which had made Europe trem- 
 ble, became gradually despicable as well 
 as odious, when they were lavished in 
 every squabble for territory which the 
 pope was pleased to make his own.* 
 
 ry, t. ii., p. 224. In Spain, even now, says De Mar- 
 ca, bishops or clerks not obeying royal mandates 
 that inhibit the excesses of ecclesiastical courts, 
 are expelled from the kingdom and deprived of the 
 rights of denizenship. 
 
 * In 1290, Pisa was put under an interdict for 
 having conferred the signiory on the Count of 
 Montefeltro, and he was ordered, on pain of excom- 
 munication, to lay down the government within a 
 
 Even the crusades, which had already 
 been tried against the heretics of Lan- 
 guedoc, were now preached against all 
 who espoused a different party from the 
 Roman see in the quarrels of Italy. Such 
 were those directed at Frederick II. , at 
 Manfred, and at Matteo Visconti, accom- 
 panied by the usual bribery, indulgences 
 and remission of sins. The papal inter- 
 dicts of the fourteenth century wore a 
 different complexion from those of for- 
 mer times. Though tremendous to the 
 imagination, they had hitherto been con- 
 fined to spiritual effects, or to such as 
 were connected with religion, as the pro- 
 hibition of marriage and sepulture. But 
 Clement V., on account of an attack 
 made by the Venetians upon Ferrara, in 
 1309, proclaimed the whole people infa- 
 mous, and incapable for three genera- 
 tions of any office ; their goods, in every 
 part of the world, subject to confiscation, 
 and every Venetian, wherever he might 
 be found, liable to be reduced into slave- 
 ry.* A bull in the same terms was pub- 
 lished by Gregory XL, in 1376, against 
 the Florentines. 
 
 From the termination of the schism, 
 as the popes found their ambition thwart- 
 ed beyond the Alps, it was diverted more 
 and more towards schemes of temporal 
 sovereignty. In these we do not per- 
 ceive that consistent policy, which re- 
 markably actuated their conduct as su- 
 preme heads of the church. Men gener- 
 ally advanced in years, and born of no- 
 ble Italian families, made the papacy 
 subservient to the elevation of their kin- 
 dred, or to the interests of a local fac- 
 tion. For such ends they mingled in the 
 dark conspiracies of that bad age, distin- 
 guished only by the more scandalous tur- 
 pitude of their vices from the petty ty- 
 rants and intriguers with whom they 
 were engaged. In the latter part of the 
 fifteenth century, when all favourable 
 prejudices were worn away, those who 
 occupied the most conspicuous station in 
 Europe disgraced their name by more no- 
 torious profligacy than could be parallel- 
 ed in the darkest age that had preceded ; 
 and at the moment beyond which this 
 work is not carried, the invasion of Italy 
 ay Charles VIII., I must leave the pon- 
 tifical throne in the possession of Alex- 
 ander VI. 
 
 It has been my object in the present 
 
 month. Muratori ad ann. A curious style for the 
 sope to adopt towards a free city ! Six years be- 
 ~ore the Venetians had been interdicted, because 
 hey would not allow their galleys to be hired by 
 the King of Naples. But it would be almost end- 
 
 ess to quote every instance. 
 * Muratori. 
 
318 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Vllf. 
 
 chapter to bring within the compass of 
 a few hours' perusal the substance of a 
 great and interesting branch of history ; 
 not certainly with such extensive reach 
 of learning as the subject might require, 
 but from sources of unquestioned credi- 
 bility. Unconscious of any partialities 
 that could give an oblique bias to my 
 mind, I have not been very solicitous to 
 avoid offence where offence is so easily 
 taken. Yet there is one misinterpreta- 
 tion of my meaning which I would gladly 
 obviate. I have not designed, in exhibit- 
 ing without disguise the usurpations of 
 Rome during the middle ages, to furnish 
 materials for unjust prejudice or unfound- 
 ed distrust. It is an advantageous cir- 
 cumstance for the philosophical inquirer 
 into the history of ecclesiastical domin- 
 ion, that, as it spreads itself over the 
 vast extent of fifteen centuries, the de- 
 pendance of events upon general causes, 
 rather than on transitory combinations 
 or the character of individuals, is made 
 more evident, and the future more prob- 
 ably foretold from a consideration of the 
 past, than we are apt to find in political 
 history. Five centuries have now elap- 
 sed, during every one of which the au- 
 thority of the Roman see has succes- 
 
 sively declined, Slowly and silently re- 
 ceding from their claims to temporal 
 power, the pontiffs hardly protect their 
 dilapidated citadel from the revolution- 
 ary concussions of modern times, the ra- 
 pacity of governments, and the grow- 
 ing averseness to ecclesiastical influence. 
 But, if thus bearded by unmannerly and 
 threatening innovation, they should occa- 
 sionally forget that cautious policy which 
 necessity has prescribed, if they should 
 attempt, an unavailing expedient ! to re- 
 vive institutions which can be no longer 
 operative, or principles that have died 
 away, their defensive efforts will not be 
 unnatural, nor ought to excite either 
 indignation or alarm. A calm, compre- 
 hensive study of ecclesiastical history, 
 not in such scraps and fragments as the 
 ordinary partisans of our ephemeral lit- 
 erature obtrude upon us, is perhaps the 
 best antidote to extravagant apprehen- 
 sions. Those who know what Rome has 
 once been are best able to appreciate 
 what she is ; those who have seen the 
 thunderbolt in the hands of the Gregories 
 and the Innocents, will hardly be intimi- 
 dated at the sallies of decrepitude, the 
 impotent dart of Priam amid the crack- 
 ling ruins of Troy. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon Constitution. Sketch of An- 
 glo-Saxon History. Succession to the Crown. 
 Orders of Men. Thanes and Ceqrls Wit- 
 tenagemot. Judicial System. Division into 
 Hundreds. County-Court. Trial by Jury its 
 Antiquity investigated. Law of Frank-pledge 
 its several Stages. Question of Feudal Ten- 
 ures before the Conquest. 
 
 No unbiased observer, who derives 
 pleasure from the welfare of his species, 
 can fail to consider the long and uninter- 
 ruptedly increasing prosperity of England 
 as the mjost beautiful phenomenon in the 
 history of mankind. Climates more pro- 
 pitious may impart more largely the 
 mere enjoyments of existence ; but in no 
 other region have the benefits that polit- 
 ical institutions can confer been diffused 
 over so extended a population ; nor have 
 any people so well reconciled the dis- 
 cordant elements of wealth, order, and 
 liberty. These advantages are surely 
 
 not owing to the soil of this island, nor 
 to the latitude in which it is placed ; but 
 to the spirit of its laws, from which, 
 through various means, the characteristic 
 independence and industriousness of our 
 nation have been derived. The consti- 
 tution, therefore, of England must be to 
 inquisitive men of all countries, far more 
 to ourselves, an object of superior inter- 
 est; distinguished especially, as it is 
 from all free governments of powerful 
 nations which history has recorded, by 
 its manifesting, after the lapse of several 
 centuries, not merely no symptom of ir- 
 retrievable decay, but a more expansive 
 energy. Comparing long periods of 
 time, it may be justly asserted that the 
 administration of government has pro- 
 gressively become more equitable, and 
 the privileges of the subject more secure ; 
 and, though it would be both presumptu- 
 ous and unwise to express an unlimited 
 confidence as to the durability of liber- 
 
I.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 310 
 
 ties which owe their greatest security to 
 the constant suspicion of the people, yet 
 if we calmly reflect on the present as- 
 pect of this country, it will probably ap- 
 pear, that whatever perils may threaten 
 our constitution are rather from circum- 
 stances altogether unconnected with it 
 than from any intrinsic defects of its own. 
 It will be the object of the ensuing chap- 
 ter to trace the gradual formation of this 
 system of government. Such an inves- 
 tigation, impartially conducted, will de- 
 tect errors diametrically opposite ; those 
 intended to impose on the populace, 
 which, on account of their palpable ab- 
 surdity and the ill faith with which they 
 are usually proposed, I have seldom 
 thought it worth while directly to re- 
 pel; and those which better informed 
 persons are apt to entertain, caught from 
 transient reading and the misrepresenta- 
 tions of late historians, but easily refuted 
 by the genuine testimony of ancient times. 
 The seven very unequal kingdoms of 
 Sketch of the Saxon Heptarchy, formed 
 Anglo- successively out of the countries 
 Saxon wrested from the Britons, were 
 ory ' originally independent of each 
 other. Several times, however, a power- 
 ful sovereign acquired a preponderating 
 influence over his neighbours, marked 
 perhaps by the payment of tribute. Sev- 
 en are enumerated by Bede as having 
 thus reigned over the whole of Britain ; 
 an expression which must be very loose- 
 ly interpreted. Three kingdoms became 
 at length predominant ; those of Wessex, 
 Mercia, and Northumberland. The first 
 rendered tributary the small estates of 
 the Southeast, and the second that of the 
 Eastern Angles. But Egbert, king of 
 Wessex, not only incorporated with his 
 own monarchy the dependant kingdoms 
 of Kent and Essex, but obtained an ac- 
 knowledgment of his superiority from 
 Mercia and Northumberland ; the latter 
 of which, though the most extensive of 
 any Anglo-Saxon state, was too much 
 weakened by its internal divisions to of- 
 fer any resistance.* Still, however, the 
 kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and 
 Northumberland remained under their 
 ancient line of sovereigns ; nor did either 
 Egbert or his five immediate successors 
 assume the title of any other crown than 
 Wessex.f 
 
 The destruction of those minor states 
 was reserved for a different enemy. 
 About the end of the eighth century the 
 
 northern pirates 
 coast of England. 
 
 began to ravage the 
 Scandinavia exhibited 
 
 * Chronicon Saxonicum, p. 70. 
 
 t Alfred denominates himself in his will, Occi- 
 dentalium Saxorum rex ; and Asserius never gives 
 him any other name. But his son Edward the El- 
 der takes the title of Rex Anglorum on his coins. 
 Vid. Numismata Anglo-Saxon, in Hickes's The- 
 saurus.vol.ii. 
 
 in that age a very singular condition of 
 society. Her population, continually re- 
 dundant in those barren regions which 
 gave it birth, was cast out in search of 
 plunder upon the ocean. Those who 
 loved riot rather than famine embarked 
 in large armaments under chiefs of legit- 
 imate authority, as well as approved val- 
 our. Such were the sea-kings, renown- 
 ed in the stories of the North ; the young- 
 er branches commonly of royal families, 
 who inherited, as it were, the sea for 
 their patrimony. Without any territory 
 but on the bosom of the waves, without 
 any dwelling but their ships, these prince- 
 ly pirates were obeyed by numerous sub- 
 jects, and intimidated mighty nations.* 
 Their invasions of England became con- 
 tinually more formidable ; and, as their 
 confidence increased, they began first to 
 winter, and ultimately to form permanent 
 settlements in the country. By their 
 command of the sea, it was easy for 
 them to harass every part of an island 
 presenting such an extent of coast as 
 Britain ; the Saxons, after a brave resist- 
 ance, gradually gave way, and were on 
 the brink of the same servitude or exter- 
 nination which their own arms had al- 
 eady brought upon the ancient posses- 
 sors. 
 
 From this imminent peril, after the 
 three dependant kingdoms, Mercia, Nor- 
 thumberland, and East Anglia, had been 
 overwhelmed, it was the glory of Alfred 
 to rescue the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. 
 Nothing less than the appearance of a 
 hero so undesponding, so enterprising, 
 and so just, could have prevented the en- 
 tire conquest of England. Yet he never 
 subdued the Danes, nor became master 
 of the whole kingdom. The Thames, 
 the Lea, the Ouse, and the Roman road 
 called Watling-street, determined the lim- 
 its of Alfred's dominion.! To the north- 
 east of this boundary were spread the in- 
 vaders, still denominated the armies of 
 East Anglia and Northumberland ;| a 
 name terribly expressive of foreign con- 
 querors, who retained their warlike con- 
 federacy without melting into the mass 
 
 * For these Vikingr, or sea-kings, a new and in- 
 teresting subject, I would refer to Mr. Turner's 
 History of the Anglo-Saxons, in which valuable 
 work almost every particular that can illustrate 
 our early annals will be found. 
 
 f Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxon., p. 47. Chron, 
 Saxon., p. 99. 
 
 Chronicon Saxon., passim. 
 
320 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 of their subject population. Three able 
 and active sovereigns, Edward, Athel- 
 stan, and Edmund, the successors of Al- 
 fred, pursued the course of victory, and 
 finally rendered the English monarchy 
 coextensive with the present limits of 
 England. Yet even Edgar, the most 
 powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kings, did 
 not venture to interfere with the legal 
 customs of his Danish subjects.* 
 
 Under this prince, whose rare fortune 
 as well as judicious conduct procured 
 him the surname of Peaceable, the king- 
 dom appears to have reached its zenith 
 of prosperity. But his premature death 
 changed the scene. The minority and 
 feeble character of Ethelred II. provoked 
 fresh incursions of our enemies beyond 
 the German Sea. A long series of dis- 
 asters, and the inexplicable treason of 
 those to whom the public safety was in- 
 trusted, overthrew the Saxon line, and 
 established Canute of Denmark upon the 
 throne. 
 
 The character of the Scandinavian na- 
 tions was in some measure changed from 
 what it had been during their first inva- 
 sions. They had embraced the Christian 
 faith ; they were consolidated into great 
 kingdoms; they had lost some of that 
 predatory and ferocious spirit which a re- 
 ligion, invented, as it seemed, for pirates, 
 had stimulated. Those too who had 
 long been settled in England became 
 gradually more assimilated to the na- 
 tives, whose laws and language were not 
 radically different from their own. Hence 
 the accession of a Danish line of kings 
 produced neither any evil nor any sen- 
 sible change of polity. But the English 
 still outnumbered their conquerors, and 
 eagerly returned, when an opportunity 
 arrived, to the ancient stock. Edward 
 the Confessor, notwithstanding his Nor- 
 man favourites, was endeared by the mild- 
 ness of his character to the English na- 
 tion; and subsequent miseries gave a 
 kind of posthumous credit to a reign not 
 eminent either for good fortune or wise 
 government. 
 
 In a stage of civilization so little ad- 
 Succession vanced as that of the Anglo- Sax- 
 tothe oils, and under circumstances 
 i;rown. Q f sucn mcessan t peril, the for- 
 tunes of a nation chiefly depend upon the 
 wisdom and valour of its sovereigns. 
 
 * Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxon., p. 83. In 1064, 
 after a revolt of the Northumbrians, Edward the 
 Confessor renewed the laws of Canute. Chronic. 
 Saxon. It seems now to be ascertained by the 
 comparison of dialects, that the inhabitants from 
 the Humber, or at least the Tyne, to the Firth of 
 Forth, were chiefly Danes. 
 
 No free people, therefore, would intrust 
 their safety to blind chance, and permit 
 a uniform observance of hereditary suc- 
 cession to prevail against strong public 
 expediency. Accordingly the Saxons, 
 like most other European nations, while 
 they limited the inheritance of the crown 
 exclusively to one royal family, were 
 not very scrupulous about its devolution 
 upon the nearest heir. It is an unwar- 
 ranted assertion of Carte, that the rule 
 of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy was " lin- 
 eal agnatic succession, the blood of the 
 second son having no right until the ex- 
 tinction of that of the eldest."* Unques- 
 tionably the eldest son of the last king, 
 being of full age, and not manifestly in- 
 competent, was his natural and probable 
 successor ; nor is it perhaps certain that 
 he always waited for an election to take 
 upon himself the rights of sovereignty; 
 although the ceremony of coronation, 
 according to the ancient form, appears to 
 imply its necessity. But the public se- 
 curity in those times was thought incom- 
 patible with a minor king ; and the arti- 
 ficial substitution of a regency, which 
 stricter notions of hereditary right have 
 introduced, had never occurred to so 
 rude a people. Thus, not to mention 
 those instances which the obscure times 
 of the Heptarchy exhibit, Ethelred I., as 
 some say, but certainly Alfred, excluded 
 the progeny of their elder brother from 
 the throne. f Alfred, in his testament, 
 dilates upon his own title, which he builds 
 upon a triple foundation, the will of his 
 father, the compact of his brother Ethel- 
 red, and the consent of the West Saxon 
 nobility.J A similar objection to the 
 government of an infant seems to have 
 rendered Athelstan, notwithstanding his 
 reputed illegitimacy, the public choice 
 upon the death of Edward the Elder. 
 Thus, too, the sons of Edmund I. were 
 postponed to their uncle Edred, and 
 again preferred to his issue. And happy 
 might it have been for England if this 
 exclusion of infants had always obtained. 
 But upon the death of Edgar, the royal 
 family wanted some prince of mature 
 years to prevent the crown from resting 
 upon the head of a child ; and hence the 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 365. Blackstone has laboured to 
 prove the same proposition ; but his knowledge of 
 English history was rather superficial. 
 
 t Chronicon Saxon., p. 99. Hume says that 
 Ethelwald, who attempted to raise an insurrection 
 against Edward the Elder, was son of Ethelbert. 
 The Saxon Chronicle only calls him the king's 
 cousin ; which he would be as the son of Ethelred, 
 Spelman, Vita Alfredi, Appendix. 
 According to the historian of Ramsey, a sort 
 of interregnum took place on Edgar's death ; his 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 321 
 
 minorities of Edward II. and Ethelred II 
 led to misfortunes which overwhelms 
 for a time both the house of Cerdic am 
 the English nation. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon monarchy, during it: 
 influence of ear li er period, seems to hav< 
 provincial suffered but little from that in 
 governors, subordination among the supe 
 rior nobility, which ended in dismember 
 ing the empire of Charlemagne. Such 
 kings as Alfred and Athelstan were no 
 likely to permit it. And the English 
 counties, each under its own alderman 
 were not of a size to encourage the usur- 
 pations of their governors. But when 
 the whole kingdom was subdued, there 
 arose unfortunately a fashion of intrust- 
 ing great provinces to the administration 
 of a single earl. Notwithstanding their 
 union, Mercia, Northumberland, and East 
 Anglia were regarded in some degree a 
 distinct parts of the monarchy. A differ- 
 ence of laws, though probably but slight, 
 kept up this separation. Alfred govern- 
 ed Mercia by the hands of a nobleman 
 who had married his daughter Ethelfleda ; 
 and that lady, after her husband's death, 
 held the reins with a masculine energy 
 till her own, when her brother Edward 
 took the province into his immediate 
 command.* But from the era of Edward 
 II. 's accession, the provincial governors 
 began to overpower the royal authority, 
 as they had done upon the continent. 
 England, under this prince, was not far 
 removed from the condition of France 
 under Charles the Bald. In the time of 
 Edward the Confessor, the whole king- 
 dom seems to have been divided among 
 five earls,f three of whom were Godwin 
 and his sons Harold and Tostig. It can- 
 not be wondered at that the royal line 
 was soon supplanted by the most power- 
 ful and popular of these leaders, a prince 
 well worthy to have founded a new dy- 
 nasty, if his eminent qualities had not 
 yielded to those of a still more illustrious 
 enemy. 
 
 There were but two denominations of 
 Distribution persons above the class of ser- 
 into Thanes vitude, Thanes and Ceorls ; the 
 and Ceoris. owners an( j the cultivators of 
 
 son's birth not being thought sufficient to give him 
 a clear right during infancy. 3 Gale, xv. Script., 
 p. 413. 
 
 * Chronicon Saxon. 
 
 t The word earl (eorl) meant originally a man 
 of noble birth, as opposed to the ceorl. It was not 
 a title of office till the eleventh century, when it 
 was used as synonymous to alderman, for a gov- 
 ernor of a county or province. After the conquest, 
 it superseded altogether the ancient title. Selden's 
 Titles of Honour, vol. iii., p. 638 (edit. Wilkins), 
 and Anglo-Saxon writings passim. 
 
 land, or rather, perhaps, as a more accu- 
 rate distinction, the gentry and the infe- 
 rior people. Among all the northern na* 
 tions, as is well known, the weregild, or 
 compensation for murder, was the stand- 
 ard measure of the gradations of society, 
 In the Anglo-Saxon laws we find two 
 ranks of freeholders ; the first, called 
 king's thanes, whose lives were valued 
 at 1200 shillings ; the second, of inferior 
 degree, whose composition was half that 
 sum.* That of a ceorl was 200 shillings. 
 The nature of this distinction between 
 royal and lesser thanes is very obscure ; 
 and I shall have something more to say 
 of it presently. However, the thanes in 
 general, or Anglo-Saxon gentry, must 
 have been very numerous. A law of Eth- 
 elred directs the sheriff to take twelve of 
 the chief thanes in every hundred as his 
 assessors on the bench of justice. f And 
 from Domesday Book we may collect 
 that they had formed a pretty large class, 
 at least in some counties, under Edward 
 the Confessor.J 
 
 The composition for the life of a ceorl 
 was, as has been said, 200 shil- condition of 
 lings. If this proportion to the ceo ^- 
 value of a thane points out the subordina- 
 tion of ranks, it certainly does not exhib- 
 it the lower freemen in a state of com- 
 Dlete abasement. The ceorl was not 
 Dound, as far as appears, to the land 
 which he cultivated ;$ he was occasion- 
 ally called upon to bear arms for the 
 public safety ;|| he was protected against 
 jersonal injuries, or trespasses on his 
 and ;^f he was capable of property, and 
 of the privileges which it conferred. If 
 le came to possess five hydes of land 
 or about 600 acres), with a church and 
 mansion of his own, he was entitled to 
 he name and rights of a thane.** I am, 
 lowever, inclined to suspect, that the 
 ceorl were sliding more and more towards 
 state of servitude before the conquest.ff 
 The natural tendency of such times of 
 
 * Wilkins, p. 40, 43, 64, 72, 101. 
 
 t Idem, p. 117. 
 
 j Domesday Book having been compiled by dif- 
 erent sets of commissioners, their language has 
 ometimes varied in describing the same class of 
 ersons. The liberi homines, of whom we find con- 
 inual mention in some counties, were perhaps not 
 ifferent from the thaini, who occur in other places. 
 But this subject is very obscure ; and a clear ap- 
 irehension of the classes of society mentioned in 
 )omesday seems at present unattainable. 
 
 Leges Alfredi, c. 33, in Wilkins. This text is 
 ot unequivocal ; and I confess that a law of Ina 
 c. 39) has rather a contrary appearance. 
 
 || Leges Inae, c. 51, ibid. 
 
 1T Leges Alfredi, c. 31, 35. 
 
 ** Leges Athelstani, ibid., p. 70, 71. 
 
 ft If the laws that bear the name of William are, 
 
 is generally supposed, those of his jpredecessor 
 
322 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VHf. 
 
 rapine, with the analogy of a similar 
 change in France, leads to this conjec- 
 ture. And as it was part of those singu- 
 lar regulations which were devised for 
 the preservation of internal peace, that 
 every man should be enrolled in some 
 tithing, and be dependant upon some 
 lord, it was not very easy for the ceorl 
 to exercise the privilege (if he possessed 
 it) of quitting the soil upon which he 
 lived. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, I doubt whether 
 it can be proved by any authority earlier 
 than that of Glanvil, whose treatise was 
 written about 1180, that the peasantry of 
 England were reduced to that extreme 
 debasement which our law-books call 
 viUanage, a condition which left them no 
 civil rights with respect to their lord. 
 For, by the laws of William the Conquer- 
 or, there was still a composition fixed 
 for the murder of a villein or ceorl, the 
 strongest proof of his being, as it was 
 called, law-worthy, and possessing a 
 rank, however subordinate, in political 
 society. And this composition was due 
 to his kindred, not to the lord.* Indeed, 
 it seems positively declared in another 
 passage, that the cultivators, though 
 bound to remain upon the land, were 
 only subject to certain services.! Again, 
 the treatise denominated the Laws of 
 Henry I., which, though not deserving 
 that appellation, must be considered as 
 a contemporary document, expressly 
 mentions the twyhinder or villein as a 
 freeman. | Nobody can doubt that the 
 villani and bordarii of Domesday Book, 
 who are always distinguished from the 
 serfs of the demesne, were the ceorls of 
 Anglo-Saxon law.fy And I presume that 
 the socmen, who so frequently occur in 
 that record, though far more in some 
 counties than in others, were ceorls more 
 fortunate than the rest, who by purchase 
 had acquired freeholds, or by prescrip- 
 tion and the indulgence of their lords had 
 obtained such a property in the outlands 
 allotted to them that they could not be 
 removed, and in many instances might 
 dispose of them at pleasure. They are 
 the root of a noble plant, the free soccage 
 tenants, or English yeomanry, whose in- 
 dependence has stamped with peculiar 
 features both our constitution and our na- 
 tional character. 
 
 Beneath the ceorls in political estima- 
 tion were the conquered natives of Brit- 
 Edward, they were already annexed to the soil, p. 
 225. 
 
 * Wilkins, p. 221. t Ibid., p. 225. 
 
 J Leges Henr. I., c. 70 and 76, in Wilkins. 
 
 Somner on Gavelkind, p. 74. 
 
 ain. In a war so long and so ob- British 
 stinately maintained as that of the nativea. 
 Britons against their invaders, it is natu- 
 ral to conclude, that in a great part of the 
 country the original inhabitants were al- 
 most extirpated, and that the remainder 
 were reduced into servitude. This, till 
 lately, has been* the concurrent opinion 
 of our antiquaries ; and with some quali- 
 fication, I do not see why it should not 
 still be received. In every kingdom of 
 the continent, which was formed by the 
 northern nations of the Roman empire, 
 the Latin language preserved its superi- 
 ority, and has much more been corrupted 
 through ignorance and want of a stand- 
 ard, than intermingled with their original 
 idiom. But our own language is, and 
 has been from the earliest times after 
 the Saxon conquest, essentially Teuton- 
 ic, and of the most obvious affinity to 
 those dialects which are spoken in Den- 
 mark and Lower Saxony. With such as 
 are extravagant enough to controvert so 
 evident a truth, it is idle to contend ; and 
 those who believe great part of our lan- 
 guage to be borrowed from the Welsh 
 may doubtless infer that great part of 
 our population is derived from the same 
 source. If we look through the subsist- 
 ing Anglo-Saxon records, there is not 
 very frequent mention of British subjects. 
 But some undoubtedly there were in a 
 state of freedom, and possessed of landed 
 state. A Welshman (that is, a Briton), 
 who held five hydes, was raised, like a 
 ceorl, to the dignity of thane.* In the 
 composition, however, for their lives, 
 and consequently in their rank in society, 
 they were inferior to the meanest Saxon 
 'reeman. The slaves, who were glaveg 
 frequently the objects of legisla- 
 ;ion, rather for the purpose of ascertain- 
 ng their punishments than of securing 
 their rights, may be presumed, at least 
 n early times, to have been part of the 
 conquered Britons. For though his own 
 crimes, or the tyranny of others, might 
 possibly reduce a Saxon ceorl to this con- 
 dition,! it i s inconceivable that the low- 
 st of those who won England with their 
 swords should in the establishment of the 
 new kingdoms have been left destitute 
 of personal liberty. 
 
 The great council by which an Anglo- 
 Saxon king was guided in all TheWitten- 
 ;he main acts of government agemot. 
 Dore the appellation of Witten agemot, or 
 ;he assembly of the wise men. All their 
 ,aws express the assent of this council ; 
 
 * Leges Inae, p. 18. Leg. Atheist., p. 71. 
 | Leges Inae, c. 24. 
 
PART L] 
 
 'ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 323 
 
 and there are instances where grants 
 made without its concurrence have been 
 revoked. It was composed of prelates 
 and abbots, of the aldermen of shires, 
 and, as it is generally expressed, of the 
 noble and wise men of the kingdom.* 
 Whether the lesser thanes, or inferior 
 proprietors of lands, were entitled to a 
 place in the national council, as they cer- 
 tainly were in the shiregemot, or county- 
 court, is not easily to be decided. Many 
 writers have concluded from a passage 
 in the History of Ely, that no one, how- 
 ever nobly born, could sit in the witten- 
 agemot, so late at least as the reign of 
 Edward the Confessor, unless he pos- 
 sessed forty hydes of land, or about five 
 thousand acres. f But the passage in 
 question does not unequivocally relate 
 to the wittenagemot ; and being vaguely 
 worded by an ignorant monk, who per- 
 haps had never gone beyond his fens, 
 ought not to be assumed as an incontro- 
 vertible testimony. Certainly so very 
 high a qualification cannot be supposed 
 to have been requisite in the kingdoms 
 of the Heptarchy ; nor do we find any 
 collateral evidence to confirm the hypoth- 
 esis. If, however, all the body of thanes 
 or freeholders were admissible to the 
 wittenagemot, it is unlikely that the priv- 
 ilege should have been fully exercised. 
 Very few, I believe, at present, imagine 
 that there was any representative system 
 in that age ; much less that the ceorls or 
 inferior freemen had the smallest share 
 in the deliberations of the national as- 
 sembly. Every argument which a spirit 
 of controversy once pressed into this 
 service, has long since been victoriously 
 refuted. 
 
 It has been justly remarked by Hume, 
 Judicial that among a people who lived in 
 power. S o simple a manner as these An- 
 glo-Saxons, the judicial power is always 
 of more consequence than the legislative. 
 The liberties of these Anglo-Saxon thanes 
 were chiefly secured, next to their swords 
 and their free spirits, by the inestimable 
 right of deciding civil and criminal suits 
 in their own county-court ; an institution 
 which, having survived the Conquest, and 
 contributed in no small degree to fix the 
 liberties of England upon a broad and 
 popular basis, by limiting the feudal aris- 
 tocracy, deserves attention in following 
 the history of the British constitution. 
 
 The division of the kingdom into coun- 
 
 * Leges Anglo-Saxon., in Wilkins, passim. 
 
 t Quoniam ille quadraginta hydarum terras do- 
 minium minimi obtineret, licet nobilis esset, inter 
 proceres tune numeran non potuit. 3 Gale, Scrip- 
 tores, p. 513. 
 
 X2 
 
 ties, and of these into hundreds Division 
 and decennaries, for the purpose JJJJ c h u u n n * 
 of administering justice, was not dmjs, and 
 peculiar to England. In the early tunings, 
 laws of France and Lombardy, frequent 
 mention is made of the hundred court, 
 and now and then of those petty village 
 magistrates, who in England were called 
 tithing-men. It has been usual to ascribe 
 the establishment of this system among 
 our Saxon ancestors to Alfred, upon the 
 authority of Ingulfus, a writer contem- 
 porary with the Conquest. But neither 
 the biographer of Alfred, Asserius, nor 
 the existing laws of that prince, bear tes- 
 timony to the fact, With respect indeed 
 to the division of counties, and their gov- 
 ernment by aldermen and sheriffs, it is 
 certain that both existed long before his 
 time ;* and the utmost that can be sup- 
 posed is that he might in some instances 
 have ascertained an unsettled boundary. 
 There does not seem to be equal evi- 
 dence as to the antiquity of the minor 
 divisions. Hundreds, I think, are first 
 mentioned in a law of Edgar, and ti- 
 things in one of Canute. f But as Alfred, 
 it must be remembered, was never mas- 
 ter of more than half the kingdom, the 
 complete distribution of England into 
 these districts cannot, upon any supposi- 
 tion, be referred to him. 
 
 There is, indeed, a circumstance ob- 
 servable in this division which seems to 
 indicate that it could not have taken place 
 at one time, nor upon one system ; I 
 mean, the extreme inequality of hundreds 
 in different parts of England. Whether 
 the name be conceived to refer to the 
 number of free families, or of landhold- 
 ers, or of petty vills, forming so many 
 associations of mutual assurance or frank- 
 pledge, one can hardly doubt that, when 
 the term was first applied, a hundred of 
 one or other of these were comprised, at 
 an average reckoning, within the district. 
 But it is impossible to reconcile the vary- 
 ing size of hundreds to any single hypoth- 
 esis. The county of Sussex contains 
 sixty-five; that of Dorset forty-three; 
 while Yorkshire has only twenty-six ; 
 and Lancashire but six. No difference of 
 population, though the south of England 
 was undoubtedly far the best peopled, 
 can be conceived to account for so pro- 
 digious a disparity. I know of no better 
 solution than that the divisions of the 
 
 * Counties, as well as the alderman who pre- 
 sided over them, are mentioned in the laws of Ina, 
 c. 36. 
 
 t Wilkins, p. 87, 136. The former, however, 
 refers to them as an ancient institution : quaeratur 
 centnriae conventus, sicut antea institutum erat. 
 
324 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 north, properly called wapentakes,* were 
 planned upon a different system, and ob- 
 tained the denomination of hundreds in- 
 correctly, after the union of all England 
 under a single sovereign. 
 
 Assuming, therefore, the name and par- 
 tition of hundreds to have originated in 
 the southern counties, it will rather, I 
 think, appear probable, that they contain- 
 ed only a hundred free families, inclu- 
 ding the ceorls as well as their landlords. 
 If we suppose none but the latter to have 
 been numbered, we should find six thou- 
 sand thanes in Kent, and six thousand 
 five hundred in Sussex ; a reckoning to- 
 tally inconsistent with any probable esti- 
 mate, f But though we have little direct 
 testimony as to the population of those 
 times, there is one passage which falls in 
 very sufficiently with the former suppo- 
 sition. Bede says that the kingdom of 
 the South Saxons, comprehending Sur- 
 rey as well as Sussex, contained seven 
 thousand families. The county of Sus- 
 sex alone is divided into sixty-five hun- 
 dreds, which comes at least close enough 
 to prove that free families, rather than 
 proprietors, were the subject of that nu- 
 meration. And this is the interpretation 
 of Du Cange and Muratori, as to the Cen- 
 tenae and Decaniae of their own ancient 
 laws. 
 
 I cannot but feel some doubt, notwith- 
 standing a passage in the laws ascribed 
 to Edward the Confessor,! whether the 
 tithing-man ever possessed any judicial 
 magistracy over his small district. He 
 was, more probably, little different from a 
 petty constable, as is now the case, I be- 
 lieve; wherever that denomination of of- 
 fice is preserved. The court of the hun- 
 dred, not held, as on the continent, by its 
 own centenarius, but by the sheriff of the 
 county, is frequently mentioned in the 
 County- later Anglo-Saxon laws. It was, 
 court, however, to the county- court that 
 an English freeman chiefly looked for the 
 maintenance of his civil rights. In this 
 assembly, held monthly, or at least more 
 than once in the year (for there seems 
 some ambiguity or perhaps fluctuation as 
 to this point), by the bishop and the earl, 
 or, in his absence, the sheriff, the oath of 
 allegiance was administered to all free- 
 men, breaches of the peace were inquired 
 
 * Leges Edwardi Confess., c. 33. 
 
 t It would be easy to mention particular hun- 
 dreds in these counties, so small as to render this 
 supposition quite ridiculous. 
 
 } Leges Edwardi Confess., p. 203. Nothing, as 
 far as I know, confirms this passage, which hardly 
 tallies with what the genuine Anglo-Saxon docu- 
 ments contain as to the judicial arrangements of 
 that period. 
 
 into, crimes were investigated, and claims 
 were determined. I assign all these func- 
 ions to the county-court upon the sup- 
 position that no other subsisted during the 
 Saxon times, and that the separation of 
 the sheriffs tourn for criminal jurisdic- 
 tion had not yet taken place, which, how- 
 ever, I cannot pretend to determine.* 
 
 A very ancient Saxon instrument, re- 
 cording a suit in the county-court suit in the 
 under the reign of Canute, has county- 
 been published by Hickes, and court - 
 may be deemed worthy of a literal transla- 
 ;ion in this place. " It is made known by 
 this writing, that in the shiregemot (coun- 
 ty-court) held at Agelnothes-stane (Ayls- 
 ton in Herefordshire), in the reign of Ca- 
 nute, there sat Athelstan the bishop, and 
 Ranig the alderman, and Edwin his son, 
 and Leofwin Wulfig's son ; and Thurkil 
 he White and Tofig came there on the 
 king's business ; and there were Bryning 
 he sheriff, and Athelweard of Frome, and 
 Leofwin of Frome, and Goodric of Stoke, 
 and all the thanes of Herefordshire. 
 Then came to the mote Edwin son of 
 Enneawne, and sued his mother for some 
 lands, called Weolintun and Cyrdeslea. 
 Then the bishop asked, who would an- 
 swer for his mother. Then answered 
 Thurkil the White, and said that he 
 would, if he knew the facts, which he 
 did not. Then were seen in the mote 
 three thanes, that belonged to Feligly 
 (Fawley, five miles from Aylston), Leof- 
 win of Frome, ^Egelwig the Red, and 
 Thinsig Staegthman ; and they went to 
 her, and inquired what she had to say 
 about the lands which her son claimed. 
 She said that she had no land which be- 
 longed to him, and fell into a noble pas- 
 sion against her son, and calling for Le- 
 ofleda her kinswoman, the wife of Thur- 
 kil, thus spake to her before them : ' This 
 is Leofleda my kinswoman, to whom I 
 give my lands, money, clothes, and what- 
 ever I possess after my life :' and this 
 said, she thus spake to the thanes : ' Be- 
 have like thanes, and declare my mes- 
 sage to all the good men in the mote, and 
 tell them to whom I have given my lands, 
 and all my possessions, and nothing to 
 my son ;' and bade them be witnesses to 
 this. And thus they did, rode to the 
 mote, and told all the good men what she 
 had enjoined them. Then Thurkil the 
 White addressed the mote, and requested 
 all the thanes to let his wife have the 
 lands which her kinswoman had given 
 her; and thus they did, and Thurkil 
 
 * This point is obscure ; but I do not perceive 
 that the Anglo-Saxon laws distinguish the civil 
 from the criminal tribunal. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 325 
 
 rode to the church of St. Ethelbert, with 
 the leave and witness of all the people, 
 and had this inserted in a book in the 
 church."* 
 
 It may be presumed from the appeal 
 made to the thanes present at the county- 
 court, and is confirmed by other ancient 
 authorities,! that all of them, and they 
 alone, to the exclusion of inferior free- 
 men, were the judges of civil controver- 
 sies. The latter indeed were called upon 
 to attend its meetings, or, in the language 
 of our present law, were suiters to the 
 court, and it was penal to be absent. 
 But this was on account of other duties, 
 the oath of allegiance which they were 
 to take, or the frank-pledges into which 
 they were to enter, not in order to exer- 
 cise any judicial power ; unless we con- 
 ceive that the disputes of the ceorls were 
 decided by judges of their own rank. It 
 is more important to remark the crude 
 state of legal process and inquiry which 
 this instrument denotes. Without any 
 regular method of instituting or conduct- 
 ing causes, the county-court seems to 
 have had nothing to recommend it but, 
 what indeed is no trifling matter, its se- 
 curity from corruption and tyranny ; and 
 in the practical jurisprudence of our 
 Saxon ancestors, even at the beginning 
 of the eleventh century, we perceive no 
 advance of civility and skill from the 
 state of their own savage progenitors on 
 the banks of the Elbe. No appeal could 
 be made to the royal tribunal, unless jus- 
 tice was denied in the county- court. J 
 This was the great constitutional judica- 
 ture in all questions of civil right. In 
 another instrument, published by Hickes, 
 of the age of Ethelred II., the tenant of 
 lands which were claimed in the king's 
 court refused to submit to the decree of 
 that tribunal, without a regular trial in 
 the county; which was accordingly grant- 
 ed.^ There were, however, royal judges, 
 
 * Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, p. 4, in The- 
 saurus Antiquitatum Septentrion, vol. iii. Before 
 the conquest, says Gurdon (on Courts-Baron, p. 
 589), grants were enrolled in the shire-book in pub- 
 lic shire mote, after proclamation made for any to 
 come in that could claim the lands conveyed ; and 
 this was as irreversible as the modern fine with 
 proclamations or recovery. This may be so ; but 
 the county-court has at least long ceased to be 
 a court of record; and one would ask for proof 
 of the assertion. The book kept in the church of 
 St. Ethelbert, wherein Thurkil is said to have in- 
 Berted the proceedings of the county-court, may or 
 may not have been a public record. 
 
 t Id., p. 3. Leges Henr. Primi, c. 29. 
 
 i Leges Eadgari, p. 77 ; Canuti, p. 136 ; Henrici 
 Primi, c. 34. I quote the latter freely as Anglo- 
 Saxon, though posterior to the conquest; then- 
 spirit being perfectly of the former period. 
 
 () Dissertatio Epistolaris, p. 5. 
 
 who, either by way of appeal from the 
 lower courts, or in excepted cases, form- 
 ed a paramount judicature ; but how their 
 court was composed under the Anglo- 
 Saxon sovereigns I do not pretend to 
 assert.* 
 
 It had been a prevailing opinion, that 
 trial by jury may be referred to the Trial by 
 Anglo-Saxon age, and common Jury- 
 tradition has ascribed it to the wisdom 
 of Alfred. In such an historical deduc- 
 tion of the English government as I have 
 attempted, an institution so peculiarly 
 characteristic deserves every attention 
 to its origin ; and I shall therefore pro- 
 duce the evidence which has been sup- 
 posed to bear upon this most eminent 
 part of our judicial system. The first 
 text of the Saxon laws which may ap- 
 pear to have such a meaning is in those 
 of Alfred. " If any one accuse a king's 
 thane of homicide, if he dare to purge 
 himself (ladian), let him do it along with 
 twelve king's thanes. If any one accuse 
 a thane of less rank (Iressa maga) than a 
 king's thane, let him purge himself along 
 with eleven of his equals, and one king's 
 thane. "f This law, which Nicholson 
 contends can mean nothing but trial by 
 jury, has been referred by Hickes to that 
 ancient usage of compurgation, where 
 the accused sustained his own oath by 
 those of a number of his friends, who 
 pledged their knowledge, or at least their 
 belief of his innocence. J 
 
 In the canons of the Northumbrian 
 clergy, we read as follows : " If a king's 
 thane deny this (the practice of heathen 
 superstitions), let twelve be appointed 
 for him, and let him take twelve of his 
 kindred (or equals, maga) and twelve 
 British strangers ; and if he fail, then let 
 him pay for his breach of law twelve half- 
 marcs : If a landholder (or lesser thane) 
 deny the charge, let as many of his equals 
 and as many strangers be taken as for a 
 royal thane ; and if he fail let him pay 
 six half-marcs : If a ceorl deny it, let as 
 many of his equals and as many stran- 
 gers be taken for him as for the others ; 
 
 * Madox, History of the Exchequer, p. 65, will 
 not admit the existence of any court analogous to 
 the Curia Regis before the conquest ; all pleas be- 
 ing determined in the county. There are, how- 
 ever, several instances of decisions before the king; 
 and in some cases it seems that the wittenagemot 
 had a judicial authority. Leges Canuti, p. 135, 
 136. Hist. Eliensis, p. 469. Chron. Sax., p. 169. 
 In the Leges Henr. I., c. 10, the limits of the royal 
 and local jurisdictions are defined as to criminal 
 matters, and seem to have been little changed since 
 the reign of Canute, p. 135. 
 
 t Leges Alfredi, p. 47. 
 
 t Nicholson, Prefatio ad Leges Anglo-Saxon. 
 Wilkinsii, p. 10. Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris. 
 
 
326 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 and if he fail, let him pay twelve orae for 
 his breach of law."* It is difficult at first 
 sight to imagine that these thirty-six so 
 selected were merely compurgators, since 
 it seems absurd that the judge should 
 name indifferent persons, who, without 
 inquiry, were to make oath of a party's 
 innocence. Some have therefore con- 
 ceived, that in this and other instances 
 where compurgators are mentioned, they 
 were virtually jurors, who, before attest- 
 ing the facts, were to inform their con- 
 sciences by investigating them. There 
 are, however, passages in the Saxon 
 laws nearly parallel to that just quoted, 
 which seem incompatible with this in- 
 terpretation. Thus, by a law of Athel- 
 stan, if any one claimed a stray ox as his 
 own, five of his neighbours were to be 
 assigned, of whom one was to maintain 
 the claimant's oath.f Perhaps the prin- 
 ciple of these regulations, and indeed of 
 the whole law of compurgation, is to be 
 found in that stress laid upon general 
 character which pervades the Anglo- 
 Saxon jurisprudence. A man of ill rep- 
 utation was compelled to undergo a triple 
 ordeal, in cases where a single one suffi- 
 ced for persons of credit; a provision 
 rather inconsistent with the trust in a 
 miraculous interposition of Providence 
 which was the basis of that superstition. 
 And the law of frank-pledge proceeded 
 upon the maxim that the best guarantee 
 of every man's obedience to the govern- 
 ment was to be sought in the confidence 
 of his neighbours. Hence, while some 
 compurgators were to be chosen by the 
 sheriff, to avoid partiality and collusion, 
 it was still intended that they should be 
 residents of the vicinage, witnesses of 
 the defendant's previous life, and compe- 
 tent to estimate the probability of his ex- 
 culpatory oath. For the British stran- 
 gers, in the canon quoted above, were 
 certainly the original natives, more inter- 
 mingled with their conquerors, probably, 
 in the provinces north of the Humber 
 than elsewhere, and still denominated 
 strangers, as the distinction of races was 
 not done away. 
 
 If in this instance we do not feel our- 
 selves warranted to infer the existence 
 of trial by jury, still less shall we find 
 even an analogy to it in an article of the 
 treaty between England and Wales du- 
 ring the reign of Ethelred II. " Twelve 
 persons skilled in the law (lahmen), six 
 English and six Welsh, shall instruct 
 the natives of each country, on pain of 
 
 * Wilkins, p. 100. 
 
 f Leges Athelstani, p. 58. 
 
 forfeiting their possessions, if, except 
 through ignorance, they give false infor- 
 mation."* This is obviously but a regu- 
 lation intended to settle disputes among 
 the Welsh and English, to which their 
 ignorance of each other's customs might 
 give rise. 
 
 By a law of the same prince, a court 
 was to be held in every wapentake, 
 where the sheriff and twelve principal 
 thanes should swear that they would nei- 
 ther acquit any criminal, nor convict any 
 innocent person. f It seems more prob- 
 able that these thanes were permanent 
 assessors to the sheriff, like the scabini 
 so frequently mentioned in the early 
 laws of France and Italy, than jurors in- 
 discriminately selected. This passage, 
 however, is stronger than those which 
 have been already adduced ; and it may 
 be thought, perhaps with justice, that at 
 least the seeds of our present form of 
 trial are discoverable in it. In the his- 
 tory of Ely, we twice read of pleas held 
 before twenty-four judges in the court of 
 Cambridge ; which seems to have been 
 formed out of several neighbouring hun- 
 dreds.! 
 
 But the nearest approach to a regular 
 jury which has been preserved in our 
 scanty memorials of the Anglo-Saxon 
 age, occurs in the history of the monas- 
 tery of Ramsey. A controversy relating 
 to lands between that society and a cer- 
 tain nobleman was brought into the coun- 
 ty-court; when each party was heard 
 in his own behalf. After this commence- 
 ment, on account probably of the length 
 and difficulty of the investigation, it was 
 referred by the court to thirty-six thanes, 
 equally chosen by both sides. $ And here 
 we begin to perceive the manner in 
 which those tumultuous assemblies, the 
 mixed body of freeholders in their coun- 
 ty-court, slid gradually into a more 
 steady and more diligent tribunal. But 
 this was not the work of a single age. 
 In the Conqueror's reign we find a pro- 
 ceeding very similar to the case of Ram- 
 sey, in which the suit has been commen- 
 ced in the county-court, before it was 
 found expedient to remit it to a select 
 body of freeholders. In the reign of 
 William Rufus, and down to that of Hen- 
 ry II., when the trial of writs of right by 
 the grand assize was introduced, Hickes 
 has discovered other instances of the ori- 
 ginal usage. || The language of Domes- 
 
 * Leges Ethelredi, p. 125. f P. 117. 
 
 J Hist. Eliensis, in Gale's Scriptores, t. iii., p. 
 471 and 478. 
 
 Hist. Ramsey, id., p. 415. 
 
 || Hickesii Dissertatio Epistolaris, p. 33, 38. 
 
 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 327 
 
 day Book lends some confirmation to 
 its existence at the time of that survey ; 
 and even our common legal expression 
 of trial by the country seems to be deri- 
 ved from a period when the form was lit- 
 erally popular. 
 
 In comparing the various passages 
 which I have quoted, it is impossible not 
 to be struck with the preference given to 
 twelve, or some multiple of it, in fixing 
 the number either of judges or compur- 
 gators. This was not peculiar to Eng- 
 land. Spelman has produced several in- 
 stances of it in the early German laws. 
 And that number seems to have been re- 
 garded with equal veneration in Scandi- 
 navia.* It is very immaterial from what 
 caprice or superstition this predilection 
 arose. But its general prevalence shows 
 that, in searching for the origin of trial 
 by jury, we cannot rely for a moment 
 upon any analogy which the mere num- 
 ber affords. I am induced to make this 
 observation, because some of the pas- 
 sages which have been alleged by emi- 
 nent men for the purpose of establishing 
 the existence of that institution before 
 the conquest, seem to have little else to 
 support them. 
 
 There is certainly no part of the Anglo- 
 Law of Saxon polity which has attracted 
 frank- so much the notice of modern 
 pledge. t j mes as the j aw O f frank-pledge, 
 or mutual responsibility of the members 
 of a tithing for each other's abiding the 
 course of justice. This, like the distribu- 
 tion of hundreds and tithings themselves, 
 and like trial by jury, has been generally 
 attributed to Alfred ; and of this, I sus- 
 pect, we must also deprive him. It is 
 not surprising that the great services of 
 Alfred to his people in peace and in war 
 should have led posterity to ascribe every 
 institution, of which the beginning was 
 obscure, to his contrivance, till his fame 
 has become almost as fabulous in legisla- 
 tion as that of Arthur in arms. The Eng- 
 lish nation redeemed from servitude, and 
 their name from extinction ; the lamp of 
 learning refreshed, when scarce a glim- 
 mer was visible ; the watchful observance 
 of justice and public order; these are the 
 genuine praises of Alfred, and entitle him 
 to the rank he has always held in men's 
 esteem, as the best and greatest of Eng- 
 lish kings. But of his legislation there is 
 little that can be asserted with sufficient 
 evidence ; the laws of his time that re- 
 main are neither numerous nor particu- 
 larly interesting ; and a loose report of 
 
 * Spelman's Glossary, voc. Jurata. Du Cange, 
 voc. Nembda. Edinb. Review, vol. xxxi., p. 115: 
 a most learned and elaborate essay. 
 
 late writers is not sufficient to prove that 
 he compiled a dom-boc, or general code 
 for the government of his kingdom. 
 
 An ingenious and philosophical writer 
 has endeavoured to found the law of 
 frank-pledge upon one of those general 
 principles to which he always loves to 
 recur. " If we look upon a tithing," he 
 says, " as regularly composed of ten fam- 
 ilies, this branch of its police will appear 
 in the highest degree artificial and sin- 
 gular ; but if we consider that society as 
 of the same extent with a town or vil- 
 lage, we shall find that such a regulation 
 is conformable to the general usage of 
 barbarous nations, and is founded upon 
 their common notions of justice."* A 
 variety of instances are then brought for- 
 ward, drawn from the customs of almost 
 every part of the world, wherein the in- 
 habitants of a district have been made 
 answerable for crimes and injuries impu- 
 ted to one of them. But none of these 
 fully resemble the Saxon institution of 
 which we are treating. They relate ei- 
 ther to the right of reprisals, exercised 
 with respect to the subjects of foreign 
 countries, or to the indemnification ex- 
 acted from the district, as in our modern 
 statutes, which give an action in certain 
 cases of felony against the hundred, for 
 crimes which its internal police was sup- 
 posed capable of preventing. In the Irish 
 custom, indeed, which bound the head of 
 a sept to bring forward every one of his 
 kindred who should be charged with any 
 heinous crime, we certainly perceive a 
 strong analogy to the Saxon law, not as 
 it latterly subsisted, but under one of its 
 prior modifications. For I think that 
 something of a gradual progression may 
 be traced to the history of this famous 
 police, by following the indications af- 
 forded by those laws through which alone 
 we become acquainted with its exist- 
 ence. 
 
 The Saxons brought with them from 
 their original forests at least as much 
 roughness as any of the nations which 
 overturned the Roman empire ; and their 
 long struggle with the Britons could not 
 contribute to polish their manners. The 
 royal authority was weak ; and little had 
 been learned of that regular system of 
 government which the Franks and Lom- 
 bards acquired from the provincial Ro- 
 mans, among whom they were mingled. 
 No people were so much addicted to rob- 
 bery, to riotous frays, and to feuds ari- 
 sing out of family revenge, as the Anglo- 
 
 * Millar on the English Government, vol. i., p. 
 189. 
 
328 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Saxons. Their statutes are filled with 
 complaints that the public peace was 
 openly violated, and with penalties which 
 seem, by their repetition, to have been 
 disregarded. The vengeance taken by 
 the kindred of a murdered man was a sa- 
 cred right which no law ventured to for- 
 bid, though it was limited by those which 
 established a composition, and by those 
 which protected the family of the mur- 
 derer from their resentment. Even the 
 author of the laws ascribed to the Con- 
 fessor speaks of this family warfare, 
 where the composition had not been paid, 
 as perfectly lawful.* But the law of com- 
 position tended probably to increase the 
 number of crimes. Though the sums 
 imposed were sometimes heavy, men 
 paid them with the help of their relations, 
 or entered into voluntary associations, 
 the purposes whereof might often be 
 laudable, but which were certainly sus- 
 ceptible of this kind of abuse. And many 
 led a life of rapine, forming large parties 
 of ruffians, who committed murder and 
 robbery with little dread of punishment. 
 
 Against this disorderly condition of so- 
 ciety, the wisdom of our English kings, 
 with the assistance of their great coun- 
 cils, was employed in devising remedies, 
 which ultimately grew up into a peculiar 
 system. No man could leave the shire 
 to which he belonged without the per- 
 mission of its alderman. f No man could 
 be without a lord, on whom he depended ; 
 though he might quit his present patron, 
 it was under the condition of engaging 
 himself to another. If he failed in this, 
 his kindred were bound to present him in 
 the county-court, and to name a lord for 
 him themselves. Unless this were done, 
 he might be seized by any one who met 
 him as a robber. J Hence, notwithstand- 
 ing the personal liberty of the peasants, 
 it was not very practicable for one of 
 them to quit his place of residence. A 
 stranger guest could not be received 
 more than two nights as such; on the 
 third the host became responsible for his 
 inmate's conduct.^ 
 
 The peculiar system of frank-pledges 
 seems to have passed through the follow- 
 ing very gradual stages. At first an ac- 
 cused person was obliged to find bail]| for 
 
 * Parentibus occisi fiat emendatio, vel guerra 
 eorum portetur. Wilkins, p. 1 99. This, like many 
 other parts of that spurious treatise, appears to 
 have been taken from some older laws, or at least 
 traditions. I do not conceive that this private re 
 Tenge was tolerated by law after the conquest. 
 
 t Leges Alfredi, c. 33. 
 
 $ Leges Athelstani, p. 56. 
 
 4 Leges Edwardi Confess., p. 202. 
 
 il Leges Lotharii regis Cantii], p. 8. 
 
 standing his trial. At a subsequent pe- 
 riod his relations were called upon to 
 become sureties for payment of the com- 
 position and other fines to which he was 
 liable.* They were even subject to be 
 imprisoned until payment was made, and 
 this imprisonment was commutable for a 
 ertain sum of money. The next stage 
 was to make persons already convicted, 
 or of suspicious repute, give sureties for 
 heir future behaviour.f It is not till the 
 reign of Edgar that we find the first gen- 
 ral law, which places every man in the 
 condition of the guilty or suspected, and 
 compels him to find a surety, who shall 
 be responsible for his appearance when 
 judicially summoned. | This is perpetu- 
 ally repeated and enforced in later stat- 
 ites, during his reign and that of Ethelred. 
 Finally, the laws of Canute declare the 
 necessity of belonging to some hundred 
 and tithing, as well as of providing sure- 
 ties ; and it may, perhaps, be inferred, 
 ;hat the custom of rendering every mem- 
 ber of a tithing answerable for the ap- 
 pearance of all the rest, as it existed 
 after the conquest, is as old as the reign 
 of this Danish monarch. 
 
 It is by no means an accurate notion 
 which the writer to whom I have already 
 adverted has conceived, that " the mem- 
 bers of every tithing were responsible 
 for the conduct of one another ; and that 
 the society, or their leader, might be 
 prosecuted and compelled to make repa- 
 ration for an injury committed by any in- 
 dividual." Upon this false apprehension 
 of the nature of frank-pledges the whole 
 of his analogical reasoning is founded. 
 It is indeed an error very current in pop- 
 ular treatises, and which might plead 
 the authority of some whose professional 
 learning should have saved them from so 
 obvious a misstatement. But, in fact, the 
 members of a tithing were no more than 
 perpetual bail for each other. " The 
 greatest security of the public order (says 
 the laws ascribed to the Confessor), is 
 that every man must bind himself to one 
 of those societies which the English in 
 general call freeborgs, and the people of 
 Yorkshire ten men's tale."|| This con- 
 sisted in the responsibility of ten men, 
 each for the other, throughout every vil- 
 lage in the kingdom ; so that if one of 
 the ten committed any fault, the nine 
 should produce him in justice ; where he 
 should make reparation by his own prop- 
 
 * Leges Edwardi Senioris, p. 53. 
 
 f Leges Athelstani, p. 57, c, 6, 7, 8. 
 
 j Leges Eadgari, p. 78. 
 
 6 Leges Canuti, p. 137, 
 
 II Leges Edwardi, in Wilkins, p. 20L 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 329 
 
 erty or by personal punishment. If he 
 fled from justice, a mode was provided, 
 according to which the tithing might 
 clear themselves from participation in 
 his crime or escape ; in default of such 
 exculpation, and the malefactor's estate 
 proving deficient, they were compelled to 
 make good the penalty. And it is equal- 
 ly manifest from every other passage in 
 which mention is made of this ancient in- 
 stitution, that the obligation of the tithing 
 was merely that of permanent bail, re- 
 sponsible only indirectly for the good be- 
 haviour of their members. 
 
 Every freeman above the age of twelve 
 years was required to be enrolled in 
 some tithing.* In order to enforce this 
 essential part of police, the courts of the 
 tourn and leet were erected, or rather, 
 perhaps, separated from that of the coun- 
 ty. The periodical meetings of these, 
 whose duty it was to inquire into the 
 state of tithings, whence they were call- 
 ed the view of frank-pledge, are regula- 
 ted in Magna Charta. But this custom, 
 which seems to have been in full vigour 
 when Bracton wrote, and is enforced by 
 ' a statute of Edward II., gradually died 
 away in succeeding times. f According 
 to the laws ascribed to the Confessor, 
 which are perhaps of insufficient author- 
 ity to fix the existence of any usage be- 
 fore the conquest, lords, who possessed 
 a baronial jurisdiction, were permitted to 
 keep their military tenants and the ser- 
 vants of their household under their own 
 peculiar frank-pledge. ;{; Nor was any 
 freeholder, in the age of Bracton, bound 
 to be enrolled in a tithing. 
 It remains only, before we conclude 
 this sketch of the Anglo-Saxon 
 nures wheth- system, to consider the once 
 er known be- famous question respecting 
 qu r e e s t the 0n " the establishment of feudal te- 
 nures in England before the 
 conquest. The position asserted by Sir 
 Henry Spelman in his Glossary, that 
 lands were not held feudally before that 
 period, having been denied by the Irish 
 judges in the great case of tenures, he 
 was compelled to draw up his treatise on 
 feuds, in which it is more fully maintain- 
 ed. Several other writers, especially 
 
 * Leges Canutt, p. 136. 
 
 f Stat. 18 E. II. Traces of the actual view of 
 frank-pledge appear in Cornwall as late as the 10th 
 of Henry VI., Rot. Parliam., vol. iv., p. 403. And 
 indeed Selden tells us (Janus Anglorum, t. ii., p. 
 993), that it was not quite obsolete in his time. 
 The form may, for aught I know, be kept up in 
 some parts of England at this day. For some rea- 
 son which I cannot explain, the distribution by 
 tens was changed into one by dozens. Britton, c. 
 29, and Stat. 18 E. II, t P. 202. 
 
 Hickes, Madox, and Sir Martin Wright, 
 have taken th same side. But names 
 equally respectable might be thrown into 
 the opposite scale ; and I think the pre- 
 vailing bias of modern antiquaries is in 
 favour of at least a modified affirmative 
 as to this question. 
 
 Lands are commonly supposed to have 
 been divided among the Anglo-Saxons 
 into bocland and folkland. The former 
 was held in full propriety, and might be 
 conveyed by boc or written grant; the 
 latter was occupied by the common peo- 
 ple, yielding rent or other service, and 
 perhaps without any estate in the land, 
 but at the pleasure of the owner. These 
 two species of tenure might be compared 
 to freehold and copyhold, if the latter had 
 retained its original dependance upon the 
 will of the lord.* Bocland was devisable 
 by will ; it was equally shared among the 
 children ; it was capable of being entailed 
 by the person under whose grant it was 
 originally taken ; and, in case of a treach- 
 erous or cowardly desertion from the 
 army, it was forfeited to the crown.f 
 
 It is an improbable, and even extrava- 
 gant supposition, that all these hereditary 
 estates of the Anglo-Saxon freeholders 
 were originally parcels of the royal de- 
 mesne, and consequently that the king 
 was once the sole proprietor in his king- 
 dom. Whatever partitions were made 
 upon the conquest of a British province, 
 we may be sure that the shares of the 
 army were coeval with those of the gen- 
 eral. The great mass of Saxon property 
 could not have been held by actual bene- 
 ficiary grants from the crown. However, 
 the royal demesnes were undoubtedly 
 very extensive. They continued to be 
 so even in the time of the Confessor, 
 after the donations of his predecessors. 
 And several instruments granting lands 
 to individuals, besides those in favour of 
 the church, are extant. These are gen- 
 erally couched in that style of full and 
 unconditional conveyance, which is ob- 
 servable in all such charters of the same 
 
 * This supposition may plead the great authori- 
 ties of Somner and Lye, the Anglo-Saxon lexicog- 
 raphers, and appears to me far more probable than 
 the theory of Sir John Dalrymple, in his Essay on 
 Feudal Property, or that of the author of a dis- 
 course on the Bocland and Folkland of the Saxons, 
 1775, whose name, I think, was Ibbetson. The 
 first of these supposes bocland to have been feudal, 
 and folkland allodial ; the second most strangely 
 takes folkland for feudal. I cannot satisfy myself 
 whether thainland and reveland, which occur 
 sometimes in Domesday Book, merely correspond 
 with the other two denominations. 
 
 t Wilkins, p. 43, 145. The latter law is copied 
 from one of Charlemagne's Capitularies. Baluze, 
 p. 767. 
 
330 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 age upon the continent. Some excep- 
 tions, however, occur; the lands be- 
 queathed by Alfred to certain of his no- 
 bles were to return to his family in de- 
 fault of male heirs ; and Hickes is of 
 opinion that the royal consent, which 
 seems to have been required for the tes- 
 tamentary disposition of some estates, 
 was necessary on account of their bene- 
 ficiary tenure.* 
 
 All the freehold lands of England, ex- 
 cept some of those belonging to the 
 church, were subject to three great public 
 burdens; military service in the king's 
 expeditions, or at least in defensive war,f 
 the repair of bridges, and that of royal 
 fortresses. These obligations, and espe- 
 cially the first, have been sometimes 
 thought to denote a feudal tenure. There 
 is, however, a confusion into which we 
 may fall by not sufficiently discriminating 
 the rights of a king as chief lord of his 
 vassals, and as sovereign of his subjects. 
 In every country, the supreme power is 
 entitled to use the arm of each citizen 
 in the public defence. The usage of all 
 nations agrees with common reason in 
 establishing this great principle. There 
 is nothing, therefore, peculiarly feudal in 
 this military service of landholders; it 
 was due from the allodial proprietors 
 upon the continent ; it was derived from 
 their German ancestors ; it had been fixed, 
 probably, by the legislatures of the Hep- 
 tarchy upon the first settlement in Brit- 
 ain. 
 
 It is material, however, to observe, that 
 a thane forfeited his hereditary freehold 
 by misconduct in battle ; a penalty more 
 severe than was inflicted upon allodial pro- 
 prietors on the continent. We even find 
 in the earliest Saxon laws, that the sith- 
 cundman, who seems to have correspond- 
 ed to the inferior thane of later times, for- 
 feited his land by neglect of attendance 
 in war ; for which an allodialist in France 
 would only have paid his heribannum, or 
 penalty. J Nevertheless, as the policy of 
 different states may enforce the duties 
 of subjects by more or less severe sanc- 
 tions, I do not know that a law of for- 
 feiture in such cases is to be considered 
 as positively implying a feudal tenure. 
 
 But a much stronger presumption is 
 afforded by passages that indicate a mu- 
 
 * Dissertatio Epistolaris, p. 60. 
 
 f This duty is by some expressed rata expedi- 
 tio ; by others, hostis propulsio, which seems to 
 make no small difference. But, unfortunately, 
 most of the military service which an Anglo-Saxon 
 freeholder had to render was of the latter kind. 
 
 J Leges Inae, p. 23. Du Cange, voc. Heribannum. 
 By the laws of Canute, p. 135, a fine only was im- 
 posed for this offence. 
 
 tual relation of lord and vassal among the 
 free proprietors. The most powerful sub- 
 jects have not a natural right to the ser- 
 vice of other freemen. But in the laws 
 enacted during the Heptarchy, we find 
 it hinted that the sithcundman, or petty 
 gentleman, might be dependant on a su- 
 perior lord.* This is more distinctly ex- 
 pressed in some ecclesiastical canons, 
 apparently of the tenth century, which 
 distinguish the king's thane from the 
 landholder, who depended upon a lord.f 
 Other proofs of this might be brought 
 from the Anglo-Saxon laws.J It is not, 
 however, sufficient to prove a mutual re- 
 lation between the higher and lower or- 
 der of gentry, in order to establish the 
 existence of feudal tenures. For this re- 
 lation was often personal, as I have men- 
 tioned more fully in another place, and 
 bore the name of commendation. And 
 no nation was so rigorous as the English 
 in compelling every man, from the king's 
 thane to the ceorl, to place himself under 
 a lawful superior. Hence the question 
 is not to be hastily decided on the credit 
 of -a few passages that express this gra- 
 dation of dependance ; feudal vassalage, 
 the object of our inquiry, being of a real, 
 not a personal nature, and resulting entire- 
 ly from the tenure of particular lands. But 
 it is not unlikely that the personal rela- 
 tion of client, if I may use that word, 
 might in a multitude of cases be changed 
 into that of vassal. And certainly many 
 of the motives which operated in France 
 to produce a very general commutation 
 of allodial into feudal tenure might have 
 a similar influence in England, where the 
 disorderly condition of society made it 
 the interest of every man to obtain the 
 protection of some potent lord. 
 
 The word thane corresponds in its de- 
 rivation to vassal ; and the latter term is 
 used by Asserius, the contemporary bi- 
 ographer of Alfred, in speaking of the 
 nobles of that prince. In their attend- 
 ance, too, upon the royal court, and the 
 fidelity which was expected from them, 
 the king's thanes seem exactly to have 
 resembled that class of followers who, 
 under different appellations, were the 
 guards as well as courtiers of the Frank 
 and Lombard sovereigns. But I have 
 remarked that the word thane is not ap- 
 
 * Leges Inas, p. 10, 23. f Wilkins, p. 101. 
 
 t P. 71, 144, 145. 
 
 Alfredus cum paucis suis nobilibus, et etiam 
 cumquibusdam militibus et Vassallis, p. 166. No- 
 biles Vassalli Sumertunensis pagi, p. 167. Yet 
 Hickes objects to the authenticity of a charter as- 
 cribed to Edgar, because it contains the word Vas- 
 sallus, " quam & Nortmannis Angli habuerunt." 
 Dissertatio Epistol., p. 7. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 331 
 
 plied to the whole body of gentry in the 
 more ancient laws, where the word eorl 
 is opposed to the ceorl or roturier, and 
 that of sithcundman* to the royal thane. 
 It would be too much to infer from the 
 extension of this latter word to a large 
 class of persons, that we should interpret 
 it with a close attention to etymology, a 
 very uncertain guide in almost all inves- 
 tigations. 
 
 For the age immediately preceding the 
 Norman invasion, we cannot have re- 
 course to a better authority than Domes- 
 day Book. That incomparable record 
 contains the names of every tenant, and 
 the conditions of his tenure, under the 
 Confessor, as well as the time of its com- 
 pilation ; and seems to give little coun- 
 tenance to the notion that a radical 
 change in the system of our laws had 
 been effected during the interval. In al- 
 most every page, we meet with tenants 
 either of the crown, or of other lords, 
 denominated thanes, freeholders (liberi 
 homines) or soccagers (socmanni) . Some 
 of these, it is stated, might sell their 
 lands to whom they pleased ; others were 
 restricted from alienation. Some, as it is 
 expressed, might go with their lands 
 whither they would ; by which I under- 
 stand the right of commending themselves 
 to any patron of their choice. These, 
 of course, could not be feudal tenants in 
 any proper notion of that term. Others 
 could not depart from the lord whom 
 they served; not certainly that they 
 were personally bound to the soil, but so 
 long as they retained it, the seigniory of 
 the superior could not be defeated. f But 
 
 * Wilkins, p. 3, 7, 23, &c. This is an obscure 
 word, occurring only, I believe, during the Hep- 
 tarchy. Wilkins translates it, praepositus paganus, 
 which gives a wrong idea. But gesith, which is 
 plainly the same word, is used in Alfred's transla- 
 tion of Bede for a gentleman or nobleman. Where 
 Bede uses comes, the Saxon is always gesith or 
 gesithman ; where princeps or dux occurs, the ver- 
 sion is ealdorman. Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 
 643. 
 
 t It sometimes weakens a proposition which is 
 capable of innumerable proofs to take a very few 
 at random : yet the following casual specimens will 
 illustrate the common language of Domesday Book. 
 
 Haec tria maneria tenuit Ulveva tempore regis 
 Edwardi et potuit ire cum terra quo volebat, p. 85. 
 
 Toti emit earn T. R. E. (temp, regis Edwardi) 
 de ecclesia Malmsburiensi ad aetatem trium homi- 
 nuin ; et infra hunc terminum poterat ire cum ea 
 ad quern vellet dominum, p. 72. 
 
 Tres Angli tenuerunt Darneford T. R. E. et non 
 poterant ab ecclesia separari. Duo ex iis redde- 
 bant v solidos, et tertius serviebat sicut Thainus, 
 p. 68. 
 
 Has terras qui tenuerunt T. R. E. quo voluerunt 
 ire poterunt, praeter unum Seric vocatum, qui in 
 Ragendal tenuit iii carucatas terrae ; sed non poterat 
 cum e& alicubi recedere, p. 235. 
 
 I am not aware that military service is 
 specified in any instance to be due from 
 one of these tenants ; though it is difficult 
 to speak as to a negative proposition of 
 this kind with any confidence. 
 
 No direct evidence appears as to the 
 ceremony of homage or the oath of feal- 
 ty before the conquest. The feudal ex- 
 action of aid in certain prescribed cases 
 seems to have been unknown. Still less 
 could those of wardship and marriage 
 prevail, which were no parts of the great 
 feudal system, but introduced, and per- 
 haps invented, by our rapacious Norman 
 tyrants. The English lawyers, through 
 an imperfect acquaintance with the his- 
 tory of feuds upon the continent, have 
 treated these unjust innovations as if they 
 had formed essential parts of the system, 
 and sprung naturally from the relation 
 between lord and vassal. And, with ref- 
 erence to the present question, Sir Hen- 
 ry Spelman has certainly laid too much 
 stress upon them in concluding that feu- 
 dal tenures did not exist among the An- 
 glo-Saxons, because their lands were not 
 in ward, nor their persons sold in mar- 
 riage. But I cannot equally concur with 
 this eminent person in denying the ex- 
 istence of reliefs during the same period. 
 If the heriot, which is first mentioned in 
 the time of Edgar* (though it may prob- 
 ably have been an established custom 
 long before), were not identical with 
 the relief, it bore at least a very strong 
 analogy to it. A charter of Ethelred's 
 interprets one word by the other. f In 
 the laws of William, which re-enact 
 those of Canute concerning heriots, the 
 term relief is employed as synonymous. | 
 Though the heriot was in later times 
 paid in chattels, the relief in money, it is 
 equally true that originally the law fixed 
 a sum of money in certain cases for the 
 heriot, and a chattel for the relief. And 
 the most plausible distinction alleged by 
 Spelman, that the heriot is by law due 
 from the personal estate, but the relief 
 from the heir, seems hardly applicable to 
 that remote age, when the law of succes- 
 sion as to real and personal estate was 
 not different. 
 
 It has been shown, in another place, 
 how the right of territorial jurisdiction 
 was generally, and at last inseparably, 
 connected with feudal tenure. Of this 
 right we meet frequent instances in the 
 laws and records of the Anglo-Saxons, 
 though not in those of an early date. A 
 charter of Edred grants to the monastery 
 
 * Selden's Works, vol. ii., p. 1620. 
 
 t Hist. Ramseyens, p. 430. 
 
 J Leges Canuti, p. 144. Leges Gulielmi, p. 223. 
 
332 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 of Croyland soc, sac, toll, team, and in- 
 fangthef; words which generally went 
 together in the description of these privi- 
 leges, and signify the right of holding a 
 court to which all freemen of the terri- 
 tory should repair, of deciding pleas 
 therein, as well as of imposing amerce- 
 ments according to law, of taking tolls 
 upon the sale of goods, and of punishing 
 capitally a thief taken in the fact within 
 the limits of the manor.* Another char- 
 ter from the confessor grants to the ab- 
 bey of Ramsey similar rights over all 
 who were suiters to the sheriff's court, 
 subject to military service, and capable 
 of landed possessions ; that is, as I con- 
 ceive, all who were not in servitude. f By 
 a law of Ethelred, none but the king could 
 have jurisdiction over a royal thane. J 
 And Domesday Book is full of decisive 
 proofs, that the English lords had their 
 courts wherein they rendered justice to 
 their suiters, like the continental nobility ; 
 privileges which are noticed with great 
 precision in that record, as part of the 
 statistical survey. For the right of juris- 
 diction at a time when punishments were 
 almost wholly pecuniary, was a matter 
 of property, and sought from motives of 
 rapacity as well as pride. 
 
 Whether, therefore, the law of feudal 
 tenures can be said to have existed in 
 England before the conquest, must be left 
 to every reader's determination. Per- 
 haps any attempt to decide it positively 
 would end in a verbal dispute. In tracing 
 the history of every political institution, 
 three things are to be considered : the 
 principle, the form, and the name. The 
 last will probably not be found in any 
 genuine Anglo-Saxon record. $ Of the 
 former, or the peculiar ceremonies and 
 incidents of a regular fief, there is some, 
 though not much appearance. But those 
 who reflect upon the dependance in which 
 free and even noble tenants held their 
 estates of other subjects, and upon the 
 
 * Ingulfus, p. 35. I do not pretend to assert the 
 authenticity of these charters, which at all events 
 are nearly as old as the conquest. Hickes calls 
 most of them in question. Dissert. Epist., p. 66 : 
 but some later antiquaries seem to have been more 
 favourable. Archaeologia, vol. xviii., p. 49. Nou- 
 veau Traite de Diplomatique, t. i., p. 348. 
 
 f Hist. Ramsey, p. 454. 
 
 j P. 118. This is the earliest allusion, if I am 
 not mistaken, to territorial jurisdiction in the Sax- 
 on laws. Probably it was not frequent till near the 
 end of the tenth century. 
 
 Feodum twice occurs in the testament of Al- 
 fred ; but it does not appear to be used in its proper 
 sense, nor do I apprehend that instrument to have 
 been originally written in Latin. It was much 
 more consonant to Alfred's practice to employ his 
 own language. 
 
 privileges of territorial jurisdiction, will, 
 I think, perceive much of the intrinsic 
 character of the feudal relation, though 
 in a less mature and systematic shape 
 than it assumed after the Norman con- 
 quest. 
 
 PART II. 
 THE ANGLO-NORMAN CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The Anglo-Norman Constitution. Causes of the 
 Conquest. Policy and character of William 
 his Tyranny. Introduction of Feudal Services. 
 Difference between the Feudal Governments 
 of France and England. Causes of the great 
 Power of the first Norman Kings. Arbitrary 
 Character of their Government. Great Council. 
 Resistance of the Barons to John. Magna 
 Charta its principal Articles. Reign of Henry 
 III. The Constitution acquires a more liberal 
 Character. Judicial System of the Anglo-Nor- 
 mans. Curia Regis, Exchequer, &c. Estab- 
 lishment of the Common Law its effect in 
 fixing the Constitution. Remarks on the Lim- 
 itation of Aristocratical Privileges in England. 
 
 IT is deemed by William of Malmsbury 
 an extraordinary work of Prov- conquest of 
 idence, that the English should England by 
 have given up all for lost after William - 
 the battle of Hastings, where only a 
 small though brave army had perished.* 
 It was indeed the conquest of a great 
 kingdom by the prince of a single prov- 
 ince, an event not easily paralleled, where 
 the vanquished were little, if at all, less 
 courageous than their enemies, and where 
 no domestic factions exposed the country 
 to an invader. Yet William was so ad- 
 vantageously situated, that his success 
 seems neither unaccountable nor any 
 matter of discredit to the English nation. 
 The heir of the house of Cerdic had been 
 already set aside at the election of Ha- 
 rold ; and his youth, joined to a medioc- 
 rity of understanding which excited nei- 
 ther esteem nor fear,f gave no encour- 
 agement to the scheme of placing him 
 upon the throne in those moments of 
 imminent peril which followed the battle 
 of Hastings. England was peculiarly des- 
 titute of great men. The weak reigns 
 
 * Malmsb., p. 53. And Henry of Huntingdon 
 says emphatically : Millesimo et sexagesimo sexto 
 anno gratiae, perfecit dominator Deus de gente An- 
 glorum quod diu cogitaverat. Genti namque Nor- 
 mannorum asperse et callidae tradidit eos ad exter- 
 minandum, p. 210. 
 
 t Edgar, after one or two ineffectual attempts 
 to recover the kingdom, was treated by William 
 with a kindness which could only have proceeded 
 from contempt of his understanding; for he was 
 not wanting in courage. He became the intimate 
 friend of Robert, duke of Normandy, whose for- 
 tunes, as well as character, much resembled his 
 own. 
 

 PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 of Ethelred and Edward had rendered 
 the government a mere oligarchy, and 
 reduced the nobility into the state of 
 retainers to a few leading houses, the 
 representatives of which were every way 
 unequal to meet such an enemy as the 
 Duke of Normandy. If indeed the con- 
 current testimony of historians does not 
 exaggerate his forces, it may be doubted 
 whether England possessed military re- 
 sources sufficient to have resisted so nu- 
 merous and well-appointed an army. 
 
 This forlorn state of the country indu- 
 ced, if it did not justify, the measure of 
 tendering the crown to William, which 
 he had a pretext or title to claim, arising 
 from the intentions, perhaps the promise, 
 perhaps even the testament of Edward, 
 which had more weight in those times 
 than it deserved, and was at least better 
 than the naked title of conquest. And 
 this, supported by an oath exactly similar 
 to that taken by the Anglo-Saxon kings, 
 and by the assent of the multitude, Eng- 
 lish as well as Normans, on the day of 
 his coronation, gave as much appearance 
 of a regular succession as the circum- 
 stances of the times would permit. Those 
 who yielded to such circumstances could 
 not foresee, and were unwilling to antici- 
 pate, the bitterness of that servitude which 
 William and his Norman followers were 
 to bring upon their country. 
 
 The commencement of his adminis- 
 His conduct tration was tolerably equita- 
 at first mod- ble. Though many confisca- 
 tions took place, in order to 
 gratify the Norman army, yet the mass 
 of property was left in the hands of its 
 former possessors. Offices of high trust 
 were bestowed upon Englishmen, even 
 upon those whose family renown might 
 have raised the most aspiring thoughts.* 
 it becomes But Partly through the inso- 
 more tyran- lence and injustice of William's 
 Norman vassals, partly through 
 the suspiciousness natural to a man con- 
 scious of having overturned the national 
 government, his yoke soon became more 
 heavy. The English were oppressed; 
 they rebelled, were subdued, and op- 
 pressed again. All their risings were 
 without concert, and desperate; they 
 wanted men fit to head them, and for- 
 tresses to sustain their revolt. f After a 
 
 * Ordericus Vitalis, p. 520 (in Du Chesne, Hist. 
 Norm. Script.). 
 
 t Ordericus notices the want of castles in Eng- 
 land, as one reason why rebellions were easily 
 quelled, p. 511. Failing in their attempts at a gen- 
 erous resistance, the English endeavoured to get 
 rid of their enemies by assassination, to which 
 many Normans became victims. William there- 
 fore enacted, that in every case of murder, which 
 
 very few years they sank in despair, and 
 yielded for a century to the indignities of 
 a comparatively small body of strangers 
 without a single tumult. So possible is 
 it for a nation to be kept in permanent 
 servitude, even without losing its reputa- 
 tion for individual courage, or its desire 
 of freedom ! 
 
 The tyranny of William displayed less 
 of passion or insolence than of that in- 
 difference about human suffering which 
 distinguishes a cold and far-sighted states- 
 man. Impressed by the frequent risings 
 of the English at the commencement of 
 his reign, and by the recollection, as one 
 historian observes, that the mild govern- 
 ment of Canute had only ended in the 
 expulsion of the Danish line,* he formed 
 the scheme of riveting such fetters upon 
 the conquered nation that all resistance 
 should become impracticable. Those 
 who had obtained honourable offices were 
 successively deprived of them ; even the 
 bishops and abbots of English birth were 
 deposed ;f a stretch of power very sin- 
 gular in that age, and which marks how 
 much the great talents of William made 
 him feared by the church, in the moment 
 of her highest pretensions, for Gregory 
 VII. was in the papal chair. Morcar, 
 one of the most illustrious English, suf- 
 fered perpetual imprisonment. Walthe- 
 off, a man of equally conspicuous birth, 
 lost his head upon a scaffold by a very 
 harsh, if not iniquitous sentence. It was 
 so rare in those times to inflict judicially 
 any capital punishment upon persons of 
 such rank, that his death seems to have 
 produced more indignation and despair in 
 England than any single circumstance. 
 The name of Englishman was turned into 
 a reproach. None of that race for a hun- 
 dred years were raised to any dignity in 
 the state or church.J Their language, 
 and the characters in which it was writ- 
 ten, were rejected as barbarous; in all 
 schools, children were taught French, 
 
 strictly meant the killing of any one by an un- 
 known hand, the hundred should be liable in a fine, 
 unless they could prove the person murdered to be 
 an Englishman. This was tried by an inquest, 
 upon what was called a presentment of Englishry. 
 But from the reign of Henry II., the two nations 
 having been very much intermingled, this inquiry, 
 as we learn from the Dialogue de Scaccario, p. 26, 
 ceased, and in every case of a freeman murdered 
 by persons unknown, the hundred was fined. See 
 however Bracton, 1. iii., c. 15. 
 
 * Malmsbury, p. 104. f Hoveden, p. 453. 
 
 t Becket is said to have been the first English- 
 man who reached any considerable dignity. Lord 
 Lyttleton's Hist, of Henry II., vol. ii., p. 22. And 
 Eadmer declares that Henry I. would not place a 
 single Englishman at the head of a monastery. Si 
 Anglus erat, nulla virtus, ut honore aliquo dignus 
 judicaretur, eum poterat adjuvare, p. 110. 
 
834 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 and the laws were administered in no 
 other tongue.* It is well known that 
 this use of French in all legal proceed- 
 ings lasted till the reign of Edward III. 
 
 This exclusion of the English from po- 
 confiscation Htical privileges was accom- 
 of English panied with such a confiscation 
 property. Q f p r0 p er ty as never perhaps 
 has proceeded from any government not 
 avowedly founding its title upon the 
 sword. In twenty years from the acces- 
 sion of William, almost the whole soil 
 of England had been divided among for- 
 eigners. Of the native proprietors many 
 had perished in the scenes of rapine and 
 tyranny which attended this convulsion ; 
 many were fallen into the utmost pover- 
 ty ; and not a few, certainly, still held 
 their lands as vassals of Norman lords. 
 Several English nobles, desperate of the 
 fortunes of their country, sought refuge 
 in the court of Constantinople, and ap- 
 proved their valour in the wars of Alex- 
 ius against another Norman conqueror 
 scarcely less celebrated than their own, 
 Robert Guiscard. Under the name of 
 Varangians, those true and faithful sup- 
 porters of the Byzantine empire preserv- 
 ed to its dissolution their ancient Saxon 
 idiom.f 
 
 The extent of this spoliation of prop- 
 erty is not to be gathered merely from 
 historians, whose language might be ac- 
 cused of vagueness and amplification. In 
 the great national survey of Domesday 
 Book, we have an indisputable record of 
 this vast territorial revolution during the 
 reign of the Conqueror. I am indeed sur- 
 prised at Brady's position, that the Eng- 
 lish had suffered an indiscriminate depri- 
 vation of their lands. Undoubtedly there 
 were a few left in almost every county, 
 who still enjoyed the estates which they 
 held under Edward the Confessor, free 
 from any superiority but that of the 
 crown, and were denominated, as in for- 
 
 * Ingulfus, p. 61. Tantum tune Anglicos abo- 
 minati sunt, ut quantocunque merito pollerent, de 
 dignitatibus repellebantur ; et multo minus habiles 
 al.ienigenae de quacunque alia nations, quae sub 
 coelo est, extitissent, gratanter assumerentur. Ip- 
 sum etiam idioma tantum abhorrebant, quod leges 
 terrae, statutaque Anglicorum regum lingua Gal- 
 lica tractarentur ; et pueris etiam in scholis prin- 
 cipia literarum grammatica Gallic^, ac non Angli- 
 c& traderentur ; modus etiam scribendi Anglicus 
 omitteretur, et modus Gallicus in chartis et in li- 
 bris omnibus admitteretur. 
 
 t Gibbon, vol. x., p. 223. No writer, except per- 
 haps the Saxon Chronicler, is so full of William's 
 tyranny as Ordericus Vitalis. See particularly pp. 
 507, 512, 514, 521,523, in Du Chesne, Hist. Norm. 
 Script. Ordericus was an Englishman, but pass- 
 ed at ten years old, A. D. 1084, into Normandy, 
 where he became professed in the monastery of 
 Eu, ibid., p. 924. 
 
 mer times, the king's thanes.* Cospa- 
 tric, son perhaps of one of that name 
 who had possessed the earldom of Nor- 
 thumberland, held forty-one manors in 
 Yorkshire, though many of them are sta- 
 ted in Domesday to be waste. Inferior 
 freeholders were probably much less dis- 
 turbed in their estates than the higher 
 class. Though few of English birth con- 
 tinued to enjoy entire manors, even by a 
 mesne tenure, it is reasonable to suppose 
 that the greater part of those who ap- 
 pear, under various denominations, to 
 have possessed small freeholds and par- 
 cels of manors, were no other than the 
 original natives. 
 
 Besides the severities exercised upon 
 the English after every insur- Devastation 
 rection, two instances of Will- of Yorkshire 
 iam's unsparing cruelty are jj!j^ ew 
 well known, the devastation of 
 Yorkshire and of the New Forest. In the 
 former, which had the tyrant's plea, ne- 
 cessity, for its pretext, an invasion being 
 threatened from Denmark, the whole 
 country between the Tyne and the Hum- 
 ber was laid so desolate, that for nine years 
 afterward there was not an inhabited vil- 
 lage, and hardly an inhabitant left; the 
 wasting of this district having been follow- 
 ed by a famine, which swept away the 
 whole population.! That of the New For- 
 est, though undoubtedly less calamitous in 
 its effects, seems even more monstrous, 
 from the frivolousness of the cause. J He 
 afforested several other tracts. And these 
 favourite demesnes of the Norman kings 
 were protected by a system of iniquitous 
 and cruel regulations, called the Forest 
 Laws, which it became afterward a great 
 object with the assertors of liberty to 
 correct. The penalty for killing a stag 
 or a boar was loss of eyes : for William 
 loved the great game, says the Saxon 
 Chronicle, as if he had been their father. 
 
 A more general proof of the ruinous 
 
 * Brady, whose unfairness always keeps pace 
 with his ability, pretends that all these were me- 
 nial officers of the king's household. But notwith- 
 standing the difficulty of disproving these gratui- 
 tous suppositions, it is pretty certain that many 
 of the English proprietors in Domesday could not 
 have been of this description. See p. 99, 153, 218, 
 219, and other places. The question, however, 
 was not worth a battle, though it makes a figure in 
 the controversy of Normans and Anti-Normans, 
 between Dugdale and Brady on the one side, and 
 Tyrrell, Petyt, and Atwood on the other. 
 
 I Malmsbury, p. 103. Hoveden, p. 451. Orde- 
 ric. Vitalis, p. 514. The desolation of Yorkshire 
 continued in Malmsbury's time, sixty or seventy 
 years afterward ; nudum omnium solum usque ad 
 hoc etiam tempus. 
 
 J Malmsbury, p. 111. 
 
 Chron. Saxon., p. 191. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 335 
 
 Proofs of oppression of William the Con- 
 depopuia- q ue ror may be deduced from the 
 Domesday comparative condition of the 
 Book. English towns in the reign of 
 Edward the Confessor, and at the compi- 
 lation of Domesday. At the former 
 epoch there were in York 1607 inhabited 
 houses, at the latter 967 ; at the former 
 there were in Oxford 721, at the latter 
 243; of 172 houses in Dorchester, 100 
 were destroyed ; of 243 in Derby, 103 ; 
 of 487 in Chester, 205. Some other 
 towns had suffered less, but scarcely any 
 one fails to exhibit marks of a decayed 
 population. As to the relative numbers 
 of the peasantry and value of lands at 
 these two periods, it would not be easy 
 to assert any thing without a laborious 
 examination of Domesday Book. 
 
 The demesne lands of the crown, ex- 
 Domains of tensive and scattered over every 
 the crown, county, were abundantly suffi- 
 cient to support its dignity and magnifi- 
 cence ;* and William, far from wasting 
 this revenue by prodigal grants, took 
 care to let them at the highest rate to 
 farm, little caring how much the cultiva- 
 tors were racked by his tenants. f Yet 
 his exactions, both feudal and in the way 
 of tallage from his burgesses and the ten- 
 ants of his vassals, were almost as vio- 
 lent as his confiscations. No source of 
 income was neglected by him, or indeed 
 by his successors, however trifling, un- 
 just, or unreasonable. His revenues, if 
 Riches of we could trust Ordericus Yitalis, 
 the con- amounted to .1060 a day. This, 
 queror. m mere weight of silver, would 
 be e^ual to nearly 1,200,000 a year at 
 present. But the arithmetical statements 
 of these writers are not implicitly to be 
 relied upon. He left at his death a treas- 
 ure of 60,000, which, in conformity to 
 his dying request, his successor distrib- 
 uted among the church and poor of the 
 kingdom, as a feeble expiation of the 
 crimes by which it had been accumula- 
 ted ;J an act of disinterestedness, which 
 seems to prove that Rufus, amid all his 
 vices, was not destitute of better feelings 
 than historians have ascribed to him. It 
 might appear that William had little use 
 for his extorted wealth. By the feudal 
 constitution, as established during his 
 reign, he commanded the service of a 
 vast army at its own expense, either for 
 
 * They consisted of 1422 manors. Lyttleton's 
 Henry II., vol. ii., p. 288. 
 
 t Chron. Saxon., p. 188. 
 
 t Huntingdon, p. 371. Ordericus Vitalis puts a 
 long penitential speech into William's mouth on 
 his death-bed, p. 666. Though this may be his in- 
 vention, yet facts seem to show the compunctions 
 of the tyrant's conscience. 
 
 domestic or continental warfare. But 
 this was not sufficient for his His merce- 
 purpose : like other tyrants, he nary troops, 
 put greater trust in mercenary obedience. 
 Some of his predecessors had kept bodies 
 of Danish troops in pay ; partly to be se- 
 cure against their hostility, partly from 
 the convenience of a regular army, and 
 the love which princes bear to it. But 
 William carried this to a much greater 
 length. He had always stipendiary sol- 
 diers at his command. Indeed, his army 
 at the conquest could not have been 
 swelled to such numbers by any other 
 means. They were drawn, by the allure- 
 ment of high pay, not from France and 
 Britany alone, but Flanders, Germany, 
 and even Spain. When Canute of Den- 
 mark threatened an invasion in 1085, 
 William, too conscious of his own tyran- 
 ny to use the arms of his English sub- 
 jects, collected a mercenary force so 
 vast, that men wondered, says the Saxon 
 Chronicler, how the country could main- 
 tain it. This he quartered upon the peo- 
 ple, according to the proportion of their 
 estates.* 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the Anglo- 
 Saxon tenures, it is certain that j- euda i sys . 
 those of the feudal system were tem estab- 
 thoroughly established in Eng- lished - 
 land under the Conqueror. It has been 
 observed in another part of this work, 
 that the rights, or feudal incidents of 
 wardship and marriage, were nearly pe- 
 culiar to England and Normandy. They 
 certainly did not exist in the former be- 
 fore the conquest ; but whether they were 
 ancient customs of the latter cannot be 
 ascertained, unless we had more incon- 
 testable records of its early jurisprudence. 
 For the Great Customary of Normandy 
 is a compilation as late as the reign of 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, when the laws of 
 England might have passed into a country 
 so long and intimately connected with it. 
 But there appears reason to think that 
 the seizure of the lands in wardship, the 
 selling of the heiress in marriage, were 
 originally deemed rather acts of violence 
 than conformable to law. For Henry 
 I.'s charter expressly promises that the 
 mother, or next of kin, shall have the 
 custody of the lands as well as person of 
 the heir.f And as the charter of Henry 
 II. refers to and confirms that of his 
 grandfather, it seems to follow that what 
 
 * Chron. Saxon., p. 185. Ingulfus, p. 79. 
 
 t Terrae et liberorum custos erit sive uxor, sive 
 alius propinquorum, qui Justus esse debebit ; et pr- 
 cipio ut barones mei similiter se contineant ergd 
 filios vel filias vel uxores hominum meorum. Le 
 gee Anglo- Saxonica, p. 234. 
 
 

 336 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 is called guardianship in chivalry had not 
 yet been established. At least it is not 
 till the assize of Clarendon, confirmed at 
 Northampton in 1176,* that the custody 
 of the heir is clearly reserved to the lord. 
 With respect to the right of consenting 
 to the marriage of a female vassal, it 
 seems to have been, as I have elsewhere 
 observed, pretty general in feudal tenures. 
 But the sale of her person in marriage, 
 or the exaction of a sum of money in 
 lieu of this scandalous tyranny, was only 
 the law of England, and was not perhaps 
 fully authorized as such till the statute of 
 Merton in 1236. 
 
 One innovation made by William upon 
 the feudal law is very deserving of atten- 
 tion. By the leading principle of feuds, 
 an oath of fealty was due from the vas- 
 sal to the lord of whom he immediately 
 held his land, and to no other. The King 
 of France, long after this period, had no 
 feudal and scarcely any royal authority 
 over the tenants of his own vassals. But 
 William received at Salisbury, in 1085, 
 the fealty of all landholders in England, 
 both those who held in chief and their 
 tenants ;f thus breaking in upon the feudal 
 compact in its most essential attribute, 
 the exclusive dependance of a vassal 
 upon his lord. And this may be reckon- 
 ed among the several causes which pre- 
 vented the continental notions of inde- 
 pendence upon the crown from ever 
 taking root among the English aristoc- 
 racy. 
 
 The best measure of William was the 
 Preservation of establishment of public peace, 
 public peace, jje permitted no rapine but 
 his own. The feuds of private revenge, 
 the lawlessness of robbery, were re- 
 pressed. A girl loaded with gold, if we 
 believe some ancient writers, might have 
 passed safely through the kingdom. J But 
 this was the tranquillity of an imperious 
 and vigilant despotism, the degree of 
 which may be measured by these effects, 
 in which no improvement of civilization 
 had any share. There is assuredly noth- 
 ing to wonder at in the detestation with 
 which the English long regarded the 
 memory of this tyrant. Some advantages 
 
 * Leges Anglo-Saxonicae, p. 330. 
 
 t Chron. Saxon., p. 187. 
 
 t Chron. Saxon., p. 190. M. Paris, p. 10. I will 
 not omit one other circumstance, apparently praise- 
 worthy, which Ordericus mentions of William, that 
 he tried to learn English, in order to render justice 
 by understanding every man's complaint, but failed 
 on account of his advanced age, p. 520. This was 
 in the early part of his reign, before the reluctance 
 of the English to submit had exasperated his dis- 
 position. 
 
 $ W. Malmsh., Praf. , ad. 1. iii. 
 
 undoubtedly, in the course of human af- 
 fairs, eventually sprang from the Norman 
 conquest. The invaders, though without 
 perhaps any intrinsic superiority in social 
 virtues over the native English, degraded 
 and barbarous as these are represented 
 to us, had at least that exterior polish of 
 courteous and chivalric manners, and that 
 taste for refinement and magnificence, 
 which serve to elevate a people from 
 mere savage rudeness. Their buildings, 
 sacred as well as domestic, became more 
 substantial and elegant. The learning of 
 the clergy, the only class to whom that 
 word could at all be applicable, became 
 infinitely more respectable in a short time 
 after the conquest. And though this may 
 by some be ascribed to the general im- 
 provements of Europe in that point during 
 the twelfth century, yet I think it was 
 partly owing to the more free intercourse 
 with France and the closer dependance 
 upon Rome which that revolution pro- 
 duced. This circumstance was, how- 
 ever, of no great moment to the English 
 of those times, whose happiness could 
 hardly be affected by the theological rep- 
 utation of Lanfranc and Anselm. Per- 
 haps the chief benefit which the natives 
 of that generation derived from the gov- 
 ernment of William and his successors, 
 next to that of a more vigilant police, was 
 the security they found from invasion on 
 the side of Denmark and Norway. The 
 high reputation of the conqueror and his 
 sons, with the regular organization of a 
 feudal militia, deterred those predatory 
 armies which had brought such repeated 
 calamity on England in former times. 
 
 The system of feudal policy, though de- 
 rived to England from a French Difference 
 source, bore a very different ap- f e e 2 en ol ^ e 
 pearance in the two countries. in U Engiand y 
 France, for about two centu- and France, 
 ries after the house of Capet had usurped 
 the throne of Charlemagne's posterity, 
 could hardly be deemed a regular con- 
 federacy, much less an entire monarchy. 
 But in England, a government, feudal in- 
 deed in its form, but arbitrary in its exer- 
 cise, not only maintained subordination, 
 but almost extinguished liberty. Several 
 causes seem to have conspired towards 
 this radical difference. In the first place, 
 a kingdom, comparatively small, is much 
 more easily kept under control than one 
 of vast extent. And the fiefs of Anglo- 
 Norman barons after the conquest were 
 far less considerable, even relatively to 
 the size of the two countries, than those 
 of France. The Earl of Chester held, 
 indeed, almost all that county;* the 
 
 * This was, upon the whole, more like a great 
 
PART 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 33? 
 
 Earl of Shrewsbury nearly the whole of 
 Salop. But these domains bore no com- 
 parison with the dukedom of Guienne or 
 the county of Touloues. In general, the 
 lordships of William's barons, whether 
 this were owing to policy or accident, 
 were exceedingly dispersed. Robert, 
 earl of Moreton, for example, the most 
 richly-endowed of his followers, enjoyed 
 248 manors in Cornwall, 54 in Sussex, 
 196 in Yorkshire, 99 in Northampton 
 shire, besides many in other counties.' 
 Estates so disjoined, however immense 
 in their aggregate, were ill calculated for 
 supporting a rebellion. It is observed by 
 Madox, that the knight's fees of almost 
 every barony were scattered over vari- 
 ous counties. 
 
 In the next place, these baronial fiefs 
 were held under an actual derivation from 
 the crown. The great vassals of France 
 had usurped their dominions before the 
 accession of Hugh Capet, and barely sub- 
 mitted to his nominal sovereignty. They 
 never intended to yield the feudal tributes 
 of relief and aid, nor did some of them 
 even acknowledge the supremacy of his 
 royal jurisdiction. But the conqueror 
 and his successors imposed what condi- 
 tions they would upon a set of barons who 
 owed all to their grants; and as man- 
 kind's notions of right are generally 
 founded upon prescription, these peers 
 grew accustomed to endure many bur- 
 dens, reluctantly indeed, but without that 
 feeling of injury which would have re- 
 sisted an attempt to impose them upon 
 the vassals of the French crown. For 
 the same reasons, the barons of England 
 were regularly summoned to the great 
 council, and by their attendance in it, and 
 concurrence in the measures which were 
 there resolved upon, a compactness and 
 unity of interest was given to the monar- 
 chy which was entirely wanting in that 
 of France. But above all, the paramount 
 authority of the king's court, and those 
 excellent Saxon tribunals of the county 
 and hundred, kept within very narrow 
 limits that great support of the feudal 
 
 French fief than any English earlddm. Hugh de 
 Abrincis, nephew of William I., had barons of his 
 own, one of whom held forty-six and another thirty 
 manors. Chester was first called a county-palatine 
 under Henry II. ; but it previously possessed all 
 regalian rights of jurisdiction. After the forfeit- 
 ures of the house of Montgomery, it acquired all 
 the country between the Mersey and Ribble. Sev- 
 eral eminent men inherited the earldom ; but upon 
 the death of the most distinguished, Ranulf, in 
 1232, it fell into a female line, and soon escheated 
 to the erown. Dugdale's Baronage, p. 45. Lyttle- 
 ton's Henry IL, vol. ii., p. 218. 
 * Dugdale's Baronage, p. 25. 
 
 aristocracy, the right of territorial juris* 
 diction. Except in the counties palatine, 
 the feudal courts possessed a very tri- 
 fling degree of jurisdiction over civil, and 
 not a very extensive one over criminal 
 causes. 
 
 We may add to the circumstances that 
 rendered the crown powerful du- Hatred of 
 ring the first century after the English to 
 conquest, an extreme antipathy Norma ns- 
 of the native English towards their in- 
 vaders. Both William Rufus and Henry 
 I. made use of the former to strengthen 
 themselves against the attempts of their 
 brother Robert ; though they forgot their 
 promises to the English after attaining 
 their object.* A fact, mentioned by Or- 
 dericus Vitalis, illustrates the advantage 
 which the government found in this na- 
 tional animosity. During the siege of 
 Bridgenorth, a town belonging to Robert 
 de Belesme, one of the most turbulent 
 and powerful of the Norman barons, by 
 Henry I., in 1102, the rest of the nobility 
 deliberated together, and came to the 
 conclusion, that if the king could expel 
 so distinguished a subject, he would be 
 able to treat them all as his servants. 
 They endeavoured, therefore, to bring 
 about a treaty ; but the English part of 
 Henry's army, hating Robert de Belesme 
 as a Norman, urged the king to proceed 
 with the siege ; which he did, and took 
 the castle. f 
 
 Unrestrained, therefore, comparative- 
 ly speaking, by the aristocrat- Tyranny of 
 ic principles which influenced the Norman 
 other feudal countries, the ad- g ver nent. 
 ministration acquired a tone of rigour 
 and arbitrariness under William the Con* 
 queror, which, though sometimes per- 
 haps a little mitigated, did not cease du- 
 ring a century and a half. For the first 
 three reigns we must have recourse 
 to historians ; whose language, though 
 vague, and perhaps exaggerated, is too 
 uniform and impressive to leave a doubt 
 of the tyrannical character of the govern- 
 ment. The intolerable exactions of trib- 
 ute, the rapine of purveyance, the iniqui- 
 ty of royal courts, are continually in their 
 mouths. " God sees the wretched peo- 
 ple," says the Saxon Chronicler, " most 
 unjustly oppressed; first they are de- 
 spoiled of their possessions, then butch- 
 ered. This was a grievous year (1 124)^ 
 Whoever had any property, lost it by 
 heavy taxes and unjust decrees. "| The 
 
 f W. Malmsbury, p. 120 et 156. R. Hoveden, 
 p. 461. Chron. Saxon., p. 194. 
 
 t Du Chesne, Script. Norman., p. 807. 
 
 t Chron. Saxon., p. 228. Non facile polest n*f- 
 rari miseria, eays Roger de Hovden, quam '' 
 
338 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 same ancient chronicle, which appears 
 to have been continued from time to time 
 in the abbey of Peterborough, frequently 
 utters similar notes of lamentation. 
 
 From the reign of Stephen, the miser- 
 its exac- ies of which are not to my im- 
 tions. mediate purpose, so far as they 
 proceeded from anarchy and intestine 
 war,* we are able to trace the character 
 of government by existing records. f 
 These, digested by the industrious Ma- 
 dox into his History of the Exchequer, 
 give us far more insight into the spirit of 
 the constitution, if we may use such a 
 word, than all our monkish chronicles. 
 It was not a sanguinary despotism. 
 Henry II. was a prince of remarkable 
 clemency ; and none of the Conqueror's 
 successors were as grossly tyrannical as 
 himself. But the system of rapacious 
 extortion from their subjects prevailed to 
 a degree which we should rather expect 
 to find among eastern slaves, than that 
 high-spirited race of Normandy, whose 
 renown then filled Europe and Asia. The 
 right of wardship was abused by selling 
 the heir and his land to the highest bid- 
 der. That of marriage was carried to a 
 still grosser excess. The kings of France 
 indeed claimed the prerogative of forbid- 
 ding the marriage of their vassals' daugh- 
 ters to such persons as they thought 
 unfriendly or dangerous to themselves ; 
 but I am not aware that they ever com- 
 pelled them to marry, much less that they 
 turned this attribute of sovereignty into 
 a means of revenue. But in England, 
 women, and even men, simply as ten- 
 ants in chief, and not as wards, fined to 
 the crown for leave to marry whom they 
 would, or not to be compelled to marry 
 any other.J Towns not only fined for 
 original grants of franchises, but for re- 
 
 nuit illo tempore [circ. aim. 1103], terra Anglorum 
 propter regias exactiones, p. 470. 
 
 * The following simple picture of that reign from 
 the Saxon Chronicle may be worth inserting. 
 " The nobles and bishops built castles, and filled 
 them with devilish and wicked men, and oppressed 
 the people, cruelly torturing men for their money. 
 They imposed taxes upon towns, and when they 
 had exhausted them of every thing, set them on 
 fire. You might travel a day, and not find one 
 man living in a town, nor any land in cultivation. 
 Never did the country suffer greater evils. If two 
 or three men were seen riding up to a town, all its 
 inhabitants left it, taking them for plunderers. And 
 this lasted, growing worse and worse, throughout 
 Stephen's reign. Men said openly that Christ and 
 his saints were asleep," p. 239. 
 
 f The earliest record in the Pipe-office is that 
 which Madox, in conformity to the usage of others, 
 Cites by the name of Magnum Rotulum quinto 
 Stephani. But in a particular dissertation subjoin- 
 ed to his History of the Exchequer, he inclines, 
 though not decisively, to refer this record to the 
 reign of Henry I. t Madox, c. 10. 
 
 peated confirmations. The Jews paid 
 exorbitant sums for every common right 
 of mankind, for protection, for justice. 
 In return, they were sustained against 
 their Christian debtors in demands of 
 usury, which superstition and tyranny 
 rendered enormous.* Men fined for the 
 king's good- will ; or that he would remit 
 his anger ; or to have his mediation with 
 their adversaries. Many fines seem as 
 it were imposed in sport, if we look to 
 the cause ; though their extent, and the 
 solemnity with which they were record- 
 ed, prove the humour to have been dif- 
 ferently relished by the two parties. 
 Thus the Bishop of Winchester paid a 
 tun of good wine for not reminding the 
 king (John) to give a girdle to the Count- 
 ess of Albemarle ; and Robert de Vaux 
 five best palfreys, that the same king 
 might hold his peace about Henry Pinel's 
 wife. Another paid four marks for leave 
 to eat (pro licentia comedendi). But of 
 all the abuses which deformed the Anglo- 
 Norman government, none was so flagi- 
 tious as the sale of judicial redress. The 
 king, we are often told, is the fountain of 
 justice ; but in those ages, it was one 
 which gold alone could unseal. Men 
 fined to have right done 'them; to sue 
 in a certain court ; to emplead a certain 
 person ; to have restitution of land which 
 they had recovered at law.f From the 
 sale of that justice which every citizen 
 has a right to demand, it was an easy 
 transition to withhold or deny it. Fines 
 were received for the king's help against 
 the adverse suiter ; that is, for perversion 
 of justice, or for delay. Sometimes they 
 were paid by opposite parties, and, of 
 course, for opposite ends. These were 
 called counter-fines ; but the money was 
 sometimes, or, as Lord Lyttleton thinks, 
 invariably, returned to the unsuccessful 
 suiter.! 
 
 Among a people imperfectly civilized, 
 the most outrageous injustice to- General 
 wards individuals may pass with- taxes - 
 out the slightest notice, while in matters 
 affecting the community, the powers of 
 government are exceedingly controlled. 
 It becomes therefore an important ques- 
 tion, what prerogative these Norman 
 kings were used to exercise in raising 
 money, and in general legislation. By 
 the prevailing feudal customs, the lord 
 was entitled to demand a pecuniary aid 
 of his vassals in certain cases. These 
 
 * Madox, c. 7. f Id., c. 12 and 13. 
 
 t The most opposite instances of these exactions 
 are well selected from Madox by Hume, Appendix 
 II. : upon which account I have gone less into de 
 tail than would otherwise have been necessary. 
 
ll] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 were, in England, to make his eldest son 
 a knight, to marry his eldest daughter, 
 and to ransom himself from captivity. 
 Accordingly, when such circumstances 
 occurred, aids were levied by the crown 
 upon its tenants, at the rate of a mark 
 or a pound for every knight's fee.* 
 These aids, being strictly due in the pre- 
 scribed cases, were taken without requi- 
 ring the consent of parliament. Escu- 
 age, which was a commutation for the 
 personal service of military tenants in 
 war, having rather the appearance of an 
 indulgence than an imposition, might 
 reasonably be levied by the king.f It 
 was not till the charter of John that es- 
 cuage became a parliamentary assess- 
 ment ; the custom of commuting service 
 having then grown general, and the rate 
 of commutation being variable. 
 
 None but military tenants could be lia- 
 ble for escuage;J but the inferior sub- 
 jects of the crown were oppressed by 
 tallages. The demesne lands of the 
 king and all royal towns were liable to 
 tallage ; an imposition far more rigorous 
 and irregular than those which fell upon 
 the gentry. Tallages were continually 
 raised upon different towns during all the 
 Norman reigns, without the consent of 
 parliament^ which neither represented 
 them nor cared for their interests. The 
 itinerant justices in their circuit usually 
 set this tax. Sometimes the tallage was 
 assessed in gross upon a town, and col- 
 lected by the burgesses : sometimes indi- 
 vidually, at the judgment of the justices. 
 There was an appeal from an excessive 
 assessment to the barons of the ex- 
 chequer. Inferior lords might tallage 
 their own tenants and demesne towns, 
 though not, it seems, without the king's 
 permission. Customs upon the import 
 
 * The reasonable aid was fixed by the statute of 
 Westminster I., 3 Edw. I., c. 36, at twenty shillings 
 for every knight's fee, and as much for every 201. 
 value of land held by soccage. The aid pour faire 
 fitz chevalier might be raised, when he entered 
 into his fifteenth year ; pour fille marier, when she 
 reached the age of seven. 
 
 t Fit interdum, ut imminente vel insurgente in 
 regnum hostium machinatione, decernat rex de 
 singulis feodis militum summam aliquam solvi, 
 marcam scilicet, vel libram unam ; unde militibus 
 stipendia vel donativa succedant. Mavult enim 
 princeps stipendiaries quam domesticos bellicis 
 exponere casibus. Haec itaque summa, quia 
 nomine scutorum solvitur, scutagium nominator. 
 Dialogus de Scaccario, ad finem. Madox,Hist. 
 Exchequer, p. 25 (edit, in folio). 
 
 t The tenant in capite was entitled to be reim- 
 bursed what would have been his escuage by his 
 vassals even if he performed personal service. 
 Madox, c. 16. 
 
 () For the important subject of tallages, see Ma- 
 dox, c. 17. 
 
 Y2 
 
 and export of merchandise, of which 
 the prisage of wine, that is, a right of 
 taking two casks out of each vessel, 
 seems the most material, were immemo- 
 rially exacted by the crown. There is 
 no appearance that these originated with 
 parliament.* Another tax, extending to 
 all the lands of the kingdom, was Dane- 
 geld, the ship-money of those times. 
 This name had been originally given to 
 the tax imposed under Ethelred II., in 
 order to raise a tribute exacted by the 
 Danes. It was afterward applied to a 
 permanent contribution for the public 
 defence against the same enemies. But 
 after the conquest this tax is said to have 
 been only occasionally required ; and the 
 latest instance on record of its payment 
 is in the 20th of Henry II. Its imposi- 
 tion appears to have been at the king's 
 discretion.! 
 
 The right of general legislation was 
 undoubtedly placed in the king, Right of ie- 
 cpnjointly with his great coun- gwifon. 
 cil,{ or, if the expression be thought more 
 proper, with their advice. So little op- 
 position was found in these assemblies 
 by the early Norman kings, that they 
 gratified their own love of pomp, as well 
 as the pride of their barons, by consult- 
 ing them in every important business. 
 But the limits of legislative power were 
 extremely indefinite. New laws, like 
 new taxes, affecting the community, re- 
 quired the sanction of that assembly 
 which was supposed to represent it ; but 
 there was no security for individuals 
 against acts of prerogative, which we 
 should justly consider as most tyranni- 
 cal. Henry II., the best of these mon- 
 archs, banished from England the rela- 
 tions and friends of Becket, to the num- 
 ber of four hundred. At another time, 
 he sent over from Normandy an injunc- 
 tion, that all the kindred of those who 
 obeyed a papal interdict should be ban- 
 ished, and their estates confiscated.^ 
 
 * Madox, c. 18. Male's Treatise on the Cus- 
 toms in Hargrave's Tracts, vol. L T p. 116. 
 
 t Henr. Huntingdon, 1. v., p. 205. Dialogus de 
 Scaccario, c. 11. Madox, c. 17. Lyttleton's 
 Henry II., vol. ii., p. 170. 
 
 t Glanvil, Prologus ad Tractatum de Consuetud. 
 
 $ Hoveden, p. 496. Lyttleton, vol. ii., p. 530. 
 The latter says that this edict must have been 
 framed by the king with the advice and assent of 
 bis council. But if he means his great council, I 
 cannot suppose that all the barons and tenants 
 in capite could have been duly summoned to a 
 council held beyond seas. Some English barons 
 might doubtless have been with the king, as at 
 Verneuil in 1176, where a mixed assembly of Eng- 
 lish and ^French enacted laws for both countries. 
 Benedict. Abbas apud Hume. So at Northampton 
 in 1165, several Norman barons voted ; net is ariy 
 
340 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 The statutes of those reigns do not ex- 
 Laws and char- hibit to us many provisions 
 ters of Norman calculated to maintain public 
 kings. liberty on a broad and gen- 
 
 eral foundation. And although the laws 
 then enacted have not all been preserved, 
 yet it is unlikely that any of an exten- 
 sively remedial nature should have left 
 no trace of their existence. We find, 
 however, what has sometimes been call- 
 ed the Magna Charta of William the 
 Conqueror, preserved in Roger de Hove- 
 den's collection of his laws. We will, 
 enjoin, and grant, says the king, that all 
 freemen of our kingdom shall enjoy their 
 lands in peace, free from all tallage, and 
 from every unjust exaction, so that noth- 
 ing but their service lawfully due to us 
 shall be demanded at their hands.* The 
 laws of the Conqueror, found in Hove- 
 den, are wholly different from those in 
 Ingulfus, and are suspected not to have 
 escaped considerable interpolation.! It 
 is remarkable that no reference is made 
 to this concession of William the Con- 
 queror in any subsequent charter. How- 
 ever, it seems to comprehend only the 
 feudal tenants of the crown. Nor does 
 the charter of Henry I., though so much 
 celebrated, contain any thing specially 
 expressed but a remission of unreasona- 
 ble reliefs, wardships, and other feudal 
 burdens. J It proceeds, however, to de- 
 clare that he gives his subjects the laws 
 of Edward the Confessor, with the 
 emendations made by his father with 
 consent of his barons. The charter 
 of Stephen not only confirms that of his 
 predecessor, but adds, in fuller terms 
 than Henry had used, an express conces- 
 sion of the laws and customs of Ed- 
 
 notice taken of this as irregular. Fitz Stephen, 
 ibid. So unfixed, or rather unformed, were all 
 constitutional principles. 
 
 * Vqlumus etiam, ac firmiter prsecipimus et 
 concedimus, ut omnes liberi homines totius mon- 
 archiae praedicti regni nostri habeant et teneant ter- 
 ras suas et possessiones suas bene, et in pace, li- 
 bere ab omm exactione injusta, et ab omnitallagio, 
 ita quod nihil ab iis exigatur vel capiatur, nisi ser- 
 vitium suum liberum, quod de jure nobis facere 
 debent, et facere tenentur ; et prout statutum est 
 iis, et illis a nobis datum et concessum jure haered- 
 itarioin perpetuum per commune concilium totius 
 regni nostri praedicti. 
 
 t Selden, ad Eadmerum. Hody (Treatise on 
 Convocations, p. 249), infers from the words of 
 Hoveden, that they were altered from the French 
 original by Glanvil. 
 
 J Wilkins, p. 234. 
 
 A great impression is said to have been made 
 on the barons confederated against John by the 
 production of Henry I.'s charter, whereof they had 
 been ignorant. Matt. Paris., p. 212. But this 
 could hardly have been the existing charter, for 
 reasons alleged by Blackstone. Introduction to 
 Magna Charta, p. 6. 
 
 ward.* Henry II. is silent about these, 
 although he repeats the confirmation of 
 his grandfather's charter.! The people, 
 however, had begun to look back to a 
 more ancient standard of law. The 
 Norman conquest, and all that ensued 
 upon it, had endeared the memory of 
 their Saxon government. Its disorders 
 were forgotten, or rather were less odi- 
 ous to a rude nation, than the coercive 
 justice by which they were afterward 
 restrained. J Hence it became the fa- 
 vourite cry to demand the laws of Ed- 
 ward the Confessor; and the Normans 
 themselves, as they grew dissatisfied 
 with the royal administration, fell into 
 these English sentiments. $ But what 
 these laws were, or more properly, per- 
 haps, these customs, subsisting in the 
 Confessor's age, was not very distinctly 
 understood. j| So far, however, was clear, 
 that the rigorous feudal servitudes, the 
 weighty tributes upon poorer freemen, 
 had never prevailed before the conquest. 
 In claiming the laws of Edward the Con- 
 fessor, our ancestors meant but the re- 
 dress of grievances which tradition told 
 them had not always existed. 
 
 It is highly probable, independently of 
 the evidence supplied by the . . 
 
 I, r TT T J-L- Kicnard I.'s 
 
 charters of Henry I. and his chancellor 
 two successors, that a sense of deposed by 
 oppression had long been stim- 
 
 * Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxon., p. 310. 
 
 t Id., p. 318. 
 
 t The Saxon Chronicler complains of a witten- 
 agemot, as he calls it, or assizes, held at Leices- 
 ter in 1124, where forty-four thieves were hanged, 
 a greater number than was ever before known ; it 
 was said that many suffered unjustly, p. 228. 
 
 The distinction between the two nations was 
 pretty well obliterated at the end of Henry II. 's 
 reign, as we learn from the Dialogue on the Ex- 
 chequer, then written ; jam cohabitantibus Angli- 
 cis et Normannis, et alterutrum uxores ducenti- 
 bus vel nubentibus, sic permixtae sunt nationes, ut 
 vix discerni possit hodie, de liberis loquor, quis 
 Anglicus, quis Normannus sit genere ; exceptis 
 duntaxat ascriptitiis qui villani dicuntur, quibus 
 non est liberum obstantibus dominis suis a sui sta- 
 tus conditione discedere. Eapropter pene qui- 
 cunque sic hodie pccisus reperitur, ut murdrum 
 punitur, exceptis his quibus certa sunt ut diximus 
 servilis conditionis indicia, p. 26. 
 
 I! Non quas tulit, sed quas observaverit, says 
 William of Malmsbury, concerning the Confes- 
 sor's laws. Those bearing his name in Lambard 
 and Wilkins are evidently spurious, though it may 
 not be easy to fix upon the time when they were 
 forged. Those found in Ingulfus, in the French 
 language, are genuine, and were confirmed by 
 William the Conqueror. Neither of these collec- 
 tions, however, can be thought to have any rela- 
 tion to the civil liberty of the subject. It has been 
 deemed more rational to suppose, that these long- 
 ings for Edward's laws were rather meant for a 
 mild administration of government, free from un- 
 just Norman innovations, than any written and 
 definitive system. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 341 
 
 ulating the subjects of so arbitrary a gov- 
 ernment, before they gave any demon- 
 strations of it sufficiently palpable to find 
 a place in history. But there are cer- 
 tainly no instances of rebellion, or even, 
 as far as we know, of a constitutional 
 resistance in parliament, down to the 
 reign of Richard I. The revolt of the 
 earls of Leicester and Norfolk against 
 Henry II., which endangered his throne 
 and comprehended his children with a 
 large part of his barons, appears not to 
 have been founded even upon the pretext 
 of public grievances. Under Richard I., 
 something more of a national spirit be- 
 gan to show itself. For the king having 
 left his chancellor, William Longchamp, 
 joint regent and justiciary with the Bish- 
 op of Durham during his crusade, the 
 foolish insolence of the former, who ex- 
 cluded his coadjutor from any share in 
 the administration, provoked every one 
 of the nobility. A convention of these, 
 the king's brother placing himself at their 
 head, passed a sentence of removal and 
 banishment upon the chancellor. Though 
 there might be reason to conceive that 
 this would not be unpleasing to the king, 
 who was already apprized how much 
 Longchamp had abused his trust, it was 
 a remarkable assumption of power by 
 that assembly, and the earliest authority 
 for a leading principle of our constitu- 
 tion, the responsibility of ministers to 
 parliament. 
 
 In the succeeding reign of John, all the 
 Magna rapacious exactions usual to these 
 charta. Norman kings were not only re- 
 doubled, but mingled with other outrages 
 of tyranny still more intolerable.* These 
 too were to be endured at the hands of a 
 prince utterly contemptible for his folly 
 and cowardice. One is surprised at the 
 forbearance displayed by the barons, till 
 they took arms at length in that confed- 
 eracy which ended in establishing the 
 Great Charter of Liberties. As this was 
 the first effort towards a legal govern- 
 ment, so is it beyond comparison the 
 most important event in our history, ex- 
 cept that revolution without which its 
 benefits would rapidly have been annihi- 
 lated. The constitution of England has 
 indeed no single date from which its du- 
 ration is to be reckoned. The institu- 
 tions of positive law, the far more impor- 
 tant changes which time has wrought in 
 
 * In 1207, John took a seventh of the moveables 
 of lay and spiritual persons, cunctis murmurantibus, 
 sed contradicere non audentibus. Matt. Paris, p. 
 186, ed. 1684. But his insults upon the nobility in 
 debauching their wives and daughters were, as usu- 
 ally happens, the most exasperating provocation. 
 
 the order of society during six hundred 
 years subsequent to the Great Charter, 
 have undoubtedly lessened its direct ap- 
 plication to our present circumstances. 
 But it is still the keystone of English 
 liberty. All that has since been obtained 
 is little more than as confirmation or 
 commentary ; and if every subsequent 
 law were to be swept away, there would 
 still remain the bold features that distin- 
 guish a free from a despotic monarchy. 
 It has been lately the fashion to depreci- 
 ate the value of Magna Charta, as if it 
 had sprung from the private ambition of 
 a few selfish barons, and redressed only 
 some feudal abuses. It is indeed of little 
 importance by what motives those who 
 obtained it were guided. The real char- 
 acters of men most distinguished in the 
 transactions of that time are not easily 
 determined at present. Yet if we bring 
 these ungrateful suspicions to the test, 
 they prove destitute of all reasonable 
 foundation. An equal distribution of 
 civil rights to all classes of freemen 
 forms the peculiar beauty of the charter. 
 In this just solicitude for the people, and 
 in the moderation which infringed upon 
 no essential prerogative of the monarchy, 
 we may perceive a liberality and patri- 
 otism very unlike the selfishness which 
 is sometimes rashly imputed to those 
 ancient barons. And, as far as we are 
 guided by historical testimony, two great 
 men, the pillars of our church and state, 
 may be considered as entitled beyond the 
 rest to the glory of this monument ; Ste- 
 phen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, 
 and William, earl of Pembroke. To 
 their temperate zeal for a legal govern- 
 ment, England was indebted during that 
 critical period for the two greatest bles- 
 sings that patriotic statesmen could con- 
 fer; the establishment of civil liberty 
 upon an immoveable basis, and the pres- 
 ervation of national independence under 
 the ancient line of sovereigns, which 
 rasher men were about to exchange for 
 the dominion of France. 
 
 By the Magna Charta of John, reliefs 
 were limited to a certain sum, according 
 to the rank of the tenant, the waste com- 
 mitted by guardians in chivalry restrain- 
 ed, the disparagement in matrimony of 
 female wards forbidden, and widows se- 
 cured from compulsory marriage. These 
 regulations, extending to the sub-vassals 
 of the crown, redressed the worst griev- 
 ances of every military tenant in Eng- 
 land. The franchises of the city of Lon- 
 don and of all towns and boroughs were 
 declared inviolable. The freedom of 
 commerce was guarantied to alien mer- 
 
342 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 chants. The Court of Common Pleas, 
 instead of following the king's person, 
 was fixed at Westminster. The tyranny 
 exercised in the neighbourhood of royal 
 forests met with some check, which was 
 further enforced by the Charter of For- 
 ests under Henry III. 
 
 But the essential clauses of Magna 
 Charta are those which protect the per- 
 sonal liberty and property of all freemen, 
 by giving security from arbitrary impris- 
 onment and arbitrary spoliation. "No 
 freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry 
 III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, 
 I quote in preference to that of John, the 
 variations not being very material) shall 
 be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of 
 his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, 
 or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other- 
 wise destroyed ; nor will we pass upon 
 him, nor send upon him, but by lawful 
 judgment of his peers, or by the law of the 
 land.* We will sell to no man, we will 
 not deny, or delay to any man justice or 
 right"." It is obftous that these words, in- 
 terpreted by any honest court of law, con- 
 vey an ample security for the two main, 
 rights of civil society. From the era, 
 therefore, of King John's charter, it must 
 have been a clear principle of our consti- 
 tution, that no man can be detained in 
 prison without trial. Whether courts of 
 justice framed the writ of habeas corpus 
 in conformity to the spirit of this clause, 
 or found it already in their register, it be- 
 came from that era the right of every sub- 
 ject to demand it. That writ, rendered 
 more actively remedial by the statute of 
 Charles II., but founded upon the broad 
 basis of Magna Charta, is the principal bul- 
 wark of English liberty ; and if ever tem- 
 porary circumstances, or the doubtful plea 
 of political necessity, shall lead men to 
 look on its denial with apathy, the most 
 
 * Nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel 
 per legem terras. Several explanations have been 
 offered of the alternative clause, which some 
 have referred to judgment by default or demurrer, 
 others to the process of attachment for contempt. 
 Certainly there are many legal procedures besides 
 trial by jury, through which a party's goods or per- 
 son may be taken. But one may doubt whether 
 these were in contemplation of the framers of 
 Magna Charta. In an entry of the charter of 1217 
 by a contemporary hand, preserved in a book in the 
 town-clerk's office in London, called Liber Cus- 
 tumarum et Regum antiquorum, a various reading, 
 et per legem terrae, occurs. Blackstone's Char- 
 ters, p. 42. A.nd the word vel is so frequently used 
 for et, that J am not wholly free from a suspicion 
 that it was so intended in this place. The mean- 
 ing will be, that no person shall be disseized, &c. 
 except upon a lawful cause of action or endictment, 
 found by the verdict of a jury. This really seems 
 as good as any of the disjunctive interpretations: 
 but { dp not offer it with much confidence. 
 
 distinguishing characteristic of our con- 
 stitution will be effaced. 
 
 As the clause recited above protects 
 the subject from any absolute spoliation 
 of his freehold rights, so others restrain 
 the excessive amercements which had an 
 almost equally ruinous operation. The 
 magnitude of his offence, by the 14th 
 clause of Henry III.'s charter, must be 
 the measure of his fine; and in every 
 case the contenement (a word expressive 
 of chattels necessary to each man's sta- 
 tion, as the arms of a gentleman, the 
 merchandise of a trader, the plough and 
 wagons of a peasant) was exempted from 
 seizure, A provision was made in the 
 charter of John, that no aid or escuage 
 should be imposed, except in the three 
 feudal cases of aid, without consent of 
 parliament. And this was extended to 
 aids paid by the city of London. But 
 the clause was omitted in the three char- 
 ters granted by Henry 111., though par- 
 liament seem to have acted upon it in 
 most part of his reign. It had, however, 
 no reference to tallages imposed upon 
 towns without their consent. Fourscore 
 years were yet to elapse before the great 
 principle of parliamentary taxation was 
 explicitly and absolutely recognised. 
 
 A law which enacts that justice shall 
 neither be sold, denied, nor delayed, 
 stamps with infamy that government un- 
 der which it had become necessary. But 
 from the time of the charter, according 
 to Madox, the disgraceful perversions of 
 right, which are upon record in the rolls 
 of the exchequer, became less frequent.* 
 
 From this era a new soul was infused 
 into the people of England. Stateofth6 
 Her liberties, at the best long cnnstitu- 
 in abeyance, became a tangible tion " n j r 
 possession, and those indefinite 
 aspirations for the laws of Edward the 
 Confessor were changed into a steady 
 regard for the Great Charter. Pass but 
 from the history of Roger de Hoveden to 
 that of Matthew Paris, from the second 
 Henry to the third, and judge whether 
 the victorious struggle had not excited 
 an energy of public spirit to which the 
 nation was before a stranger. The 
 strong man, in the sublime language of 
 Milton, was aroused from sleep, and 
 shook his invincible locks. Tyranny in- 
 deed, and injustice, will, by all historians 
 not absolutely servile, be noted with 
 moral reprobation ; but never shall we 
 find in the English writers of the twelfth 
 century that assertion of positive and na- 
 tional rights which distinguishes those 
 
 * Hist, of Exchequer, c. 13. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 343 
 
 of the next age, and particularly the 
 monk of St. Alban's. From his prolix 
 history we may collect three material 
 propositions as to the state of the Eng- 
 lish constitution during the long reign of 
 Henry III. ; a prince to whom the epithet 
 of worthless seems best applicable ; and 
 who, without committing any flagrant 
 crimes, was at once insincere, ill-judging, 
 and pusillanimous. The intervention of 
 such a reign was a very fortunate circum- 
 stance for public liberty; which might 
 possibly have been crushed in its infancy, 
 if an Edward had immediately succeeded 
 to the throne of John. 
 
 1. The Great Charter was always con- 
 sidered as a fundamental law. But yet 
 it was supposed to acquire additional se- 
 curity by frequent confirmation. This 
 it received, with some not inconsiderable 
 variation, in the first, second, and ninth 
 years of Henry's reign. The last of 
 these is in our present statute-book, and 
 has never received any alterations ; but 
 Sir E. Coke reckons thirty-two instances 
 wherein it has been solemnly ratified. 
 Several of these were during the reign 
 of Henry III., and were invariably pur- 
 chased by the grant of a subsidy.* This 
 prudent accommodation of parliament to 
 the circumstances of their age not only 
 made the law itself appear more inviola- 
 ble, but established that correspondence 
 between supply and redress, which for 
 some centuries was the balance-spring 
 of our constitution. The charter indeed 
 was often grossly violated by their ad- 
 ministration. Even Hubert de Burgh, 
 of whom history speaks more favour- 
 ably than of Henry's later favourites, 
 though a faithful servant of the crown, 
 seems, as is too often the case with 
 such men, to have thought the king's 
 honour and interest concerned in main- 
 taining an unlimited prerogative.! The 
 government was however much worse 
 administered after his fall. From the 
 great difficulty of compelling the king 
 to observe the boundaries of law, the 
 English clergy, to whom we are much 
 indebted for their zeal in behalf of liberty 
 during this reign, devised means of bind- 
 ing his conscience, and terrifying his 
 imagination by religious sanctions. The 
 solemn excommunication, accompanied 
 with the most awful threats, pronounced 
 against the violators of Magna Charta, is 
 well known from our common histories. 
 The king was a party to this ceremony, 
 and swore to observe the charter. But 
 Henry III., though a very devout person, 
 
 Matt. Paris, p. 272. 
 
 f Id., p". 284. 
 
 had his own notions as to the validity of 
 an oath that affected his power, and in- 
 deed passed his life in a series of perju- 
 ries. According to the creed of that 
 age, a papal dispensation might annul any 
 prior engagement ; and he was generally 
 on sufficiently good terms with Rome to 
 obtain such an indulgence. 
 
 2. Though the prohibition of levying 
 aids or escuages without consent of par- 
 liament had been omitted in all Henry's 
 charters, an omission for which we can- 
 not assign any other motive than the dis- 
 position of his ministers to get rid of that 
 restriction, yet neither one nor the other 
 seem in fact to have been exacted at 
 discretion throughout his reign. On the 
 contrary, the barons frequently refused 
 the aids, or rather subsidies, which his 
 prodigality was always demanding. In- 
 deed, it would probably have been impos- 
 sible for the king, however frugal, strip- 
 ped as he was of so many lucrative 
 though oppressive prerogatives by the 
 Great Charter, to support the expenditure 
 of government from his own resources. 
 Tallages on his demesnes, and especially 
 on the rich and ill-affected city of Lon- 
 don, he imposed without scruple ; but it 
 does not appear that he ever pretended 
 to a right of general taxation. We may 
 therefore take it for granted, that the 
 clause in John's charter, though not ex- 
 pressly renewed, was still considered as 
 of binding force. The king was often 
 put to great inconvenience by the refusal 
 of supply ; and at one time was reduced 
 to sell his plate and jewels, which the 
 citizens of London buying, he was pro- 
 voked to exclaim with envious spite 
 against their riches, which he had not 
 been able to exhaust.* 
 
 3. The power of granting money must 
 of course imply the power of withholding 
 it; yet this has sometimes been little 
 more than a nominal privilege. But in 
 this reign the English parliament exer- 
 cised their right of refusal, or, what was 
 much better, of conditional assent, Great 
 discontent was expressed at the demand 
 of a subsidy in 1237 ; and the king alle- 
 ging that he had expended a great deal of 
 money on his sister's marriage with the 
 emperor, and also upon his own, the bay? 
 ons answered, that he had not taken their 
 advice in those affairs, nor ought they to 
 share the punishment of acts of impru- 
 dence they had not committed. f In 
 1241, a subsidy having been demanded 
 
 * M. Paris, p, 650. 
 
 t Quod hsec omnia sine consilio fidelium suo- 
 rum facerat, nee debuerant esse poenae participes, 
 qui fuerant a culpa inirnunes, p. 367. 
 
344 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 [CHAP. VIII 
 
 for the war in Poitou, the barons drew 
 up a remonstrance, enumerating all the 
 grants they had made on former occa- 
 sions, but always on condition that the 
 imposition should not be turned into pre- 
 cedent. Their last subsidy, it appears, 
 had been paid into the hands of four bar- 
 ons, who were to expend it at their dis- 
 cretion for the benefit of the king and 
 kingdom ;* an early instance of parlia- 
 mentary control over public expendi- 
 ture. On a similar demand in 1244, the 
 king was answered by complaints against 
 the violation of the charter, the waste of 
 former subsidies, and the maladministra- 
 tion of his servants.! Finally, the bar- 
 ons positively refused any money ; and 
 he extorted 1500 marks from the city of 
 London. Some years afterward they 
 declared their readiness to burden them- 
 selves more than ever, if they could se- 
 cure the observance of the charter ; and 
 requested that the justiciary, chancellor, 
 and treasurer might be appointed with 
 consent of parliament, according, as they 
 asserted, to ancient custom, and might 
 hold their offices during good behaviour.! 
 Forty years of mutual dissatisfaction 
 had elapsed, when a signal act of Henry's 
 improvidence brought on a crisis which 
 endangered his throne. Innocent IV., 
 out of mere animosity against the family 
 of Frederick II., left no means untried 
 to raise up a competitor for the crown 
 of Naples, which Manfred had occupied. 
 Richard, earl of Cornwall, having been 
 prudent enough to decline this specula- 
 tion, the pope offered to support Henry's 
 second son, Prince Edmund. Tempted 
 
 * Matt. Paris, p. 515. 
 
 t Id., p. 563,572. Matthew Paris's language is 
 particularly uncourtly : rex cum instantissime, ne 
 dicam impudentissim&, auxilium pecuniare ab iis 
 iterum postularet, toties laesi et illusi, contradix- 
 erunt ei unanimiter et uno ore in facie. 
 
 j De comrnuni consilio regni, sicut ab antique 
 consuetum et justum, p. 778. This was not so 
 great an encroachment as it may appear. Ralph 
 de Neville, bishop of Chichester, had been made 
 chancellor in 1223, assensu totius regni; itaque 
 scilicet ut non deponeretur ab ejus sigilli custodi& 
 nisi totius regni ordinance consensu et consilio, p. 
 266. Accordingly, the king demanding the great 
 seal from him in 1236, he refused to give it up, alle- 
 ging that, having received it in the general council 
 of the kingdom, he could not resign it without the 
 same authority, p. 363. And the parliament of 
 1248 complained that the king had not followed 
 the steps of his predecessors in appointing these 
 three great officers by their consent, p. 646. What 
 had been in fact the practice of former kings, I do 
 not know ; but it is not likely to have been such 
 as they represent. Henry, however, had named 
 the Archbishop of York to the regency of the king- 
 dom during his absence beyond sea in 1242, de 
 consilio omnium comitum et baronum nostrorum et 
 omnium fldelium nostrbrum. -Rymer, t. i., p. 400. 
 
 by such a prospect, the silly king involv- 
 ed himself in irretrievable embarrass- 
 ments by prosecuting an enterprise which 
 could not possibly be advantageous to 
 England, and upon which he entered 
 without the advice of his parliament. 
 Destitute himself of money, he was com- 
 pelled to throw the expense of this new 
 crusade upon the pope; but the assist- 
 ance of Rome was never gratuitous, and 
 Henry actually pledged his kingdom for 
 the money which she might expend in a 
 war for her advantage and his own.* He 
 did not even want the effrontery to tell 
 parliament in 1257, introducing his son 
 Edmund as King of Sicily, that they were 
 bound for the repayment of 14,000 marks, 
 with interest. The pope had also, in 
 furtherance of the Neapolitan project, 
 conferred upon Henry the tithes of all 
 benefices in England, as well as the first 
 fruits of such as should be vacant, f Such 
 a concession drew upon the king the im- 
 placable resentment of his clergy, already 
 complaining of the cowardice or conni- 
 vance that had during all his reign ex- 
 posed them to the shameless exactions 
 of Rome. Henry had now indeed cause 
 to regret his precipitancy. Alexander 
 IV., the reigning pontiff, threatened him 
 not only with a revocation of the grant 
 to his son, but with an excommunication 
 and general interdict, if the money ad- 
 vanced on his account should not be im- 
 mediately repaid,^ an ^ a Roman agent 
 explained the demand to a parliament 
 assembled at London. The sum required 
 was so enormous, we are told, that it 
 struck all the hearers with astonishment 
 and horror. The nobility of the realm 
 were indignant to think that one man's 
 supine folly should thus bring them to 
 ruin. Who can deny that measures be- 
 yond the ordinary course of the consti- 
 tution were necessary to control so prod- 
 igal and injudicious a sovereign ? Ac- 
 cordingly, the barons insisted that twen- 
 ty-four persons should be nominated, half 
 by the king and half by themselves, to 
 reform the state of the kingdom. These 
 were appointed on the meeting of the 
 parliament at Oxford, after a prorogation. 
 
 * Rymer, t. i., p. 771. f P. 813. 
 
 J Idem, p. 632. This inauspicious negotiation 
 for Sicily, which is not altogether unlike that of 
 James I. about the Spanish match, in its folly, bad 
 success, and the dissatisfaction it occasioned at 
 home, receives a good deal of illustration from doc- 
 uments in Rymer's collection. 
 
 Quantitas pecuniae ad tantam ascendit sum- 
 mam, ut stuporem simul et horrorem in auribus 
 generaret audientium. Doluit igitur nobilitas reg- 
 ni, se unius hominis ita confundi supina simplici- 
 tate.-M. Pan*, p. 827. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 345 
 
 The seven years that followed are a 
 revolutionary period, the events of which 
 we do not find satisfactorily explained by 
 the historians of the time.* A king, di- 
 vested of prerogatives by his people, soon 
 appears even to themselves an injured 
 party. And as the baronial oligarchy 
 acted with that arbitrary temper which 
 is never pardoned in a government that 
 has an air of usurpation about it, the 
 royalists began to gain ground, chiefly 
 through the defection of some who had 
 joined in the original limitations imposed 
 on the crown, usually called the provis- 
 ions of Oxford. An ambitious man, con- 
 fident in his talents and popularity, ven- 
 tured to display too marked a superiority 
 above his fellows in the same cause. 
 But neither his character, nor the battles 
 of Lewes and Evesham, fall strictly with- 
 in the limits of a constitutional history. 
 It is, however, important to observe, that 
 even in the moment of success, Henry 
 III. did not presume to revoke any part 
 of the Great Charter. His victory had 
 been achieved by the arms of the Eng- 
 lish nobility, who had, generally speaking, 
 concurred in the former measures against 
 his government, and whose opposition to 
 the Earl of Leicester's usurpation was 
 compatible with a steady attachment to 
 constitutional liberty.! 
 
 The opinions of eminent lawyers are 
 Limitations undoubtedly, where legislative 
 ro'atlv 11 / or Judicial authorities fail, the 
 prove'dfrom best evidence that can be ad- 
 Bracton. duced in constitutional history. 
 It will therefore be satisfactory to select 
 a few passages from Bracton, himself a 
 judge at the end of Henry III.'s reign, by 
 which the limitation of prerogative by 
 law will clearly appear to have been 
 fully established. " The king," says he, 
 " must not be subject to any man, but to 
 God and the law ; for the law makes him 
 king. Let the king therefore give to the 
 law what the law gives to him, dominion 
 and power; for there is no king where 
 will and not law bears rule."J " The 
 king (in another place) can do nothing 
 on earth, being the minister of God, but 
 what he can do by law ; nor is what is 
 said (in the Pandects) any objection, that 
 
 * The best account of the provisions of Oxford 
 in 1260, and the circumstances connected with 
 them, is found in the Burton Annals. 2 Gale. xv. 
 Scriptores., p. 407. Many of these provisions were 
 afterward enacted in the statute of Marlebridge. 
 
 t The Earl of Glocester, whose personal quarrel 
 with Montfort had overthrown the baronial oligar- 
 chy, wrote to the king in 1267, ut provisiones Oxo- 
 niae teneri faciat per regnum suum, et ut proinissa 
 sibi apud Evesham de facto compleret. Matt. 
 Paris, p. 850. t L *-. c- 8- 
 
 whatever the prince pleases shall be law ; 
 because, by the words that follow in that 
 text, it appears to design not any mere 
 will of the prince, but that which is es- 
 tablished by the advice of his counsel- 
 lors, the king giving his authority, and 
 deliberation being had upon it."* This 
 passage is undoubtedly a misrepresenta- 
 tion of the famous lex regia, which has 
 ever been interpreted to convey the un- 
 limited power of the people to their em- 
 perors, f But the very circumstance of 
 so perverted a gloss put upon this text is 
 a proof that no other doctrine could be 
 admitted in the law of England. In an- 
 other passage, Bracton reckons as supe- 
 rior to the king, " not only God and the 
 law, by which he is made king, but his 
 court of earls and barons ; for the former 
 (comites) are so styled as associates of 
 the king, and whoever has an associate, 
 has a master ;J so that if the king were 
 without a bridle, that is, the law, they 
 ought to put a bridle upon him." Sev- 
 eral other passages in Bracton might be 
 produced to the same import ; but these 
 are sufficient to demonstrate the impor- 
 tant fact, that however extensive or even 
 indefinite might be the royal prerogative 
 in the days of Henry III., the law was 
 already its superior, itself but made part 
 of the law, and was incompetent to over- 
 throw it. It is true, that in this very 
 reign the practice of dispensing with stat- 
 utes by a non-obstante was introduced, 
 in imitation of the papal dispensations. || 
 But this prerogative could only be ex- 
 erted within certain limits, and however 
 pernicious it may be justly thought, was, 
 when thus understood and defined, not, 
 strictly speaking, incompatible with the 
 legislative sovereignty of parliament. 
 
 In conformity Avith the system of 
 France and other feudal countries, there 
 was one standing council, which assist- 
 ed the kings of England in the The king'* 
 collection and management of court - 
 their revenue, the administration of jus- 
 tice to suiters, and the despatch of all 
 public business. This was styled the 
 king's court, and held in his palace, or 
 wherever he was personally present. It 
 was composed of the great officers ; the 
 chief justiciary ;^f the chancellor, the con- 
 
 * L. iii., c. 9. These words are nearly copied 
 from Glanvil's introduction to his treatise. 
 
 t See Selden ad Fletam, p. 1046. 
 
 t This means, I suppose, that he who acts with 
 the consent of others, must be in some degree re- 
 strained by them ; but it is ill expressed. 
 
 $ L. ii., c. 16. 
 
 II M. Paris, p. 701. 
 
 IT The chief justiciary was the greatest subject 
 in England. Besides presiding in the king's court 
 
346 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 stable, marshal, chamberlain, steward, 
 and treasurer, with any others whom the 
 king might appoint. Of this great court 
 there was, as it seems, from the begin- 
 ning, a particular branch, in which all 
 matters relating to the revenue were 
 exclusively transacted. This, though 
 composed of the same persons, yet be- 
 The court m g held in a different part of the 
 of exche- palace, and for different business, 
 quer. was distinguished from the king's 
 court by the name of the exchequer ; a 
 separation which became complete when 
 civil pleas were decided and judgments 
 recorded in this second court.* 
 
 It is probable, that in the age next after 
 the conquest, few causes in which the 
 crown had no interest were carried be- 
 fore the royal tribunals ; every man finding 
 a readier course of justice in the manor or 
 county to which he belonged-! But, by 
 degrees, this supreme jurisdiction be- 
 came more familiar ; and as it seemed 
 less liable to partiality or intimidation 
 
 and in the exchequer, he was originally, by virtue 
 of his office, the regent of the kingdom during the 
 absence of the sovereign ; which, till the loss of 
 Normandy, occurred very frequently. Writs, at 
 such times, ran in his name, and were teste'd by 
 him. Madox, Hist, of Excheq., p. 16. His appoint- 
 ment upon these temporary occasions was express- 
 ed, ad custodiendum loco nostro terram nostram 
 Angliae et pacem regni nostri ; and all persons 
 were enjoined to obey him tanquam justitiario nos- 
 tro. Rymer, t. i. ? p. 181. Sometimes, however, 
 the king issued his own writ de ultra mare. The 
 first time when the dignity of this office was im- 
 paired was at the death of John, when the justicia- 
 ry, Hubert de Burgh, being besieged in Dover cas- 
 tle, those who proclaimed Henry III. at Glocester, 
 constituted the Earl of Pembroke governor of the 
 king and kingdom, Hubert still retaining his of- 
 fice. This is erroneously stated by Matthew Par- 
 is, who has misled Spelman in his Glossary ; but 
 the truth appears from Hubert's answer to the ar- 
 ticles of charge against him, and from a record in 
 Madox's Hist, of Excheq., c. 21, note A, wherein 
 the Earl of Pembroke is named rector regis et reg- 
 ni, and Hubert de Burgh justiciary. In 1241, the 
 Archbishop of York was appointed to the regency 
 during Henry's absence in Poitou, without the title 
 of justiciary. Rymer, t. i., p. 410. Still the office 
 was so considerable, that the barons who met in the 
 Oxford parliament of 1258 insisted that the justi- 
 ciary should be annually chosen with their appro- 
 bation. But the subsequent successes of Henry 
 prevented this being established ; and Edward I. 
 discontinued the office altogether. 
 
 * For every thing that can be known about the 
 Curia Regis, and especially this branch of it, the 
 student of our constitutional history should have 
 recourse to Madox's History of the Exchequer, 
 and to the Dialogus de Scaccario, written in the 
 time of Henry II. by Richard, bishop of Ely, 
 though commonly ascribed to Gervase of Tilbury. 
 This treatise he will find subjoined to Madox's 
 work. 
 
 t Omnis causa terminetu comitatu, vel hundre- 
 do, vel halimoto socam habentium. Leges Henr. 
 1..0.9. 
 
 than the provincial courts, suiters grew 
 willing to submit to its expensiveness 
 and inconvenience. It was obviously the 
 interest of the king's court to give such 
 equity and steadiness to its decisions as 
 might encourage this disposition. Noth- 
 ing could be more advantageous to the 
 king's authority, nor, what perhaps was 
 more immediately regarded, to his reve- 
 nue ; since a fine was always paid for 
 leave to plead in his court, or to remove 
 thither a cause commenced below. But 
 because few, comparatively speaking, 
 could have recourse to so distant a tribu- 
 nal as that of the king's court, and per- 
 haps also on account of the attachment 
 which the English felt to their ancient 
 right of trial by the neighbouring free- 
 holders, Henry II. established institution 
 itinerant justices, to decide civil of justices 
 and criminal pleas within each ofassi * e - 
 county.* This excellent institution is 
 referred by some to the twenty-second 
 year of that prince ; but Madox traces it 
 several years higher.f We have owed 
 to it the uniformity of our common law, 
 which would otherwise have been split, 
 like that of France, into a multitude of 
 local customs ; and we still owe to it the 
 assurance, which is felt by the poorest 
 and most remote inhabitant of England, 
 that his right is weighed by the same in- 
 corrupt and acute understanding, upon 
 which the decision of the highest ques- 
 tions is reposed. The justices of assize 
 seem originally to have gone their cir- 
 cuits annually ; and as part of their duty 
 was to set tallages upon royal towns, and 
 superintend the collection of the revenue, 
 we may be certain that there could be no 
 long interval. This annual visitation 
 was expressly confirmed by the twelfth 
 section of Magna Charta, which provides 
 also that no assize of novel disseisin, or 
 mort d'ancestor, should be taken except 
 in the shire where the lands in contro- 
 versy lay. Hence this clause stood op- 
 posed on the one hand to the encroach- 
 ments of the king's court, which might 
 otherwise, by drawing pleas of land to it- 
 self, have defeated the suiter's right to a 
 jury from the vicinage ; and on the other, 
 to those of the feudal aristocracy, who 
 hated any interference of the crown to 
 chastise their violations of law or control 
 their own jurisdiction. Accordingly, 
 while the confederacy of barons against 
 
 * Dialogus de Scaccario, p. 38. 
 
 f Hist, of Exchequer, c. iii. Lord Lyttleton 
 thinks that, this institution may have been adopted 
 in imitation of Louis VI., who half a century before 
 had introduced a similar regulation in his domin. 
 ions. Hist, of Henry II., vol. iii., p. 206. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTI0 
 
 : ' : 
 
 Henry III. was in its full power, an at- 
 tempt was made to prevent the regular 
 circuits of the judges.* 
 
 Long after the separation of the ex- 
 The court of chequer from the king's court, 
 common another branch was detached 
 for the decision of private suits. 
 This had its beginning, in Madox's opin- 
 ion, as early as the reign of Richard I.f 
 But it was completely established by 
 Magna Charta. " Common Pleas," it is 
 said in the fourteenth clause, " shall not 
 follow our court, but be held in some 
 certain place." Thus was formed the 
 Court of Common Bench at Westminster, 
 with full and, strictly speaking, exclusive 
 jurisdiction over all civil disputes, where 
 neither the king's interest, nor any mat- 
 ter savouring of a criminal nature, was 
 concerned. For of such disputes neither 
 the court of king's bench nor that of ex- 
 chequer can take cognizance, except by 
 means of a legal fiction, which, in the 
 one case, supposes an act of force, and 
 in the other, a debt to the crown. 
 
 The principal officers of state, who had 
 Origin of originally been effective mem- 
 theCom- bers of the king's court, began 
 
 monLaw. ^ withdraw from it after this 
 
 separation into three courts of justice, 
 and left their places to regular lawyers; 
 though the treasurer and chancellor of 
 the exchequer have still seats on the 
 equity side of that court, a vestige of its 
 ancient constitution. It would indeed 
 have been difficult for men bred in camps 
 or palaces to fulfil the ordinary functions 
 of judicature, under such a system of 
 law as had grown up in England. The 
 rules of legal decision among a rude peo^ 
 pie are always very simple ; not serving 
 much to guide, far less to control, the 
 feelings of natural equity. Such were 
 those which prevailed among the Anglo- 
 Saxons ; requiring no subtler intellect or 
 deeper learning than the earl or sheriff 
 at the head of his county-court might be 
 expected to possess. But a great change 
 
 * Justiciarii regis Anglia?, qui dicuntur itineris, 
 missi Herfordiam, pro suo exequendo officio repel- 
 luntur, allegantibus his qui regi adversabantur, ip- 
 sos contr& formam provisionum Qxonia? nuper fac- 
 tarum venisse. Chron. Nic. Trivet., A- D. 1260. 
 1 forget where I found this quotation. 
 
 t Hist, of ' Exchequer, c. 19. Justices of the 
 bench are mentioned several years before Magna 
 Charta. But Madox thinks the chief justiciary of 
 England might preside in the two courts, as well 
 as in the exchequer. After the erection of the 
 Common Bench, the style of the superior court 
 began to alter. It ceased by degrees to be called 
 the king's court. Pleas were said to be held coram 
 rege, or coram rege ubicunque fuerit. And thus 
 the court of king's bench was formed out of the re>> 
 mains of the ancient curia regis. 
 
 was wrought in about a century after the 
 conquest. Our English lawyers, prone 
 to magnify the antiquity, like the other 
 merits of their system, are apt to carry 
 up the date of the common law, till, like 
 the pedigree of an illustrious family, it 
 loses itself in the obscurity of ancient 
 time. Even Sir Matthew Hale does not 
 hesitate to say, that its origin is as undis- 
 coverable as that of Nile. But though 
 some features of the common law may 
 be distinguishable in Saxon times, while 
 our limited knowledge prevents us from 
 assigning many of its peculiarities to any 
 determinable period, yet the general char- 
 acter and most essential parts of the sys- 
 tem were of much later growth. The 
 laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Madox 
 truly observes, are as different from those 
 collected by Glanvil as the laws of two 
 different nations. The pecuniary com- 
 positions for crimes, especially for hom- 
 icide, which run through the Anglo- 
 Saxon code down to the laws ascribed to 
 Henry I.,* are not mentioned by Glanvil. 
 Death seems to have been the regular 
 punishment of murder, as well as rob- 
 bery. Though the investigation by means 
 of ordeal was not disused in his time,f 
 yet trial by combat, of which we find no 
 instance before the conquest, was evi- 
 dently preferred. Under the Saxon gov- 
 ernment, suits appear to have commen- 
 ced, even before the king, by verbal or 
 written complaint ; at least, no trace re- 
 mains of the original writ, the foundation 
 of our civil procedure. J The descent of 
 lands before the conquest was according 
 to the custom of gavelkind, or equal par- 
 tition among the children ; in the age of 
 Henry I. the eldest son took the principal 
 fief to his own share ;j| in that of Glanvil 
 he inherited all the lands held by knight 
 service ; but the descent of soccage lands 
 depended on the particular custom of the 
 estate. By the Saxon laws, upon the 
 death of the son without issue, the father 
 inherited ;"jf by our common law, he is 
 absolutely, and in every case, excluded. 
 Lands were, in general, devisable by tes- 
 tament before the conquest ; but not in 
 
 ~* C. 70. 
 
 t A citizen of London, suspected of murder, hav- 
 ing failed in the ordeal of cold water, was hanged 
 by order of Henry II., though he offered 500 marks 
 to save his life. Hoveden, p. 566. It appears as 
 if the ordeal were permitted to persons already con- 
 victed by the verdict of a jury. If they escaped in 
 this purgation, yet, in cases of murder, they were 
 banished the realm. Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Sax- 
 on,, p. 330. Ordeals were abolished about the be- 
 ginning of Henry III.'s reign. 
 
 t Hickes, Dissert. Epistol., p. 8. 
 
 6 Leges Gulielmi, p. 225. 
 
 fl Leges Henr. I , c. 70. 
 
343 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 the time of Henry II., except by particu- 
 lar custom. These are sufficient samples 
 of the differences between our Saxon 
 and Norman jurisprudence ; but the dis- 
 tinct character of the two will strike 
 more forcibly every one who peruses 
 successively the laws published by Wil- 
 kins, and the treatise ascribed to Glanvil. 
 The former resemble the barbaric codes 
 of the continent, and the capitularies of 
 Charlemagne and his family; minute to 
 an excess in apportioning punishments, 
 but sparing and indefinite in treating of 
 civil rights ; while the other, copious, 
 discriminating, and technical, displays the 
 characteristics as well as unfolds the prin- 
 ciples of English law. It is difficult to 
 assert any thing decisively as to the pe- 
 riod between the conquest and the reign 
 Of Henry II., which presents fewer mate- 
 rials for legal history than the preceding 
 age; but the treatise denominated the 
 Laws of Henry I., compiled at the soonest 
 about the end of Stephen's reign,* bears 
 so much of a Saxon character, that I 
 should be inclined to ascribe our present 
 common law to a date, so far as it is ca- 
 pable of any date, not much antecedent to 
 the publication of Glanvil. f At the same 
 time, since no kind of evidence attests 
 any sudden and radical change in the ju- 
 risprudence of England, the question must 
 be considered as left in great obscurity. 
 Perhaps it might be reasonable to con- 
 jecture that the treatise called Leges 
 Henrici Primi contains the ancient usa- 
 ges still prevailing in the inferior juris- 
 dictions, and that of Glanvil the rules 
 established by the Norman lawyers of the 
 king's court, which would of course ac- 
 quire a general recognition and efficacy, 
 in consequence of the institution of jus- 
 tices holding their assizes periodically 
 throughout the country. 
 The capacity of deciding legal contro- 
 
 Cbaracter Y ersi f S . WaS n W O^y to be 
 
 and defects found in men who had devo- 
 oftheEng- ted themselves to that peculiar 
 study ; and a race of such men 
 arose, whose eagerness and even enthu- 
 siasm in the profession of the law were 
 stimulated by the self-complacency of in- 
 tellectual dexterity in thridding its intri- 
 cate and thorny mazes. The Normans 
 are noted in their own country for a 
 shrewd and litigious temper, which may 
 have given a character to our courts of 
 
 * The decretum of Gratian is quoted in this trea- 
 tise, which was not published in Italy till 1151. 
 
 t Madox, Hist, of Exch., p. 122, edit. 1711. 
 Lord Lyttleton, vol. ii., p. 267, has given reasons 
 for supposing that Glanvil was not the author of 
 this treatise, but some clerk under his direction. 
 
 justice in early times. Something too 
 of that excessive subtlety, and that pref- 
 erence of technical to rational principles, 
 which runs through our system, may be 
 imputed to the scholastic philosophy 
 which was in vogue during the same 
 period, and is marked by the same fea- 
 tures. But we have just reason to* boast 
 of the leading causes of these defects ; 
 an adherence to fixed rules, and a jeal- 
 ousy of judicial discretion, which ha\e in 
 no country, I believe, been carried to 
 such a length. Hence precedents of 
 adjudged cases, becoming authorities for 
 the future, have been constantly noted, 
 and form indeed almost the sole ground 
 of argument in questions of mere law. 
 But these authorities being frequently 
 unreasonable and inconsistent, partly 
 from the infirmity of all human reason, 
 partly from the imperfect manner in 
 which a number of unwarranted and 
 incorrect reporters have handed them 
 down, later judges grew anxious to elude 
 by impalpable distinctions what they did 
 not venture to overturn. In some in- 
 stances, this evasive skill has been ap- 
 plied to acts of the legislature. Those 
 who are moderately conversant with the 
 history of our law will easily trace other 
 circumstances that have co-operated in 
 producing that technical and subtle sys- 
 tem which regulates the course of real 
 property. For as that formed almost the 
 whole of our ancient jurisprudence, it is 
 there that we must seek its original char- 
 acter. But much of the same spirit per- 
 vades every part of the law. No tri- 
 bunal of a civilized people ever borrowed 
 so little, even of illustration, from the 
 writings of philosophers, or from the in- 
 stitutions of other countries. Hence law 
 has been studied, in general, rather as an 
 art than a science, with more solicitude 
 to know its rules and distinctions, than 
 to perceive their application to that for 
 which all rules of law ought to have been 
 established, the maintenance of public 
 and private rights. Nor is there any 
 reading more jejune and unprofitable to a 
 philosophical mind than that of -our an- 
 cient law-books. Later times have in- 
 troduced other inconveniences, till the 
 vast extent and multiplicity of our laws 
 have become a practical evil of serious 
 importance, and an evil which, between 
 the timidity of the legislature on the one 
 hand, and the selfish views of practition- 
 ers on the other, is likely to reach, in no 
 long period, an intolerable excess. De- 
 terred by an interested clamour against 
 innovation from abrogating what is use- 
 less, simplifying what is complex, or de- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 349 
 
 termining what is doubtful, and always 
 more inclined to stave off an immediate 
 difficulty by some patchwork scheme of 
 modifications and suspensions, than to 
 consult for posterity in the comprehen- 
 sive spirit of legal philosophy, we accu- 
 mulate statute upon statute, and prece- 
 dent upon precedent, till no industry can 
 acquire, nor any intellect digest the mass 
 of learning that grows upon the panting 
 student; and our jurisprudence seems 
 not unlikely to be simplified in the worst 
 and least honourable manner, a tacit 
 agreement of ignorance among its pro- 
 fessors. Much indeed has already gone 
 into desuetude within the last centu- 
 ry, and is known only as an occult 
 science by a small number of adepts. 
 We are thus gradually approaching the 
 crisis of a necessary reformation, when 
 our laws, like those of Rome, must be 
 cast into the crucible. It would be a dis- 
 grace to the nineteenth century, if Eng- 
 land could not find her Tribonian.* 
 
 This establishment of a legal system, 
 which must be considered as complete at 
 the end of Henry III.'s reign, when the 
 unwritten usages of the common law, as 
 well as the forms and precedents of the 
 courts, were digested into the great work 
 of Bracton, might, in some respects, con- 
 duce to the security of public freedom. 
 For, however highly the prerogative 
 might be strained, it was incorporated 
 with the law, and treated with the same 
 
 * Whitelocke, just after the restoration, com- 
 plains that " Now the volume of our statutes is 
 grown or swelled to a great bigness." The vol- 
 ume! What would he have said to the monstrous 
 birth of a volume triennially, rilled with laws pro- 
 fessing to be the deliberate work of the legislature, 
 which every subject is supposed to read, remem- 
 ber, and understand ! The excellent sense of the 
 following sentences from the same passage may 
 well excuse me from quoting them, and, perhaps, 
 in this age of bigoted averseness to innovation, I 
 have need of some apology for what I have ven- 
 tured to say in the text. " I remember the opin- 
 ion of a wise and learned statesman and lawyer 
 (the Chancellor Oxenstiern) that multiplicity of 
 written laws do but distract the judges, and render 
 the law less certain ; that where the law sets due 
 and clear bounds between the prerogative royal 
 and the rights of the people, and gives remedy in 
 private causes, there needs no more laws to be in- 
 creased, for thereby litigation will be increased like- 
 wise. It were a work worthy of a parliament, and 
 cannot be done otherwise, to cause a review of all 
 our statutes, to repeal such as they shall judge 
 inconvenient to remain in force ; to confirm those 
 which they shall think fit to stand, and those sev- 
 eral statutes which are confused, some repugnant 
 to others, many touching the same matters, to be 
 reduced into certainty, all of one subject into one 
 statute, that perspicuity and clearness may appear 
 in our written laws, which at this day few students 
 or sages can find in them." Whitelpcke's Com- 
 mentary on Parliamentary Writ,*vol. i., p. 409. 
 
 distinguishing and argumentative subt- 
 lety as every other part of it. What- 
 ever things, therefore, it was asserted, 
 that the king might do, it was a neces- 
 sary implication that there were other 
 things which he could not do; else it 
 were vain to specify the former. It is 
 not meant to press this too far ; since un- 
 doubtedly the bias of lawyers towards 
 the prerogative was sometimes too dis- 
 cernible. But the sweeping maxims of 
 absolute power, which servile judges and 
 churchmen taught the Tudor and Stuart 
 princes, seem to have made no progress 
 under the Plantagenet line. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the ef- 
 fect which the study of the law 
 had upon the rights of the sub- JflSX 
 ject, it conduced materially to crown es- 
 the security of good order by tablished - 
 ascertaining the hereditary succession of 
 the crown. Five kings out of seven that 
 followed William the Conqueror were 
 usurpers, according at least to modern 
 notions. Of these, Stephen alone en- 
 countered any serious opposition upon 
 that ground ; and with respect to him, it 
 must be remembered, that all the barons, 
 himself included, had solemnly sworn to 
 maintain the succession of Matilda. Hen- 
 ry II. procured a parliamentary settle- 
 ment of the crown upon his eldest and 
 second sons ; a strong presumption that 
 their hereditary right was not absolutely 
 secure.* A mixed notion of right and 
 choice in fact prevailed as to the suc- 
 cession of every European monarchy. 
 The coronation oath and the form of 
 popular consent then required were con- 
 sidered as more material, at least to per- 
 fect a title, than we deem them at present. 
 They gave seisin, as it were, of the 
 crown, and, in cases of disputed preten- 
 sions, had a sort of judicial efficacy. 
 The Chronicle of Dunstaple says, con- 
 cerning Richard I., that he was "ele- 
 vated to the throne by hereditary right, 
 after a solemn election by the clergy and 
 people :"f words that indicate the current 
 principles of that age. It is to be observ- 
 ed, however, that Richard took upon him. 
 the exercise of royal prerogatives, with- 
 out waiting for his coronation.} The 
 succession of John has certainly passed 
 in modern times for a usurpation. I do 
 not find that it was considered as such 
 by his own contemporaries on this side 
 of the channel. The question of inher- 
 itance between an uncle and the son of 
 
 * Lyttleton, vol. ii., p. 14. 
 t Idem, p. 42. Haereditario jure promovendus in 
 regnum, post cleri et populi solennem electionem, 
 % Gul. Neubrigensis, 1. iv., c. 1. 
 
350 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 his deceased elder brother was yet unset- 
 tled, as we learn from Glanvil, even in 
 private succession.* In the case of sov- 
 ereignties, which were sometimes con- 
 tended to require different rules from or- 
 dinary patrimonies, it was, and continued 
 long to be, the most uncertain point in 
 public law. John's pretensions to the 
 crown might therefore be such as the 
 English were justified in admitting, espe- 
 cially as his reversionary title seems to 
 have been acknowledged in the reign of 
 his brother Richard. f If indeed we may 
 place reliance on Matthew Paris, Arch- 
 bishop Hubert, on this occasion, declared 
 in the most explicit terms that the crown 
 was elective, giving even to the blood 
 royal no other preference than their merit 
 might challenge. :{: Carte rejects this as 
 a fiction of the historian ; and it is cer- 
 tainly a strain far beyond the constitu- 
 tion, which, both before and after the 
 conquest, had invariably limited the 
 throne to one royal stock, though not 
 strictly to its nearest branch. In a char- 
 ter of the first year of his reign, John 
 calls himself king "by hereditary right, 
 and through the consent and favour of 
 the church and people. "$ 
 
 It is deserving of remark, that during 
 the rebellions against this prince and his 
 son Henry III. , not a syllable was breathed 
 in favour of Eleanor, Arthur's sister, who, 
 if the present rules of succession had 
 been established, was the undoubted heir- 
 ess of his right. The barons chose rather 
 to call in the aid of Louis, with scarcely 
 a shade of title, though with much bet- 
 ter means of maintaining himself. One 
 should think that men whose fathers had 
 been in the field for Matilda could make no 
 difficulty about female succession. But I 
 doubt whether, notwithstanding that pre- 
 cedent, the crown of England was uni- 
 versally acknowledged to be capable of de- 
 scending to a female heir. Great averse- 
 ness had been shown by the nobility of 
 Henry I. to his proposal of settling the 
 kingdom on his daughter. || And from a 
 remarkable passage which I shall produce 
 in a note, it appears that even in the reign 
 of Edward III. the succession was sup- 
 posed to be confined to the male line.T 
 
 * Glanvil, 1. vii., c. 3. f Hoveden, p. 702. 
 
 J Hoveden, p. 165. 
 
 $ Jure haereditario, et mediante tarn cleri et pop- 
 uli consensu et favore. Gurdon on Parliaments, 
 p. 139. 
 
 || Lyttleton, vol. i., p. 162. 
 
 ^ This is intimated by the treaty made in 1339, 
 for a marriage between the eldest son of Edward 
 III. and the Duke of Brabant's daughter. Edward 
 therein promises, that if his son should die before 
 him, leaving male issue, he will procure the con- 
 
 At length, about the middle of the thir- 
 teenth century, the lawyers applied to 
 the crown the same strict principles of 
 descent which regulate a private inherit-* 
 ance. Edward I. was proclaimed imme- 
 diately upon his father's death, though 
 absent in Sicily. Something, however, 
 of the old principle may be traced in this 
 proclamation, issued in his name by the 
 guardians of the realm, where he asserts 
 the crown of England " to have devolv- 
 ed upon him by hereditary succession 
 and the will of his nobles."* These last 
 words were omitted in the proclama- 
 tion of Edward II. ;f since whose time 
 the crown has been absolutely hereditary. 
 The coronation oath, and the recognition 
 of the people at that solemnity, are for- 
 malities which convey no right either to 
 the sovereign or the people, though they 
 may testify the duties of each. 
 
 I cannot conclude the present chap- 
 ter without observing one most English 
 prominent and characteristic gentry des- 
 distinction between the consti- cuSi^eprlv- 
 tution of England and that of iieges. 
 every other country in Europe ; I mean 
 its refusal of civil privileges to the lower 
 nobility, or those whom we denominate 
 the gentry. In France, in Spain, in Ger- 
 many, wherever, in short, we look, the 
 appellations of nobleman and gentleman 
 have been strictly synonymous. Those 
 entitled to bear them by descent, by ten- 
 ure of land, by office or royal creation, 
 have 'formed a class distinguished by 
 privileges inherent in their blood from 
 ordinary freemen. Marriage with noble 
 
 sent of his barons, nobles, and cities (that is, of 
 parliament; nobles here meaning knights, if the 
 word has any distinct sense) for such issue to in- 
 herit the kingdom ; and if he die leaving a daugh- 
 ter only, Edward or his heir shall make such pro- 
 vision for her as belongs to the daughter of a king. 
 Rymer, t. v., p. 114. It may be inferred from 
 this instrument, that in Edward's intention, if not 
 by the constitution, the Salique-law was to regulate 
 the succession of the English crown. This law, 
 it must be remembered, he was compelled to admit 
 in his claim on the kingdom of France, though 
 with a certain modification, which gave a pretext 
 of title to himself. 
 
 * Ad^nos regni gubernaculum successione hae- 
 reditaria, ac procerum regni voluntate, et fidelitate 
 nobis praestila sit devolutum. Brady (History of 
 England, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 1) expounds proce- 
 rum voluntate to mean willingness, not will ; SLS 
 much as to say, they acted readily and without 
 command. But in all probability it was intended 
 to save the usual form of consent. 
 
 f Rymer, t. iii., p. 1. Walsingham, however, 
 asserts that Edward II. ascended the throne non 
 tarn jure haereditario quam unanimi assensu proce- 
 rum et magnatum, p. 95. Perhaps we should omit 
 the word non, and he might intend to say, that the 
 king had not only his hereditary title, but the froe 
 consent of his barons. 
 
 
PART II.] 
 
 icNCJLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 351 
 
 families, or the purchase of military fiefs, 
 or the participation of many civil offices, 
 were more or less interdicted to the 
 commons of France and the empire. Of 
 these restrictions, nothing, or next to 
 nothing, was ever known in England. 
 The law has never taken notice of gen- 
 tlemen.* From the reign of Henry III. 
 at least, the legal equality of all ranks 
 below the peerage was, to every essen- 
 tial purpose, as complete as at present. 
 Compare two writers nearly contempo- 
 rary, Bracton with Beaumanoir, and mark 
 how the customs of England are distin- 
 guishable in this respect. The French- 
 man ranges the people under three divis- 
 ions, the noble, the free, and the servile ; 
 our countryman has no generic class 
 but freedom and villanage.f No restraint 
 seems ever to have lain upon marriage ; 
 nor have the children even of a peer 
 been ever deemed to lose any privilege 
 by his union with a commoner. The 
 purchase of lands held by knight-service 
 was always open to all freemen. A few 
 privileges indeed were confined to those 
 who had received knighthood.J But, 
 upon the whole, there was a virtual 
 equality of rights among all the com- 
 moners of England. What is most par- 
 ticular is, that the peerage itself imparts 
 no privilege except to its actual possessor. 
 In every other country, the descendants 
 of nobles cannot but themselves be noble, 
 because their nobility is the immediate 
 consequence of their birth. But though 
 we commonly say that the blood of a 
 peer is ennobled, yet this expression 
 seems hardly accurate, and fitter for 
 heralds than lawyers ; since in truth 
 nothing confers nobility but the actual 
 descent of a peerage. The sons of peers, 
 
 * It is hardly worth while, even for the sake of 
 obviating cavils, to notice as an exception the stat- 
 ute of 23 H. VI., c. 14, prohibiting the election of 
 any who were not born gentlemen for knights of 
 the shire. Much less should I have thought of 
 noticing, if it had not been suggested as an objec- 
 tion, the provision of the statute of Merton, that 
 guardians in chivalry shall not marry their wards 
 to villeins or burgesses, to their disparagement. 
 Wherever the distinctions of rank and property 
 are felt in the customs of society, such marriages 
 will be deemed unequal ; and it was to obviate the 
 tyranny of feudal superiors, who compelled their 
 wards to accept a mean alliance, or to forfeit its 
 price, that this provision of the statute was made. 
 But this does not affect the proposition I had main- 
 tained as to the legal equality of commoners, any 
 more than a report of a master in chancery at the 
 present day, that a proposed marriage for a ward 
 of the court was unequal to what her station in 
 society appeared to claim, would invalidate the 
 same proposition. 
 
 Beaumanoir, c. 45. Bracton, 1. i., c. 6. 
 
 t See for these, Selden's Titles of Honour, vol. 
 in., p. 806. 
 
 as we well know, are commoners, and 
 totally destitute of any legal right beyond 
 a barren precedence, 
 
 There is no part, perhaps, of our con- 
 stitution so admirable as this equality of 
 civil rights ; this isonomia, which the phi- 
 losophers of ancient Greece only hoped 
 to find in democratical governments.* 
 From the beginning our law has been no 
 respecter of persons. It screens not the 
 gentleman of ancient lineage from the 
 judgment of an ordinary jury, nor from 
 ignominious punishment. It confers not, 
 it never did confer, those unjust immuni- 
 ties from public burdens which the supe- 
 rior orders arrogated to themselves upon 
 the continent. Thus, while the privileges 
 of our peers, as hereditary legislators of 
 a free people, are incomparably more val- 
 uable and dignified in their nature, they 
 are far less invidious in their exercise 
 than those of any other nobility in Eu- 
 rope. It is, I am firmly persuaded, to 
 this peculiarly democratical character of 
 the English monarchy that we are in- 
 debted for its long permanence, its regu- 
 lar improvement, and its present vigour. 
 It is a singular, a providential circum- 
 stance, that in an age when the gradual 
 march of civilization and commerce was 
 so little foreseen, our ancestors, devia- 
 ting from the usages of neighbouring 
 countries, should, as if deliberately, have 
 guarded against that expansive force 
 which, in bursting through obstacles im- 
 providently opposed, has scattered havoc 
 over Europe. 
 
 This tendency to civil equality in the 
 English law may, I think, be causes of 
 ascribed to several concurrent the 
 causes. In the first place, the 
 feudal institutions were far less land. 
 military in England than upon the conti- 
 nent. From the time of Henry II., the 
 escuage, or pecuniary commutation for 
 personal service, became almost univer- 
 sal. The armies of our kings were com- 
 posed of hired troops, great part of whom 
 certainly were knights and gentlemen, 
 but who, serving for pay, and not by vir- 
 tue of their birth or tenure, preserved 
 nothing of the feudal character. It was 
 not, however, so much for the ends of na- 
 tional as of private warfare, that the re- 
 lation of lord and vassal was contrived. 
 The right which every baron in France 
 possessed of redressing his own wrongs 
 
 I}\rj9os ap%ov, Trpwrov [icv uvofia 
 
 , says the advocate of democracy in the 
 discussion of forms of government which Herodo- 
 tus (Thalia, c*. 80) has put into the mouths of 
 three Persian satraps, after the murder of Smerdis, 
 a scene conceived in the spirit of Corneille. 
 
352 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Vllf. 
 
 and those of his tenants by arms, render- 
 ed their connexion strictly military. But 
 we read very little of private wars in 
 England. Notwithstanding some passa- 
 ges in Glanvil, which certainly appear to 
 admit their legality, it is not easy to rec- 
 oncile this with the general tenure of 
 our laws.* They must always have been 
 a breach of the king's peace, which our 
 Saxon lawgivers were perpetually stri- 
 ving to preserve, and which the* conquer- 
 or and his sons more effectually main- 
 tained, f Nor can we trace many in- 
 stances (some we perhaps may) of actual 
 hostilities among the nobility of England 
 after the conquest, except during such an 
 anarchy as the reign of Stephen or the 
 minority of Henry III. Acts of outrage 
 and spoliation were indeed very frequent. 
 The statute of Marlebridge, soon after the 
 baronial wars of Henry III., speaks of the 
 disseisins that had taken place during the 
 late disturbances ;J and thirty-five ver- 
 dicts are said to have been given at one 
 court of assize against Foulkes de 
 Breaute, a notorious partisan, who com- 
 manded some foreign mercenaries at the 
 beginning of the same reign : but these 
 are faint resemblances of that wide- 
 spreading devastation which the nobles 
 of France and Germany were entitled to 
 carry among their neighbours. The most 
 prominent instance, perhaps, of what may 
 be deemed a private war, arose out of a 
 contention between the earls of Gloces- 
 ter and Hereford, in the reign of Edward 
 I., during which acts of extraordinary 
 violence were perpetrated ; but, far from 
 its having passed for lawful, these pow- 
 erful nobles were both committed to pris- 
 on, and paid heavy fines. |j Thus the 
 tenure of knight-service was not in effect 
 much more peculiarly connected with the 
 
 * I have modified this passage, in consequence 
 of the just animadversion of a periodical critic. In 
 the former edition I had stated too strongly the dif- 
 ference which I still believe to have existed be- 
 tween the customs of England and other feudal 
 countries, in respect of private warfare. 
 
 f The penalties imposed on breaches of the 
 peace in Wilkins's Anglo-Saxon laws are too nu- 
 merous to be particularly inserted. One remarka- 
 ble passage in Domesday appears, by mentioning a 
 legal custom of private feuds in an individual man- 
 or, and there only among Welshmen, to afford an in- 
 ference that it was an anomaly. In the royal manor 
 of Archenfeld in Herefordshire, if one Welshman 
 kills another, it was a custom for the relations of 
 the slain to assemble and plunder the murderer and 
 his kindred, and burn their houses until the corpse 
 should be interred, which was to take place by 
 noon on the morrow of his death. Of this plunder 
 the king had a third part, and the rest they kept for 
 themselves, p. 179. 
 
 J Stat. 52 H. III. $ Matt. Paris, p. 271. 
 
 H Rot. Parl., vol. i., p. 70. 
 
 profession of arms than that of soccage. 
 There was nothing in the former condi- 
 tion to generate that high self-estimation 
 which military habits inspire. On the 
 contrary, the burdensome incidents of 
 tenure in chivalry rendered soccage the 
 more advantageous, though less honoura- 
 ble of the two. 
 
 In the next place, we must ascribe a 
 good deal of efficacy to the old Saxon 
 principles that survived the conquest of 
 William, and infused themselves into our 
 common law. A respectable class of 
 free soccagers, having, in general, full 
 rights of alienating their lands, and hold- 
 ing them probably at a small certain rent 
 from the lord of the manor, frequent- 
 ly occur in Domesday Book. Though, 
 as I have already observed, these were 
 derived from the superior and more for- 
 tunate Anglo-Saxon ceorls, they were 
 perfectly exempt from all marks of vil- 
 lanage both as to their persons and es- 
 tates. Some have derived their name 
 from the Saxon soc, which signifies a 
 franchise, especially one of jurisdiction. 
 And whatever may come of this etymol- 
 ogy, which is not perhaps so well estab- 
 lished as that from the French word soc, 
 a ploughshare,* they undoubtedly were 
 suiters to the court-baron of the lord, to 
 whose soc, or right of justice, they be- 
 longed. They were consequently judges 
 in civil causes, determined before the 
 manorial tribunal. f Such privileges set 
 
 * It is not easy to decide between these two 
 derivations of the words soccage and socman. 
 On the one hand, the frequent recurrence in 
 Domesday Book of the expression, socmanni de 
 soca Algari, &c., seems to lead us to infer that 
 these words, so near in sound, were related to 
 each other. Sommer (on Gavelkind, p. 13) is 
 clearly for this derivation. But Bracton, 1. ii., c. 
 35, derives soccage from the French soc, and this 
 etymology is curiously illustrated by a passage 
 in Blomefield's Hist, of Norfolk, vol. iii., p. 538 
 (folio). In the manor of Cawston, a mace with a 
 brazen hand holding a ploughshare was carried 
 before the steward, as a sign that it was held by 
 soccage of the dutchy of Lancaster. Perhaps, 
 however, this custom may be thought not suffi- 
 ciently ancient to confirm Bracton's derivation. 
 
 t Territorial jurisdiction, the commencement 
 of which we have seen before the conquest, was 
 never so extensive as in governments of a more 
 aristocratical character, either in criminal or civil 
 cases. 1. In the laws ascribed to Henry I., it is 
 said that all great offences could only be tried in 
 the king's court, or by his commission, c. 10. 
 Glanvil distinguishes the criminal pleas, which 
 could only be determined before the king's judges, 
 from those which belong to the sheriff. Treason, 
 murder, robbery, and rape were of the former 
 class ; theft of the latter, 1. xiv. The criminal ju- 
 risdiction of the sheriff is entirely taken away'by 
 Magna Charta, c. 17. Sir E. Coke says, the ter- 
 ritorial franchises of infangthef and outfangthef 
 " had some continuance afterward, but either by 
 this act, or per desuetudinem, for inconvenience 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 353 
 
 them greatly above the roturiers, or cen- 
 siers of France. They were all Eng- 
 lishmen, and their tenure strictly Eng- 
 lish; which seems to have given it 
 credit in the eyes of our lawyers, when 
 the name of Englishman was affected 
 even by those of Norman descent, and 
 the laws of Edward the Confessor be- 
 came the universal demand. Certainly 
 Glanvil, and still more Bracton, treat 
 the tenure in free soccage with great re- 
 spect. And we have reason to think 
 that this class of freeholders was very 
 numerous, even before the reign of Ed- 
 ward I. 
 But, lastly, the change which took 
 
 these franchises within manors are antiquated and 
 gone."?. Inst., p. 31. The statute hardly seems 
 to reach them ; and they were certainly both claim- 
 ed and exercised as late as the reign of Edward 
 I. Blomefield mentions two instances, both in 
 1285, where executions for felony took place by 
 the sentence of a court-baron. In these cases the 
 lord's privilege was called in question at the as- 
 sizes, by which means we learn the transaction ; 
 it is very probable that similar executions occurred 
 in manors where the jurisdiction was not dispu- 
 ted. (Hist, of Norfolk, vol. i., p. 313 ; vol. iii., p. 
 50.) Felonies are now cognizable in the greater 
 part of boroughs ; though it is usual, except in the 
 most considerable places, to remit such as are not 
 within benefit of clergy to the justices of jail de- 
 livery on their circuit. This jurisdiction, however, 
 is given, or presumed to be given, by special char- 
 ter, and perfectly distinct from that which was 
 feudal and territorial. Of the latter some vestiges 
 appear to remain in particular liberties, as for ex- 
 ample the Soke of Peterborough ; but most, if not 
 all, of these local franchises have fallen, by right 
 or custom, into the hands of justices of the peace. 
 A territorial privilege somewhat analogous to 
 criminal jurisdiction, but considerably more op- 
 pressive, was that of private jails. At the parlia- 
 ment of Merton, 1237, the lords requested to have 
 their own prison for trespasses upon their parks 
 and ponds, which the king refused. Stat. Merton, 
 c. 11. But several lords enjoyed this as a particu- 
 lar franchise ; which is saved by the statute 5 H. 
 IV., c. 10, directing justices of the peace to im- 
 prison no man, except in the common jail. 2. 
 The civil jurisdiction of the court-baron was ren- 
 dered insignificant not only by its limitation, in 
 personal suits, to debts or damages not exceeding 
 forty shillings, but by the writs of toll and pone, 
 which at once removed a suit for lands, in any 
 stage of its progress before judgment, into the 
 county court or that of the king. The statute of 
 Marlebridge took away all appellant jurisdiction 
 of the superior lord, for false judgment in the 
 manorial court of his tenant, and thus aimed an- 
 other blow at the feudal connexion. 52 H. III., c. 
 19. 3. The lords of the counties palatine of Ches- 
 ter and Durham, and the royal franchise of Ely, 
 had not only a capital jurisdiction in criminal 
 cases, but an exclusive cognizance of civil suits ; 
 the former still is retained by the bishops of Dur- 
 ham and Ely, though much shorn of its ancient 
 extent by an act of Henry VIII. (27 H. VIII., c. 
 24), and administered by the king's justices of as- 
 size ; the bishops or their deputies being put only 
 on the footing of ordinary justices of the peace. 
 Id., s. 20. 
 
 place in the constitution of parliament 
 consummated the degradation, if we 
 must use the word, of the lower nobili- 
 ty: I mean, not so much their attend* 
 ance by representation instead of per- 
 sonal summons, as their election by the 
 whole body of freeholders, and their sep- 
 aration, along with citizens and bur- 
 gesses, from the house of peers. These 
 changes will fall under consideration in 
 the following chapter. 
 
 PART III. 
 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 Reign of Edward I. Confirmatio Chartarum. 
 Constitution of Parliament the Prelates the 
 Temporal Peers. Tenure by Barony its 
 Changes. Difficulty of the Subject. Origin of 
 Representation of the Commons. .Knights of 
 Shires their Existence doubtfully traced 
 through the Reign of Henry III. Question 
 whether Representation was confined to Ten' 
 ants in capite discussed. State of English 
 Towns at the Conquest and afterward their 
 Progress. Representatives from them summon- 
 ed to Parliament by Earl of Leicester. Im- 
 probability of an earlier Origin. Cases of St. Al- 
 ban's and Barnstaple considered. Parliaments 
 under Edward I. Separation of Knights and 
 Burgesses from the Peers. Edward II. grad- 
 ual progress of the Authority of Parliament 
 traced through the Reigns of Edward III. and 
 his successors down to Henry VI. Privilege of 
 Parliament the early instances of it noticed. 
 Nature of Borough Representation. Rights of 
 Election other particulars relative to Elec- 
 tions. House of Lords. Baronies by Tenure 
 by Writ. Nature of the latter discussed. 
 Creation of Peers by Act of Parliament and by 
 Patent. Summons of Clergy to Parliament. 
 King's Ordinary Council its Judicial and other 
 Power. Character of the Plantagenet Govern- 
 ment. Prerogative its Excesses erroneous 
 Views corrected. Testimony of Sir John For- 
 tescue to the Freedom of the Constitution. 
 Causes of the superior Liberty of England con- 
 sidered. State of Society in England. Want 
 of Police. Villanage its gradual extinction- 
 latter years of Henry VI. Regencies. Instan- 
 ces of them enumerated. Pretensions of the 
 House of York, and War of the Roses. Ed- 
 ward IV. Conclusion. 
 
 THOUGH the undisputed accession of a 
 prince like Edward the First Accession of 
 to the throne of his father, Edward I. 
 does not seem so convenient a resting- 
 place in history as one of those revolu- 
 tions which interrupt the natural chain 
 of events, yet the changes wrought du- 
 ring his reign make it properly an epoch 
 n the progress of these inquiries. And, 
 indeed, as ours is emphatically styled a 
 government by king, lords, and com- 
 mons, we cannot perhaps in strictness 
 carry it farther back than the admission 
 of the latter into parliament ; so that, if 
 the constant representation of the com- 
 
354 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CftAP. VI 11, 
 
 mons is to be referred to the age of Ed- 
 ward the First, it will be nearer the truth 
 to date the English constitution from that 
 than froai any earlier era. 
 
 The various statutes affecting the law 
 of property and administration of justice 
 whTch hare caused Edward I. to be 
 named, rather hyperbolically, the Eng- 
 lish Justinramr, bear no immediate relation 
 to our present inquiries. In a constitu- 
 tional point of view, the principal object 
 confirma- is that statute entitled the Con- 
 tionofthe firmationof the Charters, which 
 charters. was yer y re luctantly conceded 
 by the king in the twenty-fifth year 
 of his reign. I do not know that Eng- 
 land has ever produced any patriots to 
 whose memory she owes more gratitude 
 than Humphrey Bohun, earl of Here- 
 ford and Essex, and Roger Bigod y earl 
 of Norfolk. In the Great Charter the 
 base spirit and deserted condition of 
 John take off something from the glory of 
 the triumph, though they enhance the 
 moderation of those who pressed no far- 
 ther upon an abject tyrant. But to 
 withstand the measures of Edward, a 
 prince unequalled by any who had reign- 
 ed in England since the Conqueror for 
 prudence, valour, and success, required 
 a far more intrepid patriotism. Their 
 provocations, if less outrageous than 
 those received from John, were such as 
 evidently manifested a disposition in Ed- 
 ward to reign without any control; a 
 constant refusal to confirm the charters, 
 which in that age were hardly deemed to 
 bind the king without his actual consent ; 
 heavy impositions, especially one on the 
 export of wool, and other unwarranta- 
 ble demands. He had acted with such 
 unmeasured violence towards the clergy, 
 on account of their refusal of further 
 subsidies, that, although the ill-judged 
 policy of that class kept their interests 
 too distinct from those of the people, it 
 was natural for all to be alarmed at the 
 precedent of despotism.* These en- 
 croachments made resistance justifiable, 
 and the circumstances of Edward made 
 it prudent. His ambition, luckily for the 
 people, had involved him in foreign war- 
 fare, from which he could not recede 
 without disappointment and dishonour. 
 Thus was wrested from him that famous 
 statute, inadequately denominated the 
 
 * The fullest account we possess of these do- 
 mestic transactions from 1294 to 1298 is in Walter 
 Hemingford, one of the historians edited by 
 Hearne, p. 52168. They have been vilely per- 
 verted by Carte, but extremely well told by Hume, 
 the first writer who had the merit of exposing the 
 character of Edward I. See too Knyghton, in 
 Twysden's Decem Scriptoreb, col. 2492. 
 
 Confirmation of the Charters, because it 
 added another pillar to our constitution, 
 not less important than the Great Char- 
 ter itself.* 
 
 It wa enacted by the 25 E. I., that the 
 charter of liberties, and that of the for- 
 est, besides being explicitly confirmed,! 
 should be sent to all sheriffs, justices in 
 eyre r and other magistrates throughout 
 the realm, in order to their publication 
 before the people -, that copies of them 
 should be kept in cathedral churches, and 
 publicly read twice in the year, accom- 
 panied by a solemn sentence of excom- 
 munication against all who should in- 
 fringe them; that any judgment given 
 contrary to these charters should be in- 
 valid, and holden for naught. This au- 
 thentic promulgation, these awful sanc- 
 tions of the Great Charter, would alone 
 render the statute of which we are speak- 
 ing illustrious. But it went a great deal 
 farther. Hitherto the king's prerogative 
 of levying money, by name- of tallage or 
 prise r from his towns and tenants in de- 
 mesne, had passed unquestioned. Some 
 impositions, that especially on the ex- 
 port of wool, affected all his subjects. 
 It was now the moment to enfranchise 
 the people, and give that security to pri- 
 vate property which Magna Charta had 
 given to personal liberty. By the 5th 
 and 6th sections of this statute, "the aids, 
 tasks, and prises" before taken are re- 
 nounced as precedents ; and the king 
 " grants for him and his heirs, as- well to 
 archbishops, bishops-, abbots, priors, and 
 other folk of holy church,, as also to earls, 
 barons, and to all commonalty of the 
 land, that for no business from hence- 
 forth we shall take such manner of aids, 
 tasks, nor prises, but by the common as- 
 sent of the realm, and for the common 
 profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and 
 prises due and accustomed." The toll 
 upon wool, so far as levied by the king's 
 mere prerogative, is expressly released 
 by the seventh section. J 
 
 * Walsingham, in Camden's Scriptores Rer. 
 Anglicarum, p. 71 73. 
 
 f Edward would not confirm the charters, not- 
 withstanding his promise, without the words sal- 
 vo jure coronae nostrae ; on which the two earls 
 retired from court. When the confirmation was 
 read to the people at St. Paul's, says Hemingford, 
 they blessed the king on seeing the charters with 
 the great seal affixed : but when they heard the 
 captious conclusion, they cursed him instead. At 
 the next meeting of parliament, the king agreed to 
 omit these insidious words, p. 168. 
 
 } The supposed statute. De Tallagio non conce- 
 dendo, is considered by Blackstone (Introduction 
 to Charters, p. 67) as merely an abstract of the 
 Confirmatio Chartarum. By that entitled Articuli 
 super Chartas, 28 Edw. I., a court was erected in 
 
PART HI.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 355 
 
 We come now to a part of our subject 
 Constitu- exceed! ugly important, but more 
 tion of par- intricate and controverted than 
 liament. an y o ther, the constitution of 
 parliament. I have taken no notice of 
 this in the last section, in order to pre- 
 sent uninterruptedly to the reader the 
 gradual progress of our legislature down 
 to its complete establishment under the 
 Edwards. No excuse need be made for 
 the dry and critical disquisition of the fol- 
 lowing pages ; but among such obscure 
 inquiries, I cannot feel myself as secure 
 from error as I certainly do from par- 
 tiality. 
 
 One constituent branch of the great 
 The spirit- councils, held by William the 
 uai peers. Conqueror and all his succes- 
 sors, was composed of the bishops, and 
 the heads of religious houses holding 
 their temporalities immediately of the 
 crown. It has been frequently maintain- 
 ed, that these spiritual lords sat in par- 
 liament only by virtue of their baronial 
 tenure. And certahily they did all hold 
 baronies, which, according to the analogy 
 of lay peerages, were sufficient to give 
 them such a share in the legislature. 
 Nevertheless, I think that this is rather 
 too contracted a view of the rights of 
 the English hierarchy, and, indeed, by 
 implication, of the peerage. For a great 
 council of advice and assent in matters 
 of legislation or national importance was 
 essential to all the northern governments. 
 And all of them, except perhaps the Lom- 
 bards, invited the superior ecclesiastics 
 to their councils; not upon any feudal 
 notions, which at that time had hardly 
 begun to prevail, but chiefly as represent- 
 atives of the church and of religion itself; 
 next, as more learned and enlightened 
 counsellors than the lay nobility ; and in 
 some degree, no doubt, as rich proprie- 
 tors of land. It will be remembered 
 also that ecclesiastical and temporal af- 
 fairs were originally decided in the same 
 assemblies, both upon the continent and 
 ir; England. The Norman conquest, 
 which destroyed the Anglo-Saxon nobil- 
 ity, and substituted a new race in their 
 stead, could not affect the immortality 
 of church possessions. The bishops of 
 William's age were entitled to sit in his 
 councils by the general custom of Eu- 
 rope, and by the common law of England,* 
 
 every county, of three knights or others, to he 
 elected by the commons of the shire, whose sole 
 province was to determine offences against the two 
 charters, with power of punishing by fine and im- 
 prisonment ; hut net to extend to any case where- 
 in the remedy by writ was already provided. 
 * Hody (Treatise on Convocations, p. 126) states 
 Z 2 
 
 which the conquest did not overturn. 
 Some smaller arguments might be urged 
 against the supposition that their legis- 
 lative rights are merely baronial; such 
 as that the guardian of the spiritualities 
 was commonly summoned to parliament 
 during the vacancy of a bishopric, and 
 that the five sees created by Henry VIII. 
 have no baronies annexed to them ;* but 
 the former reasoning appears less tech- 
 nical and confined.! 
 
 the matter thus : in the Saxon times all bishops 
 and abbots sat and voted in the state councils or 
 parliament as such, and not on account of their 
 tenures. After the conquest, the abbots sat there 
 not as such, but by virtue of their tenures as bar- 
 ons ; and the bishops sat in a double capacity, as 
 bishops and as barons. 
 
 * Hody, p. 128. 
 
 f It is rather a curious speculative question, and 
 such only, we may presume, it will long continue, 
 whether bishops are entitled, on charges of treason 
 or felony, to a trial by the peers. If this question 
 be considered either theoretically or according to 
 ancient authority, I think the affirmative proposi- 
 tion is beyond dispute. Bishops were at all times 
 members of the great national council, and fully 
 equal to lay lords in temporal power as well as dig- 
 nity. Since the conquest, they have held their tem- 
 poralities of the crown by a baronial tenure, which, 
 if there be any consistency in law, must unequivo- 
 cally distinguish them from commoners ; since 
 any one holding by barony might be challenged 
 on a jury, as not being the peer of the party whom 
 he was to try. It is true that they take no share 
 in the judicial power of the house of lords in cases 
 of treason or felony ; but this is merely in conform- 
 ity to those ecclesiastical canons which prohibited 
 the clergy from partaking in capital judgment, and 
 they have always withdrawn from the house on 
 such occasions under a protestation of their right 
 to remain. Had it not been for this particularity, 
 arising wholly out of their own discipline, the 
 question of their peerage could never have come 
 into dispute. As for the common argument, that 
 they are not tried as peers because they have no 
 inheritable nobility, I consider it as very frivolous ; 
 since it takes for granted the precise matter in 
 controversy, that an inheritable nobility is neces- 
 sary to the definition of peerage, or to its incident- 
 al privileges. 
 
 If we come to constitutional precedents, by 
 which, when sufficiently numerous and unexcep- 
 tionable, all questions of this kind are ultimately 
 to be determined, the weight of ancient authority 
 seems to be in favour of the prelates. In the fif- 
 teenth year of Edward III. (1340), the king brought 
 several charges against Archbishop Stratford. He 
 came to parliament with a declared intention of 
 defending himself before his peers. The king in- 
 sisted upon his answering in the court of exche- 
 quer. Stratford, however, persevered ; and the 
 house of lords, by the king's consent, appointed 
 twelve of their number, bishops, earls, and barons, 
 to report whether peers ought to answer criminal 
 charges in parliament and not. elsewhere. This 
 committee reported to the king in full parliament, 
 that the peers of the land ought not to be arraign- 
 ed nor put on trial, except in parliament and by 
 their peers. The archbishop upon this prayed the 
 king, that inasmuch as he had been notoriously de- 
 famed, he might be arraigned in full parliament 
 before the peers, and there make answer ; which 
 
356 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Next to these spiritual lords are the 
 earls and barons, or lay peerage of Eng- 
 land. The former dignity was perhaps 
 not so merely official as in the Saxon 
 times, although the earl was entitled to 
 the third penny of all emoluments ari- 
 sing from the administration of justice in 
 
 request the king granted. Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 
 127. Collier's Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 543. The 
 proceedings against Stratford went no farther, but 
 I think it impossible not to admit that his right to 
 trial as a peer was fully recognised both by the 
 king and lords. 
 
 This is however the latest, and perhaps the 
 only instance of a prelate's obtaining so high a priv- 
 ilege. In the preceding reign of Edward II., if 
 we can rely on the account of Walsingham (p. 
 119), Adam Orleton, the factious bishop of Here- 
 fora, had first been arraigned before the house 
 of lords, and subsequently convicted by a com- 
 mon jury ; but the transaction was of a singular 
 nature, and the king might probably be influenced 
 by the difficulty of obtaining a conviction from the 
 temporal peers, of whom many were disaffected to 
 him, in a case where privilege of clergy was vehe- 
 mently claimed. But about 1357, a bishop of Ely, 
 being accused of harbouring one guilty of murder, 
 though he demanded a trial by the peers, was com- 
 pelled to abide the verdict of a jury. Collier, p. 
 557. In the 31st of Edward III. (1358), the abbot 
 of Missenden was hanged for coining. 2 Inst., p. 
 635. The abbot of this monastery appears from 
 Dugdale to have been summoned by writ, in the 
 49th of Henry III. If he actually held by barony, 
 I do not perceive any strong distinction between 
 his case and that of a bishop. The leading prece- 
 dent, however, and that upon which lawyers prin- 
 cipally found their denial of this privilege to the 
 bishops, is the case of Fisher, who was certainly 
 tried before an ordinary jury ; nor am I aware that 
 any remonstrance was made by himself, or com- 
 plaint by his friends, upon this ground. Cranmer 
 was treated in the same manner ; and from these 
 two, being the most recent precedents, though 
 neither of them in the best of times, the great plu- 
 rality of law-books have drawn a conclusion that 
 bishops are not entitled to trial by the temporal 
 peers. Nor can there be much doubt that, when- 
 ever the occasion shall occur, this will be the de- 
 cision of the house of lords. 
 
 There are two peculiarities, as it may naturally 
 appear, in the abovementioned resolutions of the 
 lords in Stratford's case. The first is, that they 
 claim to be tried, not only before their peers, but 
 in parliament. And in the case of the Bishop of 
 Ely, it is said to have been objected to his claim of 
 trial by his peers, that parliament was not then sit- 
 ting (Collier, ubi sup.). It is most probable, there- 
 fore, that the court of the lord high steward, for the 
 special purpose of trying a peer, was of more re- 
 cent institution ; as appears also from Sir E. Coke's 
 expressions. 4 Inst., p. 58. The second circum- 
 stance that may strike a reader is, that the lords 
 assert their privilege in all criminal cases, not dis- 
 tinguishing misdemeanors from treasons and felo- 
 nies. But in this they were undoubtedly warrant- 
 ed by the clear language of Magna Charta, which 
 makes no distinction of the kind. The practice of 
 trying a peer for misdemeanors by a jury of com- 
 moners, concerning the origin of which I can say 
 nothing, is one of those anomalies which too often 
 render our laws capricious and unreasonable in the 
 eyes of impartial men. 
 
 Since writing the above note I have read Stil- 
 
 the county-courts, and might, perhaps, 
 command the militia of his county when 
 it was called forth.* Every earl was also 
 a baron, and held an honour or barony of 
 the crown, for which he paid a higher re- 
 lief than an ordinary baron, probably on 
 account of the profits of his earldom. I 
 
 lingfleet's treatise on the judicial power of the bish- 
 ops in capital cases ; a right which though now, I 
 think, abrogated by non-claim and a course of contra- 
 ry precedents, he proves beyond dispute to have ex- 
 isted by the common law and constitutions of Cla- 
 rendon, to have been occasionally exercised, and to 
 have been only suspended by their voluntary act. In 
 the course of this argument he treats of the peerage 
 of the bishops, and produces abundant evidence 
 from the records of parliament that they were sty- 
 led peers, for which, though convinced from gen- 
 eral recollection, I had not leisure or disposition to 
 search. But if any doubt should remain, the statute 
 25 E. III., c. 6, contains a legislative declaration 
 of the peerage of bishops. The whole subject is 
 discussed with much perspicuity and force by Stil- 
 lingfleet, who seems however not to press very 
 greatly the right of trial by peers, aware no doubt 
 of the weight of opposite precedents. (Stilling- 
 fleet's Works, vol. hi., p. 820.) In one distinction, 
 that the bishops vote in their judicial functions as 
 barons, but in legislation as magnates, which War- 
 burton has brought forward as his own in the Alli- 
 ance of Church and State, Stillingfleet has per- 
 haps not taken the strongest ground, nor sufficient- 
 ly accounted for their right of sitting in judgment 
 on the impeachment of a commoner. Parliament- 
 ary impeachment, upon charges of high public 
 crimes, seems to be the exercise of a right inherent 
 in the great council of the nation, some traces of 
 which appear even before the conquest (Chron. 
 Sax., p. 164, 169) ; independent of and superseding 
 that of trial by peers, which, if the 29th section of 
 Magna Charta be strictly construed, is only requi- 
 red upon endictments at the king's suit. And this 
 consideration is of great weight in, the question 
 still unsettled, whether a commoner can be tried 
 by the lords upon an impeachment for treason. 
 
 The treatise of Stillingfleet was written on oc- 
 casion of the objection raised by the commons to 
 the bishops voting on the question of Lord Danby's 
 pardon, which he pleaded in bar of his impeach- 
 ment. Burnet seems to suppose that their right of 
 final judgment had never been defended, and con- 
 founds judgment with sentence. Mr. Hargrave, 
 strange to say, has made a much greater blunder, 
 and imagined that the question related to their 
 right of voting on a bill of attainder, which no one, 
 I believe, ever disputed. Notes on Co. Litt., 
 134 b. 
 
 * Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 138. Dialogus de 
 Scaccario, 1. i., c. 17. Lyttleton's Henry II., vol. 
 ii., p. 217. The last of these writers supposes, con- 
 trary to Selden, that the earls continued to be gov- 
 ernors of their counties under Henry II. Stephen 
 created a few titular earls, with grants of crown 
 lands to support them ; but his successor resumed 
 the grants, and deprived them of their earldoms. 
 
 In Rymer's Fcedera, vol. i., p. 3, we find a grant 
 of Matilda, creating Milo of Glocester earl of Here- 
 ford, with the moat and castle of that city in fee 
 to him and his heirs, the third penny of the rent 
 of the city, and of the pleas in the county, three 
 manors and a forest, and the service of three ten- 
 ants in chief, with all their fiefs, to be held with 
 all privileges and liberties as fully as ever any earl 
 in England had possessed them. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 357 
 
 will not pretend to say whether titular 
 earldoms, absolutely distinct from the 
 lieutenancy of a county, were as ancient 
 as the conquest, which Madox seems to 
 think, or were considered as irregular, so 
 late as Henry II., according to Lord Lyt- 
 tleton. In Dugdale's Baronage, I find 
 none of this description in the first Nor- 
 man reigns, for even that of Clare was 
 connected with the local earldom of Hert- 
 ford. 
 
 It is universally agreed, that the only 
 baronies known for two centu- 
 
 tiuestion as . - , 
 
 to the na- nes after the conquest were m- 
 ture of bar- c ident to the tenure of land held 
 immediately from the crown. 
 There are, however, material difficulties 
 in the way of rightly understanding their 
 nature, which ought not to be passed 
 over, because the consideration of baro- 
 nial tenures will best develop the forma- 
 tion of our parliamentary system. Two 
 of our most eminent legal antiquaries, 
 Selden and Madox, have entertained dif- 
 ferent opinions as to the characteristics 
 and attributes of this tenure. 
 
 According to the first, every tenant in 
 Theory of chief by knight-service was an 
 Seiden ; honorary or parliamentary baron 
 by reason of his tenure. All these were 
 summoned to the king's councils, and 
 were peers of his court. Their baronies, 
 or honours, as they were frequently call- 
 ed, consisted of a number of knight's 
 fees, that is, of estates, from each of 
 which the feudal service of a knight was 
 due ; not fixed to thirteen fees and a 
 third, as has been erroneously conceived, 
 but varying according to the extent of the 
 barony, and the reservation of service at 
 the time of its creation. Were they 
 more or fewer, however, their owner was 
 equally a baron, and summoned to serve 
 the king in parliament with his advice and 
 judgment, as appears by many records 
 and passages in history. 
 
 But about the latter end of John's reign, 
 some only of the most eminent tenants 
 in chief were summoned by particular 
 writs ; the rest by one general summons 
 through the sheriffs of their several coun- 
 ties. This is declared in the Great Char- 
 ter of that prince, wherein he promises 
 that whenever an aid or scutage shall be 
 required, faciemus summoneri archiepis- 
 copos, episcopos, abbates, comites et ma- 
 jores barones regni sigillatim per literas 
 nostras. Et praeterea faciemus summon- 
 eri in general! per vicecomites et ballivos 
 nostros omnes alios qui in capite tenent de 
 nobis. Thus the barons are distinguished 
 from other tenants in chief, as if the for- 
 mer name were only applicable to a par- 
 
 ticular number of the king's immediate 
 vassals. But it is reasonable to think, 
 that before this charter was made, it had 
 been settled by the law of some other par- 
 liament, how these greater barons should 
 be distinguished from the lesser tenants in 
 chief; else what certainty could there be 
 in an expression so general and indefi- 
 nite ? And this is likely to have pro- 
 ceeded from the pride with which the 
 ancient and wealthy barons of the realm 
 would regard those newly created by 
 grants of escheated honours, or those 
 decayed in estate, who yet were by their 
 tenures on an equality with themselves. 
 They procured, therefore, two innova- 
 tions in their condition ; first, that these 
 inferior barons should be summoned gen- 
 erally by the sheriff, instead of receiving 
 their particular writs, which made an 
 honorary distinction ; and next, that they 
 should pay relief, not as for an entire 
 barony, one hundred marks ; but at the 
 rate of five pounds for each knight's fee 
 which they held of the crown. This 
 changed their tenure to one by mere 
 knight-service, and their denomination to 
 tenants in chief. It was not difficult 
 afterward for the greater barons to ex- 
 clude any from coming to parliament as 
 such, without particular writs directed to 
 them, for which purpose some law was 
 probably enacted in the reign of Henry 
 III. If indeed we could place reliance 
 on a nameless author whom Camden has 
 quoted, this limitation of the peerage to 
 such as were expressly summoned de- 
 pended upon a statute made soon after 
 the battle of Evesham. But no one has 
 ever been able to discover Camden's au- 
 thority^ and the change was probably of 
 a much earlier date.* 
 
 Such is the theory of Selden, which, if 
 it rested less upon conjectural fM d 
 alterations in the law, would un- 
 doubtedly solve some material difficulties 
 that occur in the opposite view of the 
 subject. According to Madox, tenure by 
 knight's-service in chief was always dis- 
 tinct from that by barony. It is an( j obser . 
 not easy, however, to point out vations up- 
 the characteristic differences of on both ' 
 the two ; nor has that eminent antiquary, 
 in his large work, the Baronia Anglica, 
 laid down any definition, or attempted to 
 explain the real nature of a barony. The 
 distinction could not consist in the num- 
 ber of knight's fees ; for the barony of 
 Hwayton consisted of only three ;f while 
 John de Baliol held thirty fees by mere 
 
 * Selden's Works, vol. iii., p. 713743. 
 t Lyttleton's Henry II., vol. ii., p. 212. 
 
858 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 knight-service. Nor does it seem to j 
 have consisted in the privilege or ser- 1 
 vice of attending parliament, since all i 
 tenants in chief were usually summoned. ! 
 But whatever may have been the line | 
 between these modes of tenure, there j 
 seems complete proof of their separation 
 long before the reign of John. Tenants 
 in chief are enumerated distinctly from 
 earls and barons in the charter of Henry I. 
 Knights, as well as barons, are named as 
 present in the parliament of Northamp- 
 ton in 1165, in that held at the same town 
 in 1 176, and upon other occasions.* Sev- 
 eral persons appear in the Liber Niger 
 Scaccarii, a roll of military tenants made 
 in the age of Henry II., who held single 
 knight's fees of the crown. It is, how- 
 ever, highly probable, that in a lax sense 
 of the word, these knights may some- 
 times have been termed barons. The 
 author of the Dialogus de Scaccario 
 speaks of those holding greater or lesser 
 baronies, including, as appears by the 
 context, all tenants in chief, t The for- 
 mer of these seem to be the majores bar- 
 ones of King John's Charter. And the 
 secundae dignitatis barones, said by a con- 
 temporary historian to have been present 
 in the parliament of Northampton, were 
 in all probability no other than the 
 knightly tenants of the crown.! For the 
 word baro, originally meaning only a 
 man, was of very large significance, and 
 is not unfrequently applied to common 
 freeholders, as in the phrase of court- 
 baron. It was used too for the magis- 
 trates or chief men of cities, as it is still 
 for the judges of the exchequer, and the 
 representatives of the Cinque-Ports. 
 
 The passage, however, before cited 
 from the Great Charter of John affords 
 one spot of firm footing in the course of 
 our progress. Then, at least, it is evi- 
 dent that all tenants in chief were entitled 
 to their summons ; the greater barons 
 by particular writs, the rest through one 
 directed to their sheriff. The epoch when 
 all, who, though tenants in chief, had not 
 been actually summoned, were deprived 
 of their right of attendance in parliament, 
 is again involved in uncertainty and con- 
 
 * Hody on Convocations, p. 222, 234. 
 
 t Lib. ii., c. 9. 
 
 j Hody and Lord Lyttleton maintain these 
 " barons of the second rank" to have been the sub- 
 vassals of the crown ; tenants of the great barons, 
 to whom the name was sometimes improperly ap- 
 plied. This was very consistent with their opin- 
 ion, that the commons were a part of parliament at 
 that time. But Hume, assuming at once the truth 
 of their interpretation in this instance, and the 
 falsehood of their system, treats it as a deviation 
 from the established rule, and a proof of the unset 
 tied state of the constitution. 
 
 jecture. The unknown writer quoted by 
 Camden seems not sufficient authority 
 to establish his assertion, that they were 
 excluded by a statute made after the 
 battle of Evesham. The principle was 
 most likely acknowledged at an earlier 
 time. Simon de Montfort summoned 
 only twenty-three temporal peers to his 
 famous parliament. In the year 1-255, 
 the barons complained that many of their 
 number had not received their writs, ac- 
 ording to the tenour of the charter, and 
 refused to grant an aid to the king till 
 they were issued.* 
 
 But it would have been easy to disap- 
 point this mode of packing a parliament, 
 if an unsummoned baron could have sat 
 by mere right of his tenure. The opin- 
 ion of Selden, that a law of exclusion 
 w T as enacted towards the beginning of 
 Henry's reign, is not liable to so much 
 objection. But perhaps it is unnecessary 
 to frame an hypothesis of this nature. 
 Writs of summons might probably be 
 older than the time of John ;f and when 
 this had become the customary and reg- 
 ular preliminary of a baron's coming to 
 parliament, it was a natural transition to 
 look upon it as an indispensable condi- 
 tion ; in times when the prerogative 
 was high, the law unsettled, and the 
 service in parliament deemed by many 
 still more burdensome than honourable. 
 Some omissions in summoning the king's 
 tenants to former parliaments may per- 
 haps have produced the abovementioned 
 provision of the Great Charter, whicli 
 had a relation to the imposition of taxes, 
 wherein it was deemed essential to ob- 
 tain a more universal consent than was 
 required in councils held for state, or 
 even for advice. J 
 
 It is not easy to determine how long 
 the inferior tenants in chief con- Whether 
 tinued to sit personally in par- mereten- 
 liament. In the charters of a "! s in 
 Henry III., the clause which 333l iwr- 
 we have been considering is liamemun- 
 omitted : and I think there is no gj Henf y 
 express proof remaining, that 
 the sheriff was ever directed to summon 
 the king's military tenants within his 
 county in the manner which the charter 
 
 * M. Paris, p. 785. The barons even tell the 
 king that this was contrary to his charter, in 
 which nevertheless the clause to that effect, con- 
 tained in his father's charter, had been omitted. 
 
 t Henry II., in 1175, forbade any of those who 
 had been concerned in the late rebellion to come 
 to his court without a particular summons. Carte, 
 vol. ii., p. 249. 
 
 % Upon the subject of tenure by barony, besides 
 the writers already quoted, see West's Inquiry into 
 the Method of creating Peers, and Carte's History 
 of England, vol. ii., p. 247. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 350 
 
 of John required. It appears, however, 
 that they were in fact members of par- 
 liament on many occasions during Hen- 
 ry's reign, which shows that they were 
 summoned either by particular writs or 
 through the sheriff ; and the latter is the 
 more plausible conjecture. There is in- 
 deed great obscurity as to the constitu- 
 tion of parliament in this reign ; and the 
 passages which I am about to produce 
 may lead some to conceive that the free- 
 holders were represented even from its 
 beginning. I rather incline to a different 
 opinion. 
 
 In the Magna Charta of 1 Henry III., 
 it is said : Pro hac donatione et conces- 
 sione .... archiepiscopi, episcopi, com- ' 
 ites, barones, milites, et libere tenentes, 
 et omnes de regno nostro dederunt no- 
 bis quintam decimam partem omnium 
 bonorum suorum mobilium.* So in a 
 record of 19 Henry III. : Comites, et 
 barones, et omnes alii de toto regno nos- 
 tro Angliae, spontanea voluntate sua con- 
 cesserunt nobis efficax auxilium.f The 
 largeness of these words is, however, | 
 controlled by a subsequent passage, 
 which declares the tax to be imposed ad 
 mandatum omnium comituia et baronum 
 et omnium aliorurn gui de nobis tenent in 
 capite. And it seems to have been a gen- 
 eral practice to assume the common 
 consent of all ranks to that which had 
 actually been agreed by the higher. In j 
 a similar writ, 21 Henry III., the ranks 
 of men are enumerated specifically ; ar- 
 chiepiscopi, episcopi, abbates, priores, et 
 clerici terras habentes quae ad ecclesias 
 suas non pertinent, comites, barones, mi- 
 lites, et liberi homines, pro se et suis vil- 
 lanis, nobis concesserunt in auxilium tri- 
 cesimam partem omnium mobilium. J 
 In the close roll of the same year, we 
 have a writ directed to the archbish- 
 ops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, 
 knights, and freeholders (liberi homines) 
 of Ireland, in which an aid is desired of 
 them ; and it is urged, that one had been 
 granted by his fideles Angliae. $ 
 
 But this attendance in parliament of 
 inferior tenants in chief, some of them 
 too poor to have received knighthood, 
 grew insupportably vexatious to them- 
 selves, and was not well liked by the 
 king. He knew them to be dependant 
 upon the barons, and dreaded the conflu- 
 ence of a multitude who assumed the 
 
 * Hody on Convocations, p. 293. 
 
 t Brady, Introduction to History of England, 
 Appendix, p. 43. 
 
 1 Brady's History of England, vol. i., Appendix, 
 p. "182. 
 
 $ Brady's Introduction, p. 94. 
 
 privilege of coming in arms to the ap- 
 pointed place. So inconvenient and mis- 
 chievous a scheme could not long subsist 
 among an advancing people, and fortu- 
 nately the true remedy was discovered 
 with little difficulty. 
 
 The principle of representation, in its 
 widest sense, can hardly be un- Origin and 
 known to any government not JJJulSenf 
 purely democratical. In almost ary non- 
 every country the sense of the sentation. 
 whole is understood to be spoken by a 
 part, and the decisions of a part are bind- 
 ing upon the whole. Among our ances- 
 tors, the lord stood in the place of his 
 vassals, and, still more unquestionably, 
 the abbot in that of his monks. The 
 system indeed of ecclesiastical coun- 
 cils, considered as organs of the church, 
 rested upon the principle of a virtual or 
 an express representation, and had a ten- 
 dency to render its application to nation 
 al assemblies more familiar. 
 
 The first instance of actual representa- 
 tion which occurs in our history is only 
 four years after the conquest : when Will- 
 iam, if we may rely on Hoveden, caused 
 twelve persons skilled in the customs of 
 England to be chosen from each county, 
 who were sworn to inform him rightly 
 of their laws ; and these, so ascertained, 
 were ratified by the consent of the great 
 council. This Sir Matthew Hale asserts 
 to be " as sufficient and effectual a par- 
 liament as ever was held in England."* 
 But there is no appearance that these 
 twelve deputies of each county were in- 
 vested with any higher authority than 
 that of declaring their ancient usages. 
 No stress can be laid, at least, on this in 
 sulated and anomalous assembly, the ex 
 istence of which is only learned from an 
 historian of a century later. 
 
 We find nothing that can arrest our 
 attention, in searching out the origin of 
 county representation, till we come to a 
 writ in the fifteenth year of John, direct- 
 ed to all the sheriffs in the following 
 terms: Rex Vicecomiti N., salutem. 
 Praecipimus tibi quod omnes milites bal 
 livae tuae qui summoniti fuerunt esse 
 apud Oxoniam ad Nos a die Omnium 
 Sanctorum in quindecim dies venire fa 
 cias cum armis suis : corpora vero bar 
 onum sine armis singulariter, et guatuoi 
 discretos milites de comitatu tuo, illuc ve 
 nire facias ad eundem terminum, ad lo 
 quendum nobiscum de negotiis regni 
 nostri. For the explanation of this ob 
 scure writ, I must refer to what Prynnel 
 
 * Hist, of Common Law, vol. i., p. 202, 
 t 2 Prynne's Register, p. 16. 
 
 
360 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHIP. VIII. 
 
 
 has said ; but it remains problematical 
 whether these four knights (the only 
 clause which concerns our purpose) were 
 to be elected by the county, or return- 
 ed, in the nature of a jury, at the discre- 
 tion of the sheriff. Since there is no 
 sufficient proof whereon to decide, we 
 can only say with hesitation, that there 
 may have been an instance of county 
 representation in the fifteenth year of 
 John. 
 
 We may next advert to a practice, of 
 which there is very clear proof in the 
 reign of Henry III. Subsidies granted in 
 parliament were assessed, not as in for- 
 mer times, by the justices upon their cir- 
 cuits, but by knights freely chosen in the 
 county-court. This appears by two writs, 
 one of the fourth and one of the ninth 
 year of Henry III.* At a subsequent pe- 
 riod, by a provision of the Oxford parlia- 
 ment, in 1258, every county elected four 
 knights to inquire into grievances, and 
 deliver their inquisition into parliament.! 
 
 The next writ now extant that wears 
 the appearance of parliamentary repre- 
 sentation is in the thirty-eighth of Hen- 
 ry III. This, after reciting that the earls, 
 barons, and other great men (cseteri mag- 
 nates) were to meet at London three 
 weeks after Easter, with horses and arms, 
 for the purpose of sailing into Gascony, 
 requires the sheriff to compel all within 
 his jurisdiction, who hold twenty pounds 
 a year of the king in chief, or of those 
 in ward of the king, to appear at the 
 same time and place. And that besides 
 those mentioned he shall cause to come 
 before the king's council at Westminster, 
 on the fifteenth day after Easter, two 
 good and discreet knights of his county, 
 whom the men of the county shall have 
 chosen for this purpose, in the stead of 
 all and each of them, to consider, along 
 with the knights and other counties, what 
 aid they will grant the king in such an 
 emergency.! In the principle of elec- 
 tion, and in the object of the assembly, 
 which was to grant money, this certain- 
 ly resembles a summons to parliament. 
 There are indeed anomalies, sufficiently 
 remarkable upon the face of the writ, 
 which distinguish this meeting from a reg- 
 ular parliament. But when the scheme 
 of obtaining money from the commons 
 of shires through the consent of their 
 representatives had once been entertain- 
 ed, it was easily applicable to more for- 
 mal councils of the nation. 
 
 A few years later there appears anoth- 
 
 * Brady's Introduction, Appendix, pp. 41 and 44. 
 t Brady's Hist, of England, vol. i., Appendix, p. 
 227. t 2 Prynne, p. 23. 
 
 er writ analogous to a summons. Du- 
 ring the contest between Henry III. and 
 the confederate barons in 1261, they pre- 
 sumed to call a sort of parliament, sum- 
 moning three knights out of every coun- 
 ty, secum tractaturos super communibus 
 negotiis regni. This we learn only by 
 an opposite writ, issued by the king, di- 
 recting the sheriff to enjoin these knights 
 who had been convened by the earls of 
 Leicester and Glocester to their meeting 
 at St. Alban's, that they should repair in- 
 stead to the king at Windsor, and to no 
 other place, nobiscum super praemissis 
 colloquium habituros.* It is not abso- 
 lutely certain that these knights were 
 elected by their respective counties. But 
 even if they were so, this assembly has 
 much less the appearance of a parliament 
 than that in the thirty-eighth of Henry III. 
 
 At length, in the year 1265, the forty- 
 ninth of Henry III., while he was a cap- 
 tive in the hands of Simon de Montfort, 
 writs were issued in his name to all the 
 sheriffs, directing them to return two 
 knights ^or the body of their county, 
 with two citizens or burgesses for every 
 city and borough contained within it. 
 This therefore is the epoch at which the 
 representation of the commons becomes 
 indisputably manifest, even should we 
 reject altogether the more equivocal in- 
 stances of it which have just been enu- 
 merated. 
 
 If, indeed, the knights were still elect- 
 ed by none but the king's mili- 
 tary tenants, if the mode of rep- knightswere 
 resentation was merely adopt- elected by 
 ed to spare them the inconve- 
 nience of personal attendance, 
 the immediate innovation in our polity 
 was not very extensive. This is an in- 
 teresting, but very obscure topic of in- 
 quiry. Spelman and Brady, with other 
 writers, have restrained the original right 
 of election to tenants in chief, among 
 whom, in process of time, those holding 
 under mesne lords, not being readily dis- 
 tinguishable in the hurry of an election, 
 contrived to slide in, till at length their 
 encroachments were rendered legitimate 
 by the statute 7 H. IV., c. 15, which put 
 all suiters to the county-court on an 
 equal footing as to the elective franchise. 
 The argument on this side might be plau- 
 sibly urged with the following reasoning. 
 
 The spirit of a feudal monarchy, which 
 compelled every lord to act by the advice 
 and assent of his immediate vassals, es- 
 tablished no relation between him and 
 those who held nothing at his hands. 
 
 * 2 Prynne, p. 27. 
 

 PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 361 
 
 They were included, so far as he was 
 concerned, in their superiors; and the 
 feudal incidents were due to him from 
 the whole of his vassal's fief, whatever 
 tenants might possess it by sub-infeuda- 
 tion. In England, the tenants in chief 
 alone were called to the great councils 
 before representation was thought of, as 
 is evident both by the charter of John 
 and by the language of many records; 
 nor were any others concerned in levying 
 aids or escuages, which were only due 
 by virtue of their tenure. These mili- 
 tary tenants were become in the reign 
 of Henry III. far more numerous than 
 they had been under the Conqueror. If 
 we include those who held of the king 
 ut de honore, that is, the tenants of baro- 
 nies escheated or in ward, who may 
 probably have enjoyed the same privile- 
 ges, being subject, in general, to the same 
 burdens, their number will be greatly 
 augmented, and form no inconsiderable 
 portion of the freeholders of the kingdom. 
 After the statute commonly called Quia 
 emptores in the eighteenth of Edward I., 
 they were likely to increase much more, 
 as every licensed alienation of any por- 
 tion of a fief by a tenant in chief would 
 create a new freehold immediately de- 
 pending upon the crown. Many of these 
 tenants in capite held very small fractions 
 of knight's fees, and were consequently 
 not called upon to receive knighthood. 
 They were plain freeholders, holding in 
 chief, and the liberi homines or libere 
 tenentes of those writs which have been 
 already quoted. The common form in- 
 deed of writs to the sheriff directs the 
 knights to be chosen de communitate 
 comitatus. But the word communitas, 
 as in boroughs, denotes only the superior 
 part : it is not unusual to find mention 
 in records of communitas populi or omnes 
 de regno, where none are intended but 
 the barons, or, at most, the tenants in 
 chief. If we look attentively at the ear- 
 liest instance of summoning knights of 
 shires to parliament, that in 38 H. III., 
 which has been noticed above, it will 
 appear that they could only have been 
 chosen by military tenants in chief. The 
 object of calling this parliament, if par- 
 liament it were, was to obtain an aid from 
 the military tenants, who, holding less 
 than a knight's fee, were not required to 
 do personal service. None then, surely, 
 but the tenants in chief could be electors 
 upon this occasion, which merely re- 
 spected their feudal duties. Again, to 
 come much lower down, we find a series 
 of petitions in the reigns of Edward III. 
 and Richard II., which seem to lead us 
 
 to a conclusion that only tenants in chief 
 were represented by the knights of shires. 
 The writ for wages directed the sheriff 
 to levy them on the commons of the 
 county, both within franchises and with- 
 out (tarn intra libertates quam extra). 
 But the tenants of lords holding by bar- 
 ony endeavoured to exempt themselves 
 from this burden, in which they seem 
 to have been countenanced by the king. 
 This led to frequent remonstrances from 
 the commons, who finally procured a 
 statute, that all lands, not discharged by 
 prescription, should contribute to the 
 payment of wages.* But, if these mesne 
 tenants had possessed equal rights of 
 voting with tenants in chief, it is impos- 
 sible to conceive that they would have 
 thought of claiming so unreasonable an 
 exemption. Yet, as it would appear harsh 
 to make any distinction between the 
 rights of those who sustained an equal 
 burden, we may perceive how the free- 
 holders, holding of mesne lords, might on 
 that account obtain after the statute a 
 participation in the privilege of tenants 
 in chief. And without supposing any 
 partiality or connivance, it is easy to 
 comprehend, that while the nature of 
 tenures and services was so obscure as 
 to give rise to continual disputes, of 
 which the ancient records of the King's 
 Bench are full, no sheriff could be very 
 accurate in rejecting the votes of com- 
 mon-freeholders, repairing to the county- 
 court, and undistinguishable, as must be 
 allowed, from tenants in capite upon 
 other occasions, such as serving on ju- 
 ries, or voting on the election of coro- 
 ners. To all this it yields some corrob- 
 oration, that a neighbouring though long 
 hostile kingdom, who borrowed much of 
 her law from our own, has never admitted 
 any freeholders, except tenants in chief 
 of the crown, to a suffrage in county 
 elections. These attended the parlia- 
 ment of Scotland in person till 1428, when 
 a law of James I. permitted them to send 
 representatives.! 
 
 Such is, I think, a fair statement of 
 the arguments that might be alleged by 
 those who would restrain the right of 
 election to tenants of the crown. It may 
 be urged on the other side, that the genius 
 of the feudal system was never com- 
 pletely displayed in England ; much less 
 can we make use of that policy to ex- 
 plain institutions that prevailed under 
 Edward I. Instead of aids and scutages 
 
 * 12 Ric. II., c. 12. Prynne's 4th Register. 
 
 t Pinkerton's Hist, of Scotland, vol. i., p. 120, 
 357. But this law was not regularly acted upon 
 till 1587, p. 368. 
 
 
362 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 levied upon the king's military tenants, 
 the crown found ample resources in sub- 
 sidies upon moveables, from which no 
 class of men was exempted. But the stat- 
 ute that abolished all unparliamentary 
 taxation led, at least in theoretical princi- 
 
 Ele, to extend the elective franchise to as 
 irge a mass of the people as could con- 
 veniently exercise it. It was even in the 
 mouth of our kings, that what concerned 
 all should be approved by all. Nor is 
 the language of all extant writs less ad- 
 verse to the supposition, that the right 
 of suffrage in county elections was lim- 
 ited to tenants in chief. It seems extraor- 
 dinary, that such a restriction, if it existed, 
 should never be deducible from these in- 
 struments ; that their terms should inva- 
 riably be large enough to comprise all 
 freeholders. Yet no more is ever re- 
 quired of the sheriff than to return two 
 knights, chosen by the body of the coun- 
 ty. For they are not only said to be re- 
 turned pro communitate, but " per com- 
 munitatem, 1 ' and " de assensu totius com- 
 munitatis." Nor is it satisfactory to al- 
 lege, without any proof, that this word 
 should be restricted to the tenants in 
 chief, contrary to what must appear to 
 be its obvious meaning.* Certainly if 
 these tenants of the crown had found in- 
 ferior freeholds usurping a right of suf- 
 frage, we might expect to find it the sub- 
 ject of some legislative provision, or at 
 least of some petition and complaint. 
 And, on the other hand, it would have 
 been considered as unreasonable to levy 
 the wages due to knights of the shire for 
 their service in parliament on those who 
 had no share in their election. But it 
 appears by writs at the very beginning 
 of Edward II.'s reign, that wages were 
 levied " de communitate comitatus."f It 
 will scarcely be contended that no one 
 was to contribute under this writ but 
 
 * What can one who adopts this opinion of Dr. 
 Brady say to the following record? Rex militi- 
 bus, liberis hominibus, et toti communitati comita- 
 tus Wygorniae tarn intra libertates quam extra, 
 salutem. Cum comites, barones, milites, liberi 
 homines, et communitates comitatuum regni nostri 
 vicesimam omnium bonorum suorum mobilium, 
 civesque et bnrgenses et communitates omnium 
 civitatum et burgorum ejusdem regni, necnon te- 
 nentes de antiquis dominicis coronae nostra? quin- 
 decimam bonorum suorum mobilium nobis conces- 
 serunt. Pat, Rot., 1 E. II., in Rot. Parl., vol. i.,p. 
 442. See also p. 241 and p. 269. If the word com- 
 munitas is here used in any precise sense, which, 
 when possible, we are to suppose in construing a 
 legal instrument, it must designate, not the tenants 
 in chief, but the inferior class, who, though neither 
 freeholders nor free burgesses, were yet contribu- 
 table to the subsidy on their goods, 
 f Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 99 and p. 102, note Z. 
 
 tenants in chief; and yet the word com- 
 munitas can hardly be applied to differ- 
 ent persons, when it occurs in the same 
 instrument and upon the same matter. 
 The series of petitions above mentioned 
 relative to the payment of wages rather 
 tends to support a conclusion, that all 
 mesne tenants had the right of suffrage, 
 if they thought fit to exercise it, since it 
 was earnestly contended that they were 
 liable to contribute towards that expense. 
 Nor does there appear any reason to 
 doubt that all freeholders, except those 
 within particular franchises, were suiters 
 to the county-court ; an institution of no 
 feudal nature, and in which elections 
 were to be made by those present. As 
 to the meeting to which knights of shires 
 were summoned in 38 H. III., it ought 
 not to be reckoned a parliament, but rath- 
 er one of those anomalous conventions 
 which sometimes occurred in the unfix- 
 ed state of government. It is at least 
 the earliest known instance of represent- 
 ation, and leads us to no conclusion in 
 respect to later times, when the com- 
 mons had become an essential part of 
 the legislature, and their consent was 
 required to aH public burdens. 
 
 This question, upon the whole, is cer- 
 tainly not free from considerable difficul- 
 ty. The legal antiquaries are divided. 
 Prynne does not seem to have doubted 
 but that the knights were " elected in the 
 full county, by and for the whole coun- 
 ty," without respect to the tenure of the 
 freeholders.* But Brady and Carte are 
 of a different opinion. f Yet their dispo- 
 sition to narrow the basis of the constitu- 
 tion is so strong, that it creates a sort of 
 prejudice against their authority. And 
 if I might offer an opinion on so obscure 
 a subject, I should be much inclined to 
 believe, that even from the reign of Hen- 
 ry I., the election of knights by all free- 
 holders in the county-court, without re- 
 gard to tenure, was little, if at all, differ- 
 ent from what it is at present.^ 
 
 The progress of towns in several con- 
 tinental countries from a condi- Progress of 
 tion bordering upon servitude to towns - 
 wealth and liberty has more than once 
 attracted our attention in other parts of 
 the present work. Their growth in Eng- 
 land, both from general causes and imi- 
 tative policy, was very similar and near- 
 ly coincident. Under the Anglo-Saxon 
 line of sovereigns, we scarcely can dis- 
 
 * Prynne's 2d Register, p. 50. 
 
 f Carte's Hist. ofEngland, vol. ii., p. 250. 
 
 \ The present question has been discussed with 
 much ability in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvi., 
 p. 341. 
 
Hi.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, 
 
 363 
 
 cover in our scanty records the condition 
 of their inhabitants; except retrospect- 
 ively from the great survey of Domesday 
 Book, which displays the state of Eng 
 land under Edward the Confessor. Some 
 attention to commerce had been shown 
 by Alfred and Athelstan ; and a merchant 
 who had made three voyages beyond sea 
 was raised by a law of the latter monarch 
 to the dignity of a thane.* This privilege 
 was not perhaps often claimed ; but the 
 burgesses of towns were already a dis- 
 tinct class from the ceorls or rustics, and, 
 though hardly free according to our esti- 
 mation, seem to have laid the foundation 
 of more extensive immunities. It is 
 probable, at least, that the English towns 
 had made full as great advances towards 
 emancipation as those of France. At 
 the conquest, we find the burgesses or 
 inhabitants of towns living under the su- 
 periority or protection of the king, or of 
 some other lord to whom they paid an- 
 nual rents, and determinate dues or cus- 
 toms. Sometimes they belonged to dif- 
 ferent lords ; and sometimes the same 
 burgesses paid customs to one master, 
 while he was under the jurisdiction of an- 
 other. They frequently enjoyed special 
 privileges as to inheritance ; and in two or 
 three instances they seem to have possess- 
 ed common property, belonging to a sort 
 of guild or corporation ; but never, as far 
 as appears by any evidence, had they a 
 municipal administration by magistrates 
 of their own choice. f Besides the regu- 
 
 * Wilkins, p. 71. 
 
 t Burgenses Exonia? urbis habent extra civita- 
 tem terrain duodecim carucatarum: quae nullam 
 consuetudinem reddunt nisi ad ipsam civitatem. 
 Domesday, p. 100. At Canterbury the burgesses 
 had forty-five houses without the city, de quibus 
 ipsi habebant gablum et consuetudinem, rex autem 
 socam et sacain ; ipsi quoque burgenses habebant 
 de rege triginta tres acras prati in gildam suam, p. 
 2. In Lincoln and Stamford some resident propri- 
 etors, called Lagemanni, had jurisdiction (socam 
 et sacam) over their tenants. But nowhere have 
 I been able to discover any trace of internal self- 
 government ; unless Chester may be deemed an 
 exception, where we read of twelve judices civita- 
 tis ; but by whom constituted does not appear. 
 The word lageman seems equivalent to judex. 
 The guild mentioned above at Canterbury was, in 
 all probability, a voluntary association : so at Do- 
 ver we find the burgesses' guildhall, gihalla bur- 
 gensium, p. 1. 
 
 Many of the passages in Domesday relative to 
 the state of burgesses are collected in Brady's His- 
 tory of Boroughs ; a woik which, if read with due 
 suspicion of the author's honesty, will convey a 
 great deal of knowledge. 
 
 Since the former part of this note was written, 
 I have met with a charter granted by Henry H. to 
 Lincoln, which seems to refer, more explicitly than 
 any similar instrument, to municipal privileges of 
 jurisdiction enjoyed by the citizens under Edward 
 the Confessor. These charters, it is well known, 
 
 lar payments, which were in general cot 
 heavy, they were liable to tallages at the 
 discretion of their lords. This burden 
 continued for two centuries, with no lim- 
 itation, except that the barons were lat- 
 terly forced to ask permission of the 
 king before they set a tallage on their 
 tenants, which was commonly done 
 when he imposed one upon his own.* 
 Still the towns became considerably rich- 
 er ; for the profits of their traffic were 
 undiminished by competition; and the 
 consciousness that they could not be in- 
 dividually despoiled of their possessions, 
 like the villeins of the country around, 
 inspired an industry and perseverance 
 which all the rapacity of Norman kings 
 and barons was unable to daunt or over- 
 come. 
 
 One of the earliest and most important 
 changes in the condition of the Towns let in 
 burgesses was the conversion fee-farm. 
 of their individual tributes into a perpet- 
 ual rent from the whole borough. The 
 town was then said to be affermed, or 
 let in fee-farm to the burgesses and their 
 successors for ever.f Previously to such 
 a grant, the lord held the town in his de- 
 mesne, and was the legal proprietor of 
 the soil and tenements ; though I by no 
 means apprehend that the burgesses were 
 destitute of a certain estate in their pos- 
 
 do not always recite what is true ; yet it is possi- 
 ble that the citizens of Lincoln, which had been 
 one of the five Danish towns, sometimes mentioned 
 with a sort of distinction by writers before the con- 
 quest, might be in a more advantageous situation 
 than the generality of burgesses. Sciatis me 
 concessisse civibus meis Lincoln, omnes libertates 
 et consuetudines et leges suas, quas habuerunt 
 tempore Edwardi et Will, et Henr. regum Angliae, 
 et gildam suam mercatoriam de hominibus civita- 
 tis et de aliis mercatoribus comitatus, sicut illam 
 habuerunt tempore predictorum antecessorum nos- 
 trorum, regum Angliae, melius et liberius. Et om- 
 nes homines qui infra quatuor divisas civitates ma- 
 nent et mercatum deducunt, sint ad gildas, et con- 
 suetudines et assisas civitatis, sicut melius fue- 
 runt temp. Edw. et Will, et Henr. regum Angliae. 
 Rymer, t. i., p. 40 (edit. 1816). 
 
 I am indebted to the friendly remarks of the pe- 
 riodical critic whom I have before mentioned, for 
 reminding me of other charters of the same age, 
 expressed in a similar manner, which in my haste 
 I had overlooked, though printed in common books. 
 But whether these general words ought to out- 
 weigh the silence of Domesday Book, I am not 
 prepared to decide. I have admitted below, that the 
 possession of corporate property implies an elect- 
 ive government for its administration, and I think 
 it perfectly clear that the guilds made by-laws for 
 the regulation of their members. Yet this is 
 something different from municipal jurisdiction 
 over all the inhabitants of a town. 
 
 * Madox, Hist, of Exchequer, c. 17. 
 
 t Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 1. There is one in- 
 stance, I know not if any more could be found, of 
 a firma burgi before the conquest. It was at Hun- 
 tingdon. Domesday, p. 203. 
 
364 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 sessions. But of a town in fee-farm he 
 only kept the superiority, and the in- 
 heritance of the annual rent, which he 
 might recover by distress.* The burgess- 
 es held their lands by burgage-tenure, 
 nearly analogous to, or rather a species 
 of, free soccage.f Perhaps before the 
 grant they might correspond to modern 
 copy-holders. It is of some importance 
 to observe, that the lord, by such a grant 
 of the town in fee-farm, whatever we 
 may think of its previous condition, di- 
 vested himself of his property, or lucra- 
 tive dominion over the soil, in return for 
 the perpetual rent ; so that tallages sub- 
 sequently set at his own discretion upon 
 the inhabitants, however common, can 
 hardly be considered as a just exercise 
 of the rights of proprietorship. 
 
 Under such a system of arbitrary tax- 
 Charters of ation, however, it was evident to 
 incorpora- the most selfish tyrant that the 
 tioa - wealth of his burgesses was his 
 
 wealth, and their prosperity his interest; 
 much more were liberal and sagacious 
 monarchs, like Henry II., inclined to en- 
 courage them by privileges. From the 
 time of William Rufus, there was no 
 reign in which charters were not granted 
 to different towns, of exemption from 
 tolls on rivers and at markets, those 
 lighter manacles of feudal tyranny; or 
 of commercial franchises ; or of immuni- 
 ty from the ordinary jurisdictions ; or, 
 lastly, of internal self-regulation. Thus 
 the original charter of Henry I. to the 
 city of LondonJ concedes to the citizens, 
 in addition to valuable commercial and 
 fiscal immunities, the right of choosing 
 their own sheriff and justice, to the ex- 
 clusion of every foreign jurisdiction. 
 These grants, however, were not in gen- 
 eral so extensive till the reign of John.|| 
 
 * Madox, p. 12, 13. fid., p. 21. 
 
 t I have read somewhere that this charter was 
 granted in 1101. But the instrument itself, which 
 is only preserved by an Inspeximus of Edward IV., 
 does not contain any date. Rymer, t. i., p. 11 
 (edit. 1816). Could it be traced so high, the cir- 
 cumstance would be remarkable, as the earliest 
 charters granted by Louis VI., supposed to be the 
 father of these institutions, are several years later. 
 
 () This did not, however, save the citizens from 
 fining in one hundred marks to the king for this 
 privilege. Mag. Rot.,5 Steph.,apud Madox, Hist. 
 Exchequer, t. xi. I do not know that the charter 
 of Henry I. can be suspected ; but Brady, in his 
 treatise of Boroughs (p. 38, edit. 1777), does not 
 think proper once to mention it ; and indeed uses 
 many expressions incompatible with its existence. 
 
 || Blomefield, Hist, of Norfolk, vol. ii., p. 16, says 
 that Henry I. granted the same privileges by char- 
 ter to Norwich in 1122, which London possessed. 
 Yet it appears that the king named the port-reeve 
 or provost ; but Blomefield suggests that he was 
 probably recommended by the citizens, the office 
 being annual. 
 
 Before that time, the interior arrange- 
 ment of towns had received a new organ- 
 ization. In the Saxon period we find vol- 
 untary associations, sometimes religious, 
 sometimes secular; in some cases for 
 mutual defence against injury, in others 
 for mutual relief in poverty. These 
 were called guilds, from the Saxon verb 
 gildan, to pay or contribute, and exhibit- 
 ed the natural, if not the legal character 
 of corporations.* At the time of the con- 
 quest, as has been mentioned above, such 
 voluntary incorporations of the burgess- 
 es possessed in some towns either landed 
 property of their own, or rights of supe- 
 riority over that of others.. An internal 
 elective government seems to have been 
 required for the administration of a com- 
 mon revenue, and of other business in- 
 cident to their association.! They be- 
 
 * Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 23. Hicks has given 
 us a bond of fellowship among the thanes of Cam- 
 bridgeshire, containing several curious particulars. 
 A composition of eight pounds, exclusive, I con- 
 ceive, of the usual weregild, was to be enforced 
 from the slayer of any fellow. If a fellow (gilda) 
 killed a man of 1200 shillings weregild, each of the 
 society was to contribute half a marc ; for a ceorl, 
 two orae (perhaps ten shillings) ; for a Welshman, 
 one. If. however, this act was committed wan- 
 tonly, the fellow had no right to call on the socie- 
 ty for contribution. If one fellow killed another, 
 he was to pay the legal weregild to his kindred, 
 and also eight pounds to the society. Harsh words 
 used by one fellow towards another, or even to- 
 wards a stranger, incurred a fine. No one was to 
 eat or drink in the company of one who had killed 
 his brother fellow, unless in the presence of the 
 king, bishop, or alderman. Dissertatio Epistola- 
 ris, p. 21. 
 
 We find in Wilkins's Anglo-Saxon laws, p. 65, a 
 number of ordinances, sworn to by persons both of 
 noble and ignoble rank (ge eorlisce ge ceorlisce), 
 and confirmed by King Athelstan. These are in 
 the nature of by-laws for the regulation of certain 
 societies that had been formed for the preservation 
 of public order. Their remedy was rather violent : 
 to kill and seize the effects of all who should rob 
 any member of the association. This property, 
 after deducting the value of the thing stolen, was 
 to be divided into two parts ; one given to the crim- 
 inal's wife if not an accomplice, the other shared 
 between the king and the society. 
 
 In another fraternity among the clergy and laity 
 of Exeter, every fellow was entitled to a contribu- 
 tion in case of taking a journey, or if his house 
 was burnt. Thus they resembled in some de- 
 gree our friendly societies ; and display an inter- 
 esting picture of manners, which has induced me 
 to insert this note, though not greatly to the pres- 
 ent purpose. See more of the Anglo-Saxon guilds 
 in Turner's History, vol. ii., p. 102. Societies of 
 the same kind, for purposes of religion, charity, or 
 mutual assistance, rather than trade, may be found 
 afterward. Blomefield's Hist, of Norfolk, vol. iii., 
 p. 494. 
 
 i See a grant fromTurstin, archbishop of York, 
 in the reign of Henry I., to the burgesses of Beyer- 
 ley, that they may have their hanshus (i. e. guild- 
 hall) like those of York, et ibi sua statuta pertrac- 
 tent ad honorem Dei, &c. Rymer, t. i., p. 10, edit. 
 1816. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 365 
 
 came more numerous, and more peculiar 
 ly commercial after that era, as well from 
 the increase of trade as through imita 
 tion of similar fraternities existing in 
 many towns of France. The spirit of 
 monopoly gave strength to those institu- 
 tions, each class of traders forming itself 
 into a body, in order to exclude compe- 
 tition. Thus were established the com- 
 panies in corporate towns, that of the 
 Weavers in London being perhaps the 
 earliest ;* and these were successively 
 consolidated and sanctioned by charters 
 from the crown. In towns not large 
 enough to admit of distinct companies, 
 one merchant guild comprehended the 
 traders in general, or the chief of them ; 
 and this, from the reign of Henry II. 
 downward, became the subject of incor- 
 porating charters. The management of 
 their internal concerns, previously to any 
 incorporation, fell naturally enough into a 
 sort of oligarchy, which the tenour of the 
 charter generally preserved. Though 
 the immunities might be very extensive, 
 the powers were more or less restrained 
 to a small number. Except in a few 
 places, the right of choosing magistrates 
 was first given by King John ; and cer- 
 tainly must rather be ascribed to his pov- 
 erty than to any enlarged policy, of 
 which he was utterly incapable. f 
 From the middle of the twelfth century 
 Prosperity to tnat f tne thirteenth, the tra- 
 ct English ders of England became more and 
 towns. more prosperous. The towns on 
 the southern coast exported tin and oth- 
 er metals in exchange for the wines of 
 France; those on the eastern sent corn 
 to Norway; the Cinque-ports bartered 
 wool against the stuffs of Flanders. J 
 Though bearing no comparison with the 
 cities of Italy or the empire, they increas- 
 ed sufficiently to acquire importance at 
 home. That vigorous prerogative of the 
 Norman monarchs, which kept down the 
 feudal aristocracy, compensated for what- 
 ever inferiority there might be in the 
 population and defensible strength of the 
 English towns, compared with those on 
 the continent. They had to fear no pet- 
 ty oppressors, no local hostility ; and if 
 they could satisfy the rapacity of the 
 crown, were secure from all other griev- 
 London ances - London, far above the 
 rest, our ancient and noble capital, 
 might, even in those early times, be just- 
 ly termed a member of the political sys- 
 
 * Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 189. 
 
 t Idem, passim. A few of an earlier date may 
 be found in the new edition of Rymer. 
 
 J Lyttleton's Hist, of Henry II., vol. ii., p. 170. 
 Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 331. 
 
 tern. This great city, so admirably situa- 
 ted, was rich and populous long before 
 the conquest. Bede, at the beginning of 
 the eighth century, speaks of London as 
 a great market, which traders frequented 
 by land and sea.* It paid .15,000 out 
 of 82,000, raised by Canute upon the 
 kingdom.f If we believe Roger Hove- 
 den, the citizens of London, on the death 
 of Ethelred II., joined with part of the 
 nobility in raising Edmund Ironside to 
 the throne. | Harold I., according to bet- 
 ter authority, the Saxon Chronicle, and 
 William of Malmsbury, was elected by 
 their concurrence. $ Descending to later 
 history, we find them active in the civil 
 war of Stephen and Matilda. The fa- 
 mous Bishop of Winchester tells the Lon- 
 doners that they are almost accounted as 
 noblemen on account of the greatness of 
 their city ; into the community of which 
 it appears that some barons had been re- 
 ceived. || Indeed the citizens themselves, 
 or at least the principal of them, were 
 called barons. It was certainly by far 
 the greatest city in England. There have 
 been different estimates of its population, 
 some of which are extravagant ; but I 
 hink it could hardly have contained less 
 than thirty or forty thousand souls with- 
 in its walls; and the suburbs were very 
 populous.^]" These numbers, the enjoy- 
 
 Macpherson, p. 245. t Id., p. 282. 
 
 Gives Lundinenses, et pars nobilium, qui eo 
 tempore consistebant Lundoniaj, Clitonem Ead- 
 nundum unanimi consensu in regem levavere, p. 
 249. 
 
 Chron. Saxon., p. 154. Malmsbury, p. 76. 
 He says the people of London were become al- 
 most barbarians through their intercourse with the 
 Danes ; propter frequentem convictum. 
 
 || Londinenses, qui sunt quasi optimates pro 
 nagnitudine civitatis in Anglia. Malmsb., p. 189. 
 Thus too Matthew Paris : cives Londinenses, quos 
 ropter civitatis dignitatem et civium antiquam 
 ibertatem Barones consuevimus appellare, p. 744 ; 
 and in another place : totius civitatis cives, quos 
 )arones vocant, p. 835. Spelman says that the 
 nagistrates of several other towns were called bar- 
 ns. Glossary, Barones de London. 
 U" Drake, the historian of York, maintains that 
 jondon was less populous about the time of the 
 onquest than that city ; and quotes Hardynge, a 
 writer of Henry V.'s age, to prove that the interi- 
 )r part of the former was not closely built. Ebo- 
 acum, p. 91. York however does not appear to 
 vave contained more than 10,000 inhabitants at 
 he accession of the Conqueror ; and the very ex- 
 ggerations as to the populousness of London 
 rove that it must have far exceeded that number. 
 'itz-Stephen, the contemporary biographer of 
 Thomas Becket, tells us of 80,000 men capable 
 of bearing arms within its precincts ; where how- 
 ever his translator, Pegge, suspects a mistake of 
 the MS. in the numerals. And this, with simi- 
 lar hyperboles, so imposed on the judicious mind 
 of Lord Lyttleton, that, finding in Peter of Blois 
 the inhabitants of London reckoned at quadragin- 
 ta millia, he has actually proposed to read quadrin- 
 
568 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Vlir. 
 
 ment of privileges, and the consciousness 
 of strength, infused a free and even mu- 
 tinous spirit into their conduct.* The 
 Londoners were always on the barons' 
 side in their contests with the c^own. 
 They bore a part in deposing William 
 Longchamp, the chancellor and justici- 
 ary of Richard I.f They were distin- 
 guished in the great struggle for Magna 
 Charta ; the privileges of their city are 
 expressly confirmed in it ; and the Mayor 
 of London was one of the twenty-five 
 barons to whom the maintenance of its 
 provisions was delegated. In the subse- 
 quent reign, the citizens of London were 
 regarded with much dislike and jealousy 
 by the court, and sometimes suffered 
 pretty severely by its hands, especially 
 after the battle of Evesham.J 
 
 Notwithstanding the influence of Lon- 
 don in these seasons of disturbance, we 
 do not perceive that it was distinguish- 
 ed from the most insignificant town by 
 greater participation in national councils. 
 Rich, powerful, honourable, and high- 
 spirited as its citizens had become, it was 
 very long before they found a regular 
 place in parliament. The prerogative of 
 imposing tallages at pleasure, unsparing- 
 ly exercised by Henry III. even over 
 London,^ left the crown no inducement 
 
 genta. Hist. Henry II., vol. iv., ad finem. It is 
 hardly necessary to observe, that the condition of 
 agriculture and internal communication would not 
 have allowed half that number to subsist. 
 
 The subsidy-roll of 1377, published in the 
 Archaeologia, vol.vii., would lead to a conclusion 
 that all the inhabitants of London did not even 
 then exceed 35,000. If this be true, they could 
 not have amounted probably to so great a num- 
 ber two or three centuries earlier. 
 
 * This seditious, or at least refractory character 
 of the Londoners, was displayed in the tumult 
 headed by William Longbeard in the time of Rich- 
 ard I., arid that under Constantine in 1222, the pa- 
 triarchs of a long line of city demagogues. Hove- 
 den, p. 765. M. Paris, p. 154. 
 
 t Hoveden's expressions are very precise, and 
 show thr-t the share taken by the citizens of Lon- 
 don (probably the mayor and aldermen) in this 
 measure was no tumultuary acclamation, but a de- 
 liberate concurrence with the nobility. Comes 
 Johannes, et fere omnes episcopi, et comites An- 
 gliae eadep die intraverunt Londonhs ; et in cras- 
 tino praedictus Johannes frater regis, et archiepis- 
 copus Rothomagensis, et omnes episcopi, et comi- 
 tes, et barones, et cives Lcndonienses cum illis 
 convenerunt in atrio ecclesise S. Pauli. . . . Pla- 
 cuit ergo Johanni fratri regis, et omnibus episco- 
 pis, et comitibus, et baronibus regni, et civibus 
 Londoniarum, quod cancellarins ille deponeretur, 
 et deposuerunt eum, &c., p. 701. 
 
 t The reader may consult, for a more full ac- 
 count of tne English towns before the middle of 
 the thirteenth century, Lyttleton's History of Hen- 
 ry II., vol. ii., p. 174 ; and Macpherson's Annals 
 of Commerce. 
 
 $ Frequent proofs of this may be found in Ma- 
 dox, Hist, of Exchequer, c. 17, as well as in Matt, 
 
 to summon the inhabitants of cities and 
 boroughs. As these indeed were daily 
 growing more considerable, they were 
 certain, in a monarchy so limited as that 
 of England became in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, of attaining sooner or later this 
 eminent privilege. Although, therefore, 
 the object of Simon de Montfort in call- 
 ing them to his parliament after the bat- 
 tle of Lewes was merely to strengthen 
 his own faction, which prevailed among 
 the commonalty, yet their permanent 
 admission into the legislature may be as- 
 cribed to a more general cause. For 
 otherwise it is not easy to see why the 
 innovation of a usurper should have 
 been draw a into precedent, though it 
 might perhaps accelerate what the course 
 of affairs was gradually preparing. 
 
 It is well known that the earliest writs 
 of summons to cities and bor- Fm sum- 
 oughs of which we can prove the 
 existence, are those of Simon 
 de Montfort, earl of Leicester, in49H. n. 
 bearing date the T2th of December, 1264, 
 in the forty-ninth year of Henry III.* 
 After a long controversy, almost all 
 judicious inquirers seem to have acqui- 
 esced in admitting this origin of popular 
 representation.! The argument may be 
 very concisely stated. We find from in- 
 numerable records that the king imposed 
 tallages upon his demesne towns at dis- 
 cretion. I No public instrument previous 
 
 Paris, who laments it with indignation. Cives 
 Londinenses, contra consuetudinem et libertatem 
 civitatis, quasi servi ultimae conditionis, non sub 
 nomine aut titulo liberi adjutorii, sed tallagii, quod 
 multum eos angebat, regi/licet imiti et renitentes, 
 numerare sunt coacti, p. 492. Heu ubi est Londi- 
 nensis, toties empta, toties concessa, toties scripta, 
 toties jurata libertas ! &c. p. 657. The king some- 
 times suspended their market, that is, I suppose, 
 their right of toll, till his demands were paid. 
 
 * These writs are not extant, having perhaps 
 never been returned ; and consequently we cannot 
 tell to what particular places they were addressed. 
 It appears, however, that the assembly was intend- 
 ed to be numerous, for the entry runs: scribitur 
 civibus Ebor, civibus Lincoln, et csteris burgis 
 Angliae. It is singular that no mention is made of 
 London, which must have had some special sum- 
 mons. Rymer, t. i., p. 803. Dugdale, Summoni- 
 tiones ad Parliamentum, p. 1. 
 
 t It would ill repay any reader's diligence to 
 wade through the vapid and diluted pages of Tyr- 
 rell ; but whoever would know what can be best 
 pleaded for a higher antiquity of our present par- 
 liamentary constitution, may have recourse to Hody 
 on Convocations, and Lord Lyttleton's History of 
 .Jenry II., vol. ii., p. 276, and vol. iv., p. 79106. 
 I do not conceive it possible to argue the question 
 more ingeniously than has been done by the noble 
 writer last quoted. Whitelocke, in his commentary 
 on the parliamentary writ, has treated it very 
 mnch at length, but with no critical discrimina- 
 tion. 
 
 t Madox, Hist, of Exchequer, c. 17. 
 
PART HI.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 307 
 
 to the forty-ninth of Henry III. names 
 the citizens and burgesses as constitu- 
 ent parts of parliament; though prelates, 
 barons, knights, and sometimes freehold- 
 ers, are enumerated ;* while, since the 
 undoubted admission of the commons, 
 they are almost invariably mentioned. 
 No historian speaks of representatives 
 appearing for the people, or uses the 
 word citizen or burgess in describing 
 those present in parliament. Such con- 
 vincing, though negative evidence is not 
 to be invalidated by some general and 
 ambiguous phrases, whether in writs and 
 records or in historians. f Those monk- 
 ish annalists are poor authorities upon 
 any point where their language is to be 
 delicately measured. But it is hardly 
 possible, that writing circumstantially, as 
 Roger de Hoveden and Matthew Paris 
 sometimes did, concerning proceedings in 
 parliament, they could have failed to men- 
 tion the commons in unequivocal expres- 
 sions, if any representatives from that 
 order had actually formed a part of the 
 assembly. 
 
 Two authorities, however, which had 
 Authorities been supposed to prove a 
 in favour of greater antiquity than we have 
 an earlier assigned to the representation 
 of the commons, are deserving 
 of particular consideration ; the cases of 
 St Albans and Barnstaple. The burgess- 
 st Albans es ^ ^ Albans complained to 
 the council, in the eighth year 
 of Edward II., that, although they held 
 of the king in capite, and ought to at- 
 tend his parliaments whenever they are 
 summoned, by two of their number, in- 
 stead of all other services, as had been 
 their custom in all past times, which ser- 
 vices the said burgesses and their prede- 
 cessors had performed as well in the 
 time of the late King Edward and his an- 
 cestors, as in that of the present king 
 until the parliament now sitting, the 
 names of their deputies having been con- 
 stantly enrolled in chancery, yet the 
 sheriff of Hertfordshire, at the instigation 
 
 * The only apparent exception to this is in the 
 letter addressed to the pope by the parliament of 
 1246, the salutation of which runs thus : Barones, 
 proceres, et magnates, ac mobiles portuum marls hab- 
 itatores, necnon et clems et populus universus, sa- 
 lutem. Matt. Paris, p. 696. It is plain, I think, 
 from these words, that some of the chief inhabi- 
 tants of the Cinque-ports, at that time very flourish- 
 ing towns, were present in this parliament. But 
 whether they sat as representatives, or by a pecu- 
 liar writ of summons is not so evident ; and the 
 latter may be the more probable hypothesis of the 
 two. 
 
 t Thus Matthew Paris tells us, that in 1247, the 
 whole kingdom, regni totius universitas, repaired 
 to a parliament of Henry III., p. 367. 
 
 of the abbot of St. Albans, had neglected 
 to cavse an election and return to be 
 made ; and prayed remedy. To this pe- 
 tition it was answered, " Let the rolls of 
 chancery be examined, that it may ap- 
 pear whether the said burgesses were ac- 
 customed to come to parliament or not, 
 in the time of the king's ancestors ; and 
 let right be done to them, vocatis evocan- 
 dis, si necesse fuerit." I do not trans- 
 late these words, concerning the sense 
 of which there has been some dispute, 
 though not apparently very material to 
 the principal subject.* 
 
 This is, in my opinion, by far the most 
 plausible testimony for the early repre- 
 sentation of boroughs. The burgesses 
 of St. Albans claim a prescriptive right 
 from the usage of all past times, and 
 more especially those of the late Edward 
 and his ancestors. Could this be alle- 
 ged, it has been said, of a privilege at the 
 utmost of fifty years' standing, once 
 granted by a usurper, in the days of the 
 late king's father, and afterward discon- 
 tinued till about twenty years before the 
 date of their petition, according to those 
 who refer the regular appearance of the 
 commons in parliament to the twenty- 
 third of Edward 1. 1 Brady, who obvi- 
 ously felt the strength of this authority, 
 has shown little of his usual ardour and 
 acuteness in repelling it. It was observ- 
 ed, however, by Madox, that the petition 
 of St. Albans contains two very singular 
 allegations : it asserts that the town was 
 part of the king's demesne, whereas it 
 had invariably belonged to the adjoining 
 abbey; and that its burgesses held by 
 the tenure of attending parliament, in- 
 stead of all other services, contrary to 
 all analogy, and without parallel in the 
 condition of any tenant in capite through- 
 out the kingdom. " It is no wonder, 
 therefore," says Hume, " that a petition 
 which advances two falsehoods should 
 contain one historical mistake, which in- 
 deed amounts only to an inaccurate ex- 
 pression." But it must be confessed, 
 that we cannot so easily set aside the 
 whole authority of this record. For 
 whatever assurance the people of St. 
 Albans might show in asserting what was 
 untrue, the king's council must have 
 been aware how recently the deputies 
 of any towns had been admitted into 
 parliament. If the lawful birth of the 
 House of Commons were in 1295, as is 
 maintained by Brady and his disqples, is 
 it conceivable that, in 1315, the council 
 would have received a petition, claiming 
 the elective franchise by prescription, 
 
 * Brady's Introd. to Hist, of England, p. 38. 
 
368 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 and have referred to the rolls of chance- 
 ry to inquire whether this had been used 
 in the days of the king's progenitors I I 
 confess that I see no answer which can 
 easily be given to this objection by such 
 as adopt the latest epoch of borough rep- 
 I* resentation, namely, the parliament of 
 23 E. I. But they are by no means 
 equally conclusive against the supposi- 
 tion, that the communities of cities and 
 towns, having been first introduced into 
 the legislature during Leicester's usurpa- 
 tion, in the forty-ninth year of Henry 
 III., were summoned, not perhaps uni- 
 formly, but without any long intermis- 
 sion, to succeeding parliaments. There 
 is a strong presumption, from the lan- 
 guage of a contemporary historian, that 
 they sat in the parliament of 1269, four 
 years after that convened by Leicester.* 
 It is more unequivocally stated by anoth- 
 er annalist, that they were present in the 
 first parliament of Edward I., held in 
 1271. t Nor does a similar inference 
 want some degree of support from the 
 preambles of the statute of Marlebridge 
 in 51 H. III., of Westminster I., in the 
 third, and of Glocester, in the sixth 
 year of Edward I.J And the writs are 
 extant which summon every city, bor- 
 ough, and market town to send two dep- 
 uties to a council in the eleventh year of 
 his reign. I call this a council, for it 
 undoubtedly was not a parliament. The 
 sheriffs were directed to summon per- 
 sonally all who held more than twenty 
 pounds a year of the crown, as well as 
 four knights for each county invested 
 with full powers to act for the commons 
 thereof. The knights and burgesses 
 thus chosen, as well as the clergy within 
 the province of Canterbury, met at 
 Northampton ; those within the province 
 of York, at that city. And neither as- 
 
 * Convocatis universis Angliae prelatis et mag- 
 natibus, necnon cunctarum regni sui civitatum et 
 burgorum potentioribus. Wikes, in Gale, xv. 
 Scriptores, t. ii., p. 88. I am indebted to Hody on 
 Convocations for this reference, which seems to 
 have escaped most of our constitutional writers. 
 
 t Hoc anno .... convenerunt archiepiscopi, 
 episcopi, cpmites et barones, abbates et priores, 
 et^de quolibet comitatu quatuor milttes, et de 
 qualibet civitate quatuor. Annales Waverleien- 
 ses in Gale, t. ii., p. 227. I was led to this pas- 
 sage by Atterbury, Rights of Convocations, p. 
 310, where some other authorities, less unques- 
 tionable, are adduced for the same purpose. Both 
 this assembly, and that mentioned by Wikes in 
 1269, were certainly parliaments, and acted as 
 such, particularly the former, though summoned 
 for purposes not strictly parliamentary. 
 
 t The statute of, Marlebridge is said to be made 
 convocatis discretioribus, tarn majoribus quatn mi- 
 noribus; that of Westminster primer, par son 
 conseil, et par 1'essentements des archie vesques, 
 
 sembly was opened by the king.* This 
 anomalous convention was nevertheless 
 one means of establishing the represent- 
 ative system, and, to an inquirer free 
 from technical prejudice, is little less 
 important than a regular parliament. 
 Nor have we long to look even for this. 
 In the same year, about eight months 
 after the councils at Northampton and 
 York, writs were issued summoning to a 
 parliament at Shrewsbury two citizens 
 from London, and as many from each of 
 twenty other considerable towns. f It is 
 a slight cavil to object that these were 
 not directed as usual to the sheriff of 
 each county, but to the magistrates of 
 each place. Though a very imperfect, 
 this was a regular and unequivocal rep- 
 resentation of the commons in parlia- 
 ment. But their attendance seems to 
 have intermitted from this time to the 
 twenty-third year of Edward's reign. * 
 
 Those to whom the petition of St. Al- 
 bans is not satisfactory, will Barnstaple. 
 hardly yield their conviction to 
 that of Barnstaple. This town set forth 
 in the eighteenth of Edward III., that, 
 among other franchises granted to them 
 by a charter of Athelstan, they had ever 
 since exercised the right of sending two 
 burgesses to parliament. The said char- 
 ter indeed was unfortunately mislaid, 
 and the prayer of their petition was to 
 obtain one of the like import in its stead. 
 Barnstaple, it must be observed, was a 
 town belonging to Lord Audley, and had 
 actually returned members ever since 
 the twenty-third of Edward I. Upon an 
 inquisition directed by the king to be 
 made into the truth of these allegations, 
 it was found that "the burgesses of the 
 said town were wont to send two bur- 
 gesses to parliament for the commonal- 
 
 evesques, abbes, priors, countes, barons, et tout le 
 comminalty de la terre illonques summones. The 
 statute of Glocester runs, appelles les plus dis- 
 cretes de son royaume, auxibien des grandes come 
 des meinders. These preambles seem to have 
 satisfied Mr. Prynne that the commons were then 
 represented, though the writs are wanting ; and 
 certainly no one could be less disposed to exag- 
 gerate their antiquity. 2d Register, p. 30. 
 
 * Brady's Hist, of England, vol. ii., Appendix 
 Carte, vol. ii., p. 257. 
 
 t This is commonly denominated the parlia- 
 ment of Acton Burnell ; the clergy and commons 
 having sat in that town, while the barons passed 
 judgment upon David, prince of Wales, at 
 Shrewsbury. The towns which were honoured 
 with the privilege of representation, and may con- 
 sequently be supposed to have been at that time 
 the most considerable in England, were York, 
 Carlisle, Scarborough, Nottingham, Grimsby, Lin- 
 coln, Northampton, Lynn, Yarmouth, Colchester, 
 Norwich, Chester, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Here- 
 ford, Bristol, Canterbury, Winchester, and Exe- 
 ter. Rymer, t. ii., p. 247. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 369 
 
 ty of the borough ;" but nothing appearec 
 as to the pretended charter of Athelstan 
 or the liberties which it' was alleged to 
 contain. The burgesses, dissatisfied with 
 this inquest, prevailed that another should 
 be taken, which certainly answered bet- 
 ter their wishes. The second jury found 
 that Barnstaple was a free borough from 
 time immemorial ; that the burgesses had 
 enjoyed under a charter of Athelstan, 
 which had been casually lost, certain 
 franchises by them enumerated, and par- 
 ticularly that they should send two bur- 
 gesses to parliament ; and that it would 
 not be to the king's prejudice, if he 
 should grant them a fresh charter in 
 terms equally ample with that of his 
 predecessor Athelstan. But the follow- 
 ing year we have another writ and an- 
 other inquest, the former reciting that 
 the second return had been unduly and 
 fraudulently made; and the latter ex- 
 pressly contradicting the previous in- 
 quest in many points, and especially find- 
 ing no proof of Athelstan's supposed 
 charter. Comparing the various parts 
 of this business, we shall probably be in- 
 duced to agree with Willis, that it was 
 but an attempt of the inhabitants of 
 Barnstaple to withdraw themselves from 
 the jurisdiction of their lord. For the 
 right of returning burgesses, though it is 
 the main point of our inquiries, was by 
 no means the most prominent part of 
 their petition, which rather went to es- 
 tablish some civil privileges of devising 
 their tenements and electing their own 
 mayor. The first and fairest return finds 
 only that they were accustomed to send 
 members to parliament, which a usage 
 of fifty years (from 23 E. I. to 18 E. III.) 
 was fully sufficient to establish, without 
 searching into more remote antiquity.* 
 
 It has, however, probably occurred to 
 the reader of these two cases, St. Albans 
 and Barnstaple, that the representation 
 of the commons in parliament was not 
 treated as a novelty, even in times little 
 posterior to those in which we have been 
 supposing it to have originated. In this 
 consists, I think, the sole strength of the 
 opposite argument. An act in the fifth 
 year of Richard II. declares, that if any 
 sheriff shall leave out of his returns any 
 cities or boroughs which be bound, and 
 of old time were wont to come to the 
 parliament, he shall be punished as was 
 accustomed to be done in the like case 
 in time past.f In the memorable asser- 
 tion of legislative right by the commons 
 
 * Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. ii., p. 312. 
 Lyttleton's Hist, of Hen. II., vol. iv., p. 89. 
 f 5 Ric. II., stat. 2, c. iv. 
 Aa 
 
 in the second of Henry V., which will be 
 quoted hereafter, they affirm that " the 
 commune of the land is, and ever has 
 been, a member of parliament."* And 
 the consenting suffrage of our older law- 
 books must be placed in the same scale. 
 The first gainsayers, I think, were Cam- 
 den and Sir Henry Spelman, who, upon 
 probing the antiquities of our constitu- 
 tion somewhat more exactly than their 
 predecessors, declared that they could 
 find no signs of the commons in parlia- 
 ment till the forty-ninth of Henry III. 
 Prynne, some years afterward, with 
 much vigour and learning, maintained 
 the same argument, and Brady completed 
 the victory. But the current doctrine of 
 Westminster Hall, and still more of the 
 two chambers of parliament, was cer- 
 tainly much against these antiquaries ; 
 and it passed at one time for a surrender 
 of popular principles, and almost a breach 
 of privilege, to dispute the lineal descent 
 of the house of commons from the wit- 
 tenagemot.f 
 
 The true ground of these pretensions 
 to antiquity was a very well founded per-., 
 suasion, that no other argument would 
 be so conclusive to ordinary minds, or cut 
 short so effectually all encroachments of 
 the prerogative. The populace of every 
 country, but none so much as the Eng- 
 lish, easily grasp the notion, of right, 
 meaning thereby something positive and 
 definite ; while the maxims of expediency 
 or theoretical reasoning pass slightly 
 
 * Rot. ParL, vol. iv., p. 22. 
 t Though such an argument would not be con- 
 clusive, it might afford some ground for hesitation 
 if the royal burghs of Scotland were actually rep- 
 resented in their parliament more than half a cen- 
 ury before the date assigned to the first represen- 
 ation of English towns. Lord Hailes concludes 
 rom a passage in Fordun, " that, as early as 1211, 
 burgesses gave suit and presence in the great 
 council of the king's vassals ; though the contrary 
 las been asserted with much confidence by various 
 authors." Annals of Scotland, vol. i., p. 139. For- 
 dun's words, however, so far from importing that 
 hey formed a member of the legislature, which 
 perhaps Lord Hailes did not mean by the quaint 
 ;xpression " gave suit and presence," do not ap- 
 >ear to me conclusive to prove that they were ac- 
 ;ually present. Hoc anno Rex Scotiae Willelmus 
 magnum tenuit consiliuin. Ubi, petito ab opti- 
 matibus auxjko, promiserunt se daturos decem 
 mille marcas ; praeter burgenses regni, qui sex mil- 
 ia promiserunt. Those who know the brief and 
 ncorrect style of chronicles will not think it un- 
 ikely that the offer of 6000 marks by the burgesses 
 was not made in parhament, but in consequence 
 of separate requisitions from the crown. Pink- 
 erton is of opinion, that the magistrates of royal 
 burghs might upon this, and perhaps other occa- 
 sions, have attended at the bar of parliament with 
 heir offers of money. But the deputies of towns 
 do not appear as a part of parliament till 1326. 
 Hist, of Scotland, vol. i., p. 352, 371. 
 
370 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 over their minds. Happy indeed for 
 England that it is so ! But we have here 
 to do with the fact alone. And it may 
 be observed, that several pious frauds 
 were practised, to exalt the antiquity of 
 our constitutional liberties. These be- 
 gan, perhaps, very early, when the ima- 
 ginary laws of Edward the Confessor 
 were so earnestly demanded. They 
 were carried farther under Edward I. and 
 his successors, when the fable of privi- 
 leges granted by the Conqueror to the 
 men of Kent was devised ; when Andrew 
 Horn filled his Mirror of Justices with 
 fictitious tales of Alfred ; and, above all, 
 when the " method of holding parlia- 
 ments in the time of Ethelred" was fab- 
 ricated, about the end of Richard y.'s 
 reign ; an imposture which was not too 
 gross to deceive Sir Edward Coke. 
 
 There is no great difficulty in answer- 
 Causes of in the question, why the dep- 
 summoning uties of boroughs were finally 
 deputies an <j permanently ingrafted upon 
 ovtfis *' parliament by Edward I.* The 
 government was becoming con- 
 stantly more attentive to the wealth that 
 commerce brought into the kingdom, and 
 the towns were becoming more flourish- 
 ing and more independent. But, chiefly, 
 there was a much stronger spirit of gen- 
 eral liberty, and a greater discontent at 
 violent acts of prerogative, from the era 
 of Magna Charta ; after which authentic 
 recognition of free principles, many acts, 
 which had seemed before but the regular 
 exercise of authority, were looked upon 
 as infringements of the subject's right. 
 Among these the custom of setting tal- 
 lages at discretion would naturally ap- 
 pear the most intolerable ; and men were 
 unwilling to remember that the burgesses 
 who paid them were indebted for the 
 rest of their possessions to the bounty of 
 the crown. In Edward I.'s reign, even 
 before the great act of confirmation of 
 the charters had rendered arbitrary impo- 
 sitions absolutely unconstitutional, they 
 might perhaps excite louder murmurs 
 
 * These expressions cannot appear too strong. 
 But it is very remarkable, that to the parliament 
 of 18 Edward III., the writs appear to have sum- 
 moned none of the towns, but only the counties. 
 Willis, Notit. Parliament., vol. i., Preface, p. 13. 
 Prynne's Register, 3d part, p. 144. Yet the citi- 
 zens and burgesses are once, but only once, named 
 as present in the parliamentary roll ; and there is, 
 in general, a chasm in place of their names, where 
 the different ranks present are enumerated. Rot. 
 Parl., vol. ii., p. 146. A subsidy was granted at 
 this parliament ; so that, if the citizens and bur- 
 gesses were really not summoned, it is by far the 
 most violent stretch of power during the reign of 
 Edward III. But I know of no collateral evidence 
 to illustrate or disprove it. 
 
 than a discreet administration would 
 risk. Though the necessities of the king, 
 therefore, and his imperious temper, often 
 led him to this course,* it was a more 
 prudent counsel to try the willingness 
 of his people before he forced their re- 
 luctance. And the success of his in- 
 novation rendered it worth repetition. 
 Whether it were from the complacency 
 of the commons at being thus admitted 
 among the peers of the realm, or from a 
 persuasion that the king would take their 
 money if they refused it, or from inabil- 
 ity to withstand the plausible reasons of 
 his ministers, or from the private influ- 
 ence to which the leaders of every pop- 
 ular assembly have been accessible, much 
 more was granted in subsidies after the 
 representation of the towns commenced, 
 than had ever been extorted in tallages. 
 To grant money was therefore the 
 main object of their meeting ; and if the 
 exigencies of the administration could 
 have been relieved without subsidies, the 
 citizens and burgesses might still have 
 sat at home, and obeyed the laws which 
 a council of prelates and barons enacted 
 for their government. But it is a difficult 
 question, whether the king and the peers 
 designed to make room for them, as it 
 were, in legislation ; and whether the 
 power of the purse drew after it immedi- 
 ately, or only by degrees, those indispen- 
 sable rights of consenting to laws which 
 they now possess. There are no suffi- 
 cient means of solving this doubt during 
 the reign of Edward I. The writ in 22 E. 
 I. directs two knights to be chosen cum 
 plen potestate pro se et tota communi- 
 tate comitatus praedicti, ad consulendum 
 et consentiendum pro se et communitate 
 ilia, his quae comites, barpnes, et proceres 
 praedicti concorditer ordinaverint in prae- 
 missis. That of the next year runs r ad 
 faciendum tune quod de communi con- 
 silio ordinabitur in praemissis. The same 
 words are inserted in the writ of 26 E. I. 
 In that of 28 E. I. the knights are directed 
 to be sent cum plena potestate audiendi 
 et faciendi quae ibidem ordinari eonti- 
 gerint pro communi commodo. Several 
 others of the same reign have the words 
 ad faciendum. The difficulty is to pro- 
 nounce whether this term is to be inter- 
 preted in the sense of performing or of 
 enacting ; whether the representatives of 
 
 * Tallages were imposed without consent of 
 parliament in 17 E. I., Wykes, p. 117; and in 32 
 E. I., Brady's Hist, of Eng., vol. ii. In the latter 
 instance the king also gave leave to the lay and 
 spiritual nobility to set a tallage on their own ten- 
 ants. This was subsequent to the Confirmati- 
 Chartarum, and unquestionably illegal. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 371 
 
 the commons were merely to learn from 
 the lords what was to be done, or to bear 
 their part in advising upon it. The ear- 
 liest writ, that of 22 E. I., certainly im- 
 plies the latter ; and I do not know that 
 any of the rest are conclusive to the con- 
 trary. In the reign of Edward II., the 
 words ad consentiendum alone, or ad 
 faciendum et consentiendum, begin ; and 
 from that of Edward III. this form has 
 been constantly used.* It must still 
 however be highly questionable, whether 
 the commons, who had so recently taken 
 their place in parliament, gave any thing 
 more than a constructive assent to the 
 laws enacted during this reign. They 
 are not even named in the preamble of 
 any statute till the last year of Edward 
 
 I. Upon more than one occasion, the 
 sheriffs were directed to return the same 
 members who had sat in the last parlia- 
 ment, unless prevented by death or in- 
 firmity, f 
 
 It has been a very prevailing opinion. 
 At what that parliament was not divided 
 
 time parlia- mto two houses at the first ad- 
 divided tnto mission of the commons. If 
 two houses, by this is only meant that the 
 commons did not occupy a separate cham- 
 ber till some time in the reign of Edward 
 III., the proposition, true or false, will 
 be of little importance. They may have 
 sat at the bottom of Westminster Hall, 
 while the lords occupied the upper end. 
 But that they were ever intermingled in 
 voting appears inconsistent with likeli- 
 hood and authority. The usual object 
 of calling a parliament was to impose 
 taxes ; and these, for many years after 
 the introduction of the commons, were 
 laid in different proportions upon the 
 three estates of the realm. Thus in the 
 23 E. I., the earls, barons, and knights 
 gave the king an eleventh, the clergy a 
 tenth ; while he obtained a seventh from 
 the citizens and burgesses ; in the twenty- 
 fourth of the same king, the two former 
 of these orders gave a twelfth, the last 
 an eighth; in the thirty-third year, a 
 thirtieth was the grant of the barons and 
 knights, and of the clergy, a twentieth of 
 the cities and towns : in the first of Ed- 
 ward II., the counties paid a twentieth, 
 the towns a fifteenth; in the sixth of 
 Edward III., the rates were a fifteenth 
 
 * Prynne's 2d Register. It may be remarked, 
 that writs of summons to great councils never ran 
 ad faciendum, but ad tractandum, consulendum et 
 consentiendum ; from which some would infer that 
 faciendum had the sense of enacting ; since stat- 
 utes could not be passed in such assemblies. Id., 
 p. 92. 
 
 t 28 E. I., in Prynne's 4th Register,?. 12 ; 9 E. 
 
 II. (a great council), p. 4S. 
 
 A a 2 
 
 and a tenth.* These distinct grants im- 
 ply distinct grantors ; for it is not to be 
 imagined that the commons intermeddled 
 in those affecting the lords, or the lords 
 in those of the commons. In fact, how- 
 ever, there is abundant proof of their 
 separate existence long before the seven- 
 teenth of Edward III., which is the epoch 
 assigned by Carte.f or even the sixth of 
 that king, which has been chosen by 
 some other writers. Thus the commons 
 sat at Acton Burnell in the eleventh of 
 Edward I., while the upper house was at 
 Shrewsbury. In the eighth of Edward 
 II., "the commons of England complain 
 to the king and his council," &c.J These 
 must surely have been the commons as- 
 sembled in parliament, for who else could 
 thus have entitled themselves 1 In the 
 nineteenth of the same king, we find 
 several petitions, evidently proceeding 
 from the body of the commons in parlia- 
 ment, and complaining of public griev- 
 ances.^ The roll of 1 E. III., though 
 mutilated, is conclusive to show that 
 separate petitions were then presented 
 by the commons, according to the regu- 
 lar usage of subsequent times. || And, 
 indeed, the preamble of 1 E. HI., stat. 2, 
 is apparently capable of no other infer- 
 ence. 
 
 As the knights of shires correspond to 
 the lower nobility of other feudal coun- 
 tries, we have less cause to be surprised 
 that they belonged originally to the same 
 branch of parliament as the barons, than 
 at their subsequent intermixture with 
 men so inferior in station as the citizens 
 and burgesses. It is by no means easy 
 to define the point of time when this dis- 
 tribution was settled ; but I think it may 
 be inferred from the rolls of parliament, 
 that the houses were divided, as they are 
 at present, in the eighth, ninth, and nine- 
 teenth years of Edward IL^f This ap 
 pears, however, beyond doubt, in the 
 first of Edward III.** Yet in the sixth 
 of the same prince, though the knights 
 and burgesses are expressly mentioned 
 to have consulted together, the former 
 taxed themselves in a smaller rate of 
 subsidy than the latter. ff 
 
 The proper business of the house of 
 commons was to petition for redress of 
 grievances, as much as to provide for 
 the necessities of the crown. In the 
 
 * Brady's Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 40. Par- 
 liamentary History, vol. i., p. 206. Rot. Parlia- 
 ment, t. ii., p. 66. 
 
 t Carte, vol. ii., p. 45L Parliamentary History, 
 vol. i., p. 234. 
 
 SRot. Parl., v. i., p. 289. <J Id., p. 430. 
 
 Id., vol. ii,, p. 7- f Id- P- 289, 351, 430. 
 ** Id., p. 5. ft Id., p. 80. 
 
372 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 prudent fiction of English law, no wrong 
 is supposed to proceed from the source 
 of right. The throne is fixed upon a 
 pinnacle, which perpetual beams of truth 
 and justice irradiate, though corruption 
 and partiality may occupy the middle 
 region, and cast their chill shade upon 
 all below. In his high court of parlia- 
 ment, a king of England was to learn 
 where injustice had been unpunished, 
 and where right had been delayed. The 
 common courts of law, if they were suf- 
 ficiently honest, were not sufficiently 
 strong to redress the subject's injuries, 
 where the officers of the crown or the 
 nobles interfered. To parliament he 
 looked as the great remedial court for 
 relief of private as well as public griev- 
 ances. For this cause it was ordained 
 in the fifth of Edward II., that the king 
 should hold a parliament once, or, if 
 necessary, twice every year ; " that the 
 pleas which have been thus delayed, and 
 those where the justices have differed, 
 may be brought to a close."* And a 
 short act of 4 Edward III., which was 
 not very strictly regarded, provides that 
 a parliament shall be held " every year, 
 or oftener, if need be."t By what per- 
 sons, and under what limitations, this 
 jurisdiction in parliament was exercised, 
 will come under our future consideration. 
 The efficacy of a king's personal char- 
 acter, in so imperfect a state of govern- 
 ment, was never more strongly exempli- 
 fied than in the two first Edwards. The 
 father, a little before his death, had hum- 
 bled his boldest opponents among the no- 
 bility; and as for the commons, so far 
 from claiming a right of remonstrating, 
 we have seen cause to doubt whether they 
 Edward IT. were accounted effectual mem- 
 ^ ers ^ t ^ ie l e gi s l a ture for any 
 purposes but taxation. But in 
 reign. the very second year of the 
 son's reign, they granted the twenty-fifth 
 penny of their goods, " upon this condi- 
 tion, that the king should take advice 
 and grant redress upon certain articles 
 wherein they are aggrieved." These 
 were answered at the ensuing parlia- 
 ment, and are entered, with the king's 
 respective promises of redress, upon the 
 roll. It will be worth while to extract 
 part of this record, that we may see 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. i , p. 285. 
 
 t 4 E. III., c. 14. Annual sessions of parlia- 
 ment seem fully to satisfy the words, and still 
 more the spirit of this act, and of 36 E. III., c. 10 ; 
 which, however, are repealed by implication from 
 the provisions of 6 W. III., c. 2. But it was very 
 rare under the Plantagenet dynasty for a parlia- 
 ment to continue more than a year. 
 
 what were the complaints of the com- 
 mons of England, and their notions of 
 right, in 1309. I have chosen, on this as 
 on other occasions, to translate very lit- 
 erally, at the expense of some stiffness, 
 and perhaps obscurity in language. 
 
 " The good people of the kingdom who 
 are come hither to parliament, pray our 
 lord the king that he will, if it please 
 him, have regard to his poor subjects, 
 who are much aggrieved by reason that 
 they are not governed as they should be ; 
 especially as to the articles of the Great 
 Charter; and for this, if it please him, 
 they pray remedy. Besides which they 
 pray their lord the king to hear what has 
 long aggrieved his people, and still does 
 so from day to day, on the part of those 
 who call themselves his officers, and to 
 amend it, if he pleases." The articles, 
 eleven in number, are to the following 
 purport: 1. That the king's purveyors 
 seize great quantities of victuals without 
 payment; 2. That new customs are set 
 on wine, cloth, and other imports ; 3. That 
 the current coin is not so good as for- 
 merly ;* 4, 5. That the steward and mar- 
 shal enlarge their jurisdiction beyond 
 measure to the oppression of the people ; 
 
 6. That the commons find none to re- 
 ceive petitions addressed to the council ; 
 
 7. That the collectors of the king's dues 
 (pernours des prises) in towns and at fairs, 
 take more than is lawful; 8. That men 
 are delayed in their civil suits by writs of 
 protection ; 9. That felons escape pun- 
 ishment by procuring charters of par- 
 don; 10. That the constables of the 
 king's castles take cognizance of com- 
 mon pleas; 11. That the king's escheat- 
 ors oust men of lands held by good title, 
 under pretence of an inquest of office.! 
 
 These articles display in a short com- 
 pass the nature of those grievances 
 which existed under almost all the 
 princes of the Plantagenet dynasty, and 
 are spread over the rolls of parliament 
 for more than a century after this time. 
 Edward gave the amplest assurances of 
 putting an end to them all; except in 
 one instance, the augmented customs on 
 imports, to which he answered rather 
 evasively, that he would take them off 
 till he should perceive whether himself 
 and his people derived advantage from 
 so doing, and act thereupon as he should 
 
 * This article is so expressed as to make it ap- 
 pear that the grievance was the high price of com- 
 modities. But as this was the natural effect of a 
 degraded currency, and the whole tenour of these 
 articles relates to abuses of government, I think it 
 must have meant what I have said in the text. 
 
 t Prynne's 2d Register, p. 68. 
 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 373 
 
 be advised. Accordingly, the next year, 
 he issued writs to collect these new 
 customs again. But the Lords Ordainers 
 superseded the writs, having entirely ab- 
 rogated all illegal impositions.* It does 
 not appear, however, that, regard had to 
 the times, there was any thing very ty- 
 rannical in Edward's government. He 
 set tallages sometimes, like his father, 
 on his demesne towns without assent of 
 parliament.! In the nineteenth year 
 of his reign, the commons show, that 
 "whereas we and our ancestors have 
 given many tallages to the king's ances- 
 tors to obtain the charter of the forest, 
 which charter we have had confirmed 
 by the present king, paying him large- 
 ly on our part ; yet the king's officers of 
 the forest seize on lands, and destroy 
 ditches, and oppress the people, for which 
 they pray remedy, for the sake of God 
 and his. father's soul." They complain at 
 the same time of arbitrary imprisonment, 
 against the law of the land.| To both 
 these petitions the king returned a prom- 
 ise of redress; and they complete the 
 catalogue of customary grievances in this 
 period of our constitution. 
 
 During the reign of Edward^II. the 
 rolls of parliament are imperfect, and 
 we have not much assistance from other 
 sources. The assent of the commons, 
 which frequently is not specified in the 
 statutes of this age, appears in two re- 
 markable and revolutionary proceedings, 
 the appointment of the Lords Ordainers 
 in 1312, and that of Prince Edward as 
 guardian of the realm in the rebellion 
 which ended in the king's dethronement. 
 In the former case, it indicates that the 
 aristocratic party then combined against 
 the crown were desirous of conciliating 
 popularity. An historian relates, that 
 some of the commons were consulted 
 upon the ordinances to be made for the 
 reformation of government. || In the lat- 
 ter case, the deposition of Edward II., I 
 am satisfied, that the commons assent 
 was pretended in order to give more 
 speciousness to the transaction.^" But as 
 
 * Prynne's 2d Register, p. 75. 
 
 t Madox, Firrna Burgi, p. 6. Rot. Parl., vol. i., 
 p. 449. 
 
 \ Rot. Parl., vol. i., p. 430. $ Id., p. 281. 
 
 || Walsingham, p. 97. 
 
 ^[ A record, which may be read in Brady's His- 
 tory of England, vol. ii., Append., p. 66, and in 
 Rymer, t. iv., p. 1237, relative to the proceedings 
 on Edward II. s ilight into Wales and subsequent 
 detention, recites " that the king, having left his 
 kingdom without government, and gone away with 
 notorious enemies of the queen, prince, and realm ; 
 divers prelates, earls, barons, and knights then be- 
 ing at Bristol, in the presence of the said queen 
 and duke (Prince Edward, duke of Cornwall), by 
 
 this proceeding, however violent, bears 
 evident marks of having been conducted 
 by persons conversant in law, the men- 
 tion of the commons may be deemed a 
 testimony to their constitutidnal right 
 of participation with the peers in making 
 provision for a temporary defect of what- 
 ever nature in the executive government. 
 
 During the long and prosperous reign 
 of Edward III., the efforts of Edward in. 
 parliament in behalf of their 
 country were rewarded with 
 success, in establishing upon a rights. 
 firm footing three essential principles of 
 our government ; the illegality of raising 
 money without consent ; the necessity 
 that the two houses should concur for 
 any alterations in the law ; and, lastly, 
 the right of the commons to inquire 
 into public abuses, and to impeach public 
 counsellors. By exhibiting proofs of 
 each of these from parliamentary rec- 
 ords, I shall be able to substantiate the 
 progressive improvement of our free 
 constitution, which was principally con- 
 solidated during the reigns of Edward III. 
 and his two next successors. Brady in- 
 deed, Carte, and the authors of the Par- 
 liamentary History, have trod already 
 over this ground ; but none of the three 
 can be considered as familiar to the gen- 
 erality of readers, and I may at least 
 take credit for a sincerer love of liberty 
 than any of their writings display. 
 
 In the sixth year of Edward III. a par- 
 liament was called to provide for the 
 emergency of an Irish rebell- Remonstran- 
 iqn; wherein, "because the f^ ^ ainst 
 king could not send troops and rnoney g with- 
 money to Ireland without the ui consent, 
 aid of his people, the prelates, earls, 
 barons, and other great men, and the 
 knights of shires, and all the commons, 
 
 the assent of the whole commonalty of the realm there 
 being, unanimously elected the said duke to be 
 guardian of the said kingdom ; so that the said 
 duke and guardian should rule and govern the 
 said realm, in the name and by the authority of the 
 king his father, he being thus absent." But the 
 king being taken and brought back into England, 
 the power thus delegated to the guardian ceased 
 of course ; whereupon the Bishop of Hereford was 
 sent to press the king to permit that the great seal, 
 which he had with him, the prince having only 
 used his private seal, should be used in all things 
 that required it. Accordingly the king sent the 
 great seal to the queen and prince. The bishop is 
 said to have been thus commissioned to fetch the 
 seal by the prince and queen, and by the said pre- 
 lates and peers, with the assent of the said common- 
 alty then being at Hereford. It is plain that these 
 were mere words of course ; for no parliament 
 had been convoked, and no proper representatives 
 could have been either at Bristol or Hereford. 
 However, this is a very curious record, inasmuch 
 as it proves the importance attached to the forms 
 of the constitution at this period. 
 
374 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 of their free-will, for the said purpose, 
 and also in order that the king might 
 live of his own, and not vex his people 
 by excessive prises, nor in other man- 
 ner, grant to him the fifteenth penny, to 
 levy of the commons,* and the tenth 
 from the cities, towns, and royal de- 
 mesnes. And the king, at the request 
 of the same, in ease of his people, grants 
 that the commissions lately made to 
 certain persons assigned to set tallages 
 on cities, towns, and demesnes through- 
 out England, shall be immediately repeal- 
 ed; and that in time to come he will 
 not set such tallage, except as it has 
 been done in the time of his ancestors, 
 and as he may reasonably do."f 
 
 These concluding words are of danger- 
 ous implication, and certainly it was not 
 the intention of Edward, inferior to none 
 of his predecessors in the love of power, 
 to divest himself of that eminent prerog- 
 ative, which, however illegally since the 
 Confirmatio Chartarum, had' been exer- 
 cised by them all. But the parliament 
 took no notice of this reservation, and 
 continued with unshaken perseverance to 
 insist on this incontestable and funda- 
 mental right, which he was prone enough 
 to violate. 
 
 In the thirteenth year of this reign, the 
 lords gave their answer to commission- 
 ers sent to open the parliament, and to 
 treat with them on the king's part, in a 
 sealed roll. This contained a grant of 
 the tenth sheaf, fleece, and lamb. But, 
 before they gave it, they took care to 
 have letters patent showed them, by 
 which the commissioners had power " to 
 grant some graces to the great and 
 small of the kingdom."-'' And the said 
 lords," the roll proceeds to say, " will, 
 that the imposition (maletoste) which 
 flow again has been levied upon wool be 
 entirely abolished, that the old customa- 
 ry duty be kept, and that they may have 
 it by charter, and by enrolment in par- 
 liament, that such custom be never 
 more levied, and that this grant now 
 made to the king, or any other made in 
 time past, shall not turn hereafter to their 
 charge nor be drawn into precedent." 
 The commons, who gave their answers 
 in a separate roll, declared that they 
 could grant no subsidy without consult- 
 ing their constituents; and therefore 
 begged that another parliament might be 
 summoned, and in the meantime they 
 would endeavour, by using persuasion 
 
 * " La commonalt^e" seems in this place to 
 mean the tenants of land, or commons of the 
 counties, in contradistinction to citizens and bur- 
 f Rot. Parl., v. ii., p. 66. 
 
 with the people of their respective coun- 
 ties, to procure the grant of a reasonable 
 aid in the next parliament.* They de- 
 manded also that the imposition on wool 
 and lead should be taken as it used to be 
 in former times, " inasmuch as it is en- 
 hanced without assent of the commons, 
 or of the lords, as we understand ; and 
 if it be otherwise demanded, that any 
 one of the commons may refuse it (le 
 puisse arester), without being troubled on 
 that account (saunz estre chalange").f 
 
 Wool, however, the staple export of 
 that age, was too easy and tempting a 
 prey to be relinquished by a prince en- 
 gaged in an empoverishing war. Seven 
 years afterward, in 20 E. III., we find the 
 commons praying that the great subsidy 
 of forty shillings upon the sack of wool 
 be taken off; and the old custom paid as 
 heretofore was assented to and granted. 
 The government spoke this time in a 
 more authoritative tone. "As to this 
 point (the answer runs), the prelates and 
 others, seeing in what need the king stood 
 of an aid before his passage beyond sea, 
 to recover his rights, and defend his king- 
 dom of England, consented, with the 
 concurrence of the merchants, that he 
 should have, in aid of his said war, and in 
 defence of his said kingdom, forty shil- 
 lings of subsidy for each sack of wool 
 that should be exported beyond sea for 
 two years to come. And upon this grant 
 divers merchants have made many ad- 
 vances to our lord the king, in aid of his 
 war ; for which cause this subsidy can- 
 not be repealed without assent of the 
 king and his lords. "J 
 
 It is probable that Edward's counsel- 
 lors wished to establish a distinction, long 
 afterward revived by those of James I., 
 between customs levied on merchandise 
 at the ports and internal taxes. The 
 statute entitled Confirmatio Chartarum 
 had manifestly taken away the preroga- 
 tive of imposing the latter, which indeed 
 had never extended beyond the tenants 
 of the royal demesne. But its language 
 was not quite so explicit as to the former, 
 although no reasonable doubt could be 
 entertained that the intention of the legis- 
 lature was to abrogate every species of 
 imposition unauthorized by parliament. 
 The thirtieth section of Magna Charta 
 had provided that foreign merchants 
 should be free from all tributes, except 
 the ancient customs; and it was strange 
 to suppose that natives were excluded 
 from the benefit of that enactment. Yet 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 104. 
 
 t Id. ihd. J Id., p. 161. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 375 
 
 owing to the ambiguous and elliptical 
 style so frequent in our older laws, this 
 was open to dispute, and could perhaps 
 only be explained by usage. Edward I., 
 in despite of both these statutes, had 
 set a duty of threepence in the pound 
 upon goods imported by merchant stran- 
 gers. This imposition was noticed as a 
 grievance in the third year of his succes- 
 sor, and repealed by the lords ordainers. 
 It was revived however by Edward III., 
 and continued to be levied ever after- 
 ward.* 
 
 Edward was led by the necessities of 
 his unjust and expensive war into anoth- 
 er arbitrary encroachment, of which we 
 find as many complaints as of his pecuni- 
 ary extortions. The commons pray, in 
 the same parliament of 20 E. III., that 
 commissions should not issue for the fu- 
 ture out of chancery, to charge the peo- 
 ple with providing men-at-arms, hobelers 
 (or light cavalry), archers, victuals, or in 
 any other manner, without consent of 
 parliament. It is replied to this petition, 
 that " it is notorious how in many parlia- 
 ments the lords and commons had prom- 
 ised to aid the king in his quarrel with 
 their bodies and goods as far as was in 
 their power ; wherefore the said lords, 
 seeing the necessity in which the king 
 stood of having aid of men-at-arms, hobe- 
 lers, and archers, before his passage to 
 recover his rights beyond sea, and to de- 
 fend his realm of England, ordained, that 
 such as had five pounds a year or more 
 in land on this side of Trent, should fur- 
 nish men-at-arms, hobelers, and archers, 
 according to the proportion of the land 
 they held, to attend the king at his cost ; 
 and some who would neither go them- 
 selves nor find others in their stead, were 
 willing to give the king wherewithal 
 he might provide himself with some in 
 their place. And thus the thing has been 
 done, and no otherwise. And the king 
 wills, that henceforth what has been thus 
 done in this necessity be not drawn into 
 consequence or example."! 
 
 The commons were not abashed by 
 these arbitraiy pretensions; they knew 
 that by incessant remonstrances they 
 should gain at least one essential point, 
 
 * Case of impositions in Howell's State Trials, 
 vol. ii., p. 371519 ; particularly the argument of 
 Mr. Hakewill. Male's Treatise on the Customs, 
 in Margrave's Tracts, vol. i. 
 
 Edward III. imposed another duty on cloth ex- 
 ported, on the pretence that as the wool must have 
 paid a tax, he had a right to place the wrought and 
 unwrought article on an equality. The commons 
 remonstrated against this : but it was not repealed. 
 This took place about 22 E. III. Male's Treatise, 
 p. 175. t Rot. Parl., p. 160. 
 
 that of preventing the crown from claim- 
 ing these usurpations as uncontested pre- 
 rogatives. The roll of parliament in the 
 next two years, the 21st and 22d of Ed- 
 ward III., is full of the same complaints 
 on one side, and the same allegations of 
 necessity on the other.* In the latter year 
 the commons grant a subsidy, on condi- 
 tion that no illegal levying of money 
 should take place, with several other 
 remedial provisions; "and that these 
 conditions should be entered on the roll 
 of parliament, as a matter of record, by 
 which they may have remedy, if any 
 thing should be attempted to the con- 
 trary in time to come." From this year 
 the complaints of extortion become ra- 
 ther less frequent ; and soon afterward a 
 statute was passed, " That no man should 
 be constrained to find men-at-arms, hobe- 
 lers, nor archers, other than those which 
 hold by such services, if it be not by 
 common assent and grant made in parlia- 
 ment."! Yet even in the last year of 
 Edward's reign, when the boundaries of 
 prerogative and the rights of parliament 
 were better ascertained, the king lays a 
 sort of claim to impose charges upon his 
 subjects in cases of great necessity and 
 for the defence of his kingdom.^ But this 
 more humble language indicates a change 
 in the spirit of government, which, after 
 long fretting impatiently at the curb, be- 
 gan at length to acknowledge the con- 
 trolling hand of law. 
 
 These are the chief instances of a 
 struggle between the crown and com- 
 mons as to arbitrary taxation ; but there 
 are two remarkable proceedings in the 
 45th and 46th of Edward, which, though 
 they would not have been endured in 
 later times, are rather anomalies arising 
 out of the unsettled state of the constitu- 
 tion and the recency of parliamentary 
 rights, than mere encroachments of the 
 prerogative. In the former year, parlia- 
 ment had granted a subsidy of fifty thou- 
 sand pounds, to be collected by an assess- 
 ment of twenty-two shillings and three- 
 pence upon every parish, on a presump- 
 tion that the parishes in England amount- 
 ed to forty-five thousand, whereas they 
 were hardly a fifth of that number. This 
 amazing mistake was not discovered till 
 the parliament had been dissolved. Upon 
 its detection, the king summoned a great 
 council,^ consisting of one knight, citizen, 
 and burgess, named by himself out of 
 two that had been returned to the last 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 161, 166,201. 
 t 25 E. III., stat. v., c. 8. 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 366. 
 $ Prynne's 4th Register, p. 289, 
 
376 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHiP. VIII. 
 
 parliament. To this assembly the chan- 
 cellor set forth the deficiency of the last 
 subsidy, and proved by the certificates of 
 all the bishops in England how strangely 
 the parliament had miscalculated the 
 number of parishes; whereupon they 
 increased the parochial assessment by 
 their own authority to one hundred and 
 sixteen shillings.* It is obvious that the 
 main intention of parliament was carried 
 into effect by this irregularity, which 
 seems to have been the subject of no 
 complaint. In the next parliament, a 
 still more objectionable measure was re- 
 sorted to ; after the petitions of the com- 
 mons had been answered, and the knights 
 dismissed, the citizens and burgesses 
 were convened before the Prince of 
 Wales and the lords in a room near the 
 white chamber, and solicited to renew 
 their subsidy of forty shillings upon the 
 tun of wine, and sixpence in the pound 
 upon other imports, for safe convoy of 
 shipping, during one year more ; to which 
 they assented ; " and so departed."! 
 
 The second constitutional principle es- 
 Thecon- tablished in the reign of Ed- 
 currence of war< } ni. was, that the king and 
 huegisia 3 - 68 two houses of parliament in 
 tion neces- conjunction possessed exclu- 
 sary. sively the right of legislation. 
 
 Laws were now declared to be made by 
 the king at the request of the commons, 
 and by the assent of the lords and pre- 
 lates. Such at least was the general 
 form, though for many subsequent ages 
 there was no invariable regularity in this 
 respect. The commons, who till this 
 reign were rarely mentioned, were now 
 as rarely omitted in the enacting clause. 
 In fact, it is evident from the rolls of 
 parliament, that statutes were almost 
 always founded upon their petition. J 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 304. 
 
 t Idem, p. 310. In the mode of levying sub- 
 sidies, a remarkable improvement took place ear- 
 ly in the reign of Edward III. Originally two 
 chief taxers were appointed by the king for each 
 county, who named twelve persons in every hun- 
 dred to assess the moveable estate of all inhabi- 
 tants according to its real value. But in 8 E. III., 
 on complaint of parliament, that thbe taxers were 
 partial, commissioners were sent round to com- 
 pound with every town and parish for a gross sum, 
 which was from thenceforth the fixed quota of sub- 
 sidy, and raised by the inhabitants themselves. 
 Brady on Boroughs, p. 81. 
 
 J Laws appear to have been drawn up and pro- 
 posed to the two houses s by the king, down to the 
 time of Edward I. Kale's Hist, of Common Law, 
 p. 16. 
 
 Sometimes the representatives of particular 
 places address separate petitions to the king and 
 council ; as the citizens of London, the commons 
 of Devonshire, &c. These are intermingled with 
 the general petitions, and both together are for the 
 
 These petitions, with the respective an- 
 swers made to them in the king's name, 
 w^ere drawn up after the end of the ses- 
 sion in the form of laws, and entered 
 upon the statute-roll. But here it must 
 be remarked, that the petitions were 
 often extremely qualified and altered by 
 the answer, insomuch that many statutes 
 of this and some later reigns by no 
 means express the true sense of the com- 
 mons. Sometimes they contented them- 
 selves with showing their grievance, and 
 praying remedy from the king and his 
 council. Of this one eminent instance 
 is the great statute of treasons. In the 
 petition whereon this act is founded, it is 
 merely prayed that, " whereas the king's 
 justices in different counties adjudge per- 
 sons endicted before them to be traitors 
 for sundry matters not known by the 
 commons to be treason, it would please 
 the king by his council, and by the great 
 and wise men of the land, to declare 
 what are treasons in this present parlia- 
 ment." The answer to this petition con- 
 tains the existing statute, as a declara- 
 tion on the king's part.* But there is no 
 appearance that it received the direct as- 
 sent of the lower house. In the next 
 reigns we shall find more remarkable in- 
 stances of assuming a consent which was 
 never positively given. 
 
 The statute of treasons, however, was 
 supposed to be declaratory of the ancient 
 law ; in permanent and material innova- 
 tions, a more direct concurrence of all 
 the estates was probably required. A 
 new statute, to be perpetually incorpo- 
 rated with the law of England, was re- 
 garded as no.light matter. It was a very 
 common answer to a petition of the com- 
 mons, in the early part of this reign, that 
 it could not be granted without making a 
 new law. After the parliament of 14 E. 
 III., a certain number of prelates, barons, 
 and counsellors, with twelve knights and 
 six burgesses, were appointed to sit from 
 day to day, in order to turn such petitions 
 and answers as were fit to be perpetual 
 into a statute ; but for such as were of a 
 temporary nature, the king issued his let- 
 ters patent.f This reluctance to inno- 
 vate without necessity, and to swell the 
 number of laws which all were bound to 
 know and obey with an accumulation of 
 transitory enactments, led apparently to 
 the distinction between statutes 
 and ordinances. The latter are 
 indeed defined by some law- J r a e s rdi ~ 
 yers to be regulations proceed- 
 most part very numerous. In the roll of 50 Edw. 
 III. they amount to 140. 
 
 .* Rot. Parl., p. 239. f Idem, p. 113. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 377 
 
 ing from the king and lords, without con- 
 currence of the commons. But if this 
 be applicable to some ordinances, it is 
 certain that the word, even when op- 
 posed to statute, with which it is often 
 synonymous, sometimes denotes an act 
 of the whole legislature. In the 37th of 
 Edward III., when divers sumptuary reg- 
 ulations against excess of apparel were 
 made in full parliament, " it was demand- 
 ed of the lords and commons, inasmuch 
 as the matter of their petitions was novel 
 and unheard of before, whether they 
 would have them granted by way of or- 
 dinance or of statute. They answered 
 that it would be best to have them by 
 way of ordinance and not of statute, in 
 order that any thing which should need 
 amendment might be amended at the 
 next parliament."* So much scruple did 
 they entertain about tampering with the 
 statute law of the land. 
 
 Ordinances, which, if it were not for 
 their partial or temporary operation, 
 could not well be distinguished from 
 laws,f were often established in great 
 councils. These assemblies, which fre- 
 quently occurred in Edward's reign, were 
 hardly distinguishable, except in name, 
 from parliaments, being constituted not 
 only of those who were regularly sum- 
 moned to the house of lords, but of dep- 
 uties from counties, cities, and boroughs. 
 Several places that never returned bur- 
 gesses to parliament have sent deputies 
 to some of these councils. J The most 
 remarkable of these was that held in the 
 27th of Edward III., consisting of one 
 knight for each county, and of deputies 
 from all the cities and boroughs, wherein 
 the ordinances of the staple were estab- 
 lished. These were previously agreed 
 upon by the king and lords, and copies 
 given, one to the knights, another to the 
 burgesses. The roll tells us, that they 
 gave their opinion in writing to the coun- 
 cil, after much deliberation, and that this 
 was read and discussed by the great men. 
 These ordinances fix the staple of wool 
 in particular places within England, pro- 
 hibit English merchants from exporting 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 280. 
 
 t " If there be any difference between an ordi- 
 nance and a statute, as some have collected, it is 
 but only this, that an ordinance is but temporary 
 till confirmed and made perpetual ; but a statute is 
 perpetual at first, and so have some ordinances also 
 been." Whitelocke on Parliamentary Writ, vol. 
 ii., p. 297. See Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 17 ;'vol. iv., 
 p. 35. 
 
 t These may be found in Willis's Notitia Parlia- 
 mentaria. In 28 E. I., the universities were sum- 
 moned to send members to a great council, in or- 
 der to defend the king's right to the kingdom of 
 Scotland. 1 Prynne. 
 
 that article under pain of death, inflict 
 sundry other penalties, create jurisdic- 
 tions, and, in short, have the effect of 
 a new and important law. After they 
 were passed, the deputies of the com- 
 mons granted a subsidy for three years, 
 complained of grievances, and received 
 answers, as if in a regular parliament. 
 But they were aware that these proceed- 
 ings partook of some irregularity, and 
 endeavoured, as was their constant meth- 
 od, to keep up the legal forms of the 
 constitution. In the last petition of this 
 council, the commons pray, " because 
 many articles touching the state of the 
 king, and common profit of his kingdom, 
 have been agreed by him, the prelates, 
 lords, and commons of his land, at this 
 council, that the said articles may be re- 
 cited at the next parliament, and entered 
 upon the roll ; for this cause, that ordi- 
 nances and agreements made in council 
 are not of record, as if they had been 
 made in a general parliament." This 
 accordingly was done at the ensuing par- 
 liament, when these ordinances were ex- 
 pressly confirmed, and directed to be 
 " holden for a statute to endure al- 
 ways."* 
 
 It must be confessed, that the distinc- 
 tion between ordinances and statutes is 
 very obscure, and perhaps no precise 
 and uniform principle can be laid down 
 about it. But it sufficiently appears that 
 whatever provisions altered the common 
 law or any former statute, and were en- 
 tered upon the statute-roll, transmitted 
 to the sheriffs, and promulgated to the 
 people as general obligatory enactments, 
 were holden to require the positive as- 
 sent of both houses of parliament, duly 
 and formally summoned. 
 
 Before we leave this subject, it will be 
 proper to take notice of a remarkable 
 stretch of prerogative, which, if drawn 
 into precedent, would have effectually 
 subverted this principle of parliamentary 
 consent in legislation. In the 15th of 
 Edward III., petitions were presented of 
 a bolder and more enervating cast than 
 was acceptable to the court; that no peer 
 should be put to answer for any trespass, 
 except before his peers; that commis- 
 sioners should be assigned to examine 
 the accounts of such as had received 
 public moneys ; that the judges and min- 
 isters should be sworn to observe the 
 Great Charter and other laws ; and that 
 they should be appointed in parliament. 
 The last of these was probably the most 
 obnoxious ; but the king, unwilling to de- 
 fer a supply which was granted merely 
 
 Rot. Parl., p. 253, 257. 
 
378 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 upon condition that these petitions should 
 prevail, suffered them to pass into a stat- 
 ute, with an alteration which did not take 
 off much from their efficacy; namely, 
 that these officers should indeed be ap- 
 pointed by the king, with the advice of 
 his council, but should surrender their 
 charges at the next parliament, and be 
 there responsible to any who should have 
 cause of complaint against them. The 
 chancellor, treasurer, and judges entered 
 their protestation that they had not as- 
 sented to the said statutes, nor could they | 
 observe them in case they should prove 
 contrary to the laws and customs of the 
 kingdom, which they were sworn to 
 maintain.* This is the first instance of 
 a protest on the roll of parliament against 
 the passing of an act. Nevertheless they 
 were compelled to swear on the cross 
 of Canterbury to its observance.! 
 
 This excellent statute was attempted 
 too early for complete success. Ed- 
 ward's ministers plainly saw that it left 
 them at the mercy of future parliaments, 
 who would readily learn the wholesome 
 and constitutional principle of sparing the 
 sovereign while they punished his advi- 
 sers. They had recourse, therefore, to a 
 violent measure, but which was likely in 
 those times to be endured. By a procla- 
 mation addressed to all the sheriffs, the 
 king revokes and annuls the statute, as 
 contrary to the laws and customs of 
 England, and to his own just rights and 
 prerogatives, which he had sworn to pre- 
 serve ; declaring that he had never con- 
 sented to its passing, but having previous- 
 ly protested that he would revoke it, lest 
 ^he parliament should have been separa- 
 ted in wrath, had dissembled, as was his 
 duty, and permitted the great seal to be 
 affixed ; and that it appeared to the earls, 
 barons, and other learned persons of his 
 kingdom, with whom he had consulted, 
 that as the said statute had not proceed- 
 ed from his own good-will, it was null, 
 and could not have the name or force of 
 law.J This revocation of a statute, as 
 the price of which a subsidy had been 
 granted, was a gross infringement of law, 
 and undoubtedly passed for such at that 
 time ; for the right was already clear, 
 though the remedy was not always at- 
 tainable. Two years afterward Ed- 
 ward met his parliament, when that ob- 
 noxious statute was formally repealed. 
 
 Notwithstanding the king's unwilling- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 131. f Id., p. 128. 
 
 J Rytner, t. v., p. 282. This instrument betrays 
 in its language Edward's consciousness of the vio- 
 lent step he was taking, and his wish to excuse it 
 aa much as possible. 
 
 ness to permit this control of Advice of 
 parliament over his administra- parliament 
 tion, he suffered, or rather soli- SSSfof" 
 cited, their interference in mat- war and 
 ters which have since been P eace - 
 reckoned the exclusive province of the 
 crown. This was an unfair trick of his 
 policy. He was desirous, in order to 
 prevent any murmuring about subsidies, 
 to throw the war upon parliament as 
 their own act, though none could have 
 been commenced more selfishly for his 
 own benefit, or less for the advantage of 
 the people of England. It is called " the 
 war which our lord the king has underta- 
 ken against his adversary of France, by 
 common assent of all the lords and com- 
 mons of his realm in divers parlia- 
 ments."* And he several times referred 
 it to them to advise upon the subject of 
 peace. But the commons showed their 
 humility or discretion by treating this as 
 an invitation which it would show good 
 manners to decline, though in the 18th of 
 the king's reign they had joined with the 
 lords in imploring the king to make an 
 end of the war by a battle or by a suita- 
 ble peace. f " Most dreaded lord," they 
 say upon one occasion, " as to your w T ar, 
 and the equipment necessary 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 advice of the great and wise persons 
 of your council, to ordain what seems 
 best to you for the honour and profit of 
 yourself and your kingdom ; and what- 
 ever shall be thus ordained by assent and 
 agreement for you and your lords, we 
 readily assent to, and will hold it firmly 
 established."! At another time, after 
 their petitions had been answered, " it 
 was showed to the lords and commons 
 by Bartholomew de Burghersh, the king's 
 chamberlain, -how a treaty had been set 
 on foot between the king and his adver- 
 sary of France ; and how he had good 
 hope of a final and agreeable issue with 
 God's help ; to which he would not come 
 without assent of the lords and commons. 
 Wherefore the said chamberlain inquired 
 on the king's part of the said lords and 
 commons whether they would assent and 
 agree to the peace, in case it might be 
 had by treaty between the parties. To 
 which the said commons with one voice 
 replied, that whatever end it should 
 please the king and lords to make of the 
 treaty, would be agreeable to them. On. 
 which answer the chamberlain said to 
 
 * Rymer, t. v., p. 165. 
 t 21 E. III., p. 165. 
 
 t Id., p. H8. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 379 
 
 the commons, then you will assent to a 
 perpetual treaty of peace if it can be had. 
 And the said commons answered at once 
 and unanimously, yes, yes."* The lords 
 were not so diffident. Their great sta- 
 tion as hereditary counsellors gave them 
 weight in all deliberations of govern- 
 ment ; and they seem to have pretended 
 to a negative voice in the question of 
 peace. At least they answer, upon the 
 proposals made by David, king of Scots, 
 in 1368, which were submitted to them 
 in parliament, that, " saving to the said 
 David and his heirs the articles contained 
 therein, they saw no way of making a 
 treaty which would not openly turn to 
 the disherison of the king and his heirs, 
 to which they would on no account as- 
 sent; and so departed for that day."f A 
 few years before they had made a sim- 
 ilar answer to some other propositions 
 from Scotland. J It is not improbable, 
 that in both these cases they acted with 
 the concurrence and at the instigation of 
 the king ; but the precedents might have 
 been remembered in other circumstances. 
 A third important acquisition of the 
 house of commons during this 
 commons il reign was the establishment of 
 inquire into their right to investigate and 
 public abu- c hastise the abuses of adminis- 
 tration. In the fourteenth of 
 Edward III., a committee of the lords' 
 house had been appointed to examine the 
 accounts of persons responsible for the 
 receipt of the last subsidy ; but it does 
 not appear that the commons were con- 
 cerned in this.fy The unfortunate statute 
 of the next year contained a similar pro- 
 vision, which was annulled with the rest. 
 Many years elapsed before the commons 
 tried the force of their vindictive arm. 
 We must pass onward an entire generation 
 of man, and look at the parliament as- 
 sembled in the fiftieth of Edward III. 
 Nothing memorable as to the interfe- 
 rence of the commons in government 
 occurs before, unless it be their request, 
 in the forty-fifth of the king, that no 
 clergyman should be made chancellor, 
 treasurer, or other great officer ; to which 
 the king answered, that he would do 
 what best pleased his council. || 
 
 It will be remembered by every one 
 Parliament who has read our history, that 
 of so E. in. j n the latter years of Edward's 
 life, his fame was tarnished by the as- 
 
 *28 E. III., p. 261. 
 
 t Id., p. 295. Carte says, " the lords and com- 
 mons giving this advice separately, declared," &c. 
 Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 518. I can find no 
 mention of the commons doing this in the roll of 
 parliament. t Rymer, t. v., p. 269. 
 
 $ Id., p. 114. I! Id., p. 304. 
 
 cendency of the Duke of Lancaster and 
 Alice Ferrers. The former, a man of 
 more ambition than his capacity seems 
 to have warranted, even incurred the sus- 
 picion of meditating to set aside the heir 
 of the crown, when the Black Prince 
 should have sunk into the grave. Wheth- 
 er he was wronged or not by these con- 
 jectures, they certainly appear to have 
 operated on those most concerned to 
 take alarm at them. A parliament met 
 in April, 1376, wherein the general un- 
 popularity of the king's administration, 
 or the influence of the Prince of Wales, 
 led to very remarkable consequences.* 
 After granting a subsidy, the commons, 
 " considering the evils of the country, 
 through so many wars and other causes, 
 and that the officers now in the king's 
 service are insufficient without further as- 
 sistance for so great a charge, pray that 
 the council be strengthened by the addi- 
 tion of ten or twelve bishops, lords, and 
 others, to be constantly at hand, so that 
 no business of weight should be despatch- 
 ed without the consent of all ; nor small- 
 er matters without that of four or six."f 
 The king pretended to come with alacrity 
 into this measure, which was followed 
 by a strict restraint on them and all other 
 officers from taking presents in the course 
 of their duty. After this, " the said com- 
 mons appeared in parliament, protesting 
 that they had the same good-will as ever 
 to assist the king with their lives and for- 
 tunes ; but that it seemed to them, if 
 their said liege lord had always possessed 
 about him faithful counsellors and good 
 officers, he would have been so rich that 
 he would have had no need of charging 
 his commons with subsidy or tallage, 
 considering the great ransoms of the 
 French and Scotch kings, and of so 
 many other prisoners; and that it ap- 
 peared to be for the private advantage 
 of some near the king, and of others by 
 their collusion, that the king and kingdom 
 are so empoverished, and the commons 
 so ruined. And they promised the king 
 that if he would do speedy justice on 
 such as should be found guilty, and take 
 from them what law and reason permit, 
 
 * Most of our general historians have slurred 
 over this important session. The best view, per- 
 haps, of its secret history will be found in Lowth's 
 Life of Wykeham ; an instructive and elegant 
 work, only to be blamed for marks of that aca- 
 demical point of honour, which makes a fellow of 
 a college too indiscriminate an encomiast of its 
 founder. Another modern book may be named 
 with some commendation, though very inferior in 
 its execution, Godwin's Life of Chaucer, of which 
 the Duke of Lancaster is the political hero. 
 
 t Rymer, t. v., p. 322. 
 
380 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 with what had been already granted in 
 parliament, they will engage that he 
 should be rich enough to maintain his 
 wars for a long time, without much 
 charging his people in any manner." 
 They next proceeded to allege three 
 particular grievances ; the removal of the 
 staple from Calais, where it had been fixed 
 by parliament, through the procurement 
 and advice of the said private counsellors 
 about the king; the participation of the 
 same persons in lending money to the 
 king at exorbitant usury ; and their pur- 
 chasing at a low rate for their own ben- 
 efit old debts from the crown, the whole 
 of which they had afterward induced 
 the king to repay to themselves. For 
 these and for many more misdemeanors, 
 the commons accused and impeached the 
 lords Latimer and Nevil, with four mer- 
 chants, Lyons, Ellis, Peachey, and Bury.* 
 Latimer had been chamberlain, and Nevil 
 held another office. The former was the 
 friend and creature of the Duke of Lan- 
 caster. Nor was this parliament at all 
 nice in touching a point where kings least 
 endure their interference. An ordinance 
 was made, that " whereas many women 
 prosecute the suits of others in courts 
 of justice by way of maintenance, and to 
 get profit thereby, which is displeasing to 
 the king, he forbids any woman hence- 
 forward, and especially Alice Ferrers, to 
 do so, on pain of the said Alice forfeiting 
 all her goods, and suffering banishment 
 from the kingdom."! 
 
 The part which the Prince of Wales, 
 who had ever been distinguished for his 
 respectful demeanour to.wards Edward, 
 bore in this unprecedented opposition, is 
 strong evidence of the jealousy with 
 which he regarded the Duke of Lancas- 
 ter ; and it was led in the house of com- 
 mons by Peter de la Mare, a sefvant of 
 the Earl of March, who, by his marriage 
 with Philippa, heiress of Lionel, duke 
 of Clarence, stood next after the young 
 prince Richard in lineal succession to 
 the crown. The proceedings of this ses- 
 sion were indeed highly popular. But no 
 house of commons would have gone such 
 lengths on the mere support of popular 
 opinions, unless instigated and encoura- 
 ged by higher authority. Without this, 
 their petitions might perhaps have ob- 
 tained, for the sake of subsidy, an im- 
 mediate consent; but those who took 
 the lead in preparing them must have re- 
 mained unsheltered after a dissolution, 
 to abide the vengeance of the crown, 
 with no assurance that another parlia- 
 
 * Rymer, t, r., p. 332. | Id., p. 329. 
 
 ment would espouse their cause as its 
 own. Such indeed was their fate in the 
 present instance. Soon after the disso- 
 lution of parliament, the Prince of Wales, 
 who, long sinking by fatal decay, had 
 rallied his expiring energies for this do- 
 mestic combat, left his inheritance to a 
 child ten years old, Richard of Bordeaux. 
 Immediately after this event, Lancaster 
 recovered his influence ; and the former 
 favourites returned to court. Peter de la 
 Mare was confined at Nottingham, where 
 he remained two years. The citizens 
 indeed attempted an insurrection, and 
 threatened to burn the Savoy, Lancaster's 
 residence, if De la Mare was not released ; 
 but the Bishop of London succeeded in 
 appeasing them.* A parliament met next 
 year, which overthrew the work of its 
 predecessor, restored those who had been 
 impeached, and repealed the ordinance 
 against Alice Perrers.f So little secu- 
 rity will popular assemblies ever afford 
 against arbitrary power, when deprived 
 of regular leaders and the consciousness 
 of mutual fidelity. 
 
 The policy adopted by the Prince of 
 Wales and Earl of March, in employing 
 the house of commons as an engine of 
 attack against an obnoxious ministry, 
 was perfectly novel, and indicates a sen- 
 sible change in the character of our con- 
 stitution. In the reign of Edward II., 
 parliament had little share in resisting 
 the government ; much more was effected 
 by the barons, through risings of their 
 feudal tenantry. Fifty years of authority 
 better respected, of law better enforced, 
 had rendered these more perilous, and of 
 a more violent appearance than formerly. 
 A surer resource presented itself in the 
 increased weight of the lower house in 
 parliament. And this indirect aristocrat- 
 ical influence gave a surprising impulse 
 to that assembly, and particularly tended 
 to establish beyond question its control 
 over public abuses. It is less just to re- 
 mark, that it also tended to preserve the 
 relation and harmony between each part 
 and the other, and to prevent that jarring 
 of emulation and jealousy, which, though 
 generally found in the division of power 
 between a noble and a popular estate, has 
 scarcely ever caused a dissension, ex- 
 cept in cases of little moment, between 
 our two houses of parliament 1 
 
 * Anonym. Hist. Edw. III., ad calcem Heming- 
 ford, pp. 444, 448. Walsingham gives a different 
 reason, p. 192. 
 
 f Rot. Parl., p. 374. Not more than six or seven 
 of the knights who had sat in the last parliament 
 were returned to this, as appears by the writs in 
 Prynne's 4th Register, p. 302, 311. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 381 
 
 The commons had sustained with equal 
 firmness and discretion a defen- 
 n-' s * ve war a g amst arbitrary pow- 
 creaseofthe er under Edward III. : they 
 power of the a( } vanc ed with very different 
 
 commons. , , . J 
 
 steps towards his successor. 
 Upon the king's death, though Richard's 
 coronation tookjplace without delay, and 
 no proper regency was constituted, yet 
 a council of twelve, whom the great offi- 
 cers of state were to obey, supplied its 
 place to every effectual intent. Among 
 these the Duke of Lancaster was not 
 numbered ; and he retired from court in 
 some disgust. In the first parliament of 
 the young king, a large proportion of the 
 knights who had sat in that which im- 
 peached the Lancasterian party were re- 
 turned.* Peter de la Mare, now releas- 
 ed from prison, was elected speaker ; a 
 dignity which, according to some, he had 
 filled in the Good Parliament, as that of 
 the fiftieth of Edward III. was popular- 
 ly styled ; though the rolls do not men- 
 tion either him or any other as bearing 
 that honourable name before Sir Thomas 
 Hungerford in the parliament of the fol- 
 lowing year.f The prosecution against 
 Alice Ferrers was now revived ; not, as 
 far as appears, by direct impeachment of 
 the commons ; but articles were exhibit- 
 ed against her in the house of lords on 
 the king's part, for breaking the ordi- 
 nance made against her intermeddling at 
 court; upon which she received judg- 
 ment of banishment and forfeiture. | At 
 the request of the lower house, the lords 
 in the king's name appointed nine per- 
 sons of different ranks ; three bishops, 
 two earls, two bannerets, and two bache- 
 lors, to be a permanent council about the 
 king, so that no business of importance 
 should be transacted without their unani- 
 mous consent. The king was even com- 
 pelled to consent that, during his minor- 
 ity, the chancellor, treasurer, judges, and 
 other chief officers should be made in 
 parliament ; by which provision, combi- 
 ned with that of the parliamentary coun- 
 cil, the whole executive government was 
 transferred to the two houses. A peti- 
 tion that none might be employed in the 
 king's service, nor belong to his council, 
 who had been formerly accused upon 
 good grounds, struck at Lord Latimer, 
 who had retained some degree of power 
 
 * Walsingham, p. 200, says pene omnes ; but the 
 list published in Prynne's 4th Register induces me 
 to qualify this loose expression. Alice Ferrers had 
 bribed, he tells us, many of the lords, and all the 
 lawyers of England ; yet by the perseverance of 
 these knights she was convicted. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. ii.,p. 374. 
 
 i Idem, vol. iii., p. 12. 
 
 in the new establishment. Another, sug- 
 gesting that Gascony, Ireland, Artois, and 
 the Scottish marches were in danger of be- 
 ing lost for want of good officers, though 
 it were so generally worded as to leave 
 the means of remedy to the king's pleas- 
 ure, yet shows a growing energy and 
 self-confidence in that assembly, which 
 not many years before had thought the 
 question of peace or war too high for 
 their deliberation. Their subsidy was 
 sufficiently liberal ; but they took care to 
 pray the Ijing that fit persons might be 
 assigned for its receipt and disburse- 
 ment, lest it should any way be diverted 
 from the purposes of the war. Accord- 
 ingly Walworth and Philpot, two eminent 
 citizens of London, were appointed to 
 this office and sworn in parliament to its 
 execution.* 
 
 But whether through the wastefulness 
 of government, or rather because Ed- 
 ward's legacy, the French war, like a 
 ruinous and interminable lawsuit, ex- 
 hausted all public contributions, there 
 was an equally craving demand for sub- 
 sidy at the next meeting of parliament. 
 The commons now made a more serious 
 stand. The speaker, Sir James Picker- 
 ing, after the protestation against giving 
 offence, which has since become more 
 matter of form than perhaps it was then 
 considered, reminded the lords of the 
 council of a promise made to the last 
 parliament, that, if they would help the 
 king for once with a large subsidy so as 
 to enable him to undertake an expedition 
 against the enemy, he trusted not to call 
 on them again, but to support the war 
 from his own revenues ; in faith of which 
 promise there had been granted the lar- 
 gest sum that any king of England had 
 ever been suffered to levy within so short 
 a time, to the utmost loss and inconve- 
 nience of the commons ; part of which 
 ought still to remain in the treasury, and 
 render it unnecessary to burden anew 
 the exhausted people. To this Scrope, 
 lord-steward of the household, protesting 
 that he knew not of any such promise, 
 made answer by order of the king, that, 
 " saving the honour and reverence of our 
 lord the king and the lords there pres- 
 ent, the commons did not speak truth in 
 asserting that part of the last subsidy 
 should be still in the treasury ; it being 
 notorious that every penny had gone into 
 the hands of Walworth and Philpot, ap- 
 pointed and sworn treasurers in the last 
 parliament, to receive and expend it upon 
 the purposes of the war, for which they 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 12. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 had in effect disbursed the whole," Not 
 satisfied with this general justification, the 
 commons pressed for an account of the 
 expenditure. Scrope was again commis- 
 sioned to answer, that " though it had nev- 
 er been seen, that of a subsidy or other 
 grant made to the king in parliament or 
 out of parliament by the commons, any 
 account had afterward been rendered to 
 the commons, or to any other except the 
 king and his officers, yet the king, to grat- 
 ify them, of his own accord, without do- 
 ing it by way of right, would have Wai- 
 worth, along with certain persons of the 
 council, exhibit to them in writing a clear 
 account of the receipt and expenditure, 
 upon condition that this should never be 
 used as a precedent, nor inferred to be 
 done otherwise than by the king's spon- 
 taneous command." The commons were 
 again urged to provide for the public de- 
 fence, being their own concern as much 
 as that of the king. But they merely 
 shifted their ground and had recourse to 
 other pretences. They requested that 
 five or six peers might come to them, in 
 order to discuss this question of subsidy. 
 The lords entirely rejected this proposal, 
 and affirmed that such a proceeding had 
 never been known except in the three 
 last parliaments ; but allowed that it had 
 been the course to elect a committee of 
 eight or ten from each house, to confer 
 easily and without noise together. The 
 commons acceded to this, and a commit- 
 tee of conference was appointed, though 
 no result of their discussion appears upon 
 the roll. 
 
 Upon examining the accounts submit- 
 ted to them, these sturdy commoners 
 raised a new objection. It appeared that 
 large sums had been expended upon gar- 
 risons in France and Ireland, and other 
 places beyond the kingdom, of which 
 they protested themselves not liable to 
 bear the charge. It was answered that 
 Gascony and the king's other dominions 
 beyond sea were the outworks of Eng- 
 land, nor could the people ever be secure 
 from war at their thresholds unless these 
 were maintained. They lastly insisted 
 that the king ought to be rich through the 
 wealth that had devolved on him from 
 his grandfather. But this was affirmed, 
 in reply, to be merely sufficient for the 
 payment of Edward's creditors. Thus 
 driven from all their arguments, the com- 
 mons finally consented to a moderate ad- 
 ditional imposition upon the export of 
 wool and leather,* which were already 
 subject to considerable duties, apologi- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 3538. 
 
 zing on account of their poverty for the 
 slenderness of their grant. 
 
 The necessities of government, how- 
 ever, let their cause be what it might, 
 were by no means feigned ; and a new 
 parliament was assembled about seven 
 months after the last, wherein the king, 
 without waiting for a petition, informed 
 the commons that the treasurers were 
 ready to exhibit their accounts before 
 them. This was a signal victory after 
 the reluctant and ungracious concession 
 made to the last parliament. Nine per- 
 sons of different ranks were appointed at 
 the request of the commons to investi- 
 gate the state of the revenue, and the dis- 
 position which had been made of the late 
 king's personal estate. They ended by 
 granting a poll-tax, which they pretended 
 to think adequate to the supply required.* 
 But in those times no one possessed any 
 statistical knowledge, and every calcula- 
 tion which required it was subject to 
 enormous error, of which we have al- 
 ready seen an eminent example. f In 
 the next parliament (3 Ric. II.) it was set 
 forth that only 22,000 had been collect- 
 ed by the poll-tax, while the pay of the 
 king's troops hired for the expedition to 
 Britany, the pretext of the grant, had 
 amounted for but half a year to .50,000. 
 The king, in short, was more straitened 
 than ever. His distresses gave no small 
 advantage to the commons. Their speak- 
 er was instructed to declare that, as it 
 appeared to them, if the affairs of their 
 liege lord had been properly conducted 
 at home and abroad, he could not have 
 wanted aid of his commons, who are now 
 poorer than before. They pray that, as 
 the king was so much advanced in age 
 and discretion, his perpetual council (ap- 
 pointed in his first parliament) might be 
 discharged of their labours ; and that, in- 
 stead of them, the five chief officers of 
 state, to wit, the chancellor, treasurer, 
 keeper of the privy seal, chamberlain, 
 and steward of the household, might be 
 named in parliament, and declared to the 
 commons as the king's sole counsellors, 
 not removable before the next -parlia- 
 ment. They required also a general 
 commission to be made out, similar to 
 that in the last session, giving powers to 
 a certain number of peers and other dis- 
 tinguished persons, to inquire into the 
 state of the household, as well as into all 
 receipts and expenses since the king's 
 accession. The former petition seems 
 to have been passed over :J but a com- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 57. t See ante, p. 375. 
 
 J Nevertheless, the commons repeated it in their 
 schedule of petitions ; and received an evasive an- 
 
PART III ] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 883 
 
 mission as requested was made out to 
 three prelates, three earls, three banner- 
 ets, three knights, and three citizens.* 
 After guarding thus, as they conceived, 
 against malversation, but in effect rath- 
 er protecting their posterity than them- 
 selves, the commons prolonged the last 
 imposition on wool and leather for an- 
 other year. 
 
 It would be but repetition to make ex- 
 tracts from the rolls of the two next 
 years ; we have still the same tale ; de- 
 mand of subsidy on one side, remon- 
 strance and endeavours at reformation on 
 the other. After the tremendous insur- 
 rection of the villeins, in 1382, a parlia- 
 ment was convened to advise about re- 
 pealing the charters of general manumis- 
 sion, extorted from the king by the pres- 
 sure of circumstances. In this measure 
 all concurred ; but the commons were not 
 afraid to say that the late risings had been 
 provoked by the burdens which a prodi- 
 gal court had called for in the preceding 
 session. Their language is unusually 
 bold. " It seemed to them, after full de- 
 liberation," they said, "that unless the 
 administration of the kingdom were 
 speedily reformed, the kingdom itself 
 would be utterly lost and ruined for ever, 
 and therein their lord the king, with all 
 the peers and commons, which God for- 
 bid. For true it is that there are such 
 defects in the said administration, as well 
 about the king's person and his house- 
 hold, as in his courts of justice ; and 
 by grievous oppressions in the country 
 through maintainers of suits, who are, as 
 it were, kings in the country, that right 
 and law are come to nothing, and the poor 
 commons are from time to time so pil- 
 laged and ruined, partly by the king's pur- 
 veyors of the household, and others who 
 pay nothing for what they take, partly by 
 the subsidies and tallages raised upon 
 them, and besides by the oppressive be- 
 haviour of the servants of the king and 
 other lords, and especially of the afore- 
 said maintainers of suits, that they are 
 reduced to greater poverty and discom- 
 fort than ever they were before. And 
 moreover, though great sums have been 
 continually granted by and levied upon 
 them for the defence of the kingdom, 
 yet they are not the better defended 
 against their enemies, but every year are 
 
 swer, referring to an ordinance made in the first 
 parliament of the king, the application of which is 
 indefinite, p. 379. 
 
 * See ante, p. 377. In Rymer, t. viii., p. 250, the 
 Archbishop of York's name appears among these 
 commissioners, which makes their number sixteen. 
 But it is plain by the instrument that only fifteen 
 were meant to be appointed. 
 
 plundered and wasted by sea and land, 
 without any relief. Which calamities 
 the said poor commons, who lately used 
 to live in honour and prosperity, can no 
 longer endure. And to speak the real 
 truth, these injuries lately done to the 
 poorer commons more than they ever 
 suffered before, caused them to rise, and 
 to commit the mischief done in their late 
 riot; and there is still cause to fear 
 greater evils, if sufficient remedy be not 
 timely provided against the outrages and 
 oppressions aforesaid. Wherefore may 
 it please our lord the king, and the noble 
 peers of the realm now assembled in this 
 parliament, to provide such remedy and 
 amendment as to the said administration, 
 that the state and dignity of the king in 
 the first place, and of the lords may be 
 preserved, as the commons have always 
 desired, and the commons may be put in 
 peace ; removing, as soon as they can be 
 detected, evil ministers and counsellors, 
 and putting in their stead the best and 
 most sufficient, and taking away all the 
 bad practices which have led to the last 
 rising, or else none can imagine that 
 this kingdom can longer subsist without 
 greater misfortunes than it ever endured. 
 And for God's sake let it not be forgot- 
 ten, that there be put about the king and 
 of his council the best lords and knights 
 that can be found in the kingdom. 
 
 " And be it known (the entry proceeds), 
 that after the king our lord, with the 
 peers of the realm and his council, had 
 taken advice upon these requests made 
 to him for his good and his kingdom's 
 as it really appeared to him, willed and 
 granted, that certain bishops, lords, and 
 others should be appointed to survey, 
 and examine in privy council both the 
 government of the king's person and of 
 his household, and to suggest proper 
 remedies wherever necessary, and re- 
 port them to the king. And it was said 
 by the peers in parliament, that as it 
 seemed to them, if reform of government 
 were to take place throughout the king- 
 dom,it should begin by the chief member, 
 which is the king himself, and so from 
 person to person, as well churchmen as 
 others, and place to place, from higher to 
 lower, without sparing any degree."* A 
 considerable number of commissioners 
 were accordingly appointed, whether by 
 the king alone or in parliament does not 
 appear ; the latter, however, is more 
 probable. They seem to have made 
 some progress in the work of reforma- 
 tion, for we find that the officers of the 
 household were sworn to observe their 
 
 * Rot. Parl., 5 R. II., p. 100. 
 
384 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 regulations. But in all likelihood these 
 were soon neglected. 
 
 It is not wonderful, that with such feel- 
 ings of resentment towards the crown, 
 the commons were backward in granting 
 subsidies. Perhaps the king would not 
 have obtained one at all if he had not 
 withheld his charter of pardon for all of- 
 fences committed during the insurrec- 
 tion. This was absolutely necessary to 
 restore quiet among the people ; and 
 though the members of the commons had 
 certainly not been insurgents, yet inevi- 
 table irregularities had occurred in quel- 
 ling the tumults, which would have put 
 them too much in the power of those un- 
 worthy men who filled the benches of 
 justice under Richard. The king de- 
 clared that it was unusual to grant a par- 
 don without a subsidy ; the commons 
 still answered that they would consider 
 about the matter ; and the king instantly 
 rejoined that he would consider about 
 his pardon (s'aviseroit de sa dite grace) 
 till they had done what they ought. 
 They renewed at length the usual tax on 
 wool and leather.* 
 
 This extraordinary assumption of pow- 
 er by the commons was not merely ow- 
 ing to the king's poverty. It was en- 
 couraged by the natural feebleness of a 
 disunited government. The high rank 
 and ambitious spirit of -Lancaster gave 
 him no little influence, though contending 
 with many enemies at court, as well as 
 the ill-will of the people. Thomas of 
 Woodstock, the king's youngest uncle, 
 more able and turbulent than Lancaster, 
 became, as he grew older, an eager 
 competitor for power, which he sought 
 through the channel of popularity. The 
 earls of March, Arundel, and Warwick 
 bore a considerable part, and were the 
 favourites of parliament. Even Lancas- 
 ter, after a few years, seems to have fal- 
 len into popular courses, and recovered 
 some share of public esteem. He was 
 at the head of the reforming commission 
 in the fifth of Richard II., though he 
 had been studiously excluded from those 
 preceding. We cannot hope to disentan- 
 gle the intrigues of this remote age, as 
 to which our records are of no service, 
 and the chroniclers are very slightly in- 
 formed. So far as we may conjecture, 
 Lancaster, finding his situation insecure 
 at court, began to solicit the favour of the 
 commons, whose hatred of the admin- 
 istration abated their former hostility to- 
 wards him.f 
 
 * Rot. Parl., 5 R. II, p. 104. 
 f The commons granted a subsidy, 7 R. II., to 
 support Lancaster's war in Castile. R. P., p. 284. 
 
 The character of Richard II. was now 
 developing itself, and the hopes Character of 
 excited by his remarkable pres* Riphard. 
 ence of mind in confronting the rioters on 
 Blackheath were rapidly destroyed. Not 
 that he was wanting in capacity, as has 
 been sometimes imagined. For if we 
 measure intellectual power by the great- 
 est exertion it ever displays, rather than 
 by its average results, Richard II. was a 
 man of considerable talents. He pos- 
 sessed, along with much dissimulation, a 
 decisive promptitude in seizing the criti- 
 cal moment for action. Of this quality, 
 besides his celebrated behaviour towards 
 the insurgents, he gave striking evidence 
 in several circumstances which we shall 
 have shortly to notice. But his ordinary 
 conduct belied the abilities which on 
 these rare occasions shone forth, and 
 rendered them ineffectual for his securi- 
 ty. Extreme pride and violence, with an 
 inordinate partiality for the most worth- 
 less favourites, were his predominant 
 characteristics. In the latter quality, 
 and in the events of his reign, he forms 
 a pretty exact parallel to Edward II. 
 Scrope, lord chancellor, who had been 
 appointed in parliament, and was under- 
 stood to be irremoveable without its con- 
 currence, lost the great seal for refusing 
 to set it to some prodigal grants. Upon 
 a slight quarrel with Archbishop Court- 
 ney, the king ordered his temporalities to 
 be seized, the execution of which Mi- 
 chael de la Pole, his new chancellor, and 
 a favourite of his own, could hardly pre- 
 vent. This was accompanied with inde- 
 cent and outrageous expressions of an- 
 ger, unworthy of his station and of those 
 whom he insulted.* 
 
 Though no king could be less respect- 
 able than Richard, yet the con- He acqnirea 
 stitution invested a sovereign more power 
 with such ample prerogative, " ri f isma " 
 that it was far less easy to re- Jon 
 sist his personal exercise of power than 
 the unsettled councils of a minority. In 
 the parliament 6 R. II., sess. 2, the com- 
 mons pray certain lords whom they 
 name, to be assigned as their advisers. 
 This had been permitted in the two last 
 sessions without exception.! But the 
 king, in granting their request, reserved 
 
 Whether the populace changed their opinion of 
 him, I know not. He was still disliked by them 
 two years before. The insurgents of 1382 are said 
 to have compelled men to swear that they would 
 obey King Richard and the commons, and that they 
 would accept no king named John. Walsingham, 
 p. 248. 
 
 * Walsingham, pp. 290, 315, 317. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., 5 R> II., p. 100. 6 R. II., sess, 1, 
 p. 134. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 his right of naming any others.* Though 
 the commons did not relax in their im 
 portunities for the redress of genera 
 grievances, they did not venture to inter- 
 meddle as before with the conduct of ad- 
 ministration. They did not even objec 
 to the grant of the marquisate of Dublin 
 with almost a princely dominion over 
 Ireland; which enormous donation was 
 confirmed by act of parliament to Vere, 
 a favourite of the king.f A petition that 
 the officers of state should annually visit 
 and inquire into his household, was an- 
 swered, that the king would do what he 
 pleased. J Yet this was little in compar 
 ison with their former proceedings. 
 
 There is nothing, however, more de- 
 Proceedings ceitful to a monarch, unsupport- 
 
 menMn'the G ^ ^ an armec ^ f rce > an( l d 
 
 tenthd? e titute of wary advisers, than 
 Richard. this submission of his people. 
 A single effort was enough to overturn 
 his government. Parliament met in the 
 tenth year of his reign, steadily deter- 
 mined to reform the administration, and 
 especially to punish its chief leader, Mi- 
 . chael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, and lord 
 f chancellor. According to the remarka- 
 \ ble narration of a contemporary histori- 
 an,^ too circumstantial to be rejected, but 
 rendered somewhat doubtful by the si- 
 lence of all other writers and of the par- 
 liamentary roll, the king was loitering at 
 his palace at Eltham when he received 
 a message from the two houses request- 
 ing the dismissal of Suffolk, since they 
 had matter to allege against him that 
 they could not move while he kept the 
 office of chancellor. Richard, with his 
 usual intemperance, answered that he 
 would not for their request remove the 
 meanest scullion from his kitchen. They 
 returned a positive refusal to proceed on 
 any public business until the king should 
 appear personally in parliament, and dis- 
 place the chancellor. The king required 
 forty knights to be deputed from the rest, 
 to inform him clearly of their wishes. 
 But the commons declined a proposal, in 
 which they feared, or affected to fear, 
 some treachery. At length the Duke of 
 Glocester, and Arundel, bishop of Ely, 
 were commissioned to speak the sense 
 of parliament, and they delivered it, if 
 we may still believe what we read, in 
 
 * Rot. Parl., 9 R. II,, p. 145. f Id., p. 209. 
 
 J Id., p. 213. It is however asserted in the arti- 
 cles of impeachment against Suffolk, and admitted 
 by his defence, that nine lords had been appointed 
 in the last parliament, viz., 9 R. II., to inquire 
 into the state of the household, and reform what- 
 ever was amiss. But nothing of this appears in 
 the roll. 
 
 $ Knyghton, in Twysden, x. Script., col. 2680. 
 Bb 
 
 very extraordinary language, asserting 
 that there was an ancient statute, accord- 
 ing to which, if the king absented him- 
 self from parliament without just cause 
 during forty days, which he had now ex- 
 ceeded, every man might return without 
 permission to his own country; and 
 moreover there was another statute, and 
 (as they might more truly say) a prece- 
 dent of no remote date, that if a king, by- 
 bad counsel, or his own folly and obsti- 
 nacy, alienated himself from his people, 
 and would not govern according to the 
 laws of the land and the advice of the 
 peers, but madly and wantonly followed 
 his own single will, it should be lawful 
 for them, with the common assent of the 
 people, to expel him from his throne, and 
 elevate to it some near kinsman of the 
 royal blood. By this discourse the king 
 was induced to meet his parliament, 
 where Suffolk was removed from his of- 
 fice, and the impeachment against him 
 commenced.* 
 
 The charges against this minister, 
 without being wholly frivolous, impeach- 
 were not so weighty as the clam- mem of 
 our of the commons might have s 
 led us to expect. Besides forfeiting all 
 his grants from the crown, he was com- 
 mitted to prison, there to remain till he 
 should have paid such fine as the king 
 might impose ; a sentence that would 
 have been outrageously severe in many 
 cases, though little more than nugatory in 
 the present.f 
 
 This was the second precedent of that 
 grand constitutional resource, commission 
 parliamentary impeachment : f reform, 
 and more remarkable, from the emi* 
 nence of the person attacked^ than that 
 of Lord Latimer, in the fiftieth year of 
 
 Upon full consideration, I am much inclined 
 ;o give credit to this passage of Knyghton as to 
 ;he main facts ; and, perhaps, even the speech of 
 ~locester and the Bishop of Ely is more likely to 
 have been made public by them, than invented by 
 so jejune an historian. Walsingham indeed says 
 nothing of the matter ; but he is so unequally in- 
 formed, and so frequently defective, that we can 
 draw no strong inference from his silence. What 
 most weighs with me is that parliament met on 
 Dct. 1, 1387, and was not dissolved till Nov. 28 ; a 
 onger period than the business done in it seems to 
 lave required ; and also that Suffolk, who opened 
 he session as chancellor, is styled " darrein chan- 
 cellor" in the articles of impeachment against him ; 
 o that he must have been removed in the interval, 
 which tallies with Knyghton's story. Besides, it 
 s plain, from the famous question subsequently 
 >ut by the king to his judges at Nottingham, that 
 >oth the right of retiring without a regular dissolu- 
 ion and the precedent of Edward II. had been dis- 
 :ussed in parliament, which does not appear any- 
 where else than in Knyghton. 
 f Rot. Pad., vol. iii., p. 219. 
 
386 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 Edward III.* The commons were con- 
 tent to waive the prosecution of any oth- 
 er ministers ; but they rather chose a 
 scheme of reforming the administration, 
 which should avert both the necessity of 
 punishment, and the malversations which 
 provoked it. They petitioned the king 
 to ordain in parliament certain chief offi- 
 cers of his household, and other lords of 
 his council, with power to reform those 
 abuses, by which his crown was so much 
 blemished, that the laws were not kept, 
 and his revenues were dilapidated, con- 
 firming by a statute a commission for a 
 year, and forbidding, under heavy penal- 
 ties, any one from opposing, in private 
 or~ openly, what they should ad vise, f 
 With this the king complied, and a com- 
 mission founded upon the prayer of par- 
 liament was established by statute. It 
 comprehended fourteen persons of the 
 highest eminence for rank and general 
 estimation ; princes of the blood and an- 
 cient servants of the crown, by whom its 
 prerogatives were not likely to be unne- 
 cessarily impaired. In fact, the principle 
 of this commission, without looking 
 back at the precedents in the reign of 
 John, Henry III., and Edward II., which 
 yet were not without their weight as 
 constitutional analogies, was merely that 
 which the commons had repeatedly main- 
 tained during the minority of the present 
 king, and which had produced the former 
 commissions of reform in the third and 
 fifth years of his reign. These were 
 upon the whole nearly the same in their 
 operation. It must be owned there was 
 a more extensive sway virtually given to 
 the lords now appointed, by the penal- 
 ties imposed on any who should endeav- 
 our to obstruct what they might advise ; 
 the design as well as tendency of which 
 was no doubt to throw the whole admin- 
 istration into their hands during the peri- 
 od of this commission. 
 
 Those who have written our history 
 with more or less of a tory bias exclaim 
 against this parliamentary commission 
 as an unwarrantable violation of the 
 king's sovereignty, and even impartial 
 men are struck at first sight by a meas- 
 ure that seems to overset the natural 
 balance of our constitution. But it 
 would be unfair to blame either those 
 
 * Articles had been exhibited by the chancellor 
 before the peers, in the seventh of the king, against 
 Spencer, bishop of Norwich, who had led a con- 
 siderable army into a disastrous expedition against 
 the Flemings, adherents to the antipope Clement, 
 in the schism. This crusade had been exceeding- 
 ly popular, but its ill success had the usual effect. 
 The common s were not parties in this proceeding. 
 Rot. Parl, p. 153, t Id., p. 221. 
 
 concerned in this commission, some of 
 whose names at least have been handed 
 down with unquestioned respect, or those 
 high-spirited representatives of the people 
 whose patriot firmness has been hitherto 
 commanding all our sympathy and grat- 
 itude, unless we could distinctly pro- 
 nounce by what gentler means they could 
 restrain the excesses of government. 
 Thirteen parliaments had already met 
 since the accession of Richard ; in all the 
 same remonstrances had been repeated, 
 and the same promises renewed. Subsi- 
 dies, more frequent than in any former 
 reign, had been granted for the supposed 
 exigences of the war ; but this was no 
 longer illuminated by those dazzling vic- 
 tories, which give to fortune the mien 
 of wisdom ; the coasts of England were 
 perpetually ravaged, and her trade de- 
 stroyed ; while the administration incur- 
 red the suspicion of diverting to private 
 uses that treasure which they so feebly 
 and unsuccessfully applied to the public 
 service. No voice of his people, until it 
 spoke in thunder, would stop an intoxi- 
 cated boy in the wasteful career of dissi- 
 pation. He loved festivals and pageants, 
 the prevailing folly of his time, with unu- 
 sual frivolity ; and his ordinary living is 
 represented as beyond comparison more 
 showy and sumptuous than even that of 
 his magnificent and chivalrous predeces- 
 sor. Acts of parliament were no ade- 
 quate barriers to his misgovernment. 
 " Of what avail are statutes," says Wal- 
 singham, " since the king with his privy 
 council is wont to abolish what par- 
 liament has just enacted 1 ?"* The con- 
 stant prayer of the commons in every 
 session, that former statutes might be 
 kept in force, is no slight presumption 
 that they were not secure of being re- 
 
 farded. It may be true, that Edward 
 II. 's government had been full as arbi- 
 trary, though not so unwise, as his grand- 
 son's; but this is the strongest argu- 
 ment, that nothing less than an extraor- 
 dinary remedy could preserve the still 
 unstable liberties of England. 
 
 The best plea that could be made for 
 Richard was his inexperience, and the mis- 
 guided suggestions of favourites. This, 
 however, made it more necessary to re- 
 move those false advisers, and to supply 
 that inexperience. Unquestionably the 
 choice of ministers is reposed in the sov- 
 ereign ; a trust, like every other attribute 
 of legitimate power, for the public good ; 
 not, what no legitimate power can ever 
 be, the instrument of selfishness or ca- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 281. 
 
III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 price. There is something more sacred 
 than the prerogative, or even than the 
 constitution ; the public weal, for which 
 all powers are granted, and to which they 
 must all be referred. For this public 
 weal it is confessed to be sometimes ne- 
 cessary to shake the possessor of the 
 throne out of his seat ; could it never be 
 permitted to suspend, though but indi- 
 rectly and for a time, the positive exer- 
 cise of misapplied prerogatives '! He has 
 learned in a very different school from 
 myself, who denies to parliament at the 
 present day a preventive as well as vin- 
 dictive control over the administration 
 of affairs ; a right of resisting, by those 
 means which lie within its sphere, the 
 appointment of unfit ministers. These 
 means are now indirect ; they need not 
 to be the less effectual, and they are 
 certainly more salutary on that account. 
 But we must not make our notions of the 
 constitution, in its perfect symmetry of 
 manhood, the measure of its infantine pro- 
 portions, nor expect from a parliament 
 just struggling into life, and " pawing to 
 get free its hinder parts," the regularity 
 of definite and habitual power. 
 
 It is assumed rather too lightly by 
 some of those historians to whom I have 
 alluded, that these commissioners, though 
 but appointed for a twelvemonth, design- 
 ed to retain longer, or would not in fact 
 have surrendered their authority. There 
 is certainly a danger in these delegations 
 of pre-eminent trust ; but I think it more 
 formidable in a republican form than 
 under such a government as our own. 
 The spirit of the people, the letter of the 
 law, were both so decidedly monarchical, 
 that no glaring attempt of the commis- 
 sioners to keep the helm continually in 
 their hands, though it had been in the 
 king's name, would have had a fair prob- 
 ability of success. And an oligarchy 
 of fourteen persons, different in rank 
 and profession, even if we should impute 
 criminal designs to all of them, was ill 
 calculated for permanent union. Indeed, 
 the facility with which Richard reassu- 
 med his full powers two years afterward, 
 when misconduct had rendered his cir- 
 cumstances far more unfavourable, gives 
 the corroboration of experience to this 
 reasoning. By yielding to the will of 
 his parliament, and to a temporary sus- 
 pension of prerogative, this unfortunate 
 prince might probably have reigned long 
 and peacefully; the contrary course of 
 acting led eventually to his deposition 
 and miserable death. 
 
 Before the dissolution of parliament, 
 Richard made a verbal protestation, that 
 Bb2 
 
 nothing done therein should be Answers of 
 in prejudice of his rights ; a re- the judges 
 servation not unusual when ^JJJJJJ*' 8 
 any remarkable concession was 
 made, but which could not decently be 
 interpreted, whatever he might mean, as 
 a dissent from the statute just passed. 
 Some months had intervened, when the 
 king, who had already released Suffolk 
 from prison and restored him to his fa- 
 vour, procured from the judges whom he 
 had summoned to Nottingham a mos-t 
 convenient set of answers to questions 
 concerning the late proceedings in par- 
 liament. Tresilian and Belknap, chief 
 justices of the King's Bench and Com- 
 mon Pleas, with several other judges, 
 gave it under their seals, that the late 
 statute and commission were derogatory 
 to the prerogative ; that all who procured 
 it to be passed, or persuaded or compell* 
 ed the king to consent to it, were guilty 
 of treason ; that the king's business must 
 be proceeded upon before any other in 
 parliament; that he may put an end to 
 the session at his pleasure ; that his min- 
 isters cannot be impeached without his 
 consent ; that any members of parlia- 
 ment contravening the three last articles 
 incur the penalties of treason, and espe^ 
 cially he who moved for the sentence of 
 deposition against Edward II. to be read 5 
 and that the judgment against the Earl 
 of Suffolk might be revoked as altogether 
 erroneous. 
 
 These answers, perhaps extorted by 
 menaces, as all the judges ex- Subsequent 
 cept Tresilian protested before revolution, 
 the next parliament, were for the most 
 part servile and unconstitutional. The 
 indignation which they excited, and the 
 measures successfully taken to withstand 
 the king's designs, belong to general his- 
 tory ; but I shall pass slightly over that 
 season of turbulence, which afforded no 
 legitimate precedent to our constitutional 
 annals. Of the five lords appellants as 
 they were called, Glocester, Derby, Not- 
 tingham, Warwick, and Arundel, the three 
 former, at least, have little claim to pur 
 esteem ; but in every age, it is the sophism 
 of malignant and peevish men to traduce 
 the cause of freedom itself, on account 
 of the interested motives by which its 
 ostensible advocates have frequently been 
 actuated. The parliament, who had the 
 country thoroughly with them, acted no 
 doubt honestly, but with an inattention to 
 the rules of law, culpable indeed, yet from 
 which the most civilized of their succes^ 
 sors, in the heat of passion and trittmph, 
 have scarcely been exempt. Whether 
 all with whom they dealt severely, some 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 of them apparently of good previous rep- 
 utation, merited such punishment, is more 
 than, upon uncertain evidence, a modern 
 writer can profess to decide.* 
 
 Notwithstanding the death or exile of 
 all Richard's favourites, and the oath 
 taken not only by parliament, but by 
 every class of the people, to stand by 
 the lords appellants, we find him, af- 
 ter about a year, suddenly annihilating 
 their pretensions, and snatching the reins 
 again without obstruction. The secret 
 cause of this event is among the many 
 obscurities that attend the history of his 
 reign. It was conducted with a spirit 
 and activity which broke out two or three 
 times in the course of his imprudent life ; 
 but we may conjecture that he had the 
 advantage of disunion among his ene- 
 mies. For some years after this, the 
 king's administration was prudent. The 
 great seal, which he took away from 
 Archbishop Arundel, he gave to Wyke- 
 ham, bishop of Winchester, another 
 member of the reforming commission, 
 but a man of great moderation and polit- 
 ical experience. Some time after he re- 
 stored the seal to Arundel, and reinstated 
 the Duke of Glocester in the council. 
 The Duke of Lancaster, who had been 
 absent during the transactions of the 
 tenth and eleventh years of the king, in 
 prosecution of his Castilian war, formed 
 a link between the parties, and seems to 
 have maintained some share of public 
 favour. 
 
 There was now a more apparent har- 
 mony between the court and 
 monTbe- the parliament. It seems to 
 tweenthe have been tacitly agreed that 
 payment they should not interfere with 
 the king's household expenses ; 
 and they gratified him in a point where 
 his honour had been most wounded, de- 
 claring his prerogative to be as high and 
 unimpaired as that of his predecessors, 
 and repealing the pretended statute by 
 virtue of which Edward II. was said to 
 have been deposed, f They were provi- 
 dent enough, however, to grant condi- 
 tional subsidies, to be levied only in case 
 of a royal expedition against the enemy ; 
 and several were accordingly remitted 
 by proclamation, this condition not being 
 fulfilled. Richard never ventured to re- 
 call his favourites, though he testified his 
 unabated affection for Vere by a pompous 
 
 * The judgment against Simon de Burley, one 
 of those who were executed on this occasion, upon 
 impeachment of the commons, was reversed under 
 Henry IV. ; a fair presumption of its injustice. 
 Rot. Parl., voL iii., p. 464. 
 
 f Rot t Parl., 14 R. II., p. 279. 15 R. II., p. 286. 
 
 funeral. Few complaints, unequivocally 
 affecting the ministry, were presented by 
 the commons. In one parliament, the 
 chancellor, treasurer, and council resign- 
 ed their offices, submitting themselves to 
 its judgment, in case any matter of ac- 
 cusation should be alleged against them. 
 The commons, after a day's deliberation, 
 probably to make their approbation ap- 
 pear more solemn, declared in full par- 
 liament that nothing amiss had been 
 found in the conduct of these ministers, 
 and that they held them to have faithful- 
 ly discharged their duties. The king re- 
 instated them accordingly ; with a prot- 
 estation that this should not be made a 
 precedent, and that it was his right to 
 change his servants at pleasure.* 
 
 But this summer season was not to last 
 for ever. Richard had but dis- 
 sembled with those concerned 
 in the transactions of 1388, leading 
 none of whom he could ever peel 
 forgive. These lords in lapse of time 
 were divided among each other. The 
 earls of Derby and Nottingham were 
 brought into the king's interest. The 
 Earl of Arundel came^to an open breach 
 with the Duke of Lancaster, whose par- 
 don he was compelled to ask for an un- 
 founded accusation in parliament.! Glo- 
 cester's ungoverned ambition, elated by 
 popularity, could not brook the ascend- 
 ency of his brother Lancaster, who was 
 much less odious to the king. He had 
 constantly urged and defended the con- 
 cession of Guienne to this prince, to be 
 held for life, reserving only his liege hom- 
 age to Richard as king of France ;| a 
 grant as unpopular among the natives 
 of that country as it was derogatory to 
 the crown ; but Lancaster was not much 
 indebted to his brother for assistance, 
 which was only given in order to dimin- 
 ish his influence in England. The truce 
 with France, and the king's French mar- 
 riage, which Lancaster supported, were 
 passionately opposed by Glocester. And 
 the latter had given keener provocation, 
 by speaking contemptuously of that mis- 
 alliance with Katherine Swineford, which 
 contaminated the blood of Plantagenet. 
 To the parliament summoned in the 20th 
 of Richard, one object of which was to 
 legitimate the Duke of Lancaster's ante- 
 nuptial children by this lady, neither Glo- 
 cester nor Arundel would repair. There 
 passed in this assembly something re- 
 markable, as it exhibits not only the ar- 
 bitrary temper of the king, a point by no 
 
 * Rot. Parl., 13 R. II., p. 258. 
 
 fid., 17R.II., p. 313. 
 
 t Rymer, t. vii., p. 583, 659. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 means doubtful, but the inefficiency o 
 the commons to resist it, without suppor 
 from political confederacies of the nobil 
 ity. The circumstances are thus related 
 in the record. 
 
 During the session, the king sent fo 
 Richards the lords into parliament one 
 prosecution afternoon, and told them how 
 c Haxey. he nad near( i O f certain articles 
 of complaint made by the commons ir 
 conference with them a few days before 
 some of which appeared to the king 
 against his royalty, estate, and liberty 
 and commanded the chancellor to inform 
 him fully as to this. The chancellor 
 accordingly related the whole matter 
 which consisted of four alleged grievan- 
 ces ; namely, that sheriffs and escheators, 
 notwithstanding a statute, are continued 
 in their offices beyond a year ;* that the 
 Scottish marches were not well kept; 
 that the statute against wearing great 
 men's liveries was disregarded ; and, last- 
 ly, that the excessive charges of the 
 king's household ought to be diminished, 
 arising from the multitude of bishops and 
 of ladies who are there maintained at his 
 cost. 
 
 Upon this information the king de- 
 clared to the lords, that through God's 
 gift he is by lineal right of inheritance 
 king of England, and will have the royal- 
 ty and freedom of his crown, from which 
 some of these articles derogate. The 
 first petition, that sheriffs should never 
 remain in office beyond a year, he re- 
 jected ; but, passing lightly over the rest, 
 took most offence, that the commons, 
 who are his lieges, should take on them- 
 selves to make any ordinance respecting 
 his royal person or household, or those 
 whom he might please to have about him. 
 He enjoined, therefore, the lords to de- 
 clare plainly to the commons his pleas- 
 ure in this matter ; and especially direct- 
 ed the Duke of Lancaster to make the 
 speaker give up the name of the person 
 who presented a bill for this last article 
 in the lower house. 
 
 The commons were in no state to re- 
 sist this unexpected promptitude of ac- 
 
 * Hume has represented this as if the commons 
 had petitioned for the continuance of sheriffs be- 
 yond a year, and grounds upon this mistake part 
 of his defence of Richard II. (note to vol. ii., p. 270, 
 4to. edit.) For this he refers to Cotton's Abridg- 
 ment ; whether rightly or not I cannot say, being 
 little acquainted with that inaccurate book, upon 
 which it is unfortunate that Hume relied so much. 
 The passage from Walsingham in the same note 
 is also wholly perverted, as the reader will discov- 
 er without further observation. An historian must 
 be strangely warped, who quotes a passage expli- 
 citly complaining of illegal acts in order to infer 
 that those very acts were legal 
 
 tion in the king. They surrendered the 
 obnoxious bill, with its proposer, one 
 Thomas Haxey, and with great humility 
 made excuse, that they never designed to 
 give offence to his majesty, nor to inter- 
 fere with his household or attendants, 
 knowing well that such things do not be- 
 long to them, but to the king alone; but 
 merely to draw his attention, that he 
 might act therein as should please him 
 best. The king forgave these pitiful sup- 
 pliants ; but Haxey was adjudged in par- 
 liament to suffer death as a traitor. As, 
 however, he was a clerk,* the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, at the head of the pre- 
 lates, obtained of the king that his life 
 might be spared, and that they might 
 have the custody of his person ; protest- 
 ing that this was not claimed by way of 
 right, but merely of the king's grace. f 
 
 This was an open defiance of parlia- 
 ment, and a declaration of arbitrary pow- 
 er. For it would be impossible to con- 
 tend, that after the repeated instances of 
 control over public expenditure by the 
 commons since the 50th of Edward III., 
 this principle was novel and unauthorized 
 by the constitution ; or that the right of 
 free speech demanded by them in every 
 parliament was not a real and indisputa- 
 ble privilege. The king, however, was 
 completely successful, and hav- Arbitrary 
 ing proved the feebleness of measures of 
 the commons, fell next upon th 
 those he more dreaded. By a skilful 
 piece of treachery he seized the Duke 
 of Glocester, and spread consternation 
 among all his party. A parliament was 
 summoned, in which the only struggle 
 was to outdo the king's wishes, and thus 
 to efface their former transgressions.^ 
 
 * The church would perhaps have interfered in 
 behalf of Haxey, if he had only received the ton- 
 sure. But it seems that he was actually in orders ; 
 for the record calls him Sir Thomas Haxey, a title 
 at that time regularly given to the parson of a par- 
 sh. If this be so, it is a remarkable authority for 
 he clergy's capacity of sitting in parliament. 
 
 t Rot. Par!., 20 R. II., p. 339. In Henry IV.'a 
 first parliament, the commons petitioned for Hax- 
 ey's restoration, and truly say, that his sentence 
 was en aneantissement des custumes de la com- 
 mune, p. 434. His judgment was reversed by both 
 louses, as having past de volonte du Roy Richard 
 en centre droit, et la course quel avoit este devant 
 en parlement, p. 480. There can be no doubt with 
 any man who looks attentively at the passages 
 relative to Haxey, that he was a member of par- 
 liament ; though this was questioned a few years 
 igo by the committee of the house of commons 
 vho made a report on the right of the clergy to be 
 elected ; a right which, I am inclined to believe, 
 did exist down to the Reformation, as the grounds 
 alleged for Nowell's expulsion in the first of Mary, 
 >esides this instance of Haxey, conspire to prove, 
 hough it has since been lost by disuse. 
 
 This assembly, if we may trust the anony. 
 
390 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Glocester, who had been murdered a 
 Calais, was attainted after his death 
 Arundel was beheaded, his brother th< 
 Archbishop of Canterbury deposed and 
 banished, Warwick and Cobham sent be 
 yond sea. The commission of the tenth 
 the proceedings in parliament of the 
 eleventh year of the king, were annulled 
 The answers of the judges to the ques- 
 tions put at Nottingham, which had beer 
 punished with death and exile, were pro- 
 nounced by parliament to be just and le- 
 gal. It was declared high treason to pro- 
 cure the repeal of any judgment against 
 persons therein impeached. Their issue 
 male were disabled from ever sitting in 
 parliament, or holding place in council. 
 These violent ordinances, as if the pre- 
 cedent they were then overturning had 
 not shielded itself with the same sanc- 
 tion, were sworn to by parliament upon 
 the cross of Canterbury, and confirmed 
 by a national oath, with the penalty of 
 excommunication denounced against its 
 infringers. Of those recorded to have 
 bound themselves by this adjuration to 
 Richard, far the greater part had touched 
 the same relics for Glocester and Arun- 
 del ten years before, and two years after- 
 ward swore allegiance to Henry of Lan- 
 caster.* 
 
 In the fervour of prosecution this par- 
 liament could hardly go beyond that 
 whose acts they were annulling ; and 
 each is alike unworthy to be remembered 
 in the way of precedent. But the leaders 
 of the former, though vindictive and tur- 
 bulent, had a concern for the public in- 
 terest; and after punishing their ene- 
 mies, left the government upon its right 
 foundation. In this all regard for liberty 
 was extinct ; and the commons set the 
 dangerous precedent of granting the king 
 a subsidy upon wool during his life. This 
 remarkable act of severity was accompa- 
 nied by another, less unexampled, but, 
 as it proved, .of more ruinous tendency. 
 The petitions of the commons not having 
 been answered during the session, which 
 they were always anxious to conclude, a 
 commission was granted for twelve peers 
 and six commoners to sit after the dissolu- 
 tion, and "examine, answer, and fully 
 determine as well all the said petitions, 
 an(J the matters therein comprised, as all 
 other matters and things moved in the 
 king's presence, and all things incident 
 thereto not yet determined, as shall seem 
 best to them."f The " other matters" 
 
 mous author of the life of Richard II., published 
 by Hearne, was surrounded by the king's troops, 
 p. 133. 
 
 * Rot. Par!., 21 R. II., p. 347. f Id.. p. 3$Q. , 
 
 mentioned above were, I suppose, pri- 
 vate petitions to the king's council in par- 
 liament, which had been frequently de- 
 spatched after a dissolution. For in the 
 statute which establishes this commis- 
 sion, 21 R. II., c. 16, no powers are com- 
 mitted but those of examining petitions ; 
 which, if it does not confirm the charge 
 afterward alleged against Richard of fal- 
 sifying the parliament roll, must at least 
 be considered as limiting and explaining 
 the terms of the latter. Such a trust had 
 been committed to some lords of the 
 council eight years before, in very peace^ 
 ful times; and it was even requested 
 that the same might be done in future 
 parliaments.* But it is obvious what a 
 latitude this gave to a prevailing faction. 
 These eighteen commissioners, or some 
 of them (for there were who disliked the 
 turn of affairs), usurped the full rights of 
 the legislature, which undoubtedly were 
 only delegated in respect of business al- 
 ready commenced.! They imposed a 
 perpetual oath on prelates and lords for 
 all time to come, to be taken before ob- 
 taining livery of their lands, that they 
 would maintain the statutes and ordi- 
 nances made by this parliament, or " af- 
 terward by the lords and knights having 
 Dower committed to them by the same.' 1 
 They declared it high treason to disobey 
 their ordinances. They annulled the pa- 
 ints of the dukes of Hereford and Nor- 
 folk, and adjudged Henry Bowet, the for- 
 mer's chaplain, who had advised him to 
 )etition for his inheritance, to the penal- 
 ies of treason.^ And thus, having obr- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., 13 R. II., p. 256. 
 
 t This proceeding was made one of the articles 
 >f charge against Richard in the following terms : 
 tem, in parliamento ultimo celebrato apud Salo- 
 >iam, idem Rex proponens opprimere populum 
 uum procuravit subtiliter et fecit concedi, quod 
 otestas parliamenti de consensu omnium statuum 
 egni sui rernaneret apud quasdam certas personas 
 d terminandum, dissoluto parliamento, certas per 
 itiones in eodem parliamento porrectas protunc 
 ninime expeditas. Cujus concessionis colore per- 
 onae sic deputatae processerunt ad alia generaliter 
 arliamentum illud tangentia ; et hoc de vqluntate 
 egis ; in derogationem status parliamenti, et in 
 magnum incommodum totius regni et perniciosum 
 xemplum. Et ut super factis eorum hujusmodi 
 liquem colorem et auctoritatem viderentur habere, 
 ex fecit rotulos parliamenti pro voto suo mutari et 
 eleri, contra effectum consensionis praedictae. 
 lot. Parl., 1 H. IV., vol. iii., p. 418. Whether the 
 ast accusation, of altering the parliamentary roll, 
 e true or not, there is enough left in it to prove 
 very thing I have asserted in the text. From this 
 ; is sufficiently manifest how unfairly Carte and 
 Jume have drawn a parallel between this self- 
 eputed legislative commission, and that appointed 
 y parliament to reform the administration eleven 
 ears before. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., 1 H. IV., vol. iii., p. 372, 385. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 391 
 
 tained a revenue for life, and the power 
 of parliament being notoriously usurped 
 by a knot of his creatures, the king was 
 little likely to meet his people again, and 
 became as truly absolute as his ambition 
 could require. 
 
 It had been necessary for this purpose 
 Quarrel to subjugate the ancient nobility, 
 of the For the English constitution gave 
 Hereford them suc ^ paramount rights, that 
 and Nor- it was impossible either to make 
 Iolk - them surrender their country's 
 freedom, or to destroy it without their 
 consent. But several of the chief men 
 had fallen, or were involved, with the 
 party of Glocester. Two who, having 
 once belonged to it, had lately plunged 
 into the depths of infamy to ruin their 
 former friends, were still perfectly ob- 
 noxious to the king, who never forgave 
 their original sin. These two, Henry of 
 Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, and Mow- 
 bray, earl of Nottingham, now dukes of 
 Hereford and Norfolk, the most power- 
 ful of the remaining nobility, were, by a 
 singular conjuncture, thrown, as it were, 
 at the king's feet. Of the political mys- 
 teries which this reign affords, none is 
 more inexplicable than the quarrel of 
 these peers. In the parliament at Shrews- 
 bury in 1398, Hereford was called upon 
 by the king to relate what had passed 
 between the Duke of Norfolk and him- 
 self in slander of his majesty. He de- 
 tailed a pretty long and not improbable 
 conversation, in which Norfolk had as- 
 serted the king's intention of destroying 
 them both, for their old offence in im- 
 peaching his ministers. Norfolk had 
 only to deny the charge, and throw his 
 gauntlet at the accuser. It was referred 
 to the eighteen commissioners who sat 
 after the dissolution, and a trial by com- 
 bat was awarded. But when this, after 
 many delays, was about to take place at 
 Coventry, Richard interfered, and settled 
 the dispute by condemning Hereford to 
 banishment for ten years, and Norfolk 
 for life. This strange determination, 
 which treated both as guilty where only 
 one could be so, seems to admit no other 
 solution than the king's desire to rid 
 himself of two peers whom he feared 
 and hated at a blow. But it is difficult 
 to understand by what means he drew 
 the crafty Bolingbroke into his snare.* 
 
 * Besides the contemporary historians, we may 
 read a full narrative of these proceedings in the 
 rolls of parliament, vol. iii., p. 382. It appears that 
 Mowbray was the most offending party; since, in- 
 dependently of Hereford's accusation, he is char- 
 ged with openly maintaining the appeals made in 
 the false parliament of the eleventh of the king, 
 But the banishment of his accuser was wholly uu- , 
 
 However this might have been, he now 
 threw away all appearance of moderate 
 government. The indignities he had suf- 
 fered in the eleventh year of his reign 
 were still at his heart, a desire to- re- 
 venge which seems to have been the 
 main spring of his conduct. Though a 
 general pardon of those proceedings had 
 been granted, not only at the time, but 
 in his own last parliament, he made use 
 of them as a pretence to extort money 
 from seventeen counties, to whom he 
 imputed a share in the rebellion. He 
 compelled men to confess, under their 
 seals, that they had been guilty of trea- 
 son, and to give blank obligations, which 
 his officers filled up with large sums.* 
 Upon the death of the Duke of Lancas- 
 ter, who had passively complied through- 
 out all these transactions, Richard re- 
 fused livery of his inheritance to Here- 
 ford, whose exile implied no crime, and 
 who had letters patent enabling him to 
 make his attorney for that purpose du- 
 ring its continuance. In short, his gov- 
 ernment for nearly two years was Necessity 
 altogether tyrannical ; and, upon for depo- 
 the same principles that cost sin him. 
 James II. his throne, it was unquestion- 
 ably far more necessary, unless our fa- 
 thers would have abandoned all thought 
 of liberty, to expel Richard II. Far be it 
 from us to extenuate the treachery of 
 the Percies towards this unhappy prince, 
 or the cruel circumstances of his death, 
 or in any way to extol either his succes- 
 sor or the chief men of that time, most 
 of whom were ambitious and faithless ; 
 but after such long experience of the 
 king's arbitrary, dissembling, and revenge- 
 ful temper, I see no other safe course in 
 the actual state of the constitution than 
 what the nation concurred in pursuing. 
 The reign of Richard II. is, in a consti- 
 tutional light, the most interesting part 
 of our earlier history, and it has been 
 the most imperfectly written. Some 
 have misrepresented the truth through 
 prejudice, and others through careless- 
 ness. It is only to be understood, and 
 indeed there are great difficulties in the 
 way of understanding it at all, by a peru- 
 sal of the rolls of parliament, with some 
 assistance from the contemporary histo- 
 
 justifiable by any motives that we can discover. 
 It is strange that Carte should express surprise at 
 the sentence upon the Duke of Norfolk, while he 
 seems to consider that upon Hereford as very 
 equitable. But he viewed the whole of this reign, 
 and of those that ensued, with the jaundiced eye 
 of Jacobitism. 
 
 * Rot. Par!., 1 H. IV., p. 420, 426. Walsing* 
 ham, p. 353, 357. Otterburn, p. 199 Vita Rie, 
 II, HT. 
 
392 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 rians, Walsingham, Knyghton, the anony- 
 mous biographer published by Hearne, 
 and Froissart. These, I must remark, 
 except occasionally the last, are ex- 
 tremely hostile to Richard ; and although 
 we are far from being bound to acqui- 
 esce in their opinions, it is at least un- 
 warrantable in modern writers to sprinkle 
 their margins with references to such 
 authority in support of positions deci- 
 dedly opposite.* 
 
 The revolution which elevated Henry 
 circumstan- IV. to the throne was certainly 
 ces attend- so f ar accomplished by force, 
 iy g 's accL that the king was in captivity, 
 sion. and those who might still ad- 
 
 here to him in no condition to support 
 his authority. But the sincere concur- 
 rence which most of the prelates and 
 nobility, with the mass of the people, 
 gave to changes that could not have 
 been otherwise effected by one so un- 
 provided with foreign support as Henry, 
 proves this revolution to have been, if 
 not an indispensable, yet a national act, 
 and should prevent our considering the 
 Lancastrian kings as usurpers of the 
 throne. Nothing indeed looks so much 
 like usurpation in the whole transaction 
 as Henry's remarkable challenge of the 
 crown, insinuating, though not avowing, 
 as Hume has justly animadverted upon 
 it, a false and ridiculous title by right 
 line of descent, and one equally unwar- 
 rantable by conquest. The course of 
 proceedings is worthy of notice. As 
 the renunciation of Richard might well 
 pass for the effect of compulsion, there 
 was a strong reason for propping up its 
 instability by a solemn deposition from 
 the throne, founded upon specific charges 
 of misgovernment, Again, as the right 
 of dethroning a monarch was nowhere 
 found in the law, it was equally requisite 
 to support this assumption of power by 
 an actual abdication. But as neither one 
 nor the other filled the Duke of Lancas- 
 ter's wishes, who was not contented 
 with owing a crown to election, nor 
 seemed altogether to account for the ex- 
 clusion of the house of March, he devi- 
 sed this claim, which was preferred in 
 the vacancy of the throne, Richard's ces- 
 sion having been read and approved in 
 parliament, and the sentence of depo- 
 sition, " out of abundant caution, and to 
 
 * It is fair to observe, that Froissart's testimony 
 makes most in favour of the king, or rather against 
 his enemies, where it is most valuable, that is, in 
 his account of what he heard in the English court 
 in 1395, 1. iv., c. 62, where he gives a very differ- 
 ent character of the Duke of Glocester. Jn gen- 
 eral, this writer is ill informed of English affairs, 
 and undeserving to be quoted as an authority. 
 
 remove all scruple," solemnly passed by 
 seven commissioners appointed out of 
 the several estates. " After which chal- 
 lenge and claim," says the record, " the 
 lords spiritual and temporal, and all the 
 estates there present, being asked sep- 
 arately and together what they thought 
 of the said challenge and claim, the said 
 estates, with the whole people, without 
 any difficulty or delay, consented that 
 the said duke should reign over them."* 
 The claim of Henry, as opposed to that 
 of the Earl of March, was indeed ridicu- 
 lous ; but it is by no means evident that, 
 in such cases of extreme urgency as 
 leave no security for the common weal 
 but the deposition of a reigning prince, 
 there rests any positive obligation upon 
 the estates of the realm to fill his place 
 with the nearest heir. A revolution of 
 this kind seems rather to defeat and 
 confound all prior titles, though in the 
 new settlement it will commonly be pru- 
 dent, as well as equitable, to treat them 
 with some regard. Were this otherwise, 
 it would be hard to say why William 
 III. reigned to the exclusion of Anne, or 
 even of the Pretender, who had surely 
 committed no offence at that time ; or 
 why (if such indeed be the true con- 
 struction of the Act of Settlement) the 
 more distant branches of the royal stock, 
 descendants of Henry VII. and earlier 
 kings, have been cut off from their hope 
 of succession by the restriction to the 
 heirs of the Princess Sophia. 
 
 In this revolution of 1399 there was as 
 remarkable an attention shown to the for- 
 malities of the constitution, allowance 
 made for the men and the times, as in 
 that of 1688. The parliament was not 
 opened by commission ; no one took the 
 office of president ; the commons did not 
 adjourn to their own chamber; they 
 chose no speaker ; the name of parlia- 
 ment was not taken, but that only of es- 
 tates of the realm. But as it would have 
 been a violation of constitutional princi- 
 ples to assume a parliamentary character 
 without the king's commission, though 
 summoned by his writ, so it was still 
 more essential to limit their exercise of 
 power to the necessity of circumstances. 
 Upon the cession of the king, as upon his 
 death, the parliament was no more ; its 
 existence, as the council of the sover- 
 eign, being dependant upon his will. The 
 actual convention summoned by the writs 
 of Richard could not legally become the 
 parliament of Henry ; and the validity of 
 a statute declaring it to be such would 
 
 * Rot. Parl., p. 423. 
 
PART HI.} 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 probably have been questionable in that 
 age, when the power of statutes to alter 
 the original principles of the common 
 law was by no means so thoroughly rec- 
 ognised as at the Restoration and Revo- 
 lution. Yet Henry was too well pleased 
 with his friends to part with them so 
 readily ; and he had much to effect be- 
 fore the fervour of their spirits should 
 abate. Hence an expedient was devised 
 of issuing writs for a new parliament, re- 
 turnable in six days. These neither were 
 nor could be complied with ; but the same 
 members as had deposed Richard sat in 
 the new parliament, which was regularly 
 opened by Henry's commissioner, as if 
 they had been duly elected.* In this 
 contrivance, more than in all the rest, we 
 may trace the hand of lawyers. 
 
 If we look back from the accession of 
 Retrospect Henry IV. to that of his prede- 
 re s h of P thf cessor tne constitutional au- 
 constitutum thority of the house of corn- 
 under Rich- mons will be perceived to have 
 made surprising progress du- 
 ring the course of twenty-two years. Of 
 the three capital points in contest while 
 Edward reigned, that money could not 
 be levied, or laws enacted, without the 
 commons' consent, and that the adminis- 
 tration of government was subject to 
 their inspection and control, the first was 
 absolutely decided in their favour, the 
 second was at least perfectly admitted in 
 principle, and the last was confirmed by 
 frequent exercise. The commons had 
 acquired two additional engines of im- 
 mense efficiency; one, the right of di- 
 recting the application of subsidies, and 
 calling accountants before them; the 
 other, that of impeaching the king's min- 
 isters for misconduct. All these vigor- 
 ous shoots of liberty throve more and 
 its advances more under the three kings of 
 under the the house of Lancaster, and 
 Lancaster drew suc h strength and nour- 
 ishment from the generous 
 heart of England, that in after times and 
 in a less prosperous season, though 
 checked and obstructed in their growth, 
 neither the blasts of arbitrary power 
 could break them off, nor the mildew of 
 servile opinion cause them to wither. I 
 shall trace the progress of parliament till 
 the civil wars of York and Lancaster ; 1, 
 in maintaining the exclusive right of tax- 
 ation; 2, in directing and checking the 
 public expenditure ; 3, in making sup- 
 
 * If proof could be required of any thing so self- 
 evident as that these assemblies consisted of ex- 
 actly the same persons, it may be found in their 
 writs of expenses, as published by Prynne. 4th 
 Register, p. 450. 
 
 plies depend on the redress of grievan- 
 ces ; 4, in securing the people against il- 
 legal ordinances and interpolations of the 
 statutes ; 5, in controlling the royal ad- 
 ministration ; 6, in punishing bad minis- 
 ters ; and lastly, in establishing their own 
 immunities and privileges. 
 
 1. The pretence of levying money 
 without consent of parliament expired 
 with Edward III., who had asserted it, as 
 we have seen, in the very last year of 
 his reign. A great council of lords and 
 prelates, summoned in the second year 
 of his successor, declared that they could 
 advise no remedy for the king's necessi- 
 ties, without laying taxes on the people, 
 which could only be granted in parlia- 
 ment.* Nor was Richard ever accused 
 of illegal tallages, the frequent theme of 
 remonstrance under Edward, unless we 
 may conjecture that this charge is im- 
 plied in an act (11 R. II., c. 9), which an- 
 nuls all impositions on wool and leather, 
 without consent of parliament, if any 
 there be.\ Doubtless his innocence in this 
 respect was the effect of weakness ; and 
 if the revolution of 1399 had not put an 
 end to his newly-acquired despotism, this, 
 like every other right of his people, 
 would have been swept away. A less 
 palpable means of evading the consent 
 of the commons was by the extortion of 
 loans, and harassing those who refused 
 to pay by summonses before the council. 
 These loans, the frequent resource of 
 arbitrary sovereigns in later times, are 
 first complained of in an early parliament 
 of Richard II. ; and a petition is granted 
 that no man shall be compelled to lend the 
 king money.:}: But how little this was 
 regarded we may infer from a writ di- 
 rected in 1386 to some persons in Boston, 
 enjoining them to assess every person 
 who had goods and chattels to the amount 
 of twenty pounds, in his proportion of 
 two hundred pounds, which the town had 
 promised to lend the king; and giving 
 an assurance that this shall be deducted 
 from the next subsidy to be granted by 
 parliament. Among other extraordinary 
 parts of this letter is a menace of forfeit- 
 ing life, limbs, and property, held out 
 against such as should not obey these 
 commissioners. $ After his triumph over 
 
 * 2 R. II., p. 56. 
 
 t It is positively laid down by the assertors of 
 civil liberty in the great case of impositions 
 (Howell's State Trials, vol. ii., p. 443, 507), that 
 no precedents for arbitrary taxation of exports or 
 imports occur from the accession of Richard II. to 
 the reign of Mary. 
 
 t 2 R. II., p. 62. This did not find its way to the 
 statute book. 
 
 $ Rymer, t. vii., p. 544. 
 
394 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 the popular party towards the end of his 
 reign, he obtained large sums in this 
 way. 
 
 Under the Lancastrian kings, there is 
 much less appearance of raising money 
 in an unparliamentary* course. Henry 
 IV. obtained an aid from a great council 
 in the year 1400 ; but they did not pre- 
 tend to charge any besides themselves ; 
 though it seems that some towns after- 
 ward gave the king a contribution.* A 
 few years afterward, he directs the sher- 
 iffs to call on the richest men in their 
 counties to advance the money voted by 
 parliament. This, if any compulsion was 
 threatened, is an instance of overstrained 
 prerogative, though consonant to the 
 practice of the late reign. f There is, 
 however, an instance of very arbitrary 
 conduct with respect to a grant of money 
 in the minority of Henry VI. A subsidy 
 had been granted by parliament upon 
 goods imported, under certain restrictions 
 in favour of the merchants, with a provi- 
 sion, that if these conditions be not ob- 
 served on the king's part, then the grant 
 should be void and of no effect.^ But 
 an entry is made on the roll of the next 
 parliament, that "whereas some disputes 
 have arisen about the grant of the last 
 subsidy ; it is declared by the Duke of 
 Bedford and other lords in parliament, 
 with advice of the judges and others learn- 
 ed in the law, that the said subsidy was at 
 all events to be collected and levied for 
 the king's use ; notwithstanding any con- 
 ditions in the grant of the said subsidy 
 contained. " The commons, however, 
 in making the grant of a fresh subsidy in 
 
 tthis parliament, renewed their former 
 conditions, with the addition of another, 
 that " it ne no part thereof be beset ne 
 dispensed to no other use, but only in 
 and for the defense of the said rpialme."|| 
 2. The right of granting supplies would 
 Appropn- have been very incomplete, had 
 ation ; of it not been accompanied with 
 jupphes. ^^ Q . Directing their application. 
 This principle of appropriating public 
 moneys began, as we have seen, in the 
 minority of Richard; and was among 
 the best fruits of that period. It was 
 steadily maintained under the new dy- 
 nasty. The parliament of 6 H. IV. 
 granted two fifteenths and two tenths, 
 with a tax on skins and wool, on con- 
 
 * Carte, vol. ii., p. 640. Sir M. Hale observes 
 that he finds no complaints of illegal impositions 
 under the kings of the house of Lancaster. Har- 
 grave's Tracts, vol. i., p. 184. 
 
 t Rymer, t. viii., p. 412, 488. 
 
 J Rot. Par!., vol. iv., p. 216. 
 
 $ Id., p. 301. || Id., p. 302. 
 
 dition that it should be expended in 
 the defence of the kingdom, and not 
 otherwise, as Thomas Lord Furnival 
 and Sir John Pelham, ordained treasurers 
 of war for this parliament, to receive 
 the said subsidies, shall account and an- 
 swer to the commons at the next parlia- 
 ment. These treasurers were sworn in 
 parliament to execute their trust.* A 
 similar precaution was adopted in the 
 next session.f 
 
 3. The commons made a bold attempt 
 in the second year of Henry Attempt to 
 IV. to give the strongest securi- make sup- 
 ty to their claims of redress, *$ r d e e d p r e e n 8 g 
 by inverting the usual course ofgriev- 
 of parliamentary proceedings. ances - 
 It was usual to answer their petitions 
 on the last day of the session, which 
 put an end to all further discussion 
 upon them, and prevented their making 
 the redress of grievances a necessary 
 condition of supply. They now request- 
 ed that an answer might be given before 
 they made their grant of subsidy. This 
 was one of the articles which Richard 
 II. 's judges had declared it high treason 
 to attempt. Henry was not inclined to 
 make a concession which would virtual- 
 ly have removed the chief impediment 
 to the ascendency of parliament. He 
 first said that he would consult with the 
 lords, and answer according to their ad- 
 vice. On the last day of the session 
 the commons were informed, that " it had 
 never been known, in the time of his an- 
 cestors, that they should have their peti- 
 tions answered before they had done all 
 their business in parliament, whether of 
 granting money or any other concern ; 
 wherefore the king will not alter the 
 good customs and usages of ancient 
 times. "J 
 
 Notwithstanding the just views these 
 parliaments appear generally to have en- 
 tertained of their power over the public 
 purse, that of the third of Henry V. fol- 
 lowed a precedent from the worst times 
 of Richard II., by granting the king a 
 subsidy on wool and leather during his 
 life.$ This, an historian tells us, Henry 
 IV. had vainly laboured to obtain ;|| but 
 the taking of Harfleur intoxicated the 
 English with new dreams of conquest in 
 France, which their good sense and con- 
 stitutional jealousy were not firm enough 
 to resist. The cffttinued expenses of the 
 war, however, prevented this grant from 
 becoming so dangerous as it might have 
 been in a season of tranquillity. Henry 
 
 Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 546. 
 
 Id,, p. 568. t W., p. 453. 
 
 fl 
 
 Id., voL iv., p. 63. 
 
 Walsingham, p. 379. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 395 
 
 V., like his father, convoked parliament 
 almost in every year of his reign. 
 
 4. It had long been out of all question, 
 Legislative that the legislature consisted of 
 tKonf tne kingj lords, and commons ; 
 mons es- or, in stricter language, that the 
 tabiished. king could not make or repeal 
 statutes without the consent of parlia- 
 ment. But this fundamental maxim was 
 still frequently defeated by various acts 
 of evasion or violence ; which, though 
 protested against as illegal, it was a diffi- 
 cult task to prevent. The king some- 
 times exerted a power of suspending the 
 observance of statutes ; as in the ninth 
 of Richard II., when a petition that all 
 statutes might be confirmed is granted 
 with an exception as to one passed in 
 the last parliament, forbidding the judges 
 to take fees, or give counsel in cases 
 where the king was a party ; which, 
 ** because it was too severe, and needs 
 declaration, the king would have of no 
 effect till it should be declared in parlia- 
 ment."* The apprehension of this dis- 
 pensing prerogative and sense of its ille- 
 gality are manifested by the wary terms 
 wherein the commons, in one of Rich- 
 ard's parliaments, " assent that the king 
 made such sufferance respecting the 
 statute of provisors as shall seem rea- 
 sonable to him, so that the said statute 
 be not repealed ; and moreover that the 
 commons may disagree thereto at the 
 next parliament, and resort to the stat- 
 ute;" with a protestation that this as- 
 sent, which is a novelty, and never done 
 before, shall not be drawn into prece- 
 dent ; praying the king that this pro- 
 testation may be entered on the roll of 
 parliament.! A petition in one of Henry 
 IV.'s parliaments, to limit the number 
 of attorneys, and forbid filazers and pro- 
 thonotaries from practising, having been 
 answered favourably as to the first point, 
 we find a marginal entry in the roll that 
 the prince and council had respited the 
 execution of this act.| 
 
 The dispensing power, as exercised in 
 Dispensing favour of individuals, is quite 
 power of of a different character from 
 crown. ^jg g enera i suspension of stat- 
 utes, but indirectly weakens the sov- 
 ereignty of the legislature. This pow- 
 er was exerted, and even recognised, 
 throughout all the reigns of the Planta- 
 genets. In the first of Henry V. the com- 
 
 * Walsingham, p. 210. Ruffhead observes in 
 the margin upon this statute 8 R. II., c. 3, that it 
 is repealed, but does not take notice what sort of 
 repeal it had. 
 
 t 15 R. II., p. 285. See too 16 R. II., p. 301, 
 where the same power is renewed in H. IV.'s 
 
 parliaments. 
 
 13 H. IV., p. 643. 
 
 mpns pray, that the statute for driving 
 aliens out of the kingdom be executed. 
 The king assents, saving his prerogative, 
 and his right of dispensing with it when 
 he pleased. To which the commons 
 replied, that their intention was never 
 otherwise, nor, by God's help, ever 
 should be. At the same time one Rees 
 ap Thomas petitions the king to modify 
 or dispense with the statute prohibiting 
 Welshmen from purchasing lands in 
 England, or the English towns in Wales, 
 which the king grants. In the same par- 
 liament the commons pray that no grant 
 or protection be made to any one in con- 
 travention of the statute of provisors, 
 saving the king's prerogative. He mere- 
 ly answers, " Let the statutes be observ- 
 ed :" evading any allusion to his dispen- 
 sing power.* 
 
 It has been observed under the reign 
 of Edward III., that the practice of leav- 
 ing statutes to be drawn up by the 
 judges, from the petition and answer 
 jointly, after a dissolution of parliament, 
 presented an opportunity of falsifying 
 the intention of the legislature, whereof 
 advantage was often taken. Some very 
 remarkable instances of this fraud oc- 
 curred in the succeeding reigns. 
 
 An ordinance was put upon the roll of 
 parliament, in the fifth of Richard II., 
 empowering sheriffs of counties to arrest 
 preachers of heresy and their abetters, 
 and detain them in prison until they 
 should justify themselves before the 
 church. This was introduced into the 
 statutes of the year; but the assent of 
 lords and commons is not expressed. In 
 the next parliament, the commons, reci- 
 ting this ordinance, declare that it was 
 never assented to or granted by them, 
 but what had been proposed in this mat- 
 ter was without their concurrence (that 
 is, as I conceive, had been rejected by 
 them), and pray that this statute be an- 
 nulled, for it was never their intent to 
 bind themselves or their descendants to 
 the bishops more than their ancestors 
 had been bound in times past. The king 
 returned an answer agreeing to this pe- 
 tition. Nevertheless the pretended stak 
 ute was untouched, and remains still 
 among our laws :f unrepealed, except 
 
 * Rot. Parl., v. 4 H. V., p. 6, 9. 
 
 t 5 R. II., stat. 2, c. 5 ; Rot. Parl., 6 R. II., p. 
 141. Some other instances of the commons at- 
 tempting to prevent these unfair practices are ad- 
 duced by Ruffhead in his preface to the Statutes, 
 and in Prynne's preface to Cotton's Abridgment 
 of the Records. The act 13 R. II., stat. 1, c. 15, 
 that the king's castles and jails which had been 
 separated from the body of the adjoining counties, 
 should be reunited to them, is not founded upon 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 by desuetude, and by inference from the 
 acts of much later times. 
 
 This commendable reluctance of the 
 commons to let the clergy forge chains 
 for them produced, as there is much ap- 
 pearance, a similar violation of their le- 
 gislative rights in the next reign. The 
 statute against heresy in the second of 
 Henry IV. is not grounded upon any pe- 
 tition of the commons, but only upon one 
 of the clergy. It is said to be enacted 
 by consent of the lords, but no notice is 
 taken of the lower house in the parlia- 
 ment roll, though the statute reciting the 
 petition asserts the commons to have 
 joined in it.* The petition and the stat- 
 ute are both in Latin, which is unusual 
 in the laws of this time. In a subse- 
 quent petition of the commons, this act 
 is styled " the statute made in the second 
 year of your majesty's reign, at the re- 
 quest of the prelates and clergy of your 
 kingdom ;" which affords a presumption 
 that it had no regular assent of parlia- 
 ment, f And the spirit of the commons 
 during this whole reign being remark- 
 ably hostile to the church, it would have 
 been hardly possible to obtain their con- 
 sent to so penal a law against heresy. 
 Several of their petitions seem designed 
 indirectly to weaken its efficacy.J 
 
 These infringements of their most es- 
 sential right were resisted by the com- 
 mons in various ways, according to the 
 measure of their power. In the fifth of 
 Richard II., they request the lords to let 
 them see a certain ordinance before it is 
 engrossed. At another time they pro- 
 cured some of their own members, as 
 well as peers, to be present at engrossing 
 the roll. At length they spoke out une- 
 quivocally in a memorable petition, which, 
 besides its intrinsic importance, is de- 
 serving of notice as the earliest instance 
 in which the house of commons adopted 
 
 any petition that appears on the roll ; and probably 
 by making search other instances equally flagrant 
 might be discovered. 
 
 * There had been, however, a petition of the 
 commons on the same subject, expressed in very 
 general terms, on which this terrible superstruc- 
 ture might artfully be raised, p. 474. 
 
 i P. 626. 
 
 j We find a remarkable petition in 8 H. IV., 
 professedly aimed against the Lollards, but in- 
 tended, as I strongly suspect, in their favour. It 
 condemns persons preaching against the Catholic 
 faith or sacraments to imprisonment till the next 
 parliament, where they were to abide such judg- 
 ment as should be rendered by the king and peers of 
 the realm. This seems to supersede the burning 
 statute of 2 H. IV., and the spiritual cognizance 
 of heresy. Rot. Parl., p. 583. See too p. 626. 
 The petition was expressly granted ; but the cler- 
 gy, I suppose, prevented its appearing on the stat- 
 ute-roll. $ Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 102. 
 
 the English language. I shall present its 
 venerable orthography without change. 
 
 " Oure soverain lord, youre humble and 
 trewe lieges that ben come for the co- 
 mune of youre lond bysechyn onto youre 
 rizt riztwesnesse, That so as hit hath 
 ever be thair libte and fredom, that thar 
 sholde no statut no lawe be made offlasse 
 than they yaf therto their assent : con- 
 sideringe that the commie of youre lond, 
 the whiche that is, and ever hath be, a 
 membre of youre parlemente, ben as well 
 assenters as peticioners, that fro this 
 tyme foreward, by compleynte of the 
 comune of any myschief axknyge reme- 
 die by mouthe of their speker for the co- 
 mune, other ellys by petition writen, that 
 ther never be no lawe made theruppon, 
 and engrossed as statut and lawe, nother 
 by addicions, nother by diminucions, by 
 no manner of terme ne termes, the whiche 
 that sholde chaunge the sentence, and the 
 entente axked by the speker mouthe, or 
 the petitions beforesaid yeven up yn wri- 
 tyng by the manere forsaid, withoute as- 
 sent of the forsaid comune. Consider- 
 inge oure soverain lord, that it is not in 
 no wyse the entente of youre comunes, 
 zif yet be so that they axke you by spek- 
 yng, or by writyng, two thynges or three, 
 or as manye as theym lust : But that ever 
 it stande in the fredom of youre hie re- 
 galie, to graunte whiche of thoo that you 
 lust, and to werune the remanent. 
 
 " The kyng of his grace especial graunt- 
 eth that fro hensforth nothyng be enacted 
 to the peticions of his comune, that be 
 contrarie of hir askyng, wharby they 
 shuld be bounde withoute their assent. 
 Savyng alwey to our liege lord his real 
 prerogatif, to graunte and denye what 
 him lust of their petitions and askynges 
 aforesaide."* 
 
 Notwithstanding the fulness of this as- 
 sent to so important a petition, we find 
 no vestige of either among the statutes, 
 and the whole transaction is unnoticed 
 by those historians who have not looked 
 into our original records. If the com- 
 pilers of the statute-roll were able to keep 
 out of it the very provision that was in- 
 tended to check their fraudulent machi- 
 nations, it was in vain to hope for redress 
 without altering the established practice 
 in this respect ; and, indeed, where there 
 was no design to falsify the roll, it was 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 22. It is curious that the 
 authors of the Parliamentary history say that the 
 roll of this parliament is lost, and consequently 
 suppress altogether this important petition. Instead 
 of which they give, as their fashion is, impertinent 
 speeches out of Holingshed, which are certainly 
 not genuine, and would be of no value if they were 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION-. 
 
 397 
 
 impossible to draw up statutes whic 
 should be in truth the acts of the whol 
 legislature, so long as the king contin 
 ued to grant petitions in part, and t 
 ingraft new matter upon them. Sue 
 was still the case, till the commons hi 
 upon an effectual expedient for screen 
 ing themselves against these encroach 
 ments, which has lasted without altera 
 tion to the present day. This was th< 
 introduction of complete statutes, unde 
 the name of bills, instead of the old pe 
 titions; and these, containing^ the roya 
 assent, and the whole form of a law, i 
 became, though not quite immediately, 
 a constant principle, that the king mus 
 admit or reject them without qualification 
 This alteration, which wrought an ex 
 traordinary effect on the character 01 
 our constitution, was gradually introdu 
 ced in Henry VI. 's reign.f 
 
 From - the first years of Henry V. 
 though not, I think, earlier, the com 
 mons began to concern themselves with 
 the petitions of individuals to the lords 
 or council. The nature of the jurisdic 
 tion exercised by the latter will be treat 
 ed more fully hereafter. It is only ne 
 cessary to mention in this place, tha 
 many of the requests preferred to them 
 were such as could not be granted with- 
 out transcending the boundaries of law 
 A jus I inquietude as to the encroach- 
 ments of the king's council had long been 
 manifested by the commons ; and, find- 
 
 * Henry VI. and Edward IV. in some cases pass 
 cd bills with sundry provisions annexed by them- 
 selves. Thus the act for resumption of grants, 4 
 E. IV., was encumbered with 289 clauses in fa- 
 vour of so many persons whom the king meant to 
 exempt from its operation ; and the same was done 
 in other acts of the same description. Rot. Parl., 
 vol. v., p. 517. 
 
 t The variations of each statute, as n9w printed, 
 from the parliamentary roll, whether in form, or 
 substance, are noticed in Cotton's Abridgment. It 
 may be worth while to consult the preface to Ruff- 
 head's edition of the Statutes, where this subject 
 is treated at some length. 
 
 Perhaps the triple division of our legislature may 
 be dated from this innovation. For as it is impos- 
 sible to deny that, while the king promulgated a 
 statute founded upon a mere petition, he was him- 
 self the real legislator, so I think it is equally fair 
 to assert, notwithstanding the formal preamble of 
 our statutes, that laws brought into either house 
 of parliament in a perfect shape, and receiving first 
 the assent of lords and commons, and finally that 
 of the king, who has no power to modify them, 
 must be deemed to proceed, and derive their effica- 
 cy, from the joint concurrence of all the three. It 
 is" said indeed at a much earlier time, that le ley de 
 la terre est fait en parlement par le roi, et les seig- 
 neurs espirituels et temporels, et tout la commu- 
 naute du royaume. Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 293. 
 But this I must allow was in the violent session 
 of 11 Ric. II., the constitutional authority of which 
 is not to be highly prized. 
 
 ing remonstrances ineffectual, they took 
 measures for preventing such usurpations 
 of legislative power, by introducing their 
 own consent to private petitions. These 
 were now presented by the hands of the 
 commons, and in very many instances 
 passed in the form of statutes with the 
 express assent of all parts of the legisla- 
 ture. Such was the origin of private 
 bills, which occupy the greater part of 
 the rolls in Henry V. and VI. 's parlia- 
 ment. The commons once made an in- 
 effectual endeavour to have their consent 
 to all petitions presented to the council 
 in parliament rendered necessary by law ; 
 if I rightly apprehend the meaning of the 
 roll in this place, which seems obscure 
 or corrupt.* 
 
 5. If the strength of the commons had 
 lain merely in the weakness interference 
 of the crown, it might be in- of parliament 
 ferred that such harassing in- S'expendi^" 
 terference with the adminis- ture. 
 tration of affairs, as the youthful and friv- 
 olous Richard was compelled to endure, 
 would have been sternly repelled by his 
 experienced successor. But, on the con- 
 trary, the spirit of Richard might have 
 rejoiced to see that his mortal enemy 
 suffered as hard usage at the hands of 
 parliament as himself. After a few years, 
 the government of Henry became ex- 
 tremely unpopular. Perhaps his dissen- 
 sion with the great family of Percy, which 
 had placed him on the throne, and was 
 regarded with partiality by the people,! 
 chiefly contributed to this alienation of 
 their attachment. The commons re- 
 quested, in the fifth of his reign, that cer- 
 ;ain persons might be removed from the 
 court ; the lords concurred in displacing 
 bur of these, one being the king's con- 
 essor. Henry came down to parliament 
 and excused these four persons, as know- 
 'ng no special cause why they should be 
 emoved; yet, well understanding that 
 tfhat the lords and commons should or- 
 lain would be for his and his kingdom's 
 nterest, and therefore anxious to con- 
 orm himself to their wishes, consented 
 o the said ordinance, and charged the 
 )ersons in question to leave his palace ; 
 .dding that he would do as much by any 
 >ther about his person whom he should 
 nd to have incurred the ill affection of 
 is people. J It was in the same session 
 hat the Archbishop of Canterbury was 
 ommanded to declare before the lords 
 
 * 8 H. V., vol. iv., p. 127. 
 
 i The house of commons thanked the king for 
 ardoning Northumberland, whom, as it proved, 
 e had just cause to suspect. f H. IV., p, 525. 
 
 | 5 H. IV., p. 595. 
 
398 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIH. 
 
 the king's intentions respecting his ad- 
 ministration ; allowing that some things 
 had been done amiss in his court and 
 household ; and, therefore, wishing to 
 conform to the will of God and laws of 
 the land, protested that he would let in fu- 
 ture no letters of signet or privy seal go in 
 disturbance of law, beseeched the lords to 
 put his household in order, so that every 
 one might be paid, and declared that the 
 money granted by the commons for the 
 war should be received by treasurers ap- 
 pointed in parliament, and disbursed by 
 them for no other purpose, unless in case 
 of rebellion. At the request of the com- 
 mons, he named the merribers of his pri- 
 vy council ; and did the same, with some 
 variation of persons, two years afterward. 
 These, though not nominated with the 
 express consent, seem to have had the 
 approbation of the commons ; for a sub- 
 sidy is granted in 7 H. IV., among other 
 causes, for "the great trust that the 
 commons have in the lords lately chosen, 
 and ordained to be of the king's continual 
 council, that there shall be better man- 
 agement than heretofore."* 
 
 In the sixth year of Henry, the parlia- 
 ment, which Sir E. Coke derides as un- 
 learned, because lawyers were excluded 
 from it, proceeded to a resumption of 
 grants, and a prohibition of alienating the 
 ancient inheritance of the crown without 
 consent of parliament ; in order to ease 
 the commons of taxes, and that the king 
 might live on his own.f This was a fa- 
 vourite, though rather chimerical project. 
 In a later parliament, it was requested 
 that the king would take his council's ad- 
 vice how to keep within his own revenue. 
 He answered that he w r ould willingly com- 
 ply, as soon as it should be in his power.J 
 
 But no parliament came near, in the 
 number and boldness of its demands, to 
 that held in the eighth year of Henry IV. 
 The commons presented thirty-one arti- 
 cles, none of which the king ventured to 
 refuse, though pressing very severely 
 upon his prerogative. He was to name 
 sixteen counsellors, by whose advice he 
 was solely to be guided, none of them to 
 be dismissed without conviction of misde- 
 meanor. The chancellor and privy seal 
 to pass no grants or other matter, contra- 
 ry to law. Any persons about the court 
 stirring up the king or queen's minds 
 against their subjects, and duly convicted 
 thereof, to lose their offices and be fined. 
 The king's ordinary revenue was wholly 
 appropriated to his household and the 
 payment of his debts ; no grant of ward- 
 
 * Rot. Par!., v. iii ., p. 529, 568, 573. 
 
 t Id., p. 547. J 13 H. IV., p. 624. 
 
 ship or other profit to be made thereout, 
 nor any forfeiture to be pardoned. The 
 king, " considering the wise government 
 of other Christian princes, and conform- 
 ing himself thereto," was to assign two 
 days in the week for petitions, " it being 
 an honourable and necessary thing, that 
 his lieges who desired to petition him 
 should be heard." No judicial officer, 
 nor any in the revenue or household, to 
 enjoy his place for life or term of years. 
 No petition to be presented to the king 
 by any of his household at times when 
 the council were not sitting. The coun- 
 cil to determine nothing cognizable at 
 common law, unless for a reasonable 
 cause and with consent of the judges. 
 The statutes regulating purveyance were 
 affirmed ; abuses of various kinds in the 
 council and in courts of justice enumera- 
 ted and forbidden; elections of knights 
 for counties put under regulation. The 
 council and officers of state were sworn 
 to observe the common law, and all stat- 
 utes, those especially just enacted,* 
 
 It must strike every reader that these 
 provisions were of themselves a noble 
 fabric of constitutional liberty, and hardly 
 perhaps inferior to the petition of right 
 under Charles I. We cannot account for 
 the submission of Henry to conditions 
 far more derogatory than ever were im- 
 posed on Richard, because the secret 
 politics of his reign are very imperfectly 
 understood. Towards its close he man- 
 ifested more vigour. The speaker, Sir 
 Thomas Chaucer, having made the usual 
 petition for liberty of speech, the king 
 answered that he might speak as others 
 had done in the time of his (Henry's) an- 
 cestors and his own, but not otherwise ; 
 for he would by no means have any in- 
 novation, but be as much at his liberty 
 as ^ any of his ancestors had ever been. 
 Some" time after he sent a message to 
 the commons, complaining of a law pass- 
 ed at the last parliament, infringing his 
 liberty and prerogative, which he re- 
 quested their consent to repeal. To this 
 the commons agreed, and received the 
 king's thanks, who declared at the same 
 time that he would keep as much free- 
 dom and prerogative as any of his an- 
 cestors. It does not appear what was 
 the particular subject of complaint; but 
 there had been much of the same re- 
 monstrating soirit in the last parliament, 
 that was manifested on preceding occa- 
 sions. The commons, however, for rea- 
 sons we cannot explain, were rather dis- 
 mayed. Before their dissolution they 
 petition the king, that, whereas he was 
 
 "~* RotTParlTs H. IV., p. 585. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 399 
 
 reported to be offended at some of his 
 subjects in this and in the preceding par- 
 liament, he would openly declare that he 
 held them all for loyal subjects. Henry 
 granted this " of his special grace ;" and 
 thus concluded his reign more trium- 
 phantly with respect to his domestic bat- 
 tles than he had gone through it.* 
 
 Power deemed to be ill gotten is natu- 
 Henry v. rally precarious ; and the instance 
 his popu- of Henry IV. has been well quoted 
 ruy ' to prove that public liberty flour- 
 ishes with a bad title in the sovereign. 
 None of our kings seem to have been 
 less beloved ; and indeed he had little 
 claim to affection. But what men denied 
 to the reigning king, they poured in full 
 measure upon the heir of his throne. 
 The virtues of the Prince of Wales are 
 almost invidiously eulogized by those 
 parliaments who treat harshly his fa- 
 ther ;f and these records afford a strong 
 presumption that some early petulance 
 or riot has been much exaggerated by 
 the vulgar minds of our chroniclers. One 
 can scarcely understand at least, that a 
 prince, who was three years engaged in 
 quelling the dangerous insurrection of 
 Glendour, and who, in the latter time of 
 his father's reign, presided at the council, 
 was so lost in a cloud of low debauchery 
 as common fame represents. ;{: Loved 
 he certainly was throughout his life, as 
 so intrepid, affable, and generous a tem- 
 per well deserved; and this sentiment 
 was heightened to admiration by suc- 
 cesses still more rapid and dazzling than 
 those of Edward III. During his reign 
 there scarcely appears any vestige of 
 dissatisfaction in parliament ; a circum- 
 stance very honourable, whether we as- 
 cribe it to the justice of his administra- 
 tion, or to the affection of his people. 
 Perhaps two exceptions, though they are 
 rather one in spirit, might be made : the 
 first, a petition to the Duke of Glocester. 
 then holding parliament as guardian of 
 England, that he would move the king 
 and queen to return, as speedily as might 
 please them, in relief and comfort of the 
 commons ; the second, a request that 
 their petitions might not be sent to the 
 king beyond sea, but altogether deter- 
 mined " within this kingdom of England 
 during this parliament;" and that this 
 ordinance might be of force in all future 
 parliaments to be held in England. || This 
 
 * 13 H. IV., p. 648, 658. 
 
 f Rot. Parl , vol. iii., p. 549, 568, 574, 611. 
 
 j This passage was written before I was aware 
 that the same opinion had been elaborately main- 
 tained by Mr. Luders, in one of his valuable essays 
 upon points of constitutional history. 
 
 $ 8 H. V,, vol. iv., p. 125. |] Id. ibid., p. 128. 
 
 prayer, to which the guardian declined to 
 accede, evidently sprang from the appre- 
 hensions, excited in their minds by the 
 treaty of Troyes, that England might be- 
 come a province of the French crown, 
 which led them to obtain a renewal of 
 the statute of Edward III., declaring the 
 independence of this kingdom.* 
 
 It has been seen already, that even 
 Edward III. consulted his par- Parliament 
 liament upon the expediency consulted 
 of negotiations for peace ; aj i public 
 though at that time the com- affair8 ' 
 mons had not acquired boldness enough 
 to tender their advice. In Richard II. 's 
 reign they answered to a similar propo- 
 sition with a little more confidence, that 
 the dangers each way were so considera- 
 ble they dared not decide, though an hon- 
 ourable peace would be the greatest com- 
 fort they could have ; and concluded by 
 hoping that the king would not engage to 
 do homage for Calais or the conquered 
 country.f The parliament of the tenth 
 of his reign was expressly summoned in 
 order to advise concerning the king's 
 intended expedition beyond sea ; a great 
 council, which had previously been as- 
 sembled at Oxford, having declared their 
 ncompetence to consent to this measure 
 without the advice of parliament. J Yet 
 a few years afterward, on a similar ref- 
 rence, the commons rather declined to 
 give any opinion. They confirmed the 
 eague of Henry V. with the Emperor 
 Sigismund.|| And the treaty of Troyes, 
 which was so fundamentally to change 
 the situation of Henry and his successors, 
 obtained, as it evidently required, the 
 sanction of both houses of parliament. ^f 
 These precedents conspiring with the 
 weakness of the executive government, 
 in the minority of Henry VI., to fling an 
 increase of influence into the scale of 
 the commons, they made their concur- 
 rence necessary to all important business, 
 both of a foreign and domestic nature. 
 Thus commissioners were appointed to 
 treat of the deliverance of the King of 
 Scots, the dutchesses of Bedford and Glo- 
 cester were made denizens, and mediators 
 were appointed to reconcile the dukes of 
 Glocester and .Burgundy, by authority 
 of the three estates assembled in parlia- 
 ment.** Leave was given to the dukes 
 of Bedford and Glocester, and others in 
 the king's behalf, to treat of peace with 
 France, by both houses of parliament, in 
 
 * 8 H. V., vol. iv.. p. 130. 
 
 t 7 R. II., vol. iii., p. 170. $ Id. ibid., p. 215. 
 
 $ 17 R. II., p. 315. 
 
 II 4 H. V., vol. iv., p. 98. t Id. ibid., p. 135, 
 
 ** Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 211, 242, 277. 
 
400 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 pursuance of an article in the treaty of 
 Troyes, that no treaty should be set on 
 foot with the dauphin without consent 
 of the three estates of both realms.* 
 This article was afterward repealed. f 
 
 Some complaints are made by the 
 commons, even during the first years of 
 Henry's minority, that the king's subjects 
 underwent arbitrary imprisonment, and 
 were vexed by summonses before the 
 council, and by the newly-invented writ 
 of subpoena out of chancery. J But these 
 are not so common as formerly ; and, so 
 far as the rolls lead us to any inference, 
 there was less injustice committed by the 
 government under Henry VI. and his 
 father than at any former period. Waste- 
 fulness indeed might justly be imputed to 
 the regency, who had scandalously lav- 
 ished the king's revenue. This ulti- 
 mately led to an act for resuming all 
 grants since his accession, founded upon 
 a public declaration of the great officers 
 of the crown, that his debts amounted to 
 372,000, and the annual expense of the 
 household to .24,000, while the ordinary 
 revenue was not more than 5000. || 
 
 6. But before this time the sky had be- 
 gun to darken, and discontent with the 
 actual administration pervaded every 
 rank. The causes of this are familiar; 
 impeachments the unpopularity of the king's 
 of ministers, marriage with Margaret of 
 Anjou, and her impolitic violence in the 
 conduct of affairs, particularly the impu- 
 ted murder of the people's favourite, the 
 Duke of Glocester. This provoked an 
 attack upon her own creature, the Duke 
 of Suffolk. Impeachment had lain still, 
 like a sword in the scabbard, since the 
 accession of Henry IV. ; when the com- 
 mons, though not preferring formal arti- 
 cles of accusation, had petitioned the 
 king that Justice Rickhill, who had been 
 employed to take the Duke of Gloces- 
 ter's confession at Calais, and the lords 
 appellants of Richard II. 's 4ast parlia- 
 ment, should be put on their defence be- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 371. 
 
 t 23 H. VI., vol. v., p. 102. There is rather a 
 curious instance in 3 H. VI., of the jealousy with 
 which the commons regarded any proceedings in 
 parliament, where they were not concerned. A 
 controversy arose between the earls marshal and 
 of Warwick respecting their precedence ; founded 
 upon the royal blood of the first, and long posses- 
 sion of the second. In this the commons could 
 not affect to interfere judicially ; but they found a 
 singular way of meddling, by petitioning the king 
 to confer the dukedom of Norfolk on the earl 
 marshal, vol. iv., p. 273. 
 
 } Rot. Parl., 1 H. VI., p. 189. 3 H, VI., p. 292. 
 8 H. VI., p. 343. 
 
 6 Id., vol. v., 18 H. VI., p. 17. 
 
 II Id. ibid., 28 H. VI., p. 185. 
 
 fore the lords.* In Suffolk's case, the 
 commons seem to have proceeded by bill 
 of attainder, or at least to have designed 
 the judgment against that minister to be 
 the act of the whole legislature. For 
 they delivered a bill containing articles 
 against him to the lords, with a request 
 that they would pray the king's majesty 
 to enact that bill in parliament, and that 
 the said duke might be proceeded against 
 upon the said articles in parliament ac 
 cording to the law and custom of Eng- 
 land. These articles contained charges 
 of high treason; chiefly relating to his 
 conduct in France, which, whether trea- 
 sonable or not, seems to have been gross- 
 ly against the honour and advantage of 
 the crown. At a later day, the commons 
 presented many other articles of misde- 
 meanor. To the former he made a de- 
 fence, in presence of the king as" well 
 as the lords, both spiritual and temporal ; 
 and indeed the articles of impeachment 
 were directly addressed to the king, 
 which gave him a reasonable pretext to 
 interfere in the judgment. But, from ap- 
 prehension, as it is said, that Suffolk 
 could not escape conviction upon at least 
 some part of these charges, Henry anti- 
 cipated with no slight irregularity the 
 course of legal trial ; and summoning the 
 peers into a private chamber, informed 
 the Duke of Suffolk, by mouth of his 
 chancellor, that, inasmuch as he had not 
 put himself upon his peerage, but submit- 
 ted wholly to the royal pleasure, the king, 
 acquitting him of the first articles contain- 
 ing matter of treason, by his own advice, 
 and not that of the lords, nor by way of 
 judgment, not being in a place where 
 judgment could be delivered, banished 
 him for five years from his dominions. 
 The lords then present besought the king 
 to let their protest appear on record, that 
 neither they nor their posterity might 
 lose their rights of peerage by this prece- 
 dent. It was justly considered as an ar- 
 bitrary stretch of prerogative, in order to 
 defeat the privileges of parliament, and 
 screen a favourite minister from punish- 
 ment. But the course of proceeding by 
 bill of attainder, instead of regular im- 
 peachment, was not judiciously chosen 
 by the commons.! 
 
 7. Privilege of parliament, an extensive 
 and singular branch of our con- privilege of 
 stitutional law, begins to attract Parliament, 
 attention under the Lancastrian princes. 
 It is true indeed, that we can trace long 
 before by records, and may infer with 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 430, 449. 
 
 * 28 H. VI., vol. v., p. 176. 
 
PAR? JII.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 401 
 
 probability as to times whose records 
 have not survived, one considerable im- 
 munity, a freedom from arrest for persons 
 transacting the king's business in his na- 
 tional council.* Several authorities may 
 be found in Mr. Hatsell's precedents ; of 
 which one, in the 9th of Edward II., is 
 conclusive. f But in those rude times, 
 members of parliament were not always 
 respected by the officers executing legal 
 process, and still less by the violators of 
 law. After several remonstrances, which 
 the crown had evaded,! the commons ob- 
 tained the statute 11 H. VI., c. 11, for 
 the punishment of such as assault any on 
 their way to the parliament, giving double 
 damages to the party. They had more 
 difficulty in establishing, notwithstanding 
 the old precedents in their favour, an im- 
 munity from all criminal process, except 
 in charges of treason, felony, and breach 
 of the peace, which is their present 
 measure of privilege. The truth was, 
 that with a right pretty clearly recog- 
 nised, as is admitted by the judges in 
 Thorp's case, the house of commons had 
 no regular compulsory process at their 
 command. In the cases of Lark, servant 
 of a member, in the 8th of Henry VI., || 
 and of Clerke, himself a burgess, in the 
 39th of the same king,^[ it was thought 
 necessary to effect their release from a 
 civil execution by special acts of parlia- 
 ment. The commons, in a former in- 
 stance, endeavoured to make the law 
 general, that no members nor their ser- 
 vants might be taken, except for treason, 
 felony, and breach of peace ; but the king 
 put a negative upon this part of their pe- 
 tition. 
 
 The most celebrated, however, of these 
 early cases of privilege is that of Thomas 
 Thorp, speaker of the commons in 31 H. 
 VI. This person, who was moreover a 
 baron of the exchequer, had been impris- 
 oned on an execution at suit of the Duke 
 of York. The commons sent some of 
 their members to complain of a violation 
 of privilege to the king and lords in par- 
 
 * If this were to rest upon antiquity of prece- 
 dent, one might be produced that would challenge 
 all competition. In the laws of Ethelbert, the first 
 Christian king of Kent, at the end of the sixth cen- 
 tury, we find this provision: " If the king call his 
 people to him (i. e. in the wittenagemot), and any 
 one does an injury to one of them, let him pay a 
 fine." Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxon., p. 2. 
 
 + Hatsell, vol. i., p. 12. 
 
 \ Rot. Parl., 5 H. IV., p. 541. 
 
 t) The clergy had got a little precedence in this. 
 An act passed 8 H. VI., c. 1, granting privilege 
 from arrest for themselves and servants on their 
 way to convocation. 
 
 II Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 357. 
 
 f Id., vol.v., p. 374. 
 C C 
 
 liament, and to demand Thorp's release. 
 It was alleged by the Duke of York's 
 council, that the trespass done by Thorp 
 was since the beginning of the parlia- 
 ment, and the judgment thereon given in 
 time of vacation, and not during the sit- 
 ting. The lords referred the question to 
 the' judges, who said, after deliberation, 
 that " they ought not to answer to that 
 question, for it hath not be used afore- 
 tyme, that the judges should in any wise 
 determine the privilege of this high court 
 of parliament; for it is so high and so 
 mighty in his nature, that it may make 
 law, and that that is law it may make no 
 law; and the determination and knowl- 
 edge of that privilege belongeth to the 
 lords of the parliament, and not to the 
 justices." They went on, however, after 
 observing that a general writ of superse- 
 deas of all processes upon ground of 
 privilege had not been known, to say, 
 that, " if any person that is a member of 
 this high court of parliament be arrested 
 in such cases as be not for treason or fel- 
 ony, or surety of the peace, or for a con- 
 demnation had before the parliament, it 
 is used that all such persons should be 
 released of such arrests and make an at- 
 torney, so that they may have their free- 
 dom and liberty, freely to intend upon the 
 parliament." 
 
 Notwithstanding this answer of the 
 judges, it was concluded by the lords 
 that Thorp should remain in prison, with- 
 out regarding the alleged privilege ; and 
 the commons were directed in the king's 
 name to proceed " with all goodJy haste 
 and speed" to the election of a new 
 speaker. It is curious to observe, that 
 the commons, forgetting their grievances, 
 or content to drop them, made such haste 
 and speed according to this command, 
 that they presented a new speaker for ap- 
 probation the next day.* 
 
 This case, as has been strongly said, 
 was begotten by the iniquity of the times. 
 The state was verging fast towards civil 
 war; and Thorp, who afterward distin- 
 guished himself for the Lancastrian cause, 
 was an inveterate enemy of the Duke of 
 York. That prince seems to have been 
 swayed a little from his usual temper in 
 procuring so unwarrantable a determina- 
 tion. In the reign 6f Edward IV., the 
 commons claimed privilege against any 
 civil suit during the time-of their session ; 
 but they had recourse, as before, to a 
 particular act of parliament to obtain a 
 writ of supersedeas in favour of one At- 
 well, a member, who had been sued. 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. v., p. 239. Hatsell's Prece- 
 dents, p. 29. 
 
402 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 
 [CHAP. VJ1I. 
 
 The present law of privilege seems not 
 to have been fully established, or at least 
 effectually maintained, before the reign 
 of Henry VIII.* 
 
 No privilege of the commons can be 
 so fundamental as liberty of speech. 
 This is claimed at the opening of every 
 parliament by their speaker, and could 
 never be infringed without shaking the 
 ramparts of the constitution. Richard 
 II. 's attack upon Haxey has been already 
 mentioned as a flagrant evidence of his 
 despotic intentions. No other case oc- 
 curs until the 33d year of Henry VI., 
 when Thomas Young, member for Bris- 
 tol, complained to the commons, that, 
 " for matters by him shewed in the house 
 accustomed for the commons in the said 
 parliaments, he was therefore taken, ar- 
 rested, and rigorously in open wise led 
 to the Tower of London, and there griev- 
 ously in great duress long time impris- 
 oned against the said freedom and liber- 
 ty," with much more to the like effect. 
 The commons transmitted this petition 
 to the lords, and the king " willed that 
 the lords of his council do and provide 
 for the said suppliant, as in their discre- 
 tion shall be thought convenient and rea- 
 sonable." This imprisonment of Young, 
 however, had happened six years before, 
 in consequence of a motion made by him, 
 that the king then having no issue, the 
 Duke of York might be declared heir-ap- 
 parent to the crown. In the present ses- 
 sion, when the duke was protector, he 
 thought it well-timed to prefer his claim 
 to remuneration. f 
 
 There is a remarkable precedent in the 
 9th of Henry IV., and perhaps the earliest 
 authority for two eminent maxims of par- 
 liamentary law ; that the commons pos- 
 sess an exclusive right of originating 
 money bills, and that the king ought not 
 to take notice of matters pending in par- 
 liament. A quarrel broke out between 
 the two houses upon this ground ; and as 
 we have not before seen the commons 
 venture to clash openly with their supe- 
 riors, the circumstance is for this addi- 
 tional reason worthy of attention. As it 
 has been little noticed, I shall translate 
 the whole record. 
 
 " Friday, the second day of December, 
 which was the last day of the parliament, 
 the commons came before the king and 
 the lords in parliament, and there, by 
 
 * Upon this subject the reader should have re- 
 course to Hatsell's Precedents, vol. i., chap. i. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. v., p. 337. W. Worcester, p. 
 475. Mr. Hatsell seems to have overlooked this 
 case, for he mentions that of Strickland, in 1571, as 
 the earliest instance of the crown's interference 
 with freedom of speech in parliament, vol. i., p. 85. 
 
 command of the king, a schedule of in- 
 demnity touching a certain altercation 
 moved between the lords and commons 
 was read ; and on this it was command- 
 ed by our said lord the king, that the 
 said schedule should be entered of record 
 in the roll of parliament ; of which sched- 
 ule the tenour is as follows : be it remem- 
 bered, that on Monday, the 21st day of 
 November, the king our sovereign lord 
 being in the council-chamber in the ab- 
 bey of Glocester,* the lords spiritual and 
 temporal for this present parliament as- 
 sembled being then in his presence, a 
 debate took place among them about the 
 state of the kingdom, and its defence to 
 resist the malice of the enemies who on 
 every side prepare to molest the said 
 kingdom and its faithful subjects, and 
 how no man can resist this malice, un- 
 less, for the safeguard and defence of his 
 said kingdom, our sovereign lord the king 
 has some notable aid and subsidy granted 
 to him in his present parliament. And 
 therefore it was demanded of the said 
 lords by way of question, what aid would 
 be sufficient and requisite in these cir- 
 cumstances ] To which question it was 
 answered by the said lords severally, that, 
 considering the necessity of the king on 
 one side, and the poverty of his people 
 on the other, no less aid could be suffi- 
 cient than one tenth and a half from 
 cities and towns, and one fifteenth and a 
 half from all other lay persons ; and be- 
 sides, to grant a continuance of the sub- 
 sidy on wool, woolfells, and leather, and 
 of three shillings on the tun (of wine), 
 and twelve pence on the pound (of other 
 merchandise), from Michaelmas next en- 
 suing for two years thenceforth. Where- 
 upon, by command of our said lord the 
 king, a message was sent to the com- 
 mons of this parliament, to cause a cer- 
 tain number of their body to come before 
 our said lord the king and the lords, in 
 order to hear and report to their com- 
 panions what they should be commanded 
 by our said lord the king. And upon this 
 the said commons sent into the presence 
 of our said lord the king and the said 
 lords twelve of their companions; to 
 whom, by command of our said lord the 
 king, the said question was declared, 
 with the answer by the said lords sever- 
 ally given to it. Which answer it was 
 the pleasure of our said lord the king, 
 that they should report to the rest of 
 their fellows, to the end that they might 
 take the shortest course to comply with 
 the intention of the said lords. Which 
 
 This parliament sat at Glocester. 
 
PART III.} 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 403 
 
 report being thus made to the said com- 
 mons, they were greatly disturbed at it, 
 saying and asserting it to be much to the 
 prejudice and derogation of their liber- 
 ties. And after that our said lord the 
 king had heard this, not willing that any 
 thing should be done at present, or in 
 time to come, that might anywise turn 
 against the liberty of the estate, for 
 which they are come to parliament, nor 
 against the liberties of the said lords, 
 wills, and grants, and declares, by the ad- 
 vice and consent of the said lords, as fol- 
 lows ; to wit, that it shall be lawful for 
 the lords to debate together in this pres- 
 ent parliament, and in every other for 
 time to come, in the king's absence, con- 
 cerning the condition of the kingdom, 
 and the remedies necessary for it. And 
 in like manner it shall be lawful for the 
 commons, on their part, to debate to- 
 gether concerning the said condition and 
 remedies. Provided always, that neither 
 the lords on their part, nor the commons 
 on theirs, do make any report to our said 
 lord the king of any grant granted by the 
 commons, and agreed to by the lords, nor 
 of the communications of the said grant, 
 before that the said lords and commons 
 are of one accord and agreement in this 
 matter, and then in manner and form ac- 
 customed, that is to say, by the mouth of 
 the speaker of the said commons for the 
 time being, to the end that the said lords 
 and commons may have what they desire 
 (avoir puissent leur gree) of our said 
 lord the king. Our said lord the king 
 willing, moreover, by the consent of the 
 said lords, that the communication had 
 in this present parliament as above be 
 not drawn into precedent in time to 
 come, nor be turned to the prejudice or 
 derogation of the liberty of the estate, for 
 which the said commons are now come, 
 neither in this present parliament, nor in 
 any other time to come. But wills that 
 himself, and all the other estates, should 
 be as free as they were before. Also, 
 the said last day of parliament, the said 
 speaker prayed our said lord the king on 
 the part of the said commons, that he 
 would grant the said commons, that they 
 should depart in as great liberty as other 
 commons had done before. To which 
 the king answered, that this pleased him 
 well, and that at all times it had been his 
 desire."* 
 
 Every attentive reader will discover 
 this remarkable passage to illustrate sev- 
 eral points of constitutional law. For 
 hence it may be perceived : first, that 
 
 * Rot. Parl., v. iii., p. 611. 
 C c2 
 
 the king was used in those times to be 
 present at debates of the lords, personal* 
 ty advising with them upon the public 
 business; which also appears by many 
 other passages on record ; and this prac- 
 tice, I conceive, is not abolished by the 
 king's present declaration, save as to 
 _rants of money, which ought to be of 
 the free-will of parliament, and without 
 that fear or influence which the pres- 
 ence of so high a person might create : 
 secondly, that it was already the estab- 
 lished law of parliament, that the lords 
 should consent to the commons' grant, 
 and not the commons to the lords ; since 
 it is the inversion of this order whereof 
 the commons complain, and it is said ex- 
 pressly that grants are made by the com- 
 mons, and agreed by the lords : thirdly, 
 that the lower house of parliament is 
 not, in proper language, an estate of the 
 realm, but rather the image and repre- 
 sentative of the commons of England ; 
 who, being the third estate, with the no- 
 bility and clergy, make up and constitute 
 the people of this kingdom and liege sub- 
 jects of the crown.* 
 
 * A notion is entertained by many people, and 
 not without the authority of some very respecta- 
 ble names, that the king is one of the three estates 
 of the realm, the lords spiritual and temporal 
 forming together the second, as the commons in 
 parliament do the third. This is contradicted by 
 the general tenour of our ancient records and law- 
 books ; and indeed the analogy of other govern- 
 ments ought to have the greatest weight, even if 
 more reason for doubt appeared upon the face of 
 our own authorities. But the instances where the 
 three estates are declared or implied to be the no- 
 bility, clergy, and commons, or at least their rep>- 
 resentatives in parliament, are too numerous for 
 insertion. This land standeth, says the Chancel- 
 lor Stillington, in 7th Edward IV., by three states, 
 and above that one principal, that is, to wit, lords 
 spiritual, lords temporal, and commons, and over 
 that, state royal, as our sovereign lord the king. 
 Rot. Parl., vol. v., p. 622. Thus too it is declared 
 that the treaty of Staples in 1492 was to be con- 
 firmed per tres status regni Angliae rite et debite 
 convocatos, videlicet per prelates et clerum, nobi- 
 les et communitates ejusdem regni. Rymer, t. 
 xii., p. 508. 
 
 I will not, however, suppress one passage, and 
 the only instance that has occurred in my reading, 
 where the king does appear to have been reckoned 
 among the three estates. The commons say, in 
 the 2d of Henry IV., that the states of the realm 
 may be compared to a trinity, that is, the king, the 
 lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons. 
 Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 459. In this expression, 
 however, the sense shows, that by estates of the 
 realm they meant members, or necessary parts of 
 the parliament. 
 
 Whitelocke, on the Parliamentary Writ, vol. ii., 
 p. 43, argues at length, that the three estates are 
 king, lords, and commons, which seems to have 
 been a current doctrine among the popular lawyers 
 of the seventeenth century. His reasoning is 
 chiefly grounded on .the baronial tenure of bishops, 
 the validity of acts passed against their consent, 
 
404 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII, 
 
 At the next meeting of parliament, in 
 allusion probably to this disagreement 
 between the houses, the king told them, 
 that the states of parliament were come 
 together for the common profit of the 
 king and kingdom, and for unanimity's 
 sake and general consent ; and therefore 
 he was sure the commons would not at- 
 tempt nor say any thing but what should 
 be fitting and conducive to unanimity; 
 commanding them to meet together, and 
 communicate for the public service.* 
 
 It was not only in money bills that the 
 originating power was supposed to reside 
 in the commons. The course of pro- 
 ceedings in parliament, as has been 
 seen, from the couimencement at least 
 of Edward III.'s reign, was that the 
 commons presented petitions, which the 
 lords by themselves, or with the assist- 
 ance of the council, having duly consid- 
 ered, the sanction of the king was noti- 
 fied or withheld. This was so much ac- 
 cording to usage, that, on one occasion, 
 when the commons requested the advice 
 of the other house on a matter before 
 them, it was answered, that the ancient 
 custom and form of parliament had ever 
 been for the commons to report their 
 own opinion to the king and lords, and 
 not to the contrary ; and the king would 
 have the ancient and laudable usages of 
 parliament maintained.! It is singular 
 that, in the terror of innovation, the lords 
 did not discover how materially this 
 usage of parliament took off from their 
 own legislative influence. The rule, 
 
 and other arguments of the same kind ; which 
 might go to prove that there are only at present 
 two estates, but can never turn the king into 
 one. 
 
 The source of this error is an inattention to the 
 primary sense of the word estate (status), which 
 means an order or condition into which men are 
 classed by the institutions of society. It is only in 
 a secondary, or rather an elliptical applicatiqp, that 
 it can be referred to their representatives in parlia- 
 ment or national councils. The lords temporal, 
 indeed, of England are identical with the estate 
 of the nobility ; but the house of commons is not, 
 strictly speaking, the estate of commonalty, to 
 which its members belong, and from which they 
 are deputed. So the whole body of the clergy are 
 properly speaking one of the estates, and are de- 
 scribed as such in the older authorities, 21 Ric. 
 II., Rot. Parl., v. iii., p. 348, though latterly the 
 lords spiritual in parliament acquired, with less 
 correctness, that appellation. Hody on Convoca- 
 tions, p. 426. The bishops, indeed, may be said 
 constructively to represent the whole of the cler- 
 gy, with whose grievances they are supposed to be 
 best acquainted, and whose rights it is their pecu- 
 liar duty to defend. And I do not find that the in- 
 ferior clergy had any other representation in the 
 cortes of Castile and Aragon, where the ecclesi- 
 astical order was always counted among the es- 
 tates of the realm. 
 
 * P. 623. t Rot. Parl., 5 R. II., p. 100. 
 
 however, was not observed in succeed- 
 ing times ; bills originated indiscrimi- 
 nately in either house ; and indeed some 
 acts of Henry V., which do not appear 
 to be grounded on any petition, may be 
 suspected, from the manner of their in- 
 sertion in the rolls of parliament, to have 
 been proposed on the king's part to the 
 commons.* But there is one manifest 
 instance in the 18th of Henry VI., where 
 the king requested the commons to give 
 their authority to such regulations! as 
 his council might have provided for re- 
 dressing the abuse of purveyance; to 
 which they assented. 
 
 If we are to choose constitutional pre- 
 cedents from seasons of tranquillity rath- 
 er than disturbance, which surely is the 
 only means of preserving justice or con- 
 
 * Stat. 2 H. V., c. 6, 7, 8, 9. 4 H. VI., c. 7. 
 
 f Rot. Parl., vol. v., p. 7. It appears by a case 
 in the year-book of the thirty-third of Henry VI., 
 that, where the lords made only some minor alter- 
 ations in a bill sent up to them from the commons, 
 even if it related to a grant of money, the custom 
 was not to remand it for their assent to the amend- 
 ment. Brooke's Abridgment : Parliament. 4. 
 The passage is worth extracting, in order to illus- 
 trate the course of proceeding in parliament at 
 that time. Case fuit que Sir J. P. fuit attaint de 
 certeyn trespas par acte de parliament, dont les 
 commons furerit assentus, quesil ne vient eins per 
 tiel jour que il forfeytera tiel summe, et les seign- 
 eurs done plus longe jour, et le bil nient rebaile al 
 commons arrere ; et per Kirby, clerk des roles del 
 parliament, 1'use del parliament est, que si bil 
 vient primes a les commons, et ils passent ceo, il 
 est use d'endorser ceo en tiel forme ; Soit bayle as 
 seigniors ; et si les seigniors ne le roy ne alteront le 
 bil, donques est use a liverer ceo al clerke del par- 
 liament destre enrol saunz endorser ceo . . . Et si 
 es seigniors volent alter un bil in ceo que poet es- 
 toye ore le bil, ils poyent saunz remandre ceo al 
 commons, come si les commons graunte poundage 
 pur quatuor ans, et les grantent nisi par deux ans, 
 ceo ne serra rebayle al commons ; mes si les com- 
 mons grauntent nisi pur deux ans, et les seigneurs 
 pur quatre ans, la ceo serra reliver al commons, et 
 ;n cest case les seigniors doyent faire un sedule de 
 our intent, ou d'endorser le bil en ceste forme, 
 Les seigneurs ceo assentent pur durer par quatuor 
 ans ; et quant les commons ount le bil arrere, et ne 
 volent assenter a ceo, ceo ne poet estre un actre, 
 mes si les commons volent assenter, donques ils 
 ndorse leur respons sur le mergent ne basse deins 
 e bil en tiel forme, Les commons sont ass.entans al 
 sedul des seigniors, a mesme cesty bil annexe, et 
 donques sera bayle ad clerke del parliament, ut 
 supra. Et si un bil soit primes liver al seigniors, 
 et le bil passe eux, ils ne usont de fayre ascun en- 
 dorsement, mess de mitter le bil as commons, et 
 donques si le bil passe les commons, il est use 
 destre issint endorce, Les commons sont assent- 
 ants, et ceo prove que il ad passe les seigniors de- 
 vant, et lour assent est a cest passer del seigniors ; 
 et ideo cest acte supra nest bon, pur ceo que ne 
 fuit rebaile as commons. 
 
 A singular assertion is made in the year-book 21 
 E. IV., p. 48 (Maynard's edit.), that a subsidy 
 granted by the commons without assent of the 
 peers is good enough. This cannot surely have 
 been law at that time. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 sistency, but little intrinsic authority can 
 be given to the following declaration of 
 parliamentary law in the llth of Richarc 
 II. "In this parliament (the roll says) 
 all the lords as well spiritual and tem- 
 poral there present, claimed as their lib- 
 erty and privilege, that the great matters 
 moved in this parliament, and to be moved 
 in other parliaments for time to come, 
 touching the peers of the land, should be 
 treated, adjudged, and debated according 
 to the course of parliament, and not by 
 the civil law, nor the common law of the 
 land, used in the other lower courts of 
 the kingdom ; which claim, liberty, and 
 privileges, the king graciously allowed 
 and granted them in full parliament." 1 
 It should be remembered that this asser- 
 tion of paramount privilege was made in 
 very irregular times, when the king was 
 at the mercy of the Duke of Glocester 
 and his associates, and that it had a view 
 to the immediate object of justifying their 
 violent proceedings against the opposite 
 party, and taking away the restraint of 
 the common law. It stands as a danger- 
 ous rock to be avoided, not a lighthouse 
 to guide us along the channel. The law 
 of parliament, as determined by regular 
 custom, is incorporated into our constitu- 
 tion ; but not so as to warrant an indef- 
 inite, uncontrollable assumption of pow- 
 er in any case, least of all in judicial pro- 
 cedure, where the form and the essence 
 of justice are inseparable from each oth- 
 er. And, in fact, this claim of the lords, 
 whatever gloss Sir E. Coke may put upon 
 it, was never intended to bear any rela- 
 tion to the privileges of the lower house. 
 I should not perhaps have noticed this 
 passage so strongly if it had not been 
 made the basis of extravagant assertions 
 as to the privileges of parliament ;f the 
 spirit of which exaggerations might not 
 be ill adapted to the times wherein Sir E. 
 Coke lived, though I think they produced 
 at several later periods no slight mis- 
 chief, some consequences of which we 
 may still have to experience. 
 The want of all judicial authority, ei- 
 
 Contested tner *? i ssue process or to exam- 
 elections ine witnesses, together with the 
 
 howde- usua l shortness Of Sessions, de- 
 termined. , ., - - 
 
 pnved the house of commons of 
 what is now considered one of its most 
 fundamental privileges, the cognizance 
 of disputed elections. Upon a false re- 
 turn by the sheriff, there was no remedy 
 but through the king or his council. Six 
 instances only, I believe, occur during the 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 244. 
 i Coke'a 4th Institute, p. 15. 
 
 reigns of the Plantagenet family, where- 
 in the misconduct or mistake of the sher- 
 iff is recorded to have called for a spe- 
 cific animadversion, though it was fre- 
 quently the ground of general complaint, 
 and even of some statutes. The first is 
 in the 12th of Edward II., when a petition 
 was presented to the council against a 
 false return for the county of Devon, the 
 petitioner having been duly elected. It 
 was referred to the court of exchequer 
 to summon the sheriff before them.* The 
 next occurs in the 36th of E. III., when 
 a writ was directed to the sheriff of Lan- 
 cashire, after the dissolution of parlia- 
 ment, to inquire at the county-court into 
 the validity of the election ; and upon his 
 neglect, a second writ issued to the jus- 
 tices of the peace to satisfy themselves 
 about this in the best manner they could, 
 and report the truth into chancery. This 
 inquiry after the dissolution was on ac- 
 count of the wages for attendance, to 
 which the knights unduly returned could 
 have no pretence. f We find a third case 
 in the 7th of Richard II., when the king 
 took notice that Thomas de Camoys, 
 who was summoned by writ to the house 
 of peers, had been elected knight for 
 Surry, and directed the sheriff to return 
 another.;}: In the same year, the town of 
 Shaftsbury petitioned the king, lords, and 
 commons against a false return of the 
 sheriff of Dorset, and prayed them to or- 
 der remedy. Nothing further appears re- 
 specting this petition. This is the first 
 instance of the commons being noticed 
 in matters of election. But the next 
 case is more material : in the 5th of Hen- 
 ry IV., the commons prayed the king and 
 lords in parliament, that because the writ 
 of summons to parliament was not suffi- 
 ciently returned by the sheriff of Rut- 
 iand, this matter might be examined in 
 parliament, and in case of default found 
 therein, an exemplary punishment might 
 3e inflicted ; whereupon the lords sent 
 for the sheriff and Oneby, the knight re- 
 turned, as well as for Thorp, who had been 
 duly elected, and having examined into 
 ;he facts of the case, directed the return to 
 be amended, by the insertion of Thorp's 
 name, and committed the sheriff to the 
 Fleet, till he should pay a fine at the 
 ting's pleasure. || The last passage that 
 [ can produce is from the roll of 18 H. 
 VI., where " it is considered by the king, 
 with the advice and assent of the lords 
 
 * Glanvil's Reports of Elections, edit. 1774. In- 
 roduction, p, 12. f 4 Prynne, p. 261. 
 
 t Glanvil*s Reports, ibid., from Prynne. 
 $ Id. ibid. 
 II Ibid., and Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 530. 
 
406 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAt>. VIII. 
 
 spiritual and temporal," that whereas no 
 knights have been returned for Cam- 
 bridgeshire, the sheriff shall be directed, 
 by another writ, to hold a court and to 
 proceed to an election,* proclaiming that 
 no person shall come armed, nor any tu- 
 multuous proceeding take place; some- 
 thing of which sort appears to have ob- 
 structed the execution of the first writ. 
 It is to be noticed that the commons are 
 not so much as named in this entry.* 
 But several provisions were made by stat- 
 ute under the Lancastrian kings, when 
 seats in parliament became much more 
 an object of competition than before, to 
 check the partiality of the sheriffs in ma- 
 king undue returns. One act (11 H. IV., 
 c. 1) gives the justices of assize power 
 to inquire into this matter, and inflicts a 
 penalty of one hundred pounds on the 
 sheriff. Another (6 H. VI., c. 4) miti- 
 gates the rigour of the former, so far as 
 to permit the sheriff or the knights re- 
 turned by him to traverse the inquests 
 before the justices ; that is, to be heard 
 in their own defence, which, it seems, 
 had not been permitted to them. An- 
 other (23 H. VI., c. 14) gives an addi- 
 tional penalty upon false returns to the 
 party aggrieved. These statutes con- 
 spire with many other testimonies to 
 manifest the rising importance of the 
 house of commons, and the eagerness 
 with which gentlemen of landed estates 
 (whatever might be the case in petty 
 boroughs) sought for a share in the na- 
 tional representation. 
 
 Whoever may have been the original 
 in whom voters for county representa- 
 
 louSfor 0f tives ' the first s ^tute that regu- 
 knights re- lates their election, so far from 
 sided. limiting the privilege to tenants 
 in capite, appears to place it upon a very 
 large and democratical foundation. For 
 (as I rather conceive, though not without 
 much hesitation), not only all freeholders, 
 but all persons whatever present at the 
 county-court, were declared or rendered 
 capable of voting for the knight of their 
 shire. Such at least seems to be the 
 inference from the expressions of 7 H. 
 IV., c. 15, " all who are there present, as 
 well suiters duly summoned for that 
 cause as others,"! And this acquires 
 
 * Rot. Pad., vol. v., p. 7. 
 
 t 3 Prynne's Register, p, 187. This hypothesis, 
 though embraced by Prynne, is, I confess, much 
 opposed to general opinion ; and a very respectable 
 living writer treats such an interpretation of the 
 statute 7 H. IV. as .chimerical. The words cited 
 in the text "as others," mean only, according to 
 him, suiters not duly summoned. Heywood on 
 Elections, yol. i., p. 20. But, as I presume, the 
 aummons to freeholders was by general proclama- 
 
 some degree of confirmation from the 
 later statute, 8 H. VI., c. 7, which, re- 
 citing that " elections of knights of shires 
 have now of late been made by very 
 great, outrageous, and excessive number 
 of people dwelling within the same coun- 
 ties, of the which most part was people 
 of small substance and of no value," con- 
 fines the elective franchise to freeholders 
 of lands or tenements to the value of 
 forty shillings. 
 
 The representation of towns in parlia- 
 ment was founded upon two Elections of 
 principles ; of consent to public Burgesses, 
 burdens and of advice in public meas- 
 ures, especially such as related to trade 
 and shipping. Upon both these accounts 
 it was natural for the kings who first 
 summoned them to parliament, little fore- 
 seeing that such half-emancipated burgh- 
 ers would ever clip the loftiest plumes 
 of their prerogative, to make these as- 
 semblies numerous, and summon mem- 
 bers from every town of consideration 
 in the kingdom. Thus the writ of 23 E. 
 I. directs the sheriffs to cause deputies 
 to be elected to a general council from 
 every city, borough, and trading town. 
 And although the last words are omitted 
 in subsequent writs, yet their spirit was 
 preserved ; many towns having constant- 
 ly returned members to parliament by 
 regular summonses from the sheriffs, 
 which were no chartered boroughs, nor 
 had apparently any other claim than their 
 populousness or commerce. These are 
 now called boroughs by prescription.* 
 
 tion ; so that it is not easy to perceive what, differ- 
 ence there could be between summoned and un- 
 summoned suiters. And if the words are supposed 
 to glance at the private summonses to a few friends, 
 by means of which the sheriffs were accustomed 
 to procure a clandestine election, one can hardly 
 imagine that such persons would be styled " duly 
 summoned." It is not unlikely, however, that 
 these large expressions were inadvertently used, 
 and that they led to that inundation of voters with- 
 out property, which rendered the subsequent act 
 of Henry VI. necessary. That of Henry IV. had 
 itself been occasioned by an opposite evil, the close 
 election of knights by a few persons in the name 
 of the county. 
 
 Yet the consequence of the statute of Henry IV. 
 was not to let in too many voters, or to render elec- 
 tions tumultuous, in the largest of English coun- 
 ties, whatever it might be in others. Prynne has 
 published some singular sheriffs' indentures for the 
 county of York, all during the interval between the 
 acts of Henry IV. and Henry VI., which are sealed 
 by a few persons calling themselves the attorneys 
 of some peers and ladies, who, as far as appears, 
 had solely returned the knights of that shire. 3 
 Prynne, p. 152. What degree of weight these 
 anomalous returns ought to possess, I leave to the 
 reader. 
 
 * The majority of prescriptive boroughs have 
 prescriptive corporations, which carry the legal, 
 which is not always the moral presumption of an 
 
PART HI.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 407 
 
 Besides these respectable towns, there 
 were some of a less eminent figure, 
 which had writs directed to them as an- 
 cient demesnes of the crown. During 
 times of arbitrary taxation, the crown 
 had set tallages alike upon its chartered 
 boroughs and upon its tenants in de- 
 mesne. When parliamentary consent 
 became indispensable, the free tenants in 
 ancient demesne, or rather such of them 
 as inhabited some particular vills, were 
 called to parliament among the other 
 representatives of the commons. They 
 are usually specified distinctly from the 
 other classes of representatives in grants 
 of subsidies throughout the parliaments 
 of the two first Edwards, till, about the 
 beginning of the Third's reign, they 
 were confounded with ordinary burges- 
 ses.* This is the foundation of that par- 
 ticular species of elective franchise inci- 
 dent to what we denominate burgage 
 tenure ; which, however, is not confined 
 to the ancient demesne of the crown.f 
 
 The proper constituents therefore of 
 the citizens and burgesses in parliament 
 appear to have been 1. All chartered 
 boroughs, whether they derived their 
 privileges from the crown or from a 
 mesne lord, as several in Cornwall did 
 from Richard, king of the Romans ;| 2. 
 All towns which were the ancient or the 
 actual demesne of the crown; 3. All 
 considerable places, though unincorpo- 
 rated, which could afford to defray the 
 expenses of their representatives, and 
 had a notable interest in the public wel- 
 fare. But no parliament ever perfectly 
 corresponded with this theory. The 
 
 original charter. But " many boroughs and towns 
 in England have burgesses by prescription, that 
 never were incorporated." Ch. J. Hobart in Dun- 
 gannon Case, Hobart's Reports, p. 15. And Mr. 
 Luders thinks, I know not how justly, that in the 
 age of Edward I., which is most to our immediate 
 purpose, " there were not perhaps thirty corpora- 
 tions in the kingdom." Reports of Elections, vol. 
 i., p. 98. But I must allow that, in the opinion of 
 many sound lawyers, the representation of unchar- 
 tered, or at least unincorporated boroughs, was rath- 
 er a real privilege, and founded upon tenure, than 
 one arising out of their share in public contributions. 
 Ch. J. Holt in Ashby v. White, 2 Ld. Raymond, 
 951. Hey wood on Borough Elections, p. 11. This 
 inquiry is very obscure ; and perhaps the more so, 
 because the learning directed towards it has more 
 frequently been that, of advocates pleading for their 
 clients than of unbiased antiquaries. If this be 
 kept in view, the lover of constitutional history 
 will find much information in several of the re- 
 ported cases on controverted elections ; particu- 
 larly those of Tewksbury and Liskeard in Peck- 
 well's Reports, vol. i. 
 
 * Brady on Boroughs, p. 75, 80, and 163. Case 
 of Tewksbury, in Peckwell's Reports, vol. i., p. 
 178. 
 
 t Littleton, s. 162, 163. t Brady, p. 97. 
 
 writ was addressed in general Power of 
 terms to the sheriff, requiring the sheriff 
 him to cause two knights to be f oomil . 
 elected out of the body of the 
 county, two citizens from every city, and 
 two burgesses from every borough. It 
 rested altogether upon him to determine 
 what towns should exercise this fran- 
 chise ; and it is really incredible, with all 
 the carelessness and ignorance of those 
 times, what frauds the sheriffs ventured 
 to commit in executing this trust. Though 
 parliaments met almost every year, and 
 there could be no mistake in so notori- 
 ous a fact, it was the continual practice 
 of sheriffs to omit boroughs that had 
 been in recent habit of electing mem- 
 bers, and to return upon th writ that 
 there were no more within their county. 
 Thus, in the 12th of Edward III., the sher- 
 iff of Wiltshire, after returning two citi- 
 zens for Salisbury, and burgesses for two 
 boroughs, concludes with these words: 
 " There are no other cities or boroughs 
 within my bailiwick." Yet in fact eight 
 other towns had sent members to pre- 
 ceding parliaments. So in the 6th of 
 Edward II., the sheriff of Bucks declared 
 that he had no borough within his county 
 except Wycomb ; though Wendover, Ag- 
 mondesham, and Marlow had twice made 
 returns since that king's accession.* And 
 from this cause alone it has happened 
 that many towns called boroughs, and 
 having a charter and constitution as such, 
 have never returned members to parlia- 
 ment; some of which are now among 
 the most considerable in England, as 
 Leeds, Birmingham, and Macclesfield.-j- 
 
 It has been suggested, indeed, by Bra- 
 dy,! that these returns may not appear so 
 false and collusive if we suppose the sher- 
 iff to mean only that there were no res- 
 ident burgesses within these boroughs fit 
 to be returned, or that the expense of 
 their wages would be too heavy for the 
 place to support. And no doubt the lat- 
 ter plea, whether implied or not in the re- 
 turn, was very frequently an inducement 
 to the sheriffs to spare the smaller bor- 
 
 * Brady on Boroughs, p. 110. 3 Prynne, p. 231. 
 The latter even argues that this power of omitting 
 ancient boroughs was legally vested in the sheriff' 
 before the 5th of Richard II., and though the lan- 
 guage of that act implies the contrary of this posi- 
 tion, yet it is more than probable that most of our 
 parliamentary boroughs by prescription, especially 
 such as were then unincorporated, are indebted 
 for their privileges to the exercise of the sheriff's 
 discretion ; not founded on partiality, which would 
 rather have led him to omit them, but on the broad 
 principle that they were sufficiently opulent and 
 important to send representatives to parliament. 
 
 t Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. i., preface, 
 p. 35. J P. 117, 
 
408 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 oughs. The wages of knights were four 
 shillings a day, levied on all freeholders, 
 or at least on all holding by knight-ser- 
 vice, within the county.* Those of bur- 
 gesses were half that sum ;f but even this 
 pittance was raised with reluctance and 
 difficulty from miserable burghers, little 
 solicitous about political franchises. Pov- 
 erty, indeed, seems to have been accepted 
 as a legal excuse. In the 6th of E. II., 
 the sheriff of Northumberland returns to 
 the writ of summons, that all his knights 
 are not sufficient to protect the county ; 
 and in the 1st of E. III., that they were 
 too much ravaged by their enemies to 
 send any members to parliament.! The 
 sheriffs 'of Lancashire, after several re- 
 
 * It is a perplexing question, whether freehold- 
 ers in soccage were liable to contribute towards 
 the wages of knights; and authorities might be 
 produced on both sides. The more probable sup- 
 position is that they were not exempted. See the 
 various petitions relating to the payment of wages 
 in Prynne's fourth Register. This is not uncon- 
 nected with the question as to their right of suf- 
 frage. See ante, p. 360. Freeholders within fran- 
 chises made repeated endeavours to exempt them- 
 selves from payment of wages. Thus in 9 H. IV. 
 it was settled by parliament, that, to put an end to 
 the disputes on this subject between the people of 
 Cambridgeshire and those of the Isle of Ely, the 
 latter should pay 200Z. and be quit in future of all 
 charges on that account. Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 
 383. By this means the inhabitants of that fran- 
 chise seem to have purchased the right of suffrage, 
 which they still enjoy, though not, I suppose, suit- 
 ers to the county-court. In most other franchises, 
 and in many cities erected into distinct counties, 
 the same privilege of voting for knights of the 
 shire is practically exercised; but whether this 
 has not proceeded as much from the tendency of 
 returning officers and of parliament to favour the 
 right of election in doubtful cases, as from the 
 merits of their pretensions, may be a question. 
 
 t The wages of knights and burgesses were first 
 reduced to this certain sum by the writs De levan- 
 dis expensis, 16 E. II. Prynne's fourth Register, 
 p. 53. These were issued at the request of those 
 who had served after the dissolution of parliament, 
 and included a certain number of days, according 
 to the distance of the county whence they came, 
 for going and returning. It appears by these that 
 thirty-five or forty miles were reckbned a day's 
 journey ; which may correct the exaggerated no- 
 tions of bad roads and tardy locomotions that are 
 sometimes entertained. See Prynne's fourth part, 
 and Willis's Notitia Parliamentaria, passim. 
 
 The latest entries of writs for expenses in the 
 close rolls are of 2 H. V. ; but they may be proved to 
 have issued much longer ; and Prynne traces them 
 to the end of Henry VIII. 's reign, p. 495. With- 
 out the formality of this writ, a very few instances 
 of towns remunerating their burgesses for attend- 
 ance in parliament are known to have occurred in 
 later times. Andrew Marvel is commonly said to 
 have been the last who received this honourable 
 salary. A modern book asserts that wages were 
 paid in some Cornish boroughs as late as the 
 eighteenth century. Lyson's Cornwall, preface, p. 
 xxxii. ; but the passage quoted in proof of this is 
 not precise enough to support so unlikely a fact. 
 
 t 3 Prynne, p. 165. 
 
 turns that they had no boroughs within 
 their county, though Wigan, Liverpool, 
 and Preston were such, alleged at length 
 that none ought to be called upon on ac- 
 count of their poverty. This return was 
 constantly made, from 36 E. III. to the 
 reign of Henry VI.* 
 
 The elective franchise was deemed by 
 the boroughs no privilege or 
 blessing, but rather, during the ofViroughs 
 chief part of this period, an in- to send 
 tolerable grievance. Where they ir 
 could not persuade the sheriff to omit 
 sending his writ to them, they set it at 
 defiance by sending no return. And this 
 seldom failed to succeed, so that after 
 one or two refusals to comply, which 
 brought no punishment upon them, they 
 were left in quiet enjoyment of their in- 
 significance. The town of Torrington, 
 in Devonshire, went farther, and obtained 
 a charter of exemption from sending bur- 
 gesses, grounded upon what the charter 
 asserts to appear on the rolls of chance- 
 ry, that it had never been represented 
 before the 21st of E. III. This is abso- 
 lutely false, and is a proof how little we 
 can rely upon the veracity of records, 
 Torrington having made not less than 
 twenty-two returns before that time. It 
 is curious, that in spite of this charter, the 
 town sent members to the two ensuing 
 parliaments, and then ceased for ever.f 
 Richard II. gave the inhabitants of Col- 
 chester a dispensation from returning bur- 
 gesses for five years, in consideration of 
 the expenses they had incurred in forti- 
 fying the town 4 But this immunity, 
 from whatever reason, was not regarded, 
 Colchester having continued to make re- 
 turns as before. 
 
 The partiality of sheriffs in leaving out 
 boroughs which were accustomed in old 
 time to come to the parliament, was re- 
 pressed, as far as law could repress it, by 
 a statute of Richard II., which imposed a 
 fine on them for such neglect, and upon 
 any member of parliament who should 
 absent himself from his duty. But it is, 
 I think, highly probable, that a great part 
 of those who were elected from the bor- 
 oughs did not trouble themselves with at- 
 tendance in parliament. The sheriff even 
 found it necessary to take sureties for 
 their execution of so burdensome a duty, 
 whose names it was usual, down to the 
 end of the fifteenth century, to endorse 
 upon the writ along with those of the 
 elected. || This expedient is not likely to 
 
 * 4 Prynne, p. 317. 
 J 3 Prynne, p. 241, 
 
 t Id., p. 320. 
 
 5 R. II., stat. ii., c. 4. 
 
 Luders's Reports, vol. i., p. 15. Sometimes 
 an elected burgess absolutely refused to go to par- 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 409 
 
 have been very successful ; and the small 
 number, comparatively speaking, of writs 
 for expenses of members for boroughs 
 which have been published by Prynne, 
 while those for the knights of shires are 
 almost complete, leads to a strong pre- 
 sumption that their attendance was very 
 defective. This statute of Richard II. 
 produced no sensible effect. 
 
 By what person the election of bur- 
 wiothe g esses was usually made is a 
 eiectorsln question of great obscurity, 
 borougha which is still occasionally deba- 
 ted before committees of parlia- 
 ment. It appears to have been the com- 
 mon practice for a very few of the prin- 
 cipal members of the corporation to make 
 the election in the county-court ; and their 
 names, as actual electors, are generally 
 returned upon the writ by the sheriff.* 
 But we cannot surely be warranted by 
 this to infer that they acted in any other 
 capacity than as deputies of the whole 
 body, and indeed it is frequently ex- 
 pressed that they chose such and such 
 persons by the assent of the communi- 
 ty ;f by which word, in an ancient cor- 
 porate borough, it seems natural to un- 
 derstand the freemen participating in its 
 general franchises, rather than the ruling 
 body, which, in many instances at pres- 
 ent, and always perhaps in the earliest 
 age of corporations, derived its authority 
 by delegation from the rest. The con- 
 sent, however, of the inferior freemen 
 we may easily believe to have been 
 merely nominal ; and from being nomi- 
 nal, it would in many places come by de- 
 grees not to be required at all ; the cor- 
 poration, specially so denominated, or 
 municipal government, acquiring by 
 length of usage an exclusive privilege in 
 election of members of parliament, as 
 they did in local administration. This, 
 at least, appears to me a more probable 
 hypothesis than that of Dr. Brady, who 
 limits the original right of election in all 
 corporate boroughs to the aldermen or 
 other capital burgesses. | 
 
 The members of the house of corn- 
 Members of nions, from this occasional dis- 
 the House use of ancient boroughs, as 
 .r commons. we [\ as f rom the creation of 
 new ones, underwent some fluctuation 
 during the period subject to our review. 
 Two hundred citizens and burgesses sat 
 in the parliament held by Edward I. in 
 
 liament, and drove his constituents to a fresh 
 choice. 3 Prynne, p. 277. 
 
 * 3 Prynne, p. 252. 
 
 t Idem, p. 257, de asaensu totius communita- 
 tis predictae elegerunt R. W., so in several other 
 instances quoted in the ensuing pages. 
 
 J Brady on Boroughs, p. 132, &c. 
 
 his twenty-third year, the earliest epoch 
 of acknowledged representation. But in 
 the reigns of Edward III. and his three 
 successors, about ninety places, on an 
 average, returned members, so that we 
 may reckon this part of the commons at 
 one hundred and eighty.* These, if reg- 
 ular in their duties, might appear an over- 
 balance for the seventy-four knights who 
 sat with them. But the dignity of an- 
 cient lineage, territorial wealth, and mil- 
 itary character, in times when the feudal 
 spirit was hardly extinct, and that of 
 chivalry at its height, made these burgh- 
 ers veil their heads to the landed aris- 
 tocracy. It is pretty manifest that the 
 knights, though doubtless with some sup- 
 port from the representatives of towns, 
 sustained the chief brunt of battle against 
 the crown. The rule and intention of 
 our old constitution was, that each coun- 
 ty, city, or borough should elect deputies 
 out of its own body, resident among 
 themselves, and consequently acquainted 
 with their necessities and grievances.! 
 It would be very interesting to discover 
 at what time, and by what degrees, the 
 practice of election swerved from this 
 strictness. But I have not been able to 
 trace many steps of the transition. The 
 number of practising lawyers who sat in 
 parliament, of which there are several 
 complaints, seems to afford an inference 
 that it had begun in the reign of Edward 
 III. Besides several petitions of the 
 commons, that none but knights or repu- 
 table squires should be returned for 
 shires, an ordinance was made in the 
 forty-sixth of his reign that no lawyer 
 practising in the king's court, nor sheriff 
 during his shrievalty, be returned knight 
 for a county ; because these lawyers put 
 forward many petitions in the name of 
 the commons, which only concerned their 
 clients.! This probably was truly al- 
 leged, as we may guess from the vast 
 number of proposals for changing the 
 course of legal process which fill the 
 
 * Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. iii., p. 96, 
 &c. 3 Prynne, p. 224, &c. 
 
 f In 4 Edw. II., the sheriff of Rutland made this 
 return : Eligi feci in pleno comitatu, loco duorum 
 militum, eo quod' milites non sunt in hoc comitatu 
 commorantes, duos homines de comitatu Rutland, 
 de discretioribus et ad laborandum potentioribus, 
 &c. 3 Prynne, p. 170. But this deficiency of ac- 
 tual knights soon became very common. In 19 E. 
 II. there were twenty-eight members returned 
 from shires who were not knights, and but twen- 
 ty-seven who were such. The former had at this 
 time only two shillings or three shillings a day for 
 their wages, while the real knights had four shil- 
 inga. 4 Prynne, p. 53, 74. But in the next reign 
 their wages were put on a level, 
 Rot. Par!., vol. ii., p. 310. 
 
410 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 rolls during this reign. It is not to be 
 doubted, however, that many practising 
 lawyers were men of landed estate in 
 their respective counties. 
 
 An act in the first year of Henry V. 
 directs that none be chosen knights, citi- 
 zens, or burgesses, who are not resident 
 within the place for which they are re- 
 turned on the day of the date of the 
 writ.* This statute apparently indicates 
 a point of time when the deviation from 
 the line of law was frequent enough to 
 attract notice, and yet not so established 
 as to pass for an unavoidable irregulari- 
 ty. It proceeded, however, from great 
 and general causes, which new laws, in 
 this instance, very fortunately, are utter- 
 ly incompetent to withstand. There can- 
 not be a more opposite proof of the inef- 
 ficacy of human institutions to struggle 
 against the steady course of events, than 
 this unlucky statute of Henry V., which 
 is almost a solitary instance in the law 
 of England, wherein the principle of de- 
 suetude has been avowedly set up against 
 an unrepealed enactment. I am not 
 aware, at least, of any other, which not 
 only the house of commons, but the court 
 of king's bench has deemed itself at lib- 
 erty to declare unfit to be observed.! 
 Even at the time when it was enacted, 
 the law had probably, as such, very little 
 effect. But still the plurality of elections 
 were made, according to ancient usage 
 as well as statute, out of the constituent 
 body. The contrary instances were ex- 
 ceptions to the rule ; but exceptions in- 
 creasing continually, till they subverted 
 the rule itself. Prynne has remarked, 
 that we chiefly find Cornish surnames 
 among the representatives of Cornwall, 
 and those of northern families among the 
 returns from the north. Nor do the 
 members for shires and towns seem to 
 have been much interchanged ; the names 
 of the former belonging to the most an- 
 cient families, while those- of the latter 
 have a more plebeian cast. J In the reign 
 of Edward IV., and not before, a very few 
 of the burgesses bear the addition of es- 
 quire in the returns ; which became uni- 
 versal in the middle of the succeeding 
 century. 
 
 * 1 H. V., c. 1. 
 
 t See the case of Dublin -university, in the first 
 volume of Peckwell's Reports of contested elec- 
 tions. Note D., p. 53. The statute itself was re- 
 pealed by 14 G. HI., c. 58. 
 
 t By 23 H. VI., c. 15, none but gentlemen born, 
 generosi a nativitate, are capable of sitting in par- 
 liament as knights of counties; an election was 
 set aside 39 H. VI., because the person returned 
 was not of gentle birth. Prynne's 3d Reg., p. 16] . 
 
 $ Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria. Prynne's 4th 
 
 Even county elections seem in gener- 
 al, at least in the fourteenth cen- irregularity 
 tury, to have been ill attend- of elections, 
 ed, and left to the influence of a few 
 powerful and active persons. A petition- 
 er against an undue return in the 12th of 
 Edward II. complains that, whereas he 
 had been chosen knight for Devon, by Sir 
 William Martin, bishop of Exeter, with 
 the consent of the county, yet the sheriff 
 had returned another.* In several in- 
 dentures of a much later date, a few per- 
 sons only seem to have been concerned 
 in the election, though the assent of the 
 community be expressed.! These ir- 
 regularities, which it would be exceed- 
 ingly erroneous to convert, with Hume, 
 into lawful customs, resulted from the 
 abuses of the sheriffs power, which, 
 when parliament sat only for a few weeks, 
 with its hands full of business, were al- 
 most sure to escape with impu- i n fl uen ce of 
 nity. They were sometimes the crown 
 also countenanced, or rather in- upon them - 
 stigated by the crown, which, having re- 
 covered in Edward II.'s reign the prerog- 
 ative of naming the sheriffs, surrendered 
 by an act of his father,^ filled that office 
 with its creatures, and constantly disre- 
 garded the statute forbidding their con- 
 tinuance beyond a year. Without search- 
 ing for every passage that might illus- 
 trate the interference of the crown in elec- 
 tions, I will mention two or three leading 
 instances. When Richard II. was medi- 
 tating to overturn the famous commis- 
 sion of reform, he sent for some of the 
 sheriffs, and required them to permit no 
 knight or burgess to be elected to the 
 next parliament without the approbation 
 of the king and his council. The sheriffs 
 replied, that the commons would main- 
 tain their ancient privilege of electing 
 
 Register, p. 1184. A letter in that authentic and 
 interesting accession to our knowledge of ancient 
 times, the Paston collection, shows that eager 
 canvass was sometimes made by country gentle- 
 men in Edward IV.'s reign to represent boroughs. 
 This letter throws light at the same time on the 
 creation or revival of boroughs. The writer tells 
 Sir John Paston : " If ye miss to be burgess of 
 Maiden, and my lord chamberlain will, ye may be 
 in another place ; there be a dozen towns in Eng- 
 land that choose no burgess which ought to do it ; 
 ye may be set in for one of those towns an' ye be 
 friended." This was in 1472, vol. ii., p. 107. 
 
 * Glanvil's Reports of Elections, edit. 1774. In- 
 troduction, p. xii. 
 
 t Prynne's 3d Register, p. 171. 
 
 j 28 E. I., c. 8. 9 E. II. It is said that the 
 sheriff was elected by the people of his county in 
 the Anglo-Saxon period ; no instance of this, how- 
 ever, according to Lord Lyttleton, occurs after the 
 conquest. Shrievalties were commonly sold by 
 the Norman kings. Hist, of Henry II., vol. ii., p. 
 921. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 411 
 
 their own representatives.* The parlia- 
 ment of 1397, which attainted his ene- 
 mies, and left the constitution at his mer- 
 cy, was chosen, as we are told, by dint 
 of intimidation and influence.! Thus 
 also that of Henry VI., held at Coventry 
 in 1460, wherein the Duke of York and 
 his party were attainted, is said to have 
 been unduly returned by the like means. 
 This is rendered probable by a petition 
 presented to it by the sheriffs, praying 
 indemnity for all which they had done in 
 relation thereto contrary to law.| An 
 act passed according to their prayer, and 
 in confirmation of elections. A few 
 years before, in 1455, a singular letter 
 under the king's signet is addressed to 
 the sheriffs, reciting that " we be enfourm- 
 ed there is busy labour made in sondry 
 wises by certaine persons for the che- 
 
 syng of the said knights, of which 
 
 labour we marvaille greatly, insomuche 
 as it is nothing to the honour of the la- 
 borers, but. ayenst their worship; it is 
 also ayenst the lawes of the lande," with 
 more to that effect; and enjoining the 
 sheriffs to let elections be free and the 
 peace kept.$ There was certainly no 
 reason to wonder that a parliament, 
 which was to shift the virtual sovereign- 
 ty of the kingdom into the hands of one 
 whose claims were known to extend 
 much farther, should be the object of tol- 
 erably warm contests. Thus in the Pas- 
 ton letters, we find several proofs of the 
 importance attached to parliamentary 
 elections by the highest nobility. || 
 
 The house of lords, as we left it in the 
 constitu- reign of Henry III., was entirely 
 tionofthe composed of such persons hold- 
 Lord? f in lands bv baron y as were sum- 
 moned by particular writ of par- 
 liament. T[ Tenure and summons were 
 both essential at this time in order to 
 render any one a lord of parliament ; the 
 first by the ancient constitution of our 
 feudal monarchy from the conquest ; the 
 
 * Vita Ricardi II., p. 85. 
 
 f Otterbourne, p. 191. He says of the knights 
 returned on this occasion, that they were not elect- 
 ed per communitatem ut mos exigit, sed per regi- 
 am voluntatem. 
 
 t Prynne's 2d Reg., p. 141. Rot. Parl., vol. v., 
 p. 367. $ Id., p. 450. 
 
 I! Vol. i., p. 96, 98; vol. ii., p. 99, 105; vol. ii., 
 p. 243. 
 
 ^f Upon this dry and obscure subject of inquiry, 
 the nature and constitution of the house of lords 
 during this period, I have been much indebted to 
 the first part of Prynne's Register, and to West's 
 Inquiry into the manner of creating peers ; which, 
 though written with a party motive, to serve the 
 ministry of 1719 in the peerage bill, deserves, for 
 the perspicuity of the method and style, to be reck- 
 oned among the best of our constitutional disserta- 
 tions. 
 
 second by some regulation or usage of 
 doubtful origin, which was thoroughly 
 established before the conclusion of Hen- 
 ry III.'s reign. This produced, of course, 
 a very marked difference between the 
 greater and the lesser, or unparliament- 
 ary barons. The tenure of the latter, 
 however, still subsisted, and though too 
 inconsiderable to be members of the le- 
 gislature, they paid relief as barons, they 
 might be challenged on juries, and, .as I 
 presume, by parity of reasoning, vfere 
 entitled to trial by their peerage. Tfcese 
 lower barons, or, more commonly, ten- 
 ants by parcels of baronies,* may ; be 
 dimly traced to the latter years of Ed- 
 ward Ill.f But many of them were sucr 
 cessively summoned to parliament, and 
 thus recovered the former lustre of their 
 rank ; while the rest fell gradually into 
 the station of commoners, as tenants by 
 simple knight-service. 
 
 As tenure without summons did not 
 entitle any one to the privileges Baronial 
 of a lord of parliament, so no te u e r j J 
 spiritual person at least ought to Srdsspir- 
 have been summoned without ituai. 
 baronial tenure. The prior of St. James 
 at Northampton, having been summoned 
 in the twelfth of Edward II., was dis- 
 charged upon his petition, because he 
 held nothing of the king by barony, but 
 only in frankalmoign. The prior of Brid- 
 lington, after frequent summonses, was 
 finally left out, with an entry made in the 
 roll that he held nothing of the king. 
 The abbot of Leicester had been called 
 to fifty parliaments : yet, in the 25th of 
 
 * Baronies were often divided by descent among 
 females into many parts, each retaining its charac- 
 ter as a fractional member of a barony. The ten- 
 ants in such case were said to hold of the king by 
 the third, fourth, or twentieth part of a barony, and 
 did service or paid relief in such proportion. 
 
 t Madox, BaroniaAnglica,p.42and58. West's 
 Inquiry, p. 28, 33. That a baron could only be 
 tried by his fellow-barons, was probably a rule as 
 old as the trial per pais of a commoner. In 4 E. 
 III., Sir Simon Bereford having been accused be- 
 fore the lords in parliament of aiding and advising 
 Mortimer in his treasons, they declared with one 
 voice that he was not their peer ; wherefore they 
 were not bound to judge him as a peer of the land ; 
 but inasmuch as it was notorious that he had been 
 concerned in usurpation of royal powers and mur- 
 der of the liege lord (as they styled Edward II.), 
 the lords, as judges of parliament, by assent of the 
 king in parliament, awarded and adjudged him to 
 oe hanged. A like sentence, with a like protesta- 
 tion, was passed on Mautravers and Gournay. 
 There is a very remarkable anomaly in the case of 
 Lord Berkley, who, though undoubtedly a baron, 
 his ancestors having been summoned from the ear- 
 iiest date of writs, put himself on his trial in par- 
 liament by twelve knights of the county of Glo- 
 cester. Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 53. Rymer, t. iv., 
 p. 734. 
 
412 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIM. 
 
 Edward III., he obtained a charter of per- 
 petual exemption, reciting that he held 
 no lands or tenements of the crown by 
 barony, or any such service as bound him 
 to attend parliaments or councils.* But 
 great irregularities prevailed in the rolls 
 of chancery, from which the writs to 
 spiritual and temporal peers were taken ; 
 arising in part, perhaps, from negligence 
 in part from wilful perversion : so that 
 many abbots and priors, who like these 
 had no baronial tenure, were summoned 
 at times and subsequently omitted, of 
 wh6se actual exemption we have no 
 record. Out of one hundred and twen- 
 ty-two abbots and forty-one priors, who 
 at some time or other sat in parliament, 
 but twenty-five of the former and two 
 of the latter were constantly summoned ; 
 the names of forty occur only once, and 
 those of thirty-six others not more than 
 five times. f Their want of baronial te- 
 nure, in all probability, prevented the rep- 
 etition of writs which accident or occa- 
 sion had caused to issue. 
 
 The ancient temporal peers are sup- 
 Barons posed to have been intermingled 
 called by with persons who held nothing of 
 wnt> the crown by barony, but attended 
 in parliament solely by virtue of the 
 king's prerogative exercised in the writ 
 of summons. These have been called 
 barons by writ ; and it seems to be denied 
 by no one, that, at least under the three 
 first Edwards, there were some of this 
 description in parliament. But after all 
 the labours of Dugdale and others in 
 tracing the genealogies of our ancient 
 
 * Prynne, p. 142, &c. West's Inquiry. 
 
 t Prynne, p. 141. 
 
 J It is worthy of observation, that the spiritual 
 peers summoned to parliament were in general 
 considerably more numerous than the temporal. 
 Prynne, p. 1 14. This appears, among other causes, 
 to have saved the church from that sweeping ref- 
 ormation of its wealth, and perhaps of its doc- 
 trines, which the commons were -thoroughly in- 
 clined to make under Richard II. and Henry IV. 
 Thus the reduction of the spiritual lords by the 
 dissolution of monasteries was indispensably re- 
 quired to bring the ecclesiastical order into due 
 subjection to the state. 
 
 f) Perhaps it can hardly be said that the king's 
 prerogative compelled the party summoned, not 
 being a tenant by barony, to take his seat. But 
 though several spiritual persons appear to have 
 been discharged from attendance on account of 
 their holding nothing by barony, as has been justly 
 observed, yet there is, I believe, no istance of any 
 layman's making such an application. The terms 
 of the ancient writ of summons, however, in fide et 
 hpmagio quibus nobis tenemini, afford a presump- 
 tion that a feudal tenure was, in construction of 
 law, the basis of every lord's attendance in parlia- 
 ment. This form was not finally changed to the 
 present, in fide et ligentia, till the 46th of Edw. III. 
 Prynne's 1st Register, p. 206. 
 
 aristocracy, it is a problem of much diffi- 
 culty to distinguish these from the terri- 
 torial barons. As the latter honours de- 
 scended to female heirs, they passed into 
 new families and new names, so that we 
 can hardly decide of one summoned for 
 the first time to parliament, that he did 
 not inherit the possession of a feudal 
 barony. Husbands of baronial heiresses 
 were almost invariably summoned in 
 their wives' right, though frequently by 
 their own names. They even sat after 
 the death of their wives, as tenants by 
 the courtesy.* Again, as lands, though 
 not the subject of frequent transfer, were, 
 especially before the statute de donis, 
 not inalienable, we cannot positively as- 
 sume that all the right heirs of original 
 barons had preserved those estates upon 
 which their barony had depended.! If 
 we judge, however, by the lists of those 
 summoned, according to the best means 
 in our power, it will appear that the reg- 
 ular barons by tenure were all along very 
 far more numerous than those called by 
 writ : and that, from the end of Edward 
 III.'s reign, no spiritual persons, and few 
 if any laymen, except peers created by 
 patent, were summoned to parliament, 
 who did not hold territorial baronies. J 
 
 With respect to those who were in- 
 debted for their seats among the lords 
 
 e Collins's Proceedings on Claims of Baronies, 
 p. 24 and 73. 
 
 f Prynne speaks of " the alienation of baronies 
 y sale, gift, or marriage, after which the new pur- 
 chasers were summoned instead," as if it frequently 
 happened. 1st Register, p. 239. And several in- 
 stances are mentioned in the Bergavenny case 
 Collins's Proceedings, p. 113), where land-baro- 
 nies having been entailed by the owners on their 
 heirs male, the heirs general have been excluded 
 rom inheriting the dignity. 
 
 It is well known, notwithstanding these ancient 
 precedents, that the modern doctrine does not ad- 
 nit any right in the purchaser of a territorial peer- 
 age, such as Arundel, to a writ of summons, or 
 consequently to any privilege as a lord of parlia- 
 ment. But it might be a speculative question, 
 whether such a purchaser could not become a real 
 ;hough unparliamentary baron, and entitled as such 
 ;o a trial by the peers. For though the king, as- 
 sisted, if he please, by the advice of the house of 
 ords, is finally and exclusively to decide upon 
 claims to parliamentary privileges, yet the dignity 
 of peerage, whether derived under ancient tenure 
 jr a royal patent, is vested in the possessor by act 
 )f law, whereof the ordinary courts of justice may 
 ncidentally take cognizance. See the case of R. 
 ;. Knowles, Salkeld's Reports, p. 509, the princi- 
 ples of which will never be controverted by any 
 ne acquainted with the original constitution of 
 his country. 
 
 t Prynne's 1st Register, p. 237. This must be 
 understood to mean that no new families were 
 ummoned ; for the descendants of some who are 
 lot supposed to have held land-baronies may con- 
 tantly be found in later lists. 
 
 
PART III] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 413 
 
 to the king's writ, there are two materi- 
 al questions ; whether they acquired an 
 hereditary nobility by virtue of the writ : 
 and, if this be determined against them, 
 whether they had a decisive, or merely a 
 deliberative voice in the house. Now, 
 for the first question, it seems that, if the 
 writ of summons conferred an estate of 
 inheritance, it must have done so either by 
 virtue of its terms, or by established con- 
 struction and precedent. But the writ 
 contains no words by which such an es- 
 tate can in law be limited ; it summons 
 the person addressed to attend in parlia- 
 ment in order to give his advice on the 
 public business, but by no means implies 
 that his advice will be required of his 
 heirs, or even of himself, on any other 
 occasion. The strongest expression is 
 " vobiscum et cateris praelatis, magnati- 
 bus et proceribus," which appears to 
 place the party on a sort of level with 
 the peers. But the word magnates and 
 proceres are used very largely in ancient 
 language, and, down to the time of Ed- 
 ward III., comprehend the king's ordina- 
 ry council as well as his barons. Nor 
 can these, at any rate, be construed to 
 pass an inheritance, which, in the grant 
 of a private person, much more of the 
 king, would require express words of 
 limitation. In a single instance, the 
 writ of summons to Sir Henry de Brom- 
 flete (27 H. VI.), we find these remarka- 
 ble words : Volumus enim vos et haere- 
 des vestros masculos de corpore vestro 
 legitime exeuntes barones de Vescy ex- 
 istere. But this Sir Henry de Bromflete 
 was the lineal heir of the ancient barony 
 de Vesci.* And if it were true that the 
 writ of summons conveyed a barony of 
 itself, there seems no occasion to have 
 introduced these extraordinary words of 
 creation or revival. Indeed there is less 
 necessity to urge these arguments from 
 the nature of the writ, because the mod- 
 ern doctrine, which is entirely opposite 
 to what has here been suggested, asserts 
 that no one is ennobled by the mere 
 summons, unless he has rendered it op- 
 erative by taking his seat in parliament ; 
 distinguishing it in this from a patent of 
 peerage,! which requires no act of the 
 
 * West's Inquiry. Prynne, who takes rather 
 lower ground than West, and was not aware of 
 Sir Henry de Bromflete's descent, admits that a 
 writ of summons to any one, naming him baron, or 
 dominus, as Baroni de Greystoke, Domino de 
 Furnival, did give an inheritable peerage ; not so a 
 writ generally worded, naming the party knight 
 or esquire, unless he held by barony. 
 
 t Lord Abergavenny's case, 12 Coke's Reports ; 
 and Collins's Proceedings on claims of baronies by 
 writ, p. 61. 
 
 party for its completion. But this dis- 
 tinction could be suppor|pd by nothing 
 except long usage. If, however, we re- 
 cur to the practice of former times, we 
 shall find that no less than ninety-eight 
 laymen were summoned once only to 
 parliament, none of their names occur- 
 ring afterward ; and fifty others two, 
 three, or four times. Some were con- 
 stantly summoned during their lives, 
 none of whose posterity ever attained 
 that honour.* The course of proceed- 
 ing, therefore, previous to the accession 
 of Henry VII., by no means warrants 
 the doctrine which was held in the lat- 
 ter end of Elizabeth's reign,f and has 
 since been too fully established by re- 
 peated precedents to be shaken by any 
 reasoning. The foregoing observations 
 relate to the more ancient history of our 
 constitution, and to the plain matter of 
 fact as to those times, without consider- 
 ing what political cause there might be 
 to prevent the crown from introducing 
 occasional counsellors into the house of 
 lords. 
 
 It is manifest by many passages in 
 these records, that bannerets Bannerets 
 were frequently summoned to summou- 
 the upper house of parliament, 5ouse l of 
 constituting a distinct class in- lords. 
 ferior to barons, though generally named 
 together, and ultimately confounded with 
 them. | Barons are distinguished by the 
 appellation of Sire, bannerets have only 
 that of Monsieur, as le Sire de Berkeley, 
 le Sire de Fitzwalter, Monsieur Richard 
 Scrop, Monsieur Richard Stafford. In 
 the 7th of Richard II., Thomas Camoys 
 having been elected knight of the shire 
 for Surrey, the king addresses a writ to 
 .he sheriff, directing him to proceed to 
 a new election, cum hujusmodi banne- 
 retti ante haec tempora in milites comita- 
 tus ratione alicujus parliament! eligi min- 
 ime consueverunt. Camoys was sum- 
 moned by writ to the same parliament. 
 It has been inferred from hence by Sel- 
 den that he was a baron, and that the 
 word banneret is merely synonymous. $ 
 
 * Prynne's 1st Register, p. 232. Elsynge, who 
 strenuously contends against the writ of summons 
 conferring an hereditary nobility, is of opinion that 
 the party summoned was never omitted in subse- 
 quent parliaments, and consequently was a peer 
 or life, p. 43. But more regard is due to Prynne's 
 alter inquiries. 
 
 t Case of Willoughby, Collins, p. 8: of Dacres, 
 p. 41 : of Abergavenny, p. 119. But see the case 
 of Grey de Ruthyn, p. 222 and 230, where the con- 
 trary position is stated by Selden upon better 
 grounds. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol.ii., p. 147, 309 ; vol.'lii., p. 100, 
 386, 424 ; vol. iv., p. 374. Rymer, t. vii., p. 161. 
 Selden's Works, vol. iii., p. 764. Selden's 
 
414 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 But this is contradicted by too many 
 passages. Bannerets had so far been 
 considered as commoners some years be- 
 fore, that they could not be challenged 
 on juries.* But they seem to have 
 been more highly estimated at the date 
 of this writ. 
 
 The distinction however between bar- 
 ons and bannerets died away by degrees. 
 In the 3d of Henry VL,f Scrop of Bolton 
 is called le Sire de Scrop ; a proof that 
 he was then reckoned among the barons. 
 The bannerets do not often appear after- 
 ward by that appellation as members of 
 the upper house. Bannerets, or, as they 
 are called, banrents, are enumerated 
 among the orders of Scottish nobility in 
 the year 1428, when the statute directing 
 the common lairds or tenants in capite to 
 send representatives was enacted ; and 
 a moderate historian justly calls them 
 an intermediate order between the peers 
 and lairds. | Perhaps a consideration of 
 these facts, which have frequently been 
 overlooked, may tend in some measure 
 to explain the occasional discontinuance, 
 or sometimes the entire cessation, of 
 writs of summons to an individual or his 
 descendants ; since we may conceive 
 that bannerets, being of a dignity much 
 inferior to that of barons, had no such 
 inheritable nobility in their blood as ren- 
 dered their parliamentary privileges a 
 matter of right. But whether all those 
 who, without any baronial tenure, receiv- 
 ed their writs of summons to parliament 
 belonged to the order of bannerets, I 
 cannot pretend to affirm : though some 
 passages in the rolls might rather lead to 
 such a supposition. 
 
 The second question relates to the right 
 of suffrage possessed by these temporary 
 members of the upper house. It might 
 seem plausible certainly to conceive, that 
 the real and ancient aristocracy would not 
 permit their powers to be impaired by 
 numbering the votes of such as the king 
 might please to send among them, how- 
 
 opinion that bannerets in the lords' house were the 
 same as barons, may seem to call on me for some 
 contrary authorities, in order to support my own 
 assertion, besides the passages above quoted from 
 the rolls, of which he would naturally be sup- 
 posed a more competent judge. I refer therefore 
 to Spelman's Glossary, p. 74 ; Whitelocke on Par- 
 liamentary Writ, vol. i., p. 313 ; and Elsynge's 
 Method of holding parliaments, p. 65. 
 
 * Puis un fut chalenge puree qu'il fut a ban- 
 niere, et non allocatur,, car s'il soit a banniere, et 
 ne tient pas par baronie, il sera en 1'assise. Year- 
 book, 22 Edw. III., fol. 18, a.apud West's Inquiry, 
 p. 22. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 201. 
 
 t Pinkerton's Hist, of Scotland, vol. i., p. 35 
 and 365. 
 
 ever they might allow them to assist in 
 their debates. But I am much more in- 
 clined to suppose that they were in all 
 respects on an equality with other peers 
 during their actual attendance in parlia- 
 ment. For, 1. They are summoned by 
 the same writ as the rest, and their names 
 are confused among them in the lists ; 
 whereas the judges and ordinary coun- 
 sellors are called by a separate writ, vo- 
 bifcum et caeteris de consilio nostro, and 
 their names are entered after those of 
 the peers.* 2. Some, who do not appear 
 to have held land-baronies, were con- 
 stantly summoned from father to son, 
 and thus became hereditary lords of par- 
 liament, through a sort of prescriptive 
 right, which probably was the foundation 
 of extending the same privilege after- 
 ward to the descendants of all who had 
 once been summoned. There is no evi- 
 dence that the family of Scrope, for ex- 
 ample, which was eminent under Edward 
 III. and subsequent kings, and gave rise 
 to two branches, the lords of Bolton and 
 Masham, inherited any territorial hon- 
 o.ur.f 3. It is very difficult to obtain any 
 direct proof as to the right of voting, be- 
 cause the rolls of parliament do not take 
 notice of any debates ; but there happens 
 
 * West, whose business it was to represent the 
 barons by writ as mere assistants without suffrage, 
 cites the writ to them rather disingenuously, as if 
 it ran vobiscum et cum prelatis, magnatibus ac 
 proceribus, omitting the important word cseteris, p. 
 35. Prynne, however, from whom West has bor- 
 rowed a great part of his arguments, does not seem 
 to go the length of denying the right of suffrage 
 to persons so summoned. 1st Register, p. 237. 
 
 f These descended from two persons, each na- 
 med Geoffrey le Scrope, chief-justices of K. B. and 
 C. B. at the beginning of Edward III.'s reign. The 
 name of one of them is once found among the bar- 
 ons, but I presume this to have been an accident 
 or mistake in the roll, as he is frequently mentioned 
 afterward among the judges. Scrope, chief-jus- 
 tice of K. B., was made a banneret in 14 E. III. 
 He was the father of Henry Scrope of Masham, a 
 considerable person in Edward III. and Richard 
 II.'s government, whose grandson, Lord Scrope of 
 Masham, was beheaded for a conspiracy against 
 Henry V. There was a family of Scrupe as old 
 as the reign of Henry II. ; but it is not clear, not- 
 withstanding Dugdale's assertion, that the Scropes 
 descended from them, or at least that they held 
 the same lands : nor were the Scrupes barons, as 
 appears by their paying a relief of only sixty marks 
 for three knights' fees. Dugdale's Baronage, p. 
 654. 
 
 The want of consistency in old records throws 
 much additional difficulty over this intricate sub- 
 ject. Thus Scrope of Masham, though certainly 
 a baron, and tried next year by the peers, is called 
 Chevalier in an instrument of 1 H. V. Rymer, t. 
 ix., p. 13. So, in the endictment against Sir John 
 Oldcastle, he is constantly styled knight, though 
 he had been summoned several times as Lord Cob- 
 ham, in right of his wife, who inherited that bar- 
 ony. Rot. Parl., vol. iv., p. 107. 
 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 415 
 
 to exist one remarkable passage, in which 
 the suffrages of the lords are individual- 
 ly specified. In the first parliament of 
 Henry IV., they were requested by the 
 Earl of Northumberland to declare what 
 should be done with the late King Rich- 
 ard. The lords then present agreed that 
 he should be detained in safe custody; 
 and on account of the importance of this 
 matter, it seems to have been thought ne- 
 cessary to enter their names upon the 
 roll in these words : The names of the 
 lords concurring in their answer to the 
 said question here follow; to wit, the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, and fourteen 
 other bishops ; seven abbots ; the Prince 
 of Wales, the Duke of York, and six 
 earls; nineteen barons, styled thus: le 
 Sire de Roos, or le Sire de Grey de Ru- 
 thyn. Thus far the entry has nothing 
 singular; but then follow these nine 
 names : Monsieur Henry Percy, Mon- 
 sieur Richard Scrop, le Sire Fitz-hugh, le 
 Sire de Bergeveny, le Sire de Lomley, le 
 Baron de Greystock, le Baron de Hilton, 
 Monsieur Thomas Erpyngham, Chamber- 
 layn, Monsieur Mayhewe Gournay. Of 
 these nine, five were undoubtedly bar- 
 ons, from whatever cause misplaced in 
 order. Scrop was summoned by writ; 
 but his title of Monsieur, by which he is 
 invariably denominated, would of itself 
 create a strong suspicion that he was no 
 baron, and in another place we find him 
 reckoned among the bannerets. The 
 other three do not appear to have been 
 summoned, their writs probably being 
 lost. One of them, Sir Thomas Erpyng- 
 ham, a statesman well known in the his- 
 tory of those times, is said to have been 
 a banneret ;* certainly he was not a bar- 
 on. It is not unlikely that the two oth- 
 ers, Henry Percy (Hotspur), and Gour- 
 nay, an officer of the household, were 
 also bannerets ; they cannot at least be 
 supposed to be barons, neither were they 
 ever summoned to any subsequent par- 
 liament. Yet in the only record we pos- 
 sess of votes actually given in the house 
 of lords, they appear to have been reck- 
 oned among the rest.f 
 
 The next method of conferring an hon- 
 Creation of 9 ur of peerage was by creation 
 peers by in parliament. This was adopt- 
 
 ute - ed by Edward III. in several in- 
 stances, though always, 1 believe, for the 
 higher titles of duke or earl. It is laid 
 down by lawyers, that whatever the king 
 is said, in an ancient record, to have done 
 in full parliament, must be taken to have 
 
 * Blomefield's Hist, of Norfolk, vol. iii., p. 645 
 (folio edit.). ! Rot. Parl., v. iii., p. 427. 
 
 proceeded from the whole legislature. 
 As a question of fact, indeed, it might be 
 doubted whether, in many proceedings 
 where this expression is used, and espe- 
 cially in the creation of peers, the assent 
 of the commons was specifically, and de- 
 liberately given. It seems hardly con- 
 sonant to the circumstances of their or- 
 der under Edward III. to suppose their 
 sanction necessary, in what seemed so 
 little to concern their interest. Yet there 
 is an instance, in the fortieth year of that 
 prince, where the lords individually, and 
 the commons with one voice, are decla- 
 red to have consented, at the king's re- 
 quest, that the Lord de Coucy, who had 
 married his daughter, and was already 
 possessed of estates in England, might be 
 raised to the dignity of an earl, whenev- 
 er the king should determine what earl- 
 dom he would confer upon him.* Under 
 Richard II., the marquisate of Dublin is 
 granted to Vere by full consent of all the 
 estates. But this instrument, besides the 
 unusual name of dignity, contained an 
 extensive jurisdiction and authority over 
 Ireland.f In the same reign Lancaster 
 was made Duke of Guienne, and the 
 Duke of York's son created Earl of Rut- 
 land, to hold during his father's life. 
 The consent of the lords and commons is 
 expressed in their patents, and they are 
 entered upon the roll of parliament.^: 
 Henry V. created his brothers dukes of 
 Bedford and Glocester, by request of the 
 lords and commons.^ But the patent of 
 Sir John Cornwall, in the 10th of Henry 
 VI., declares him to be made Lord Fan- 
 hope, "by consent of the lords, in the 
 presence of the three estates of parlia- 
 ment ;" as if it were designed to show 
 that the commons had not a legislative 
 voice in the creation of peers. || 
 
 The mention I have made of creating 
 peers by act of parliament has And by 
 partly anticipated the modern form patent. 
 of letters patent, with which the other 
 was nearly allied. The first instance of 
 a barony conferred by patent was in the 
 tenth year of Richard II., when Sir John 
 Holt, a judge of the Common Pleas, was 
 reated Lord Beauchamp of Kiddermin- 
 ster. Holt's patent, however, passed 
 while Richard was endeavouring to act 
 in an arbitrary manner; and in fact he 
 never sat in parliament, having been at- 
 tainted in that of the next year by the 
 name of Sir John Holt. In a number of 
 subsequent patents down to the reign of 
 Henry VII., the assent of parliament is 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 290. 
 
 t Id., vol. iii., p. 209. J Id., p. 263, 264. 
 
 $ Id., vol. iv., p. 17. (I Id., p. 401. 
 
416 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 expressed, though it frequently happens 
 that no mention of it occurs in the par- 
 liamentary roll. And, in some instances, 
 the roll speaks to the consent of parlia- 
 ment, where the patent itself is silent.* 
 
 It is now perhaps scarcely known by 
 Clergy sum- man y persons not unversed in 
 moncd to the constitution of their coun- 
 attendpar- tr y 5 t h a t, besides the bishops 
 and baronial abbots, the infe- 
 rior clergy were regularly summoned at 
 every parliament. In the writ of sum- 
 mons to a bishop, he is still directed to 
 cause the dean of his cathedral church, 
 the archdeacon of his diocess, with one 
 proctor from the chapter of the former, 
 and two from the body of his clergy, to 
 attend with him at the place of meeting. 
 This might, by an inobservant reader, be 
 confounded with the summons to the 
 convocation, which is composed of the 
 same constituent parts, and, by modern 
 usage, is made to assemble on the same 
 day. But it may easily be distinguish- 
 ed by this difference ; that the convoca- 
 tion is provincial, and summoned by the 
 metropolitans of Canterbury and York ; 
 whereas the clause commonly denomi- 
 nated praemimientes (from its first word), 
 in the writ to each bishop, proceeds from 
 the crown, and enjoins the attendance 
 of the clergy at the national council of 
 parliament.! 
 
 The first unequivocal instance of rep- 
 resentatives appearing for ^the lower 
 clergy is in the year 1255, when they are 
 expressly named by the author of the An- 
 nals of Burton. J They preceded, there- 
 fore, by a few years, the house of com- 
 mons ; but the introduction of each was 
 founded upon the same principle. The 
 king required the clergy's money, but 
 
 * West's Inquiry, p. 65. - This writer does not 
 allow that the king possessed the prerogative of 
 creating new peers without consent of parliament. 
 But Prynne (1st Register, p. 225), who generally 
 adopts the same theory of peerage as West, strong- 
 ly asserts the contrary ; and the party views of the 
 latter's treatise, which I mentioned above, should 
 be kept in sight. It was his object to prove, that 
 the pending bill to limit the members of the peer- 
 age was conformable to the original constitution. 
 
 t Hody's History of Convocations, p. 12. Dis- 
 sertatio de antiqua et moderna Synodi Anglicani 
 constitutione, prefixed to Wilkins's Concilia, t. i. 
 
 J 2 Gale, Scriptores Rer. Anglic., t. ii., p. 355. 
 Hody , p. 345. A tterbury ( Rights of Convocations, 
 p. 295, 315) endeavours to show that the clergy had 
 been represented in parliament from the conquest, 
 as well as before it. Many of the passages he 
 quotes are very inconclusive ; but possibly there 
 may be some weight in one from Matthew Paris, 
 ad ann. 1247, and two or three writs of the reign 
 of Henry III. 
 
 , Hody, p. 381. Atterbury's Rights of Convo- 
 cations, p. 221. 
 
 dared not take it without their consent. 
 In the double parliament, if so we may 
 call it, summoned in the eleventh of Ed- 
 ward I. to meet at Northampton and 
 York, and divided according to the two 
 ecclesiastical provinces, the proctors of 
 chapters for each province, but not those 
 of the diocesan clergy, were summoned 
 through a royal writ addressed to the 
 archbishops. Upon account of the ab- 
 sence of any deputies from the lower 
 clergy, these assemblies refused to grant 
 a subsidy. The proctors of both descrip- 
 tions appear to have been summoned by 
 the praemunientes clause in the 22d, 23d, 
 24th, 28th, and 35th years of the same 
 king; but in some other parliaments of 
 his reign the praemunientes clause is 
 omitted.* The same irregularity contin- 
 ued under his successor ; and the con- 
 stant usage of inserting this clause in the 
 bishop's writ is dated from the twenty- 
 eighth of Edward Ill.f 
 
 It is highly probable that Edward I., 
 whose legislative mind was engaged in 
 modelling the constitution on a compre- 
 hensive scheme, designed to render the 
 clergy an effective branch of parliament, 
 however their continual resistance may 
 have defeated the accomplishment of this 
 intention.^ We find an entry upon the 
 roll of his parliament at Carlisle, con- 
 taining a list of all the proctors deputed 
 to it by the several diocesses of the king- 
 dom. This may be reckoned a clear 
 proof of their parliamentary attendance 
 during his reign under the praemunientes 
 clause ; since the province of Canterbury 
 could not have been present in convoca- 
 tion at a city beyond its limits. And 
 indeed if we were to found our judgment 
 merely on the language used in these 
 writs, it would be hard to resist a very 
 strange paradox, that the clergy were not 
 only^me of the three estates of the realm, 
 but as essential a member of the legisla- 
 ture by their representatives as the com- 
 mons.|| They are summoned in the ear- 
 
 * Hody, p. 386. Atterbury, p. 222. 
 
 f Hody, p. 391. 
 
 i Gilbert's Hist, of Exchequer, p. 47. 
 
 $ Rot. Parl., vol. i., p. 189. Atterbury, p. 229. 
 
 || The lower house of convocation, in 1547, ter- 
 rified at the progress of reformation, petitioned 
 that, " according to the tenour of the king's writ and 
 the ancient customs of the realm, they might have 
 room and place, and be associated with the com- 
 mons in the nether house of this present parlia- 
 ment, as members of the commonwealth and the 
 king's most humble subjects." Burnet's Hist, of 
 Reformation, vol. ii., Appendix, No. 17. This as- 
 sertion that the clergy had ever been associated as 
 one body with the commons is not borne out by 
 any thing that appears on our records, and is con- 
 tradicted by many passages. But it is said that 
 
PART 111.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 417 
 
 liestyear extant (23 E. I.), ad tractandum, 
 ordinandum et faciendum nobiscum, et 
 cum cseteris praelatis, proceribus, ac aliis 
 incolis regni nostri ; in that of the next 
 year, ad ordinandum de quantitate et 
 modo subsidii; in that of the twenty- 
 eighth, ad faciendum et consentiendum 
 his, qua? tune de communi consilio ordi- 
 nari contigerit. In later times, it ran 
 sometimes ad faciendum et consentien- 
 dum, sometimes only ad consentiendum ; 
 which, from the fifth of Richard II., has 
 been the term invariably adopted.* Now, 
 as it is usual to infer from the same words, 
 when introduced into the writs for elec- 
 tion of the commons, that they possessed 
 an enacting power implied in the words 
 ad faciendum, or at least to deduce the 
 necessity of their assent from the words 
 ad consentiendum, it should seem to fol- 
 low that the clergy were invested, as a 
 branch of the parliament, with rights no 
 less extensive. It is to be considered 
 how we can reconcile these apparent at- 
 tributes of political power with the un- 
 questionable facts, that almost all laws, 
 even while they continued to attend, 
 were passed without their concurrence, 
 and that, after some time, they ceased 
 altogether to comply with the writ.f 
 
 The solution of this difficulty can only 
 be found in that estrangement from the 
 common law and the temporal courts, 
 which the clergy throughout Europe 
 were disposed to affect. In this coun- 
 try, their ambition defeated its own ends ; 
 and while they endeavoured by privileges 
 and immunities to separate themselves 
 from the people, they did not perceive 
 that the line of demarcation thus strongly 
 traced would cut them off from the sym- 
 pathy of common interests. Every thing 
 which they could call of ecclesiastical 
 cognizance was drawn into their own 
 courts ; while the administration of what 
 they contemned as a barbarous system, 
 the temporal law of the land, fell into the 
 hands of lay judges. But these were 
 men not less subtle, not less ambitious, 
 not less attached to their profession than 
 themselves ; and wielding, as they did in 
 the courts of Westminster, the delegated 
 
 the clergy were actually so united with the com- 
 mons in the Irish parliament till the reformation. 
 Gilbert's Hist, of the Exchequer, p. 57. 
 
 * Hody, p. 392. 
 
 f The prsemunientes clause in a bishop's writ of 
 summons was so far regarded down to the Reform- 
 ation, that proctors were elected, and their names 
 returned upon the writ ; though the clergy never 
 attended from the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, and gave their money only in convocation. 
 Since the Reformation, the clause has been pre- 
 served for form merely hi the writ. Wilkins, Dis- 
 sertatio, ubi supra. 
 Dd 
 
 sceptre of judicial sovereignty, they soon 
 began to control the spiritual jurisdic- 
 tion) and to establish the inherent su- 
 premacy of the common law. From this 
 time an inveterate animosity subsisted 
 between the two courts, the vestiges of 
 which have only been effaced by the lib- 
 eral wisdom of modern ages. The gen- 
 eral love of the common law, however, 
 with the great weight of its professors in 
 the king's council and in parliament, kept 
 the clergy in surprising subjection. None 
 of our kings after Henry III. were big- 
 ots ; and the constant tone of the com- 
 mons serves to show, that the English 
 nation was thoroughly averse to ecclesi- 
 astical influence, whether of their own 
 church or the see of Rome. 
 
 It was natural therefore to withstand 
 the interference of the clergy summoned 
 to parliament in legislation, as much as 
 that of the spiritual court in temporal ju- 
 risdiction. With the ordinary subjects, 
 indeed, of legislation they had little con- 
 cern. The oppressions of the king's 
 purveyors, or escheators, or officers of 
 the forests, the abuses or defects of the 
 common law, the regulations necessary 
 for trading towns and seaports, were 
 matters that touched them not, and to 
 which their consent was never required* 
 And, as they well knew there was no de- 
 sign in summoning their attendance but 
 to obtain money, it was with great re- 
 luctance that they obeyed the royal writ, 
 which was generally obliged to be en- 
 forced by an archiepiscopal mandate.* 
 Thus, instead of an assembly of deputies 
 from an estate of the realm, they became 
 a synod or convocation. And it seems 
 probable that in most, if not all, instances 
 where the clergy are said in the roll of 
 parliament to have presented their peti- 
 tions, or are otherwise mentioned as a 
 deliberative body, we should suppose the 
 convocation alone of the province of 
 Canterbury to be interided.f For that of 
 York seems to have been always consid- 
 ered as inferior, and even ancillary to 
 
 * Hody, p. 396, 403, &c. In 1314, the clergy 
 protest even against the recital of the king's writ 
 to the archbishop, directing him to summon the 
 clergy of his province, in his letters mandatory, de- 
 claring that the English clergy had not been ac- 
 customed, nor ought by right, to be convoked by 
 the king's authority. Atterbury> p. 230. 
 
 t Hody, p. 425. Atterbury, p. 42, 233. The 
 latter seems to think that the clergy of both prov- 
 inces never actually met in a national council or 
 house of parliament, under the praemunientes writ, 
 after the reign of Edward IL, though the proctors 
 were duly returned. But Hody does not go quite 
 so far, and Atterbury had a particular motive to 
 enhance the influence of the convocation for Can* 
 terbury, 
 
418 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Yllf, 
 
 the greater province, voting subsidies, 
 and even assenting to canons, without 
 deliberation, in compliance with the ex- 
 ample of Canterbury ;* the convocation 
 of which province consequently assumed 
 the importance of a national council. But 
 in either point of view the proceedings 
 of this ecclesiastical assembly, collateral 
 in a certain sense to parliament, yet very 
 intimately connected with it, whether 
 sitting by virtue of the praemunientes 
 clause or otherwise, deserve some notice 
 in a constitutional history. 
 
 In the sixth year of Edward III., the 
 proctors of the clergy are specially men- 
 tioned as present at the speech pro- 
 nounced by the king's commissioner, and 
 retired, along with the prelates, to con- 
 sult together upon the business submitted 
 to their deliberation. They proposed 
 accordingly a sentence of excommunica- 
 tion against disturbers of the peace, which 
 was assented to by the lords and com- 
 mons. The clergy are said afterward to 
 have had leave, as well as the knights, 
 citizens, and burgesses, to return to their 
 homes ; the prelates and peers continu- 
 ing with the king.f This appearance of 
 the clergy in full parliament is not per- 
 haps so decisively proved by any later 
 record. But in the eighteenth of the 
 same reign several petitions of the clergy 
 are granted by the king and his council, 
 entered on the roll of parliament, and 
 even the statute roll, and in some re- 
 spects are still part of our law.J To 
 these it seems highly probable that the 
 commons gave no assent ; and they may 
 be reckoned among the other infringe- 
 ments of their legislative rights. It is 
 remarkable that in the same parliament 
 the commons, as if apprehensive of what 
 was in preparation, besought the king 
 that no petition of the clergy might be 
 granted till he and his council should 
 have considered whether it would turn to 
 the prejudice of the lords or, commons. 
 
 A series of petitions from the clergy, 
 in the twenty-fifth of Edward III., had 
 not probably any real assent of the com- 
 mons, though it is once mentioned in the 
 enacting words, when they were drawn 
 into a statute. || Indeed, the petitions cor- 
 respond so little with the general senti- 
 ment of hostility towards ecclesiastical 
 
 * Atterbury, p. 46. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 64, 65. 
 
 t 18 E. III., stat. 3. Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 151. 
 This is the parliament in which it is very doubtful 
 whether any deputies from cities and boroughs 
 had a place. The pretended statutes were there- 
 fore every way null ; being falsely imputed to an 
 incomplete parliament. 
 
 Ibid. I! 25 E. III., stat, 3. 
 
 privileges manifested by the lower house 
 of parliament, that they would not easily 
 have obtained its acquiescence. The 
 convocation of the province of Canterbu- 
 ry presented several petitions in the fif- 
 tieth year of the same king, to which they 
 received an assenting answer ; but they 
 are not found in the statute-book. This 
 however produced the following remon- 
 strance from the commons at the next 
 parliament : " Also the said commons be- 
 seech their lord the king, that no statute 
 nor ordinance be made at the petition of 
 the clergy, unless by assent of your com- 
 mons; and that your commons be not 
 bound by any constitutions which they 
 make for their own profit without the 
 commons' assent. For they will not be 
 bound by any of your statutes or ordi- 
 nances made without their assent."* The 
 king evaded a direct answer to this peti- 
 tion. But the province of Canterbury 
 did not the less present their own griev- 
 ances to the king in that parliament, and 
 two among the statutes of the year seem 
 to be founded upon no other authority.! 
 In the first session of Richard II., the 
 prelates and clergy of both provinces are 
 said to have presented their schedule of 
 petitions, which appear upon the roll, and 
 three of which are the foundation of stat- 
 utes unassented to in all probability by the 
 commons. J If the clergy of both prov- 
 inces were actually present, as is here 
 asserted, it must of course have been as 
 a house of parliament, and not of convo- 
 cation. It rather seems, so far as we 
 can trust to the phraseology of records, 
 that the clergy sat also in a national as- 
 sembly under the king's writ in the sec- 
 ond year of the same king.$ Upon other 
 occasions during the same reign, where 
 the representatives of the clergy are al- 
 luded to as a deliberative body, sitting at 
 the same time with the parliament, it is 
 impossible to ascertain its constitution ; 
 and indeed, even from those already cited, 
 we cannot draw any positive inference. |j 
 
 * P. 368. The word they is ambiguous ; White- 
 locke (on Parliamentary Writ, vol. ii., p. 346) in- 
 terprets it of the commons : I should rather sup- 
 pose it to mean the clergy. 
 
 t 50 E. III., c. 4 and 5. 
 
 j Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 25. A nostre tres ex- 
 cellent seigneur le roy supplient humblement ses 
 devotes oratours, les prelats et la clergie de la 
 province de Canterbirs etd'Everwyk, stat. 1 R. II., 
 c. 13, 14, 15. But see Hody, p. 425 ; Atterbury, 
 p. 329. $ Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 37. 
 
 j| It might be argued, from a passage in the par- 
 liament-roll of 21 R. II., that the clergy of both 
 provinces were not only present, but that they were 
 accounted an essential part of parliament in tem- 
 poral matters, which is contrary to the whole ten- 
 our of our laws. The commons are there said 
 to have prayed, that " whereas many judgments 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 419 
 
 But whether in convocation or in parlia- 
 ment, they certainly formed a legislative 
 council in ecclesiastical matters, by the 
 advice and consent of which alone, with- 
 out that of the commons (I can say noth- 
 ing as to the lords), Edward III., and 
 even Richard II., enacted laws to bind the 
 laity. I have mentioned in a different 
 place a still more conspicuous instance 
 of this assumed prerogative ; namely, the 
 memorable statute against heresy in the 
 second of Henry IV. ; which can hardly 
 be deemed any thing else than an in- 
 fringement of the rights of parliament, 
 more clearly established at that time than 
 at the accession of Richard II. Petitions 
 of the commons relative to spiritual mat- 
 ters, however frequently proposed, in few 
 or no instances obtained the king's assent 
 so as to pass into statutes, unless ap- 
 proved by the convocation.* But, on the 
 other hand, scarcely any temporal laws 
 appear to have passed by the concurrence 
 of the clergy. Two instances only, so 
 far as I know, are on record : the parlia- 
 ment held in the llth of Richard II. is 
 annulled by that in the twenty-first of his 
 reign, " with the assent of the lords spir- 
 itual and temporal, and the proctors of the 
 clergy, and the commons ;"f and the 
 statute entailing the crown on the chil- 
 
 and ordinances formerly made in parliament had 
 been annulled, because the estate of clergy had not 
 been present thereat, the prelates and clergy might 
 make a proxy with sufficient power to consent in 
 their name to all things done in this parliament. 
 Whereupon the spiritual lords agreed to intrust 
 their powers to Sir Thomas Percy, and gave him 
 a procuration, commencing in the following words : 
 ' Nos Thomas Cantuar' et Robertas Ebor' archi- 
 episcopi, ac praelati et clerus utriusque provincioe Can- 
 tuar' et Ebor' jure ecclesiarum nostrarum et temporali- 
 um earundem habentes jus interessendi in singulis par- 
 liamentis domini nostri regis et regni Angliae pro 
 tempore celebrandis,necnon tractandi et expediendi 
 in eisdem quantum ad singula in instanti parlia- 
 mento pro statu et honore domini nostri regis, nec- 
 non regaliae suae, ac quiete, pace, et tranquillitate 
 regni judicialiter justificandis, venerabili viro do- 
 mino Thomae de Percy militi, nostram plenarie 
 committimus potestatem.' " It may be perceived 
 by these expressions, and more unequivocally by 
 the nature of the case, that it was the judicial 
 power of parliament which the spiritual lords del- 
 egated to their proxy. Many impeachments for 
 capital offences were coming on, at which, by 
 their canons, the bishops could not assist. But it 
 can never be conceived that the inferior clergy 
 had any share in this high judicature. And, upon 
 looking attentively at the words above printed in 
 italics, it will be evident that the spiritual lords 
 holding by barony are the only persons designated; 
 whatever may have been meant by the singular 
 phrase, as applied to them, clerus utriusque pro- 
 vinciae. Rot. ParL, vol. iii., p. 348. 
 
 * Atterbury, p. 346. 
 
 t 21 Rich. II., c. 12. Burnet's Hist, of Refor- 
 mation (vol. ii., p. 47) led me to this act, which I 
 had overlooked. 
 Dd2 
 
 dren of Henry IV. is said to be enacted 
 on the petition of the prelates, nobles, 
 clergy, and commons.* Both these were 
 stronger exertions of legislative authority 
 than ordinary acts of parliament, and 
 were very likely to be questioned in suc- 
 ceeding times. 
 
 The supreme judicature, which had 
 been exercised by the king's Jurisdiction 
 court, was diverted, about the oftheking'a 
 reign of John, into three chan- council, 
 nels ; the tribunals of King's Bench, 
 Common Pleas, and the Exchequer.! 
 These became the regular fountains of 
 justice, which soon almost absorbed the 
 provincial jurisdictions of the sheriff and 
 lord of manor. But the original institu- 
 tion, having been designed for ends of 
 state, police, and revenue, full as much 
 as for the determination of private suits, 
 still preserved the most eminent parts 
 of its authority. For the king's ordinary 
 or privy council, which is the usual style 
 from the reign of Edward I., seems to 
 have been no other than the king's court 
 (curia regis) of older times, being com- 
 posed of the same persons, and having, 
 in a principal degree, the same subjects 
 of deliberation. It consisted of the chief 
 ministers; as the chancellor, treasurer, 
 lord steward, lord admiral, lord marshal, 
 the keeper of the privy seal, the cham- 
 berlain, treasurer and comptroller of the 
 household, the chancellor of the exche- 
 quer, the master of the wardrobe; and 
 of the judges, king's sergeant and attor- 
 ney-general, the master of the rolls, and 
 justices in eyre, who at that time were 
 not the same as the judges at Westmin- 
 ster. When all these were called togeth- 
 er, it was a full council ; but where the 
 business was of a more contracted nature, 
 those only who were fittest to advise 
 were summoned; the chancellor and 
 judges, for matters of law; the officers 
 of state for what concerned the revenue 
 or household. 
 
 The business of this council, out of 
 parliament, may be reduced to two heads ; 
 its deliberative office, as a council of ad- 
 vice, and its decisive power of jurisdic- 
 tion. With respect to the first, it obvi- 
 ously comprehended all subjects of polit- 
 ical deliberation, which were usually re- 
 ferred to it by the king : this being in fact 
 the administration or governing council of 
 state, the distinction of a cabinet being in- 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 582. Atterbttfy, P- 6L 
 t The ensuing sketch of the jurisdiction exer- 
 cised by the king's council has been chiefly derived 
 from Sir Matthew Hale's Treatise of the Juris- 
 diction of the Lords' House in Parliament, publish- 
 ed by Mr. Hargrave. 
 
420 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VJII. 
 
 troduced in comparatively modern times. 
 But there were likewise a vast number 
 of petitions continually presented to the 
 council, upon which they proceeded no 
 farther than to sort, as it were, and for- 
 ward them by endorsement to the proper 
 courts, or advise the suiter what remedy 
 he had to seek. Thus some petitions 
 are answered, "this cannot be done 
 without a new law ;" some were turned 
 over to the regular court, as the chancery 
 or king's bench; some of greater mo- 
 ment were endorsed to be heard " before 
 the great council;" some, concerning 
 the king's interest, were referred to the 
 chancery, or select persons of the coun- 
 cil. 
 
 The coercive authority exercised by 
 this standing council of the king was far 
 more important. It may be divided into 
 acts legislative and judicial. As for the 
 first, many ordinances were made in 
 council ; sometimes upon request of the 
 commons in parliament, who felt them- 
 selves better qualified to state a griev- 
 ance than a remedy ; sometimes without 
 any pretence, unless the usage of govern- 
 ment, in the infancy of our constitution, 
 may be thought to afford one. These were 
 always of a temporary or partial nature, 
 and were considered as regulations not 
 sufficiently important to demand a new 
 statute. Thus, in the second year of Rich- 
 ard II., the council, after hearing read the 
 statute-roll of an act recently passed, 
 conferring a criminal jurisdiction in cer- 
 tain cases upon justices of the peace, de- 
 clared that the intention of parliament, 
 though not clearly expressed therein, had 
 been to extend that jurisdiction to certain 
 other cases omitted, which accordingly 
 they caused to be inserted in the commis- 
 sions made to these justices under the 
 great seal.* But they frequently so 
 much exceeded what the growing spirit 
 of public liberty would permit, that it 
 gave rise to complaint in 'parliament. 
 The commons petition, in 13 R. II., that 
 "neither the chancellor nor the king's 
 council, after the close of parliament, 
 may make any ordinance against the 
 common law, or the ancient customs of 
 the land, or the statutes made heretofore 
 or to be made in this parliament; but 
 that the common law have its course for 
 all the people, and no judgment be ren- 
 dered without due legal process." The 
 king answers, " Let it be done as has 
 been usual heretofore, saving the prerog- 
 ative ; and if any one is aggrieved, let 
 him show it specially, and right shall be 
 done him."t This unsatisfactory an- 
 
 Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 84. 
 
 Id., p. 269. 
 
 swer proves the arbitrary spirit in which 
 Richard was determined to govern. 
 
 The judicial power of the council was in 
 some instances founded upon particular 
 acts of parliament, giving it power to hear 
 and determine certain causes. Many pe- 
 titions likewise were referred to it from 
 parliament, especially where they were 
 left unanswered by reason of a dissolu- 
 tion. But, independently of this dele- 
 gated authority, it is certain that the 
 king's council did anciently exercise, as 
 well out of parliament as in it, a very- 
 great jurisdiction, both in causes crimi- 
 nal and civil. Some, however, have con- 
 tended, that whatever they did in this 
 respect was illegal, and an encroachment 
 upon the common law and Magna Charta. 
 And be the common law what it may, it 
 seems an indisputable violation of the 
 charter, in its most admirable and essen- 
 tial article, to drag men in questions of 
 their freehold or liberty before a tribu- 
 nal which neither granted them a trial 
 by their peers, nor always respected the 
 law of the land. Against this usurpation 
 the patriots of those times never ceased 
 to lift their voices. A statute of the fifth 
 year of Edward III. provides that no 
 man shall be attached, nor his property 
 seized into the king's hands against the 
 form of the great charter and the law of 
 the land. In the twenty-fifth of the same 
 king, it was enacted, that " none shall be 
 taken by petition or suggestion to the 
 king or his council, unless it be by en- 
 dictment or presentment, or by writ ori- 
 ginal at the common law, nor shall be put 
 out of his franchise or freehold, unless 
 he be duly put to answer, and forejudged 
 of the same by due course of law."* 
 This was repeated in a short act of the 
 twenty-eighth of his reign ;| but both, in 
 all probability, were treated with neglect ; 
 for another was passed some years after- 
 ward, providing that no man shall be put 
 to answer without presentment before 
 justices, or matter of record, or by due 
 process and writ original according to the 
 old law of the land. The answer to the 
 petition whereon this statute is grounded, 
 
 * 25 E. III., stat. 5, c. 4. See the petition Rot. 
 Parl., vol. ii., p. 228, which extends farther than 
 the king's answer or the statute. Probably this 
 fifth statute of the 25th of Edward III. is the most 
 extensively beneficial act in the whole body of our 
 laws. It established certainty in treasons, regu- 
 lated purveyance, prohibited arbitrary imprison- 
 ment, and the determination of pleas of freehold 
 before the council, took away the compulsory find- 
 ing of men-at-arms and other troops,, confirmed the 
 reasonable aid of the king's tenants fixed by 3 E. 
 I., and provided that the king's protection should 
 not hinder civil process or execution. 
 
 f 28 E. III., c. 3. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 421 
 
 in the parliament-roll, expressly declares 
 this to be an article of the great charter.* 
 Nothing, however, would prevail on the 
 council to surrender so eminent a power, 
 and, though usurped, yet of so long a 
 continuance. Cases of arbitrary impris- 
 onment frequently occurred, and were 
 remonstrated against by the commons. 
 The right of every freeman in that car- 
 dinal point was as indubitable, legally 
 speaking, as at this day ; but the courts 
 of law were afraid to exercise their re- 
 medial functions in defiance of so power- 
 ful a tribunal. After the accession of 
 the Lancastrian family, these, like other 
 grievances, became rather less frequent ; 
 but the commons remonstrate several 
 times, even in the minority of Henry VI., 
 against the council's interference in mat- 
 ters cognizable at common law.f In 
 these later times, the civil jurisdiction 
 of the council was principally exercised 
 in conjunction with the chancery, and 
 accordingly they are generally named 
 together in the complaint. The chan- 
 cellor having the great seal in his custody, 
 the council usually borrowed its process 
 from his court. This was returnable into 
 chancery even where the business was 
 depending before the council. Nor were 
 the two jurisdictions less intimately allied 
 in their character ; each being of an equi- 
 table nature ; and equity, as then prac- 
 tised, being little less than innovation and 
 encroachment on the course of law. 
 This part, long since the most important, 
 of the chancellor's judicial function, can- 
 not be traced beyond the time of Richard 
 II., when the practice of feoffments to 
 uses having been introduced, without 
 any legal remedy to secure the cestui 
 
 * 42 E. III., c. 3, and Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 295. 
 It is not surprising that the king's council should 
 have persisted in these transgressions of their law- 
 ful authority, when we find a similar jurisdiction 
 usurped by the officers of inferior persons. Com- 
 plaint is made in the 18th of Richard II., that, men 
 were compelled to answer before the council of di- 
 vers lords and ladies, for their freeholds and other 
 matters cognizable at common law, and a remedy 
 for this abuse is given by petition in chancery, stat. 
 15 R. II., c. 12. This act is confirmed with a pen- 
 alty on its contraveners the next year. 16 R. II., 
 c. 2. The private jails which some lords were per- 
 mitted by law to possess, and for which there was 
 always a provision in their castles, enabled them to 
 render this oppressive jurisdiction effectual. 
 
 f Rot. Parl., 17 R. II., vol. hi., p. 319; 4 H. IV., 
 p. 507 ; 1 H. VI., vol. iv., p. 189 ; 3 H. VI., p. 292 ; 
 8 H. VI., p. 343 ; 10 H. VI., p. 403 ; 15 H. VI., p. 
 501. To one of these (10 H. VI.), "that none 
 should be put to answer for his freehold in parlia- 
 ment, nor before any court or council where such 
 things are not cognizable by the law of the land," 
 the king gave a denial. As it was less usual to 
 refuse promises of this kind than to forget them 
 afterward, I do not understand the motive of this. 
 
 que use, or usufructuary, against his fe- 
 offees, the court of chancery undertook 
 to enforce this species of contract by 
 process of its own.* 
 
 Such was the nature of the king's ordi- 
 nary council in itself, as the organ of his 
 executive sovereignty ; and such the ju- 
 risdiction which it habitually exercised. 
 But it is also to be considered in its rela- 
 tion to the parliament, during whose ses- 
 sion, either singly, or in conjunction with 
 the lords' house, it was particularly con- 
 spicuous. The great officers of state, 
 whether peers or not, the judges, the 
 king's sergeant, and attorney- general, 
 were, from the earliest times, as the 
 latter still continue to be, summoned by 
 special writs to the upper house. But 
 while the writ of a peer runs, ad tractan- 
 dum nobiscum et cum caeteris prselatis, 
 magnatibus et proceribus; that directed 
 to one of the judges is only, ad tractan- 
 dum nobiscum et cum ca3teris de consilio 
 nostro ; and the seats of the latter are 
 upon the woolsacks at one extremity of 
 the house. 
 
 In the reigns of Edward I. and II., the 
 council appear to have been the regular 
 advisers of the king in passing laws, to 
 which the houses of parliament had as- 
 sented. The preambles of most statutes 
 during this period express their concur- 
 rence. Thus, the statute Westm. I. is 
 said to be the act of the king, by his 
 council, and by the assent of archbishops, 
 bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, and 
 all the commonalty of the realm being 
 hither summoned. The statute of es- 
 cheators, 29 E. I., is said to be agreed by 
 the council, enumerating their names, all 
 whom appear to be judges or public offi- 
 cers. Still more striking conclusions are 
 to be drawn from the petitions addressed 
 to the council by both houses of parlia- 
 ment. In the 8th of Edward II. there 
 are four petitions from the commons to 
 the king and his council, one from the 
 
 * Hale's Jurisdiction of Lords' House, p. 46. 
 Coke, 2 Inst., p. 553. The last author places this 
 a little later. There is a petition of the commons, 
 in the roll of the 4th of Henry IV., p. 511, that 
 whereas many grantees and feoffees in trust for 
 ;heir grantors and feoffers, alienate or charge the 
 tenements granted, in which case there is no remedy, 
 unless one is ordered by parliament, that the king 
 and lords would provide a remedy. This petition 
 s referred to the king's council to ad vise of a rem- 
 edy against the ensuing parliament. It may per- 
 haps be inferred from hence, that the writ of sub- 
 poena out of chancery had not yet been applied to 
 jrotect the cestui que use. But it is equally pos- 
 sible that the commons, being disinclined to what 
 hey would deem an illegal innovation, were en- 
 deavouring to reduce these fiduciary estates within 
 the pale of the common law, as was afterward 
 done by the statute of uses. 
 
422 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 lords alone, and one in which both appear 
 to have joined. Later parliaments of the 
 same reign present us with several more 
 instances of the like nature. Thus, in 18 
 E. II., a petition begins : " To our lord 
 the king, and to his council, the arch- 
 bishops, bishops, prelates, earls, barons, 
 and others of the commonalty of Eng- 
 land, show," &c.* 
 
 But from the beginning of Edward 
 III.'s reign, it seems that the council and 
 the lords' house in parliament were often 
 blended together into one assembly. 
 This was denominated the great council, 
 being the lords spiritual and temporal, 
 with the king's ordinary council annexed 
 to them, as a council within a council. 
 And even in much earlier times, the 
 lords, as hereditary counsellors, were, 
 either whenever they thought fit to at- 
 tend, or on special summonses by the 
 king (it is hard to say which), assistant 
 members of this council, both for advice 
 and for jurisdiction. This double capa- 
 city of the peerage, as members of the 
 parliament or legislative assembly, and 
 of the deliberative and judicial council, 
 throws a very great obscurity over the 
 subject. However, we find that private 
 petitions for redress were, even under 
 Edward I., presented to the lords in par- 
 liament as much as to the ordinary coun- 
 cil. The parliament was considered a 
 high court of justice, where relief was to 
 be given in cases where the course of 
 law was obstructed, as well as where it 
 was defective. Hence the intermission 
 of parliaments was looked upon as a de- 
 lay of justice, and their annual meeting 
 is demanded upon that ground. "The 
 king," says Fleta, ** has his court in his 
 council, in his parliaments, in the pres- 
 ence of bishops, earls, barons, lords, and 
 other wise men, where the doubtful cases 
 of judgments are resolved, and new rem- 
 edies are provided against new injuries, 
 and justice is rendered to every man ac- 
 cording to his desert."! In the third year 
 of Edward II., receivers of petitions 
 began to be appointed at the opening of 
 every parliament, who usually transmit- 
 ted them to the ordinary, but in some in- 
 stances to the great council. These re- 
 ceivers were commonly three for Eng- 
 land, and three for Ireland, Wales, Gas^ 
 cony, and other foreign dominions. 
 There were likewise two corresponding 
 classes of auditors, or triers of petitions. 
 These consisted partly of bishops or 
 peers, partly of judges and other mem- 
 bers of the council; and they seem to 
 
 * Rot. Par!,, v. i., p. 416. f Id., 1. ii., c. 2. 
 
 have been instituted in order to disbur- 
 den the council, by giving answers to 
 some petitions. But about the middle of 
 Edward III.'s time they ceased to act 
 juridically in this respect, and confined 
 themselves to transmitting petitions to 
 the lords of the council. 
 
 The great council, according to the def- 
 inition we have given, consisted of the 
 lords spiritual and temporal, in conjunc- 
 tion with the ordinary council, or, in oth- 
 er words, of all who were severally sum- 
 moned to parliament, exercised a consid- 
 erable jurisdiction, as well civil as crim- 
 inal. In this jurisdiction, it is the opin- 
 ion of Sir M. Hale that the council, 
 though not peers, had right of suffrage ; 
 an opinion very probable, when we rec- 
 ollect that the council, by themselves, 
 both in and out of parliament, possessed, 
 in fact, a judicial authority little inferior; 
 and that the king's delegated sovereignty 
 in the administration of justice, rather 
 than any intrinsic right of the peerage, 
 is the foundation on which the judicature 
 of the lords must be supported. But in 
 the time of Edward III. or Richard II., 
 the lords, by their ascendency, threw the 
 judges and rest of the council into shade, 
 and took the decisive jurisdiction entirely 
 to themselves, making use of their for- 
 mer colleagues but as assistants and ad- 
 visers, as they still continue to be held 
 in all the judicial proceedings of that 
 house. 
 
 Those statutes which restrain the 
 king's ordinary council from disturbing 
 men in their freehold rights, or question- 
 ing them for misdemeanors, have an 
 equal application to the lords' house in 
 parliament, though we do not frequently 
 meet with complaints of the encroach- 
 ments made by that assembly. There was, 
 however, one class of cases tacitly ex- 
 cluded from the operation of those acts, 
 in which the coercive jurisdiction of this 
 high tribunal had great convenience ; 
 namely, where the ordinary course of 
 justice was so much obstructed by the 
 defending party, through riots, combina- 
 tions of maintenance, or overawing influ- 
 ence, that no inferior court would find its 
 process obeyed. Those ages, disfigured 
 in their quietest season by rapine and 
 oppression, afforded no small number of 
 cases that called for this interposition of 
 a paramount authority,* They do not 
 
 * This is remarkably expressed in one of the 
 articles agreed in parliament 8 H, VI., for the reg- 
 ulation of the council. " Item, that alle the billes 
 that comprehend matters terminable atte the com- 
 mon lawe, shall be remitted ther to be determin- 
 ed ; but if so be that the discresion of the coun- 
 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 423 
 
 occur so frequently, however, in the rolls 
 of parliament after the reign of Henry 
 IV.; whether this be attributed to the 
 gradual course of civilization, and to 
 the comparative prosperity which Eng- 
 land enjoyed under the line of Lancaster, 
 or rather to the discontinuance of the 
 lords' jurisdiction. Another indubitable 
 branch of this jurisdiction was in writs 
 of error : but it may be observed, that 
 their determination was very frequently 
 left to a select committee of peers and 
 counsellors. These, too, cease almost 
 entirely with Henry IV. ; and were 
 scarcely revived till the accession of 
 James I. 
 
 Some instances occur in the reign of 
 Edward III., where records have been 
 brought into parliament, and annulled 
 with assent of the commons as well as 
 the rest of the legislature.* But these 
 were attainders of treason, which it 
 seemed gracious and solemn to reverse 
 in the most authentic manner. Certainly 
 the commons had neither by the nature 
 of our constitution, nor the practice of 
 parliament, any right of intermeddling in 
 judicature ; save where something was 
 required beyond the existing law, or 
 where, as in the statute of treasons, an 
 authority of that kind was particularly 
 reserved to both houses. This is fully 
 acknowledged by themselves in the first 
 year of Henry IV. f But their influence 
 upon the balance of government became 
 so commanding in a few years afterward, 
 that they contrived, as has been men- 
 tioned already, to have petitions directed 
 to them rather than to the lords or coun- 
 cil, and to transmit them either with a 
 tacit approbation, or in the form of acts, 
 to the upper house. Perhaps this en- 
 croachment of the commons may have 
 contributed to the disuse of the lords' ju- 
 risdiction, who would rather relinquish 
 their ancient and honourable, but labori- 
 ous function, than share it with such bold 
 usurpers. 
 
 seill fele to grete myght on that o syde, and un- 
 myght on that other, or elles other cause resona- 
 ble yat shal move him." Rot. Parl., vol. iv., 
 p. 343. 
 
 * The judgment against Mortimer was reversed 
 at the suit of his son, 28 E. III., because he had 
 not been put on his trial. The peers had adjudged 
 him to death in his absence, upon common notori- 
 ety of his guilt. 4 E. III., p. 53. In the same 
 session of 28 E. III., the Earl of Arundel's attain- 
 der was also reversed, which had passed in 1 E. 
 III., when Mortimer was at the height of his pow- 
 er. These precedents, taken together, seem to 
 have resulted from no partiality, but a true sense 
 of justice in respect of treasons, animated by the 
 recent statute. Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 250. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 427. 
 
 Although the restraining hand of par- 
 liament was continually grow- General char- 
 ing more effectual, and the act v e e r fthe t 
 notions of legal right acqui- f^Sse 16 " 
 ring more precision from the ages, 
 time of Magna Charta to the civil wars 
 under Henry VI., we may justly say, that 
 the general tone of administration was 
 not a little arbitrary. The whole fabric 
 of English liberty rose step by step, 
 through much toil and many sacrifices ; 
 each generation adding some new secu- 
 rity to the work, and trusting that pos- 
 terity would perfect the labour as well 
 as enjoy the reward. A time perhaps 
 was even then foreseen, in the visions 
 of generous hope, by the brave knights 
 of parliament, and by the sober sages 
 of justice, when the proudest ministers 
 of the crown should recoil from those 
 barriers which were then daily pushed 
 aside with impunity. 
 
 There is a material distinction to be ta- 
 ken between the exercise of the king's 
 undeniable prerogative, however repug- 
 nant to our improved principles of- free- 
 dom, and the abuse or extension of it to 
 oppressive purposes. For we cannot 
 fairly consider as part of pur ancient 
 constitution what the parliament was 
 perpetually remonstrating against, and 
 the statute-book is full of enactments to 
 repress. Doubtless the continual acqui- 
 escence of a nation in arbitrary govern- 
 ment may ultimately destroy all privi- 
 leges of positive institution, and leave 
 them to recover, by such means as op- 
 portunity shall offer, the natural and im- 
 prescriptible rights for which human so- 
 cieties were established. And this may 
 perhaps be the case at present with many 
 European kingdoms. But it would be 
 necessary to shut our eyes with deliber- 
 ate prejudice against the whole tenpur 
 of the most unquestionable authorities, 
 against the petitions of the commons, the 
 acts of the legislature, the testimony of 
 historians and lawyers, before we could 
 assert that England acquiesced in those 
 abuses and oppressions, which it must be 
 owned she was unable fully to prevent. 
 
 The word prerogative is of a peculiar 
 import, and scarcely understood by those 
 who come from the studies of political 
 philosophy. We cannot define it by any 
 theory of executive functions. All these 
 may be comprehended in it, but also a 
 great deal more. It is best perhaps to be 
 understood by its derivation; and has 
 been said, to be that law in case of the 
 king* which is law in no case of, the sub- 
 
 * Blackstone's Com. from Finch, vol. i., c, 7. 
 
424 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 ject. Of the higher and more sovereign 
 prerogatives I shall here say nothing : 
 they result from the nature of a mon- 
 archy, and have nothing very peculiar in 
 their character. But the smaller rights 
 of the crown show better the original 
 lineaments of our constitution. It is 
 said commonly enough, that all preroga- 
 tives are given for the subject's good. I 
 must confess that no part of this asser- 
 tion corresponds with my view of the 
 subject. It neither appears to me that 
 these prerogatives were ever given, nor 
 that they necessarily redound to the 
 subject's good. Prerogative, in its old 
 sense, might be defined an advantage ob- 
 tained by the crown over the subject, 
 in cases where their interests came into 
 competition, by reason of its greater 
 strength. This sprang from the nature 
 of the Norman government, which rath- 
 er resembled a scramble of wild beasts, 
 where the strongest takes the best share, 
 than a system founded upon principles of 
 common utility. And, modified as the 
 exercise of most prerogatives has been 
 by the more liberal tone which now per- 
 vades our course of government, who- 
 ever attends to the common practice of 
 courts of justice, and, still more, whoev- 
 er consults the law-books, will not only 
 be astonished at their extent and multi- 
 plicity, but very frequently at their in- 
 justice and severity. 
 
 The real prerogatives that might for- 
 Purvey. merly be exerted were sometimes 
 ance. of so injurious a nature, that we 
 can hardly separate them from their 
 abuse : a striking instance is that of pur- 
 veyance, which will at once illustrate the 
 definition above given of a prerogative, 
 the limits within which it was to be ex- 
 ercised, and its tendency to transgress 
 them. This was a right of purchasing 
 whatever was necessary for the king's 
 household, at a fair price, in preference 
 to every competitor, and without the con- 
 sent of the owner. By the same pre- 
 rogative, carriages and horses were im- 
 pressed for the king's journeys, and 
 lodgings provided for his attendants. 
 This was defended on a pretext of neces- 
 sity, or at least of great convenience 
 to the sovereign, and was both of high 
 antiquity and universal practice through- 
 out Europe. But the royal purveyors 
 had the utmost temptation, and doubt- 
 less no small store of precedents, to 
 stretch this power beyond its legal 
 boundary ; and not only to fix their own 
 price too low, but to seize what they 
 wanted without any payment at all, or 
 with tallies which were carried in vain 
 
 to an empty exchequer.* This gave 
 rise to a number of petitions from the 
 commons, upon which statutes were 
 often framed ; but the evil was almost 
 incurable in its nature, and never ceased 
 till that prerogative was itself abolished. 
 Purveyance, as I have already said, may 
 serve to distinguish the defects from the 
 abuses of our constitution. It was a re- 
 proach to the law, that men should be 
 compelled to send their goods without 
 their consent ; it was a reproach to the 
 administration, that they were deprived 
 of them without payment. 
 
 The right of purchasing men's goods 
 for the use of the king was extended by 
 a sort of analogy to their labour. Thus 
 Edward III. announces to all sheriffs, that 
 William of Walsingham had a commis- 
 sion to collect as many painters as might 
 suffice for " our works in St, Stephen's 
 chapel, Westminster, to be at our wages 
 as long as shall be necessary ;" and to 
 arrest and keep in prison all who should 
 refuse or be refractory ; and enjoins them 
 to lend their assistance.! Windsor Cas 
 tie owes its massive magnificence to la- 
 bourers impressed from every part of the 
 kingdom. There is even a commission 
 from Edward IV. to take as many work- 
 men in gold as were wanting, and em- 
 ploy them at the king's cost upon the 
 trappings of himself and his household. : 
 
 Another class of abuses intimately 
 connected with unquestionable, Abusegof 
 though oppressive, rights of the feudal 
 crown, originated in the feudal ri s hts - 
 tenure which bound all the lands of the 
 kingdom. The king had indisputably a 
 right to the wardship of his tenants in 
 chivalry, and to the escheats or forfeit-? 
 ures of persons dying without heirs or 
 attainted for treason. But his officers, un- 
 der pretence of wardship, took posses- 
 sion of lands not held immediately of the 
 
 * Letters are directed to all the sheriffs, 2 
 Edw. I., enjoining them to send up a certain num- 
 ber of beeves, sheep, capons, &c. for the king's 
 coronation. Rymer, vol. ii., p. 21. By the statute 
 21 Edw. III., c. 12, goods taken by the purveyors 
 were to be paid for on the spot if under twenty 
 shillings value, or within three months time if 
 above that value. But it is not to be imagined 
 that this law was or could be observed. 
 
 Edward III., impelled by the exigences of his 
 French war, went still greater lengths, and seized 
 large quantities of wool, which he sold beyond 
 sea, as well as provisions for the supply of his ar- 
 my. In both cases the proprietors had tallies, or 
 other securities ; but their despair of obtaining 
 payment gave rise, in 1338, to an insurrection. 
 There is a singular apologetical letter of Edward 
 to the archbishops on this occasion. Rymer, t. v., 
 p. 10. See also p. 73, and Knyghton, col. 2570. 
 
 t Rymer,, t. vi., p. 417. t Id., t. xi., p. 852. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 425 
 
 crown, claimed escheats where a right 
 heir existed, and seized estates as forfeit- 
 ed which were protected by the statute 
 of entails. The real owner had no rem- 
 edy against this dispossession, but to pre- 
 fer his petition of right in chancery, or, 
 which was probably more effectual, to 
 procure a remonstrance of the house of 
 commons in his favour. Even where 
 justice was finally rendered to him, he 
 had no recompense for his damages ; and 
 the escheators were not less likely to re- 
 peat an iniquity by which they could not 
 personally suffer. 
 
 The charter of the forests, granted by 
 Pnrp<ltlaw , Henry III. along with Magna 
 ' Charta,* had been designed to 
 crush the flagitious system of oppres- 
 sion, which prevailed in those favourite 
 haunts of the Norman kings. They had 
 still, however, their peculiar jurisdiction, 
 though, from the time at least of Edward 
 III., subject in some measure to the con- 
 trol of the King's Bench. f The forest- 
 ers, I suppose, might find a compensation 
 for their want of the common law, in 
 that easy and licentious way of life which 
 they affected ; but the neighbouring cul- 
 tivators frequently suffered from the 
 king's officers, who attempted to recover 
 those adjacent lands, or, as they were 
 called, purlieus, which had been disaf- 
 forested by the charter, and protected 
 by frequent perambulations. Many peti- 
 tions of the commons relate to this griev- 
 ance. 
 
 The constable and marshal of Eng- 
 Junsdiction land possessed a jurisdiction, 
 of constable the proper limits whereof were 
 and Marshal, sufficiently narrow, as it seems 
 to have extended only to appeals of trea- 
 son committed beyond sea, which were 
 determined by combat, and to military 
 offences within the realm. But these 
 high officers frequently took upon them 
 to inquire of treasons and felonies cog- 
 nizable at common law, and even of civil 
 
 * Matthew Paris asserts that John granted a 
 separate forest-charter, and supports his position 
 by inserting that of Henry III. at full length. In 
 fact, the clauses relating to the forest were incor- 
 porated with the great charter of John. Such an 
 error as this shows the precariousness of histor- 
 ical testimony, even where it seems to be best 
 grounded. 
 
 t Coke, 4th Inst., p 294. The forest domain of 
 the king, says the author of the Dialogue on the 
 Exchequer under Henry II., is governed by its own 
 laws, not founded on the common law of the land, 
 but the voluntary enactment of princes ; so that 
 whatever is done by that law is reckoned not legal 
 in itself, but legal according to forest law, p. 29, 
 non justum absolute, sed justum secundiim legem 
 forestae dicatur. I believe my translation of justum 
 is right ; for he is not writing satirically. 
 
 contracts or trespasses. This is no bad 
 illustration of the state in which our con- 
 stitution stood under the Plantagenets. 
 No colour of right or of supreme prerog- 
 ative was set up to justify a procedure 
 so manifestly repugnant to the great char- 
 ter. For all remonstrances against these 
 encroachments, the king gave promises 
 in return ; and a statute was enacted, in 
 the 13th of Richard II., declaring the 
 bounds of the constable and marshal's 
 jurisdiction.* It could not be denied, 
 therefore, that all infringements of these 
 acknowledged limits were illegal, even 
 if they had a hundred fold more actual 
 precedents in their favour than can be 
 supposed. But the abuse by no means 
 ceased after the passing of this statute, 
 as several subsequent petitions, that it 
 might be better regarded, will evince. 
 One, as it contains a special instance, I 
 shall insert. It is of the fifth year of 
 Henry IV. "On several supplications 
 and petitions made by the commons in 
 parliament to our lord the king for Ben- 
 net Wilman, who is accused by certain 
 of his ill wishers, and detained in prison, 
 and put to answer before the constable 
 and marshal, against the statutes and the 
 common law of England, our said lord the 
 king, by the advice and assent of the lords 
 in parliament, granted that the said Ben- 
 net should be treated according to the 
 statutes and common law of England, 
 notwithstanding any commission to the 
 contrary, or accusation against him made 
 before the constable and marshal." And 
 a writ was sent to the justices of the 
 king's bench, with a copy of this article 
 from the roll of parliament, directing them 
 to proceed as they shall see fit according 
 to the laws and customs of England.! 
 
 It must appear remarkable, that, in a 
 case so manifestly within their compe- 
 tence, the court of king's bench should 
 not have issued a writ of habeas corpus, 
 without waiting for what may be consid- 
 ered as a particular act of parliament. 
 But it is a natural effect of an arbitrary 
 administration of government, to intimi- 
 date courts of justice. J A negative ar- 
 
 * 13 R. II., c. 2. f Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 530. 
 
 t The apprehension of this compliant spirit in 
 the ministers of justice led to an excellent act in 
 2 E. III., c. 8, that the judges shall not omit to do 
 right for any command under the great or privy 
 seal. And the conduct of Richard II., who sought 
 absolute power by corrupting or intimidating them, 
 produced another statute in the eleventh year of 
 his reign (c. 10), providing that neither letters of the 
 king's signet nor of the privy seal should from 
 thenceforth be sent in disturbance of the law. An 
 ordinance of Charles V., king of France, in 1369, 
 directs the parliament of Paris to pay no regard to 
 any letters under his seal suspending the course of 
 
426 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGJES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 gument, founded upon the want of legal 
 precedent, is certainly not conclusive, 
 when it relates to a distant period, of 
 which all the precedents have not been 
 noted ; yet it must strike us, that in the 
 learned and zealous arguments of Sir 
 Robert Cotton, Mr. Selden, and others, 
 against arbitrary imprisonment, in the 
 great case of the habeas corpus, though 
 the statute law is full of authorities in 
 their favour, we find no instance addu- 
 ced, earlier than the reign of Henry VII., 
 where the king's bench has released, or 
 even bailed, persons committed by the 
 council, or the constable, though it is un- 
 questionable that such committals were 
 both frequent and illegal.* 
 
 If I have faithfully represented thus 
 far the history of our constitution, its es- 
 sential character will appear to be a mon- 
 archy greatly limited by law, though re- 
 taining much power that was ill calcu- 
 lated to promote the public good, and 
 swerving continually into an irregular 
 course, which there was no restraint ad- 
 equate to correct. But of all the notions 
 that have been advanced as to the theory 
 of this constitution, the least consonant 
 to law and history is that which repre- 
 sents the king as merely an hereditary 
 executive magistrate, the first officer of 
 the state. What advantages might re- 
 sult from such a form of government, this 
 is not the place to discuss. But it cer- 
 tainly was not the ancient constitution of 
 England. There was nothing in this, ab- 
 solutely nothing, of a republican appear- 
 
 legal procedure, but to consider them as surrepti- 
 tiously obtained. Villaret, t. x., p. 175. This or- 
 dinance, which was sedulously observed, tended 
 very much to confirm the independence and integ- 
 rity of that tribunal. 
 
 * Cotton's Posthuma, p. 221. Howell's State 
 Trials, vol. iii., p. 1. Hume quotes a grant of the 
 office of constable to the Earl of Rivers in 7 Edw. 
 IV., and infers, unwarrantably enough, that "its 
 authority was in direct contradiction to Magna 
 Charta ; and it is evident that no regular liberty 
 could subsist with it. It involved a full dictatorial 
 power, continually subsisting in the state." Hist. 
 of England, c. 22. But by the very words of this 
 patent the jurisdiction given was only over such 
 causes quae in curia constabularii Angiiae ab anti- 
 quo, viz., tempore dicti Gulielmi conquaestoris, seu 
 aliquo tempore citra, tractari, audiri, examinari, 
 aut decidi consueverunt aut jure debuerant aut de- 
 bent. These are expressed, though not very per- 
 spicuously, in the statute 13 Ric. II., c. 2, that de- 
 clares the constable's jurisdiction. And the chief 
 criminal matter reserved by law to the court of this 
 officer was treason committed out of the kingdom. 
 In violent and revolutionary seasons, such as the 
 commencement of Edward IV.'s reign, some per- 
 sons were tried by martial law before the constable. 
 But in general, the exercise of criminal justice by 
 this tribunal, though one of the abuses of the 
 times, cannot be said to warrant the strong lan- 
 guage adopted by Hume. 
 
 ance. All seemed to grow out of the 
 monarchy, and was referred to its advan- 
 tage and honour. The voice of supplica- 
 tion, even in the stoutest disposition of 
 the commons, was always humble ; the 
 prerogative was always named in large 
 and pompous expressions. Still more 
 naturally may we expect to find in the 
 law-books even an obsequious deference 
 to power ; from judges who scarcely ven- 
 tured to consider it as their duty to de- 
 fend the subject's freedom, and who be- 
 held the gigantic image of prerogative, in 
 the full play of its hundred arms, con- 
 stantly before their eyes. Through this 
 monarchical tone, which certainly per- 
 vades all our legal authorities, a writer 
 like Hume, accustomed to philosophical 
 liberality as to the principles of govern- 
 ment, and to the democratical language 
 which the modern aspect of the constitu- 
 tion and the liberty of printing have pro- 
 duced, fell hastily into the error of be- 
 lieving that all limitations of royal power 
 during the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies were as much unsettled in law and 
 in public opinion, as they were liable to 
 be violated by force. Though a contrary- 
 position has been sufficiently demonstra- 
 ted, I conceive, by the series of parlia- 
 mentary proceedings which I have al- 
 ready produced, yet there is a passage in 
 Sir John Fortescue's treatise De Laudibus 
 Legum Angiiae, so explicit and weighty, 
 that no writer on the English constitution 
 can be excused from inserting it. This 
 eminent person, having been chief jus- 
 tice of the king's bench under Henry 
 VI., was governor to the young Prince 
 of Wales during his retreat in France, 
 and received at his hands the office of 
 chancellor. It must never be forgotten, 
 that in a treatise purposely composed for 
 the instruction of one who hoped to reign 
 over England, the limitations of govern- 
 ment are enforced as strenuously by 
 Fortescue, as some succeeding lawyers 
 have inculcated the doctrines of arbitrary 
 prerogative. 
 
 "A king of England cannot at his 
 pleasure make any alterations sir John 
 in the laws of the "land, for the 
 nature of his government is not J 
 only regU, but political. Had 
 it been merely regal, he would stitullon - 
 have a power to make what innovations 
 and alterations he pleased in the laws of 
 the kingdom, impose tallages and other 
 hardships upon the people, whether they 
 would or no, without their consent, which 
 sort of government the civil laws point 
 out when they declare, Quod principi pla- 
 cuit, legis habet vigorem. But it is much 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 427 
 
 otherwise with a king whose governmen 
 is political, because he can neither mak< 
 any alteration or change in the laws of 
 the realm without the consent of the sub- 
 jects, nor burden them against their wills 
 with strange impositions, so that a peo 
 
 Ele governed by such laws as are made 
 y their own consent and approbation 
 enjoy their properties securely, and with 
 out the hazard of being deprived of them 
 either by the king or any other. The 
 same things may be effected under an ab- 
 solute prince, provided he do not degen- 
 erate into the tyrant. Of such a prince 
 Aristotle, in the third of his Politics, says 
 1 It is better for a city to be governed by 
 a good man than by good laws.' Bui 
 because it does not always happen that 
 the person presiding over a people is so 
 qualified, St. Thomas, in the book which 
 he writ to the King of Cyprus, De Regi- 
 mine Principum, wishes, that a kingdom 
 could be so instituted as that the king 
 might not be at liberty to tyrannise over 
 his people ; which only comes to pass 
 in the present case; that is, when the 
 sovereign power is restrained by polit- 
 ical laws. Rejoice, therefore, my good 
 prince, that such is the law of the king- 
 dom to which you are to inherit, because 
 it will afford, both to yourself and sub- 
 jects, the greatest security and satisfac- 
 tion."* 
 
 The two great divisions of civil rule, 
 the absolute, or regal, as he calls it, and 
 the political, Fortescue proceeds to de- 
 duce from the several originals of con- 
 quest and compact. Concerning the lat- 
 ter, he declares emphatically, a truth not 
 always palatable to princes, that such 
 governments were instituted by the peo- 
 ple and for the people's good; quoting 
 St. Augustine for a similar definition of a 
 political society. "As the head of a 
 body natural cannot change its nerves 
 and sinews, cannot deny to the several 
 parts their proper energy, their due pro- 
 portion and aliment of blood, neither can 
 a king, who is the head of a body politic, 
 change the laws thereof, nor take from 
 the people what is theirs by right against 
 their consent. Thus you have, sir, the 
 formal institution of every political king- 
 dom, from whence you may guess at the 
 power which a king may exercise with 
 respect to the laws and the subject. For 
 he is appointed to protect his subjects in 
 their lives, properties, and laws ; for this 
 very end and purpose he has the delega- 
 tion of power from the people, and he has 
 no just claim to any other power but 
 
 * Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 9. 
 
 this. Wherefore, to give a brief answer 
 to that question of yours concerning the 
 different powers which kings claim over 
 their subjects, I am firmly of opinion that 
 it arises solely from the different natures 
 of their original institution, as you may 
 easily collect from what has been said. 
 So the kingdom of England had its origi- 
 nal from Brute and the Trojans, who at- 
 tended him from Italy and Greece, and 
 became a mixed kind of government, 
 compounded of the regal and political."* 
 It would occupy too much space to 
 quote every other passage of Erroneous 
 the same nature in this treatise views taken 
 of Fortescue, and in that enti- by Hume - 
 tied, Of the Difference between an Abso- 
 lute and Limited Monarchy, which, so far 
 as these points are concerned, is nearly 
 a translation from the former.f But 
 these, corroborated as they are by the 
 statute-book and by the rolls of parlia- 
 ment, are surely conclusive against the 
 notions which pervade Mr. Hume's His- 
 tory. I have already remarked that a 
 sense of the glaring prejudice by which 
 some whig writers had been actuated, in 
 representing the English constitution 
 from the earliest times as nearly arrived 
 at its present perfection, conspired with 
 certain prepossessions of his own to lead 
 this eminent historian into an equally er- 
 roneous system on the opposite side. 
 And as he traced the stream backwards, 
 and came last to the times of the Plan- 
 tagenet dynasty, with opinions already 
 biased and even pledged to the world in 
 his volumes of earlier publication, he was 
 prone to seize hold of and even exagger- 
 ate every circumstance that indicated 
 immature civilization, and law perverted 
 or infringed. | To this his ignorance of 
 
 * Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 13. 
 f The latter treatise having been written under 
 Edward IV., whom Fortescue, as a restored Lan- 
 castrian, would be anxious not to offend, and whom 
 n fact he took some pains to conciliate both in 
 this and other writings, it is evident that the prin- 
 ciples of limited monarchy were as fully recognised 
 n his reign, whatever particular acts of violence 
 night occur, as they had been under the Lancas 
 rian princes. 
 
 t The following is one example of these preju 
 dices : In the 9th of Richard II. a tax on wool, 
 granted till the ensuing feast of St. John Baptist, 
 vas to be intermitted from thence to that of St. . 
 3 eter, and then to recommence ; that it might not 
 >e claimed as a right. Rot. Parl., vol. in., p. 214. 
 tfr. Hume has noticed this provision, as " showing 
 an accuracy beyond what was to be expected in 
 hose rude times." In this epithet we" see the 
 bundation of his mistakes. The age of Richard 
 I. might perhaps be called rude in some respects. 
 3ut assuredly, in prudent and circumspect pejcep- 
 ion of consequences, and an accurate use of lan- 
 guage, there could be no reason why it should be 
 
 
 
428 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 English jurisprudence, which certainl) 
 in some measure disqualified him from 
 writing our history, did not a little con 
 tribute ; misrepresentations frequently 
 occurring in his work, which a moderate 
 acquaintance with the law of the lane 
 would have prevented. 
 
 It is an honourable circumstance to 
 instances of England, that the history of no 
 illegal con- other country presents so few 
 damnation i ns t a nces of illegal condem- 
 nations upon political charges. 
 The judicial torture was hardly known, 
 and never recognised by law.* The 
 sentence in capital crimes, fixed un- 
 alterably by custom, allowed nothing to 
 vindictiveness and indignation. There 
 hardly occurs an example of any one 
 being notoriously put to death without 
 form of trial, except in moments of fla- 
 grant civil war. If the right of juries 
 were sometimes evaded by irregular ju- 
 risdictions, they were at least held sacred 
 by the courts of law : and through all 
 the vicissitudes of civil liberty, no one 
 ever questioned the primary right of 
 every freeman, handed down from his 
 Saxon forefathers, to the trial by his 
 peers. A just regard for public safety 
 prescribes the necessity of severe penal- 
 ties against rebellion and conspiracy ; 
 but the interpretation of these offences, 
 when intrusted to sovereigns and their 
 counsellors, has been the most tremen- 
 dous instrument of despotic power. In 
 rude ages, even though a general spirit 
 of political liberty may prevail, the legal 
 character of treason will commonly be 
 undefined; nor is it the disposition of 
 lawyers to give greater accuracy to this 
 part of criminal jurisprudence. The na- 
 ture of treason appears to have been 
 subject to much uncertainty in England 
 before the statute of Edward III. If 
 
 deemed inferior to our own. If Mr, Hume had 
 ever deigned to glance at the legal decisions re- 
 ported in the Year-books of those times, he would 
 have been surprised, not only at the utmost accu- 
 racy, but at a subtle refinement in verbal logic, 
 which none of his own metaphysical treatises 
 could surpass. 
 
 * During the famous process against the knights 
 templars in the reign of Edward II., the Archbish- 
 op, of York, having taken the examination of cer- 
 tain templars in his province, felt some doubts, 
 which he propounded to several monasteries and 
 divines. Most of these relate to the main subject. 
 But one question, fitter indeed for lawyers than 
 theologians, was, whereas many would not confess 
 without torture, whether he might make use of 
 this means, licet hoc in regno Angiice nunquam visum 
 fuerit vel auditum ? Et si torquendi sunt, utrum 
 per clericos vel laicos? Et dato, quo-1 nullus om- 
 nind tortor inveniri valeat in Angli&, utrum pro tor- 
 toribus mittendum sit ad paites transmarinas? 
 Walt. Hemingford, p. 256. 
 
 that memorable law did not give all pos- 
 sible precision to the offence, which we 
 must certainly allow, it prevented at 
 least those stretches of vindictive tyran- 
 ny which disgrace the annals of other 
 countries. The praise, however, must be 
 understood as comparative. Some cases 
 of harsh, if not illegal convictions, could 
 hardly fail to occur, in times of violence 
 and during changes of the reigning family. 
 Perhaps the circumstances have now 
 and then been aggravated by historians. 
 Nothing could be more illegal than the 
 conviction of the Earl of Cambridge and 
 Lord Scrop, in 1415. if it be true, accord- 
 ing to Carte and Hume, that they were 
 not heard in their defence. But whether 
 this is to be absolutely inferred from the 
 record,* is perhaps open to question. 
 There seems at least to have been no 
 sufficient motive for such an irregularity ; 
 their participation in a treasonable con- 
 spiracy being manifest from their own 
 confession. The proceedings against 
 Sir John Mortimer in the 2d of Henry 
 VI. f are called by Hume highly irregular 
 and illegal. They were, however, by act 
 of attainder, which cannot well be styled 
 llegal. Nor are they to be considered as 
 severe. Mortimer had broken out of 
 ;he Tower, where he was confined on a 
 charge of treason. This was a capital 
 felony at common law ; and the chief ir- 
 regularity seems to have consisted in 
 laving recourse to parliament in order to 
 attaint him of treason, when he had al- 
 ready forfeited his life by another crime. 
 I would not willingly attribute to the 
 prevalence of tory dispositions what 
 nay be explained otherwise, the prog- 
 ess which Mr. Hume's historical theory 
 as to our constitution has been gradually 
 naking since its publication. The tide 
 f opinion, which, since the Revolution, 
 and indeed since the reign of James I., 
 ad been flowing so strongly in favour of 
 he antiquity of our liberties, now seems, 
 imong the higher and more literary 
 lasses, to set pretty decidedly the other 
 vay. Though we may still sometimes 
 lear a demagogue chattering about the 
 vittenagemot, it is far more usual to find 
 ensible and liberal men who look on 
 Vlagna Charta itself as the result of an 
 ninteresting squabble between the king 
 ind his barons. Acts of force and in- 
 ustice, which strike the cursory inquirer, 
 especially if he derives his knowledge 
 rom modern compilations more than 
 he average tenour of events, are selected 
 and displayed as fair samples of the law 
 
 * Rot. Part., vol. iv., p. 65. f Id., p. 202. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, 
 
 420 
 
 and of its administration. We are de- 
 ceived by the comparatively perfect 
 state of our present liberties, and forget 
 that our superior security is far less ow- 
 ing to positive law than to the control 
 which is exercised over government by 
 public opinion through the general use of 
 printing, and to the diffusion of liberal 
 principles in policy through the same 
 means. Thus, disgusted at a contrast 
 which it was hardly candid to institute, 
 we turn away from the records that at- 
 test the real, though imperfect, freedom 
 of our ancestors ; and are willing to be 
 persuaded that the whole scheme of Eng- 
 lish polity, till the commons took on 
 themselves to assert their natural rights 
 against James I., was at best but a mock- 
 ery of popular privileges, hardly recog- 
 nised in theory, and never regarded in 
 effect. 
 
 This system, when stripped of those 
 slavish inferences that Brady and Carte 
 attempted to build upon it, admits per- 
 haps of no essential objection but its 
 want of historical truth. God forbid that 
 our rights to just and free government 
 should be tried by a jury of antiquaries ! 
 Yet it is a generous pride that inter- 
 twines the consciousness of hereditary 
 freedom with the memory of our ances- 
 tors; and no trifling argument against 
 those who seem indifferent in its cause, 
 that the character of the bravest and 
 most virtuous among nations has not de- 
 pended upon the accidents of race or 
 climate, but been gradually wrought by 
 the plastic influence of civil rights, 
 transmitted as a prescriptive inheritance 
 through a long course of generations. 
 
 By what means the English acquired 
 causes tend- anc * preserved this political lib- 
 ing to form erty, which, even in the fif- 
 tio e n c nstitu teenth century, was the admi- 
 ration of judicious foreigners,* 
 is a very rational and interesting inquiry. 
 Their own serious and steady attachment 
 to the laws must always be reckoned 
 among the principal causes of this bles- 
 sing. The civil equality of all freemen 
 below the rank of peerage, and the sub- 
 jection of peers themselves to the impar- 
 tial arm of justice, and to a just share in 
 contribution to public burdens, advan- 
 tages unknown to other countries, tended 
 to identify the interests and to assimilate 
 the feelings of the aristocracy with those 
 of the people ; classes whose dissension 
 and jealousy have been in many instances 
 
 * Philip de Comines takes several opportunities 
 of testifying his esteem for the English govern- 
 ment. See particularly 1. ir., c. i., and 1. v., c. 
 xlx. 
 
 the surest hope of sovereigns aiming at 
 arbitrary power. This freedom from the 
 oppressive superiority of a privileged or- 
 der was peculiar to England. In many 
 kingdoms the royal prerogative was at 
 least equally limited. The statutes of 
 Aragon are more full of remedial provis- 
 ions. The right of opposing a tyranni- 
 cal government by arms was more fre- 
 quently asserted in Castile. But no- 
 where else did the people possess by 
 law, and I think, upon the whole, in ef- 
 fect, so much security for their personal 
 freedom and property. Accordingly, the 
 middling ranks flourished remarkably, 
 not only in commercial towns, but among 
 the cultivators of the soil. u There is 
 scarce a small village," says Sir J. For- 
 tescue, " in which you may not find a 
 knight, an esquire, or some substantial 
 householder (paterfamilias), commonly 
 called a frankleyn,* possessed of consid- 
 erable estate; besides others who are 
 called freeholders, and many yeomen of 
 estates sufficient to make a substantial 
 jury." I would, however, point out 
 more particularly two causes which had 
 a very leading efficacy in the gradual de- 
 velopment of our constitution ; first, the 
 schemes of continental ambition in which 
 our government was long engaged ; sec- 
 ondly, the manner in which feudal prin- 
 ciples of insubordination and resistance 
 were modified by the prerogatives of the 
 early Norman kings. 
 
 1. At the epoch when William the 
 Conqueror ascended the throne, hardly 
 any other power was possessed by the 
 King of France than what he inherited 
 from the great fiefs of the Capetian fam- 
 ily. War with such a potentate was not 
 exceedingly to be dreaded, and William, 
 besides his immense revenue, could em- 
 ploy the feudal services of his vassals, 
 which were extended by him to conti- 
 nental expeditions. These circumstan- 
 ces were not essentially changed till 
 after the loss of Normandy ; for the ac- 
 quisitions of Henry II. kept him fully on 
 an equality with the French crown, and 
 the dilapidation which had taken place in 
 
 * By a frankleyn in this place we are to under- 
 stand what we call a country squire, like the 
 frankleyn of Chaucer; for the word esquire in 
 Fortescue's time was only used in its limited 
 sense, for the sons of peers and knights, or such as 
 had obtained the title by creation or some other 
 legal means. 
 
 The mention of Chaucer leads me to add, that 
 the prologue to his Canterbury Tales is of itself a 
 continual testimony to the plenteous and comfort- 
 able situation of the middle ranks in England, as 
 well as to that fearless independence and frequent 
 originality of character among them, which liberty 
 and competence have conspired to produce. 
 
430 
 
 EUROPE DtRING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHiP. Vllfj 
 
 the royal demesnes was compensated 
 by several arbitrary resources that filled 
 the exchequer of these monarchs. But 
 in the reigns of John and Henry III., the 
 position of England, or rather of its sov- 
 ereign, with respect to France, under- 
 went a very disadvantageous change. 
 The loss of Normandy severed the con- 
 nexion between the English nobility and 
 the continent ; they had no longer es- 
 tates to defend, and took not sufficient 
 interest in the concerns of Guienne to 
 fight for that province at their own cost. 
 Their feudal service was now commuted 
 for an escuage, which fell very short of 
 the expenses incurred in a protracted 
 campaign. Tallages of royal towns and 
 demesne lands, extortion of money from 
 the Jews, every feudal abuse and oppres- 
 sion were tried in vain to replenish the 
 treasury, which the defence of Eleanor's 
 inheritance against the increased energy 
 of France was constantly exhausting. 
 Even in the most arbitrar) 7 reigns, a gen- 
 eral tax upon landholders, in any cases 
 but those prescribed by the feudal law, 
 had not been ventured ; and the standing 
 bulwark of Magna Charta, as well as the 
 feebleness and unpopularity of Henry III., 
 made it more dangerous to violate an 
 established principle. Subsidies were 
 therefore constantly required; but for 
 these it was necessary for the king to 
 meet parliament, to hear their com- 
 plaints, and, if he could not elude, to ac- 
 quiesce in their petitions. These neces- 
 sities came stiff more urgently upon Ed- 
 ward I., whose ambitious spirit could not 
 t patiently endure the encroachments of 
 Philip the Fair, a rival not less ambitious, 
 but certainly less distinguished by per- 
 sonal prowess than himself. What ad- 
 vantage the friends of liberty reaped 
 from this ardour for continental warfare, 
 is strongly seen in the circumstances at- 
 tending the Confirmation of the Char- 
 ters. 
 
 But after this statute had rendered all 
 tallages without consent of parliament 
 illegal, though it did not for some time 
 prevent their being occasionally imposed, 
 it was still more difficult to carry on a 
 war with France or Scotland, to keep on 
 foot naval armamentSj or even to pre- 
 serve the courtly magnificence which 
 that age of chivalry affected, without 
 perpetual recurrence to the house of 
 commons. Edward III. very little con- 
 sulted the interests of his prerogative 
 when he stretched forth his hand to 
 seize the phantom of a crown in France. 
 It compelled him to assemble parliament 
 almost annually, and often to hold more 
 
 than one session within the year. Here 
 the representatives of England learned 
 the habit of remonstrance and condition-* 
 al supply; and though, in the meridian 
 of Edward's age and vigour, they often 
 failed of immediate redress, yet they 
 gradually swelled the statute-roll with 
 provisions to secure their country's free- 
 dom ; and acquiring self-confidence by 
 mutual intercourse, and sense of the pub- 
 lic opinion, they became able, before the 
 end of Edward's reign, and still more in 
 that of his grandson, to control, prevent, 
 and punish the abuses of administration. 
 Of all these proud and sovereign privi- 
 leges, the right of refusing supply was 
 the keystone. But for the long wars in 
 which our kings were involved, at first 
 by their possession of Guienne, and after- 
 ward by their pretensions upon the crown 
 of France, it would have been easy 
 to suppress remonstrances by avoiding 
 to assemble parliament. For it must be 
 confessed, that an authority was given to 
 the king's proclamations, and to ordinan- 
 ces of the council, which differed but 
 little from legislative power, and would 
 very soon have been interpreted by com- 
 plaisant courts of justice to give them 
 the full extent of statutes. 
 
 It is common indeed to assert, that the 
 liberties of England were bought with 
 the blood of pur forefathers. This is a 
 very magnanimous boast; and in some 
 degree is consonant enough to the truth. 
 But it is far more generally accurate to 
 say, that they were purchased by money. 
 A great proportion of our best laws, in- 
 cluding Magna Charta itself, as it now 
 stands confirmed by Henry III., were, in 
 the most literal sense, obtained by a pe- 
 cuniary bargain with the crown. In 
 many parliaments of Edward III. and 
 Richard II. this sale of redress is chaf- 
 fered for as distinctly, and with as little 
 apparent sense of disgrace, as the most 
 legitimate business between two mer- 
 chants would be transacted. So little 
 was there of voluntary benevolence in 
 what the loyal courtesy of our constitu- 
 tion styles concessions from the throne ; 
 and so little title have these sovereigns, 
 though we cannot refuse our admiration 
 to the generous virtues of Edward III. 
 and Henry V., to claim the gratitude of 
 posterity as the benefactors of their 
 people ! 
 
 2. The relation established between a 
 lord and his vassal, by the feudal tenure, 
 far from containing principles of any 
 servile and implicit obedience, permitted 
 the compact to be dissolved in case of its 
 violation by either party. This extend- 
 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 431 
 
 ed as much to the sovereign as to inferi- 
 or lords ; the authority of the former in 
 France, where the system most flour- 
 ished, being for several ages rather feu- 
 dal than political. If a vassal was ag- 
 grieved, and if justice was denied him, he 
 sent a defiance, that is, a renunciation of 
 fealty to the king, and was entitled to 
 enforce redress at the point of his 
 sword. It then became a contest of 
 strength as between two independent po- 
 tentates, and was terminated by treaty, 
 advantageous or otherwise, according to 
 the forHne of war. This privilege, 
 suited enough to the situation of France, 
 the great peers of which did not origi- 
 nally intend to admit more than a nomi- 
 nal supremacy in the house of Capet, 
 was evidently less compatible with the 
 regular monarchy of England. The 
 stern natures of William the Conqueror 
 and his successors kept in control the 
 mutinous spirit of their nobles, and reap- 
 ed the profit of feudal tenures, without 
 submitting to their reciprocal obligations. 
 They counteracted, if I may so say, the 
 centrifugal force of that system by the 
 application of a stronger power; by 
 preserving order, administering justice, 
 checking the growth of baronial influ- 
 ence and riches, with habitual activity, 
 vigilance, and severity. Still, however, 
 there remained the original principle, 
 that allegiance depended conditionally 
 upon good treatment, and that an appeal 
 might be lawfully made to arms against 
 an oppressive government. Nor was 
 this, we may be sure, left for extreme 
 necessity, or thought to require a long 
 enduring forbearance. In modern times, 
 a king compelled by his subjects' swords 
 to abandon any pretension would be sup- 
 posed to have ceased to reign ; and the 
 express recognition of such a right as 
 that of insurrection has been justly 
 deemed inconsistent with the majesty of 
 law. But ruder ages had ruder senti- 
 ments. Force was necessary to repel 
 force; and men accustomed to see the 
 king's authority defied by private riot 
 were not much shocked when it was re- 
 sisted in defence of public freedom. 
 
 The Great Charter of John was secured 
 by the election of twenty-five barons, as 
 conservators of the compact. If the king, 
 or the justiciary in his absence, should 
 transgress any article, any four might de- 
 mand reparation, and on denial carry 
 their complaint to the rest of their body. 
 " And those barons, with all the com- 
 mons of the land, shall distrain and an- 
 noy us by every means in their power ; 
 that is, by seizing our castles, lands, and 
 
 possessions, and every othei* mode, till 
 the wrong shall be repaired to their sat- 
 isfaction; saving our person, and our 
 queen and children. And when it shall 
 be repaired they shall obey us as be- 
 fore."* It is amusing to see the com- 
 mon law of distress introduced upon this 
 gigantic scale ; and the capture of the 
 king's castles treated as analogous to im- 
 pounding a neighbour's horse for break- 
 ing fences. 
 
 A very curious illustration of this feu- 
 dal principle is found in the conduct of 
 William, earl of Pembroke, one of the 
 greatest names in our ancient history, 
 towards Henry III. The king had defied 
 him, which was tantamount to a declara- 
 tion of war ; alleging that he had made 
 an inroad upon the royal domains. Pem- 
 broke maintained that he was not the ag- 
 gressor, that the king had denied him 
 justice, and been the first to invade his 
 territory ; on which account he had 
 thought himself absolved from his hom- 
 age, and at liberty to use force against 
 the malignity of the royal advisers. 
 " Nor would it be for the king's honour," 
 the earl adds, " that I should submit to 
 his will against reason, whereby I should 
 rather do wrong to him and to that jus- 
 tice which he is bound to administer to- 
 wards his people : and I should give an 
 ill example to all men in deserting justice 
 and right in compliance with his mistaken 
 will. For this would show that I loved 
 my worldly wealth better than justice." 
 These words, with whatever dignity ex- 
 pressed, it may be objected, prove only 
 the disposition of an angry and revolted 
 earl. But even Henry fully admitted the 
 right of taking arms against himself, if 
 he had meditated his vassal's destruction, 
 and disputed only the application of this 
 maxim to the Earl of Pembroke. f 
 
 These feudal notions, which placed the 
 moral obligation of allegiance very low, 
 acting under a weighty pressure from the 
 real strength of the crown, were favour- 
 able to constitutional liberty. The great 
 vassals of France and Germany aimed at 
 living independently on their fiefs, with 
 no further concern for the rest than as 
 useful allies having a common interest 
 against the crown. But in England, as 
 there was no prospect of throwing off 
 subjection, the barons endeavoured only 
 to lighten its burden, fixing limits to pre- 
 rogative by law, and securing their ob- 
 servation by parliamentary remonstran- 
 ces or by dint of arms. Hence, as all 
 
 * Brady's Hist., vol. i., Appendix, p. 148. 
 f Matt. Paris, p. 330. Lyttleton'a Hist, of Hen- 
 ry II., vol. iv., p. 41. 
 
432 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 rebellions in England were directed only 
 to coerce the government, or, at the ut- 
 most, to change the succession of the 
 crown, without the smallest tendency to 
 separation, they did not impair the na- 
 tional strength, nor destroy the charac- 
 ter of the constitution. In all these con- 
 tentions, it is remarkable that the people 
 and clergy sided with the nobles against 
 the throne. No individuals are so pop- 
 ular with the monkish annalists, who 
 speak the language of the populace, as 
 Simon, earl of Leicester, Thomas, earl 
 of Lancaster, and Thomas, duke of 
 Glocester, all turbulent opposers of the 
 royal authority, and probably little de- 
 serving of their panegyrics. Very few 
 English historians of the middle ages are 
 advocates of prerogative. This may be 
 ascribed both to the equality of our laws, 
 and to the interest which the aristocracy 
 found in courting popular favour when 
 committed against so formidable an ad- 
 versary as the king. And even now, 
 when the stream that once was hurried 
 along gullies, and dashed down precipices, 
 hardly betrays, upon its broad and tran- 
 quil bosom, the motion that actuates it, 
 it must still be accounted a singular hap- 
 piness of our constitution, that all ranks 
 graduating harmoniously into one anoth- 
 er, the interests of peers and common- 
 ers are radically interwoven ; each in a 
 certain sense distinguishable, but not bal- 
 anced like opposite weights, not separa- 
 ted like discordant fluids, not to be se- 
 cured by insolence or jealousy, but by 
 mutual adherence and reciprocal influ- 
 ences. 
 
 From the time of Edward I., the feudal 
 influence system and all the feelings con- 
 which the nected with it declined very rap- 
 
 Xa'nners idl 7' But what the nobility lost 
 
 gave the in the number of their military 
 nobility, tenants was in some degree com- 
 pensated by the state of manners. The 
 higher class of them, who took the chief 
 share in public affairs, were exceedingly 
 opulent; and their mode of life gave 
 wealth an incredibly greater efficacy than 
 it possesses at present. Gentlemen of 
 large estates and good families, who had 
 attached themselves to these great peers, 
 who bore offices, which we should call 
 menial, in their households, and sent 
 their children thither for education, were 
 of course ready to follow their banner in 
 rising, without much inquiry into the 
 cause. Still less would the vast body of 
 tenants, and their retainers, who were 
 fed at the castle in time of peace, refuse 
 to carry their pikes and staves into the 
 field of battle. Many devices were used 
 
 to preserve this aristocratic Influence, 
 which riches and ancestry of themselves 
 rendered so formidable. Such was the 
 Maintenance of suits, or confederacies 
 or the purpose of supporting each other's 
 3laims in litigation, which was the sub- 
 ect of frequent complaints in parliament, 
 and gave rise to several prohibitory stat- 
 jtes. By help of such confederacies, 
 parties were enabled to make violent en- 
 vies upon the lands they claimed, which 
 the law itself could hardly be said to dis- 
 courage.* Even proceedings in courts 
 of justice were often liable to*fntimida- 
 ion and influence. f A practice much 
 allied to confederacies of maintenance, 
 hough ostensibly more harmless, was 
 hat of giving liveries to all retainers of 
 a noble family ; but it had an obvious 
 tendency to preserve that spirit of fac- 
 jous attachments and animosities, which 
 t is the general policy of a wise govern- 
 ment to dissipate. From the first year 
 of Richard II. we find continual mention 
 of this custom, with many legal provis- 
 ions against it, but it was never abol- 
 ished till the reign of Henry VII. J 
 
 * If a man was disseized of his land, he might 
 nter upon the disseisor and reinstate himself with- 
 out course of law. In what case this right of en- 
 ;ry was taken away, or tolled, as it was expressed, 
 jy the death or alienation of the disseisor, is a sub- 
 ject extensive enough to occupy two chapters of 
 Lyttleton. What pertains to our inquiry is, that by 
 an entry, in the old law books, we must understand 
 an actual repossession of the disseisee, not a suit 
 in ejectment, as it is now interpreted, but which is 
 a comparatively modern proceeding. The first 
 remedy, says Britton, of the disseisee is to collect a 
 body of his friends (recoiller amys et force), and 
 without delay to cast out the disseisors, or at least 
 to maintain himself in possession along with them, 
 c. 44. This entry ought indeed, by 5 Rich. II., 
 stat. i., c. 8, to be made peaceably ; and the jus- 
 tices might assemble the posse comitatus, to im- 
 prison persons entering on lands by violence (15 
 Ric. II., c. 2), but these laws imply the facts that 
 made them necessary. 
 
 f No lord or other person, by 20 Ric. II., c. 3, 
 was permitted to sit on the bench with the justices 
 of assize. Trials were sometimes overawed by 
 armed parties, who endeavoured to prevent their 
 adversaries from appearing. Paston Letters, vol. 
 hi., p, 119. 
 
 | From a passage in the Paston Letters (vol. ii., 
 p. 23), it appears that, far from these acts being re- 
 garded, it was considered as a mark of respect to 
 the king, when he came into a county, for the no- 
 blemen and gentry to meet him with as many at- 
 tendants in livery as they could muster. Sir John 
 Paston was to provide twenty men in their livery- 
 gowns, and the Duke of Norfolk two hundred. 
 This illustrates the well-known story of Henry 
 VII. and the Earl of Oxford, and shows the mean 
 and oppressive conduct of the king in that affair, 
 which Hume has pretended to justify. 
 
 In the first of Edward IV. it is said in the roll of 
 parliament (vol. v., p. 407). that " by yeving of liv- 
 eries and signes, contrary to the statutes and ordi- 
 nances made aforetyme, maintenaunce of quarrels, 
 
PART HI.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 433 
 
 These associations under powerful 
 Prevalent chiefs were only incidentally 
 habits of beneficial as they tended to with- 
 rapiiie. stand the abuses of prerogative. 
 In their more usual course, they were 
 designed to thwart the legitimate exer- 
 cise of the king's government in the ad- 
 ministration of the laws. All Europe 
 was a scene of intestine anarchy during 
 the middle ages; and though England 
 was far less exposed to the scourge of 
 private war than most nations on the 
 continent^Hte should find, could we re- 
 cover thjpBoal annals of every country, 
 such an accumulation of petty rapine and 
 tumult, as would almost alienate us from 
 the liberty which served to engender it. 
 This was the common tenour of manners, 
 sometimes SQ-inuch aggravated as to find 
 a place in general history,* more often 
 attested by records, during the three cen- 
 turies that the house of Plantagenet sat 
 on the throne. Disseisin, or forcible dis- 
 possession of freeholds, makes one of 
 the most considerable articles in our 
 law-books. f Highway robbery was from 
 
 extortions, robberies, murders been multiplied and 
 continued within this reame, to the grete disturb- 
 aunce and inquietation of the same." 
 
 * Thus, to select one passage out of many ; 
 Eodem anno (1332) quidam maligni, fulti quorun- 
 dam magnatum praesidio, regis adolescentiam sper- 
 nentes, et regnum perturbare intendentes, in tan- 
 tarn turbam creverunt, nemora et saltus occupave- 
 rurit, ita quod toti regno terrori essent. Walsing- 
 ham, p. 132. 
 
 t I am aware that in many, probably a great 
 majority of reported cases, this word was techni- 
 cally used, where some unwarranted conveyance, 
 such as a feoffment by the tenant for life, was held 
 to have wrought a disseisin ; or where the plain- 
 tiff was allowed, for the purpose of a more con- 
 venient remedy, to feign himself disseized, which 
 was called disseisin by election. But several 
 proofs might be brought from the parliamentary 
 petitions, and I doubt not, if nearly looked at, from 
 the year-books, that in other cases there was an 
 actual and violent expulsion. And the definition 
 of disseisin in all the old writers, such as Britton 
 and Littleton, is obviously framed upon its primary 
 meaning of violent dispossession, which the word 
 had probably acquired long before the more peacea- 
 ble disseisins, if I may use the expression, became 
 the subject of the remedy by assize. 
 
 I would speak with deference of Lord Mansfield's 
 elaborate judgment in Taylor dem. Atkins v. 
 Horde, I Burrow, 107, &c. ; but some positions in 
 it appear to me rather too strongly stated ; and 
 particularly, that the acceptance of the disseisor as 
 tenant by the lord was necessary to render the dis- 
 seisin complete ; a condition which I have not 
 found hinted in any law-book. See Butler's note 
 on Co. Litt., p. 330 ; where that eminent lawyer 
 expresses similar doubts as to Lord Mansfield's 
 reasoning. It may however be remarked, that 
 constructive or elective disseisins, being of a tech- 
 nical nature, were more likely to produce cases in 
 the year-books, than those accompanied with ac- 
 tual violence, which would commonly turn only 
 on matters of fact, and be determined by a jury. 
 E e 
 
 the earliest times a sort of national crime. 
 Capital punishments, though very fre- 
 quent, made little impression on a bold 
 and licentious crew, who had at least the 
 sympathy of those who had nothing to 
 lose on their side, and flattering pros- 
 pects of impunity. We know how long 
 the outlaws of Sherwood lived in tradi- 
 tion ; men who,, like some of their bet- 
 ters, have been permitted to redeem by 
 a few acts of generosity the just igno- 
 miny of extensive crimes. These, in- 
 deed, were the heroes of vulgar applause ; 
 but when such a judge as Sir John For- 
 tescue could exult that more Englishmen 
 were hanged for robbery in one year 
 than French in seven, and that " if an 
 Englishman be poor, and see another 
 having riches, which may be taken from 
 him by might, he will not spare to do 
 so,"* it may be perceived how thorough- 
 ly these sentiments had pervaded the 
 public mind. 
 
 Such robbers, I have said, had flatter- 
 ing prospects of impunity. Besides the 
 general want of communication, which 
 made one who had fled from his own 
 neighbourhood tolerably secure, they had 
 the advantage of extensive forests to fa- 
 cilitate their depredations, and prevent 
 detection. When outlawed, or brought 
 to trial, the worst offenders could fre- 
 quently purchase charters of pardon, 
 which defeated justice in the moment 
 of her blow.f Nor were the nobility 
 
 A remarkable instance of violent disseisin, 
 amounting in effect to a private war, may be found 
 in the Paston Letters, occupying most of the fourth 
 volume. One of the Paston family, claiming a 
 right to Caister Castle, kept possession against the 
 Duke of Norfolk, who brought a large force, and 
 laid a regular siege to the place, till it surrendered 
 for want of provisions. Two of the besiegers were 
 killed. It does not appear that any legal measures 
 were taken to prevent or punish this outrage. 
 
 * Difference between an Absolute and Limited 
 Monarchy, p. 99. 
 
 t The manner in which these were obtained, in 
 spite of law, may be noticed among the violent 
 courses of prerogative. By statute 2 E. III., c. 2, 
 confirmed by 10 E. III., c. 2, the king's power of 
 granting pardons was taken away, except in cases of 
 homicide per infortunium. Another act, 14 E. III., 
 c. 15, reciting that the former laws in this respect 
 have not been kept, declares that all pardons con- 
 trary to them shall be hplden as null. This, how- 
 ever, was disregarded like the rest ; and the com- 
 mons began tacitly to recede from them, and en- 
 deavoured to compromise the question with the 
 crown. By 27 E. III., stat. 1, c. 2, without advert- 
 ing to the existing provisions, which may therefore 
 seem to be repealed by implication, it is enacted that 
 in every charter of pardon, granted at any one's 
 suggestion, the suggestor's name and the grounds 
 of his suggestion shall be expressed, that if the 
 same be found untrue, it may be disallowed. And 
 in 13 R. II., stat. 2, c. 1, we are surprised to find 
 the commons requesting that pardons might not 
 
434 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 ashamed to patronise men guilty of eve- 
 ry crime. Several proofs of this occur 
 in the rolls. Thus, for example, in the 
 22d of Edward HI., the commons pray, 
 that "whereas it is notorious how rob- 
 bers and malefactors infest the country, 
 the king would charge the great men of 
 the land that none such be maintained 
 by them, privily or openly, but that they 
 lend assistance to arrest and take such 
 ill doers."* 
 
 It is perhaps the most meritorious part 
 of Edward I.'s government, that he bent 
 all his power to restrain these breaches 
 of tranquillity. One of his salutary pro- 
 visions is still in constant use, the statute 
 of coroners. Another more extensive, 
 and, though partly obsolete, the founda- 
 tion of modern laws, is the statute of 
 Winton, which, reciting that, "from day 
 to day robberies, murders, burnings, and 
 theft be more often used than they have 
 been heretofore, and felons cannot be at- 
 
 be granted, as if the subject were wholly unknown 
 to the law ; the king protesting in reply that he 
 will save his liberty and regality, as his progenitors 
 had done before, but conceding some regulations, 
 far less remedial than what were provided already 
 by the 27th of Edward II. Pardons make a pretty 
 large head in Brooke's Abridgment, and were un- 
 doubtedly granted without scruple by every one 
 of our kings. A pardon obtained in a case of pecu- 
 liar atrocity is the subject of a specific remonstrance 
 in 23 H. VI., Rot. Par!., vol. v., p. 111. 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. ii., p. 201. A strange policy, 
 for which no rational cause can be alleged, kept 
 Wales, and even Cheshire, distinct from the rest 
 of the kingdom. Nothing could be more injurious 
 to the adjacent countries. Upon the credit of their 
 immunity from the jurisdiction of the king's courts, 
 the people of Cheshire broke with armed bands into 
 the neighbouring counties, and perpetrated all the 
 crimes in their power. Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 81, 
 201, 440. Stat. 1 H. IV., c. 18. As to the Welsh 
 frontier, it was constantly almost in a state of war, 
 which a very little good sense and benevolence in 
 any of our shepherds would have easily prevented, 
 by admitting the conquered people to partake in 
 equal privileges with their fellow-subjects. Instead 
 of this, they satisfied themselves with aggravating 
 the mischief by granting legal reprisals upon 
 Welshmen. Stat. 2 H. IV., c. 16. Welshmen 
 were absolutely excluded from bearing office in 
 Wales. The English living in the English towns 
 of Wales earnestly petition, 23 H. VI., Rot. Parl., 
 vol. v., p. 104, 154, that this exclusion maybe kept 
 in force. Complaints of the disorderly state of the 
 Welsh frontier are repeated as late as 12 Edw. IV., 
 vol. vi., p. 8. 
 
 It is curious that, so early as 15 Edw. II., a writ 
 was addressed to the Earl of Arundel, justiciary of 
 Wales, directing him to cause twenty-four discreet 
 persons to be chosen from the north, and as many 
 from the south of that principality, to serve in par- 
 liament. Rot. Parl., vol. i., p. 456. And we find 
 a similar writ in the 20th of the same king. 
 Prynne's Reg., 4th part, p. 60. Willis says, that 
 he has seen a return to one of these precepts, much 
 obliterated, but from which it appears that Con- 
 way, Beaumaris, and Carnarvon returned mem- 
 bers. Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. i,, preface, p. 15, 
 
 tainted by the oath of jurors, which had 
 rather suffer robberies on strangers to 
 pass without punishment, than indite the 
 offenders, of whom great part be people 
 of the same country, or at least, if the 
 offenders be of another country, the re- 
 ceivers be of places near," enacts that 
 hue and cry shall be made upon the com- 
 mission of a robbery, and that the hun- 
 dred shall remain answerable for the 
 damage unless the felons be brought to 
 justice. It may be inferred from this 
 provision, that the ancient law of frank- 
 pledge, though retained longMpn form, 
 had lost its efficiency. By the same act, 
 no stranger or suspicious person was to 
 lodge even in the suburbs of towns ; the 
 gates were to be kept locked from sunset 
 to sunrising ; every host to be answera- 
 ble for his guest ; the highways to be 
 cleared of trees and underwood for two 
 hundred feet on each side; and every 
 man to keep arms, according to his sub- 
 stance, in readiness to follow the sheriff 
 on hue and cry raised after felons,* 
 The last provision indicates that the rob- 
 bers plundered the country in formidable 
 bands. One of these, in a subsequent 
 part of Edward's reign, burnt the town 
 of Boston during a fair, and obtained a 
 vast booty, though their leader had the 
 ill fortune not to escape the gallows. 
 
 The preservation of order throughout 
 the country was originally intrusted, not 
 only to the sheriff, coroner, and consta- 
 bles, but to certain magistrates, called 
 conservators of the peace. These, in 
 ctJhformity to the democratic character 
 of our Saxon government, were elected 
 by the freeholders in their county-court, f 
 But Edward I. issued commissions to 
 carry into effect the statute of Winton ; 
 and from the beginning of Edward III.'s 
 reign, the appointment of conservators 
 was vested in the crown, their authority 
 gradually enlarged by a series of stat- 
 utes, and their title changed to that of 
 justices. They were empowered to im- 
 prison and punish all rioters and other of- 
 fenders, and such as they should find by 
 endictment, or suspicion, to be reputed 
 thieves or vagabonds ; and to take sure- 
 ties for good behaviour from persons of 
 evil fame.J Such a jurisdiction was hard- 
 
 * The statute of Winton was confirmed, and 
 proclaimed afresh by the sheriffs, 7 R. II., c. 6, af- 
 ter an era of great disorder. 
 
 t Blackstone, vol. i., c. 9. Carte, vol. ii., p. 203. 
 
 t 1 E. HI., stat. ii., c. 16 ; 4 E. III., c. 2 ; 34 E. 
 III., c. 1 ; 7 R. II., c. 5. The institution excited a 
 good deal of ill-will, even before these strong acts 
 were passed. Many petitions of the commons in 
 the 28th E. III., and other years, complain of it. 
 Rot. Parl., vol. ii. 
 
PAftT III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 435 
 
 ly more arbitrary than* in a free and civ- 
 ilized age, it has been thought fit to vest 
 in magistrates ; but it was ill endured by 
 a people who placed their notions of 
 liberty in personal exemption from re- 
 straint, rather than any political theory. 
 An act having been passed (2 R. II., st. 2, 
 c. 6) in consequence of unusual riots and 
 outrages, enabling magistrates to commit 
 the ringleaders of tumultuary assemblies 
 without waiting for legal process till the 
 next arrival of justices of jail delivery, 
 the comjgto^ petitioned the next year 
 against ^(f* " horrible grievous ordi- 
 nance," by which " every freeman in the 
 kingdom would be in bondage to these 
 justices," contrary to the great charter 
 and to many statutes, which forbid any 
 man to be tajjjj|n without due course of 
 law.* So sensitive was their jealousy 
 of arbitrary imprisonment, that they pre- 
 ferred enduring riot and robbery to chas- 
 tising them by any means that might af- 
 ford a precedent to oppression, or weak- 
 en men's reverence for Magna Charta. 
 
 There are two subjects remaining, to 
 which this retrospect of the state of man- 
 ners naturally leads us, and which I 
 would not pass unnoticed, though not 
 perhaps absolutely essential to a consti- 
 tutional history ; because they tend in a 
 very material degree to illustrate the 
 progress of society, with which civil lib- 
 erty and regular government are closely 
 connected. These are, first, the servi- 
 tude or villanage of the peasantry, and 
 their gradual emancipation from that 
 condition ; and, secondly, the continual 
 increase of commercial intercourse with 
 foreign countries. But as the latter topic 
 will fall more conveniently into the next 
 part of this work, I shall postpone its 
 consideration for the present. 
 
 In a former passage I have remarked 
 vnianage of of the Anglo-Saxon ceorls, that 
 the peas- neither their situation nor that 
 its Mature . f tneir descendants for the ear- 
 and gradual lier reigns after the conquest 
 extinction. a pp ears to have been mere ser- 
 vitude. But from the time of Henry II., 
 as we learn from Glanvil, the villein so 
 called was absolutely dependant upon his 
 lord's will, compelled to unlimited servi- 
 ces, and destitute of property, not only 
 in the land he held for his maintenance, 
 but in his own acquisitions.! If a villein 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 65. It may be observed 
 that this act, 2 E. II., c. 16, was not founded on a 
 petition, but on the king's answer ; so that the 
 commons were not real parties to it, and according- 
 ly call it an ordinance in their present petition. 
 This naturally increased their animosity in treating 
 it as an infringement of the subject's right. 
 
 f Glanvil, 1. v., c. 5. 
 E e 2 
 
 purchased or inherited land, the lord 
 might seize it ; if he accumulated stock, 
 its possession was equally precarious. 
 Against his lord he had no right of ac- 
 tion ; because his indemnity in damages, 
 if he could have recovered any, might 
 have been immediately taken away. If 
 he fled from his lord's service or from 
 the land which he held, a writ issued de 
 nativitate probanda, and the master re- 
 covered his fugitive by law. His chil- 
 dren were born to the same state of ser- 
 vitude ; and, contrary to the rule of the 
 civil law, where one parent was free and 
 the other in villanage, the offspring fol- 
 lowed their father's condition.* 
 
 This was certainly a severe lot; yet 
 there are circumstances which materially 
 distinguish it from slavery. The condi- 
 tion of villanage, at least in later times, 
 was perfectly relative ; it formed no dis- 
 tinct order in the political economy. No 
 man was a villein in the eye of law, unless 
 his master claimed him : to all others he 
 was a freeman, and might acquire, dis- 
 pose of, or sue for property without im- 
 pediment. Hence, Sir E. Coke argues, 
 that villeins are included in the 29th arti- 
 cle of Magna Charta : " No freeman 
 shall be disseized nor imprisoned.''! For 
 
 * According to Bracton, the bastard of a nief, or 
 female villein, was born in servitude ; and where 
 the parents lived on a villein tenement, the children 
 of a nief, even though married to a freeman, were 
 villeins, j. iv., c. 21, and see Beame's translation 
 of Glanvil, p. 109. But Littleton lays down an op- 
 posite doctrine, that a bastard was necessarily free ; 
 because, being the child of no father in the con- 
 templation of law, he could not be presumed to in- 
 herit servitude from any one ; and makes no dis- 
 tinction as to the parent's residence. Sect. 188. 1 
 merely take notice of this change in the law be- 
 tween the reigns of Henry III. and Edward IV. as 
 an instance of the bias which the judges showed in 
 favour of personal freedom. Another, if we can 
 rely upon it, is more important. In the reign of 
 Henry II., a freeman marrying a nief and settling 
 on a villein tenement, lost the privileges of free- 
 dom during the time of his occupation ; legem ter- 
 rae quasi nativus amittit. Glanvil, 1. v., c. 6. This 
 was consonant to the customs of some other coun- 
 tries, some of which went farther, and treated 
 such a person for ever as a villein. But, on the 
 contrary, we find in Britton a century later, that 
 the nief herself by such a marriage became free du- 
 ring the coverture, c. 31. 
 
 t I must confess that I have some doubts how 
 far this was law at the epoch of Magna Charta. 
 Glanvil and Bracton both speak of the status ville- 
 nagii as opposed to that of liberty, and seem to con- 
 sider it as a civil condition, not a merely personal 
 relation. The civil law and the French treatise of 
 Beaumanoir hold the same language. And Sir 
 Robert Cotton maintains without hesitation, that 
 villeins are not within the 29th section of Magna 
 Charta, " being excluded by the word liber," Cot- 
 ton's Posthuma, p. 223. Britton, however, a little 
 after Bracton, says that in an action the villein is 
 answerable to all men, and all men to him, p. 79. 
 And later >udgee, in favorem libertatis, gave this 
 
436 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 murder, rape, or mutilation of his villein, 
 the lord was endictable at the king's suit ; 
 though not for assault or imprisonment, 
 which were within the sphere of his 
 signorial authority.* 
 
 This class was distinguished into vil- 
 leins regardant, who had been attached 
 from time immemorial to a certain ma- 
 nor, and villeins in gross, where such ter- 
 ritorial prescription had never existed or 
 had been broken. In the condition of 
 these, whatever has been said by some 
 writers, I can find no manner of differ- 
 ence ; the distinction was merely tech- 
 nical, and affected only the mode of 
 pleading.! The term, in gross, is appro- 
 priated in our legal language to property 
 held absolutely, and without reference to 
 any other. Thus it is applied to rights 
 of advowson or of common, when pos- 
 sessed simply, and not as incident to 
 any particular lands. And there can be 
 no doubt that it was used in the same 
 sense for the possession of a villein. 
 But there was a class of persons, some- 
 times inaccurately confounded with vil- 
 leins, whom it is more important to sep- 
 arate. Villanage had a double sense, as 
 it related to persons "or to lands. As all 
 men were free or villeins, so all lands 
 
 construction to the villein's situation, which must 
 therefore be considered as the clear law of Eng- 
 land in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 
 * Littleton, sect. 189, 190, speaks only of an ap- 
 peal in the two former cases ; but an endictment is 
 a fortiori; and he says, sect. 194, that an endict- 
 ment, though not an appeal, lies against the lord 
 for maiming his villein. 
 
 f Gurdon on Courts Baron, p. 592, supposes the 
 villein in gross to have been the Lazzus or Servus 
 of early times, a domestic serf, and of an inferior 
 species to the cultivator or villein regardant. Un- 
 luckily, Bracton and Littleton do not confirm this 
 notion, which would be convenient enough ; for in 
 Domesday Book there is a marked distinction be- 
 tween the Servi and Villani. Blackstone express- 
 es himself inaccurately when he says the villein 
 in gross was annexed to the person of the lord, and 
 transferable by deed from one owner to another. 
 By this means indeed, a villein regardant would be- 
 come a villein in gross, but all villeins were alike 
 liable to be sold by their owners. Littleton, sect. 
 181. Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii., p. 860. Mr. 
 Hargrave supposes that villeins in gross were nev- 
 er numerous (Case of Somerset, Howell's State 
 Trials, vol. xx., p. 42) ; drawing this inference from 
 the few cases relative to them that occur in the 
 Year-books. And certainly the form of a writ de 
 nativitate probanda, and the peculiar evidence it 
 required, which may be found in Fitzherbert's Na- 
 tura Brevium, or in Mr. H.'s argument, are only 
 applicable to the other species. It is a doubtful 
 point, whether a freeman could, in contemplation of 
 law, become a villein in gross; though his con- 
 fession in a court of record, upon a suit already 
 commenced (for this was requisite), would estop 
 him from claiming his liberty ; and hence Bracton 
 speaks of this proceeding as a mode by which a 
 freeman might fall into servitude. 
 
 were held by a free or villein tenure. 
 This great division of tenures was prob- 
 ably derived from the bockland and folk- 
 land of Saxon times. As a villein might 
 be enfeoffed of freeholds, though they lay 
 at the mercy of his lord, so a freeman 
 might hold tenements in villanage. In 
 this case, his personal liberty subsisted 
 along with the burdens of territorial ser- 
 vitude. He was bound to arbitrary ser- 
 vice at the will of the lord, and he might 
 by the same will be at any moment dis- 
 possessed ; for such was the^^idition of 
 his tenure. But his chatfreJPfc-ere se- 
 cure from seizure, his persbnrrom inju- 
 ry, and he might leave the land whenev- 
 er he pleased.* 
 
 From so disadvantageous a condition 
 as this of villanage, it ma^r cause some 
 surprise that the peasantry of England 
 should have ever emerged. The law 
 incapacitating a villein from acquiring 
 property, placed, one would imagine, 
 an insurmountable barrier in the way of 
 his enfranchisement. It followed from 
 thence, and is positively said by Glan- 
 vil, that a villein could not buy his free- 
 dom, because the price he tendered 
 would already belong to his lord.f And 
 even in the case of free tenants in villan- 
 age, it is not easy to comprehend how 
 their uncertain and unbounded services 
 could ever pass into slight pecuniary com- 
 mutations ; much less how they could 
 come to maintain themselves in their 
 lands, and mock the lord with a nominal 
 tenure according to the custom of the 
 manor. 
 
 This, like many others relating to the 
 progress of society, is a very obscure in- 
 quiry. We can trace the pedigree of 
 princes, fill up the catalogue of towns 
 besieged and provinces desolated, de- 
 scribe even the whole pageantry of cor- 
 onations and festivals, but we cannot re- 
 cover the genuine history of mankind. 
 It has passed away with slight and par- 
 tial notice by contemporary writers ; and 
 our most patient industry can hardly at 
 present put together enough of the frag- 
 ments to suggest a tolerably clear repre- 
 sentation of ancient manners and social 
 life. I cannot profess to undertake what 
 would require a command of books as 
 well as leisure beyond my reach; but 
 the following observations may tend a 
 little to illustrate our immediate subject, 
 the gradual extinction of villanage. 
 
 If we take what may be considered as 
 the simplest case, that of a manor divided 
 into demesne lands of the lord's occupa- 
 
 < Bracton, I. ii., c. 8 ; 1. iv.,c.28. Littleton, sect. 
 172. f Glanvil, 1. iv., c. 5. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 437 
 
 tion, and those in the tenure of his vil- 
 leins, performing all the services of agri- 
 culture for him, it is obvious that his in- 
 terest was to maintain just so many of 
 these as his estate required for its culti- 
 vation. Land, the cheapest of articles, 
 was the price of their labour ; and though 
 the law did not compel him to pay this 
 or any other price, yet necessity, repair- 
 ing in some degree the law's injustice, 
 made those pretty secure of food and 
 dwellings who were to give the strength 
 of theiiMAbs for his advantage. But in 
 course flBfme, as alienations of small 
 parcels fflrrafcnors to free tenants came 
 to prevail, the proprietors of land were 
 placed in a new situation relatively to its 
 cultivators. The tenements in villanage, 
 whether by^w or usage, were never 
 separated from the lordship, while its do- 
 main was reduced to a smaller extent, 
 through sub-infeudations, sales, or de- 
 mises for valuable rent. The purchasers 
 under these alienations had occasion for 
 labourers ; and these would be free ser- 
 vants in respect of such employers, 
 though in villanage to their original lord. 
 As he demanded less of their labour 
 through the diminution of his domain, 
 they had more to spare for other mas- 
 ters ; and retaining the character of vil- 
 leins and the lands they held by that ten- 
 ure, became hired labourers in husbandry 
 for the greater part of the year. It is 
 true that all their earnings were at the 
 lord's disposal, and that he might have 
 made a profit of their labour when he 
 ceased to require it for his own land. 
 But this, which the rapacity of more com- 
 mercial times would have instantly sug- 
 gested, might escape a feudal superior, 
 who, wealthy beyond his wants, and 
 guarded by the haughtiness of ancestry 
 against the love of such pitiful gains, was 
 better pleased to win the affection of his 
 dependants than to improve his fortune 
 at their expense. 
 
 The services of villanage were grad- 
 ually rendered less onerous and uncer- 
 tain. Those of husbandry indeed are 
 naturally uniform, and might be antici- 
 pated with no small exactness. Lords of 
 generous tempers granted indulgences, 
 which were either intended to be, or 
 readily became perpetual. And thus, in 
 the time of Edward I., we find the ten- 
 ants in some manors bound only to stated 
 services, as recorded in the lord's book.* 
 
 * Dugdale's Warwickshire apud Eden's State 
 of the Poor, vol. i., p. 13. A passage in another 
 local history rather seems to indicate, that some 
 kind of delinquency was usually alleged, and some 
 ceremony employed before the lord entered on the 
 
 Some of these perhaps might be villeins 
 by blood ; but free tenants in villanage 
 were still more likely to obtain this pre- 
 cision in their services ; and from claim- 
 ing a customary right to be entered in the 
 court-roll upon the same terms as their 
 predecessors, prevailed at length to get 
 copies of it for their security.* Proofs 
 of this remarkable transformation from 
 tenants in villanage to copyholders are 
 found in the reign of Henry III. I do 
 not know, however, that they were pro- 
 tected, at so early an epoch, in the pos- 
 session of their estates. But it is said in 
 the year-book of the 42d of Edward III., 
 to be " admitted for clear law, that if the 
 customary tenant or copyholder does not 
 perform his services, the lord may seize 
 his land as forfeited."! It seems implied 
 herein, that so long as the copyholder did 
 continue to perform the regular stipula- 
 tions of his tenure, the lord was not at 
 liberty to divest him of his estate ; and 
 this is said to be confirmed by a passage 
 in Britton, which has escaped my search ; 
 though Littleton intimates that copy- 
 holders could have no remedy against 
 their lord.| However, in the reign of 
 Edward IV., this was put out of doubt by 
 the judges, who permitted the copyholder 
 to bring his action of trespass against the 
 lord for dispossession. 
 
 While some of the more fortunate vil- 
 leins crept up into property as well as 
 freedom under the name of copyholders, 
 the greater part enfranchised themselves 
 in a different manner. The law, which 
 treated them so harshly, did not take 
 
 villein's land. In Gissing manor, 39 E. III., the 
 jury present, that W. G., a villein by blood, was a 
 rebel and ungrateful towards his lord, for which all 
 his tenements were seized. His offence was the 
 having said that the lord kept four stolen sheep in 
 his field. Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. i., p. 114. 
 
 * Gurdon on Courts Baron, p. 574. 
 
 f Brooke's Abridgm. Tenant par copie, 1. By 
 the extent-roll of the manor of Brisingham in 
 Norfolk in 1254, it aypears that there were then 
 ninety-four copyholders and six cottagers in vil- 
 lanage ; the former performing many, but deter- 
 minate services of labour for the lord. Blome- 
 field's Norfolk, vol. i., p. 34. 
 
 $ Littl., sect. 77. A copyholder without legal 
 remedy may seem little better than a tenant in 
 mere villanage, except in name. But though from 
 the relation between the lord and copyholder the 
 latter might not be permitted to sue his superior, 
 yet it does not follow that he might not bring his 
 action against any person acting under the lord's 
 direction, in which the defendant could not set up 
 an illegal authority ; just as, although no writ runs 
 against the king, his ministers or officers are not 
 justified in acting under his command contrary to 
 aw. I wish this note to be considered as correct- 
 ng one on p. 88 of this work, where I have said 
 :hat a similar law in France rendered the distinc- 
 ion between a serf and an homme de poote little 
 more than theoretical. 
 
438 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. Vlif. 
 
 away the means of escape, nor was this 
 a matter of difficulty in such a country 
 as England. To this indeed the unequal 
 progression of agriculture and population 
 in different counties would have nat- 
 urally contributed. Men emigrated, as 
 they always must, in search of cheap- 
 ness or employment, according to the 
 tide of human necessities. But the vil- 
 lein, who had no additional motive to 
 urge his steps away from his native 
 place, might well hope to be forgotten or 
 undiscovered when he breathed a freer 
 air, and engaged his voluntary labour to 
 a distant master. The lord had indeed 
 an action against him ; but there was so 
 little communication between remote 
 parts of the country, that it might be 
 deemed his fault or singular ill-fortune if 
 he were compelled to defend himself. 
 Even in that case, the law inclined to 
 favour him ; and so many obstacles were 
 thrown in the way of these suits to re- 
 claim fugitive villeins, that they could 
 not have operated materially to retard 
 their general enfranchisement.* In one 
 case indeed, that of unmolested residence 
 for a year and a day within a walled city 
 or borough, the villein became free, and 
 the lord was absolutely barred of his 
 remedy. This provision is contained 
 even in the laws of William the Conquer- 
 or, as contained in Hoveden, and if it be 
 not an interpolation, may be supposed to 
 have had a view to strengthen the popu- 
 lation of those places which were de- 
 signed for garrisons. This law, whether 
 of William or not-, is unequivocally men- 
 tioned by Glanvil.f Nor was it a mere 
 letter. According to a record in the 6th 
 of Edward II., Sir John Clavering sued 
 eighteen villeins of his manor of Cossey, 
 for withdrawing themselves therefrom 
 with their chattels; whereupon a writ 
 was directed to them; but six of the 
 number claimed to be freemen, alleging 
 the Conqueror's charter, and offering to 
 prove that they had lived in Norwich, 
 paying scot and lot, about thirty years ; 
 which claim was admitted. J 
 
 By such means a large proportion of 
 the peasantry, before the middle of the 
 fourteenth century, had become hired 
 labourers instead of villeins. We first 
 
 * See the rules of pleading and evidence in 
 questions of villanage fully stated in Mr. Har- 
 grave's argument in the case of Somerset. How- 
 ell's State Trials, vol. xx., p. 38. 
 
 t L. v., c. 5. 
 
 $ Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. i., p. 657. I know 
 not how far this privilege was supposed to be im- 
 paired by the statute 34 E. III., c. 11 ; which how- 
 ever might, I should conceive, very well stand 
 along with it. 
 
 hear of them on a grand scale in an or- 
 dinance made by Edward III., in the 
 twenty-third year of his reign. This was 
 just after the dreadful pestilence of 1348, 
 and it recites that the number of work- 
 men and servants having been greatly 
 reduced by that calamity, the remainder 
 demanded excessive wages from their 
 employers. Such an enhancement in 
 the price of labour, though founded ex- 
 actly on the same principles as regulate 
 the value of any other commodity, is too 
 frequently treated as a sort (^xxrime by 
 lawgivers, who seem to g r yjflfr G poor 
 that transient melioration l^wieir lot, 
 which the progress of population, or oth- 
 er analogous circumstances, will, without 
 any interference, very rapidly take away. 
 This ordinance therefore^ enacts that 
 every man in England, of whatever con- 
 dition, bond or free, of able body, and 
 within sixty years of age, not living of 
 his own nor by any trade, shall be obli- 
 ged, when required, to serve any master 
 who is willing to hire him at such wages 
 as were usually paid three years since, 
 or for some time preceding; provided 
 that the lords of villeins or tenants in vil- 
 lanage shall have the preference of their 
 labour, so that they retain no more than 
 shall be necessary for them. More than 
 these old wages is strictly forbidden to 
 be offered, as well as demanded. No 
 one is permitted, under colour of charity, 
 to give alms to a beggar. And, to make 
 some compensation to the inferior classes 
 for these severities, a clause is inserted, 
 as wise, just, and practicable as the rest, 
 for the sale of provisions at reasonable 
 prices.* 
 
 This ordinance met with so little re- 
 gard, that a statute was made in parlia- 
 ment two years after, fixing the wages 
 of all artificers and husbandmen, with re- 
 gard to the nature and season of their la- 
 bour. From this time it became a fre- 
 quent complaint of the commons, that the 
 statute of labourers was not kept. The 
 king had in this case, probably, no other 
 reason for leaving their grievance unre- 
 dressed, than his inability to change the 
 order of Providence. A silent alteration 
 had been wrought in the 'condition and 
 character of the lower classes during the 
 reign of Edward III. This was the ef- 
 fect of increased knowledge and refine- 
 ment, which had been making a consid- 
 erable progress for full half a century, 
 though they did not readily permeate the 
 cold region of poverty and ignorance. It 
 was natural that the country people, or 
 outlandish folk, as they were called, 
 
 * Stat. 23 E. III. 
 
PART 111.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 
 439 
 
 should repine at the exclusion from that 
 enjoyment of competence, and security 
 for the fruits of their labour, which the 
 inhabitants of towns so fully possessed. 
 The fourteenth century was, in many 
 parts of Europe, the age when a sense 
 of political servitude was most keenly 
 felt. Thus, the insurrection of the Jac- 
 querie in France, about the year 1358, had 
 the same character, and resulted in a 
 great measure from the same causes, as 
 that of the English peasants in 1382. 
 And w^jjfoaccount in a similar man- 
 ner fofl fiemocratical tone of the 
 FrencH^BW^emish cities, and for the 
 prevalence of a spirit of liberty in Ger- 
 many and Swisseiiand. 
 
 I do not jNpow whether we should at- 
 tribute parfjjof this revolutionary con- 
 cussion to flb' preaching of Wicliffe's 
 disciples, or look upon both one and 
 the other as phenomena belonging to 
 that particular epoch in the progress 
 of society. New principles, both as to 
 civil rule and religion, broke suddenly 
 upon the uneducated mind, to render it 
 bold, presumptuous, and turbulent. But 
 at least I make little doubt that the 
 dislike of ecclesiastical power, which 
 spread so rapidly among the people at 
 this season, connected itself with a 
 spirit of insubordination and an intol- 
 erance of political subjection. Both 
 were nourished by the same teachers, 
 the lower secular clergy; and however 
 distinct we may think a religious ref- 
 ormation from a civil anarchy, there was 
 a good deal common in the language, by 
 which the populace were inflamed to 
 either one or the other. Even the scrip- 
 tural moralities which were then exhibit- 
 ed, and which became the foundation of 
 our theatre, afforded fuel to the spirit of 
 sedition. The common original, and 
 common destination of mankind, with 
 every other lesson of equality which re- 
 ligion supplies to humble or to console, 
 were displayed with coarse and glaring 
 features in these representations. The 
 familiarity of such ideas has deadened 
 their effect upon our minds; but when 
 a rude peasant, surprisingly destitute of 
 religious instruction during that corrupt 
 age of the church, was led at once to 
 these impressive truths, we cannot be 
 astonished at the intoxication of mind 
 they produced.* 
 
 * I have been more influenced by natural proba- 
 bilities than testimony, in ascribing this effect to 
 Wicliffe's innovations, because the historians are 
 prejudiced witnesses against him. Several of 
 them depose to the connexion between his opin- 
 ions and the rebellion of 1382 ; especially Wal- 
 
 Though I believe that, compared at 
 least with the aristocracy of other coun- 
 tries, the English lords were guilty of 
 very little cruelty or injustice, yet there 
 were circumstances belonging to that 
 period which might tempt them to deal 
 more hardly than before with their peas- 
 antry. The fourteenth century was an 
 age of greater magnificence than those 
 which had preceded, in dress, in ceremo- 
 nies, in buildings ; foreign luxuries were 
 known enough to excite an eager de- 
 mand among the higher ranks, and yet 
 so scarce as to yield inordinate prices ; 
 while the landholders were on the other 
 hand empoverished by heavy and un- 
 ceasing taxation. Hence it is probable 
 that avarice, as commonly happens, had 
 given birth to oppression; and if the 
 gentry, as I am inclined to believe, had 
 become more attentive to agricultural 
 improvements, it is reasonable to conjec- 
 ture that those whose tenure obliged 
 them to unlimited services of husband- 
 ry were more harassed than under their 
 wealthy and indolent masters in prece- 
 ding times. 
 
 The storm that almost swept away all 
 bulwarks of civilized and regular society 
 seems to have been long in collecting it- 
 self. Perhaps a more sagacious legisla- 
 ture might have contrived to disperse it : 
 but the commons only presented com- 
 plaints of the refractoriness with which 
 villeins and tenants in villanage received 
 their due services;* and the exigences 
 of government led to the fatal poll-tax 
 of a groat, which was the proximate 
 cause of the insurrection. By the de- 
 mands of these rioters, we perceive that 
 territorial servitude was far from ex- 
 tinct : but it should not be hastily conclu- 
 ded that they were all personal villeins, 
 for a large proportion were Kentish- 
 men, to whom that condition could not 
 have applied ; it being a good bar to a 
 writ de nativitate probanda, that the par- 
 ty's father was born in the county of 
 Kent.f 
 
 singham, p. 288. This implies no reflection upon 
 Wicliffe, any more than the crimes of the anabap- 
 tists in Munster do upon Luther. Every one 
 knows the distich of John Ball, which compre- 
 hends the essence of religious democracy : 
 " When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Where was then the gentleman ?" 
 The sermon of this priest, as related by Walsing- 
 ham, p. 275, derives its argument for equality from 
 the common origin of the species. He is said to 
 have been a disciple of Wicliffe. Turner's Hist, 
 of England, vol. ii., p. 420. 
 
 * Stat. 1 R. II., c. 6 ; Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 21. 
 
 t 30 E. L, in Fitzherbert. Villanage. apud 
 Lombard's Perambulation of Kent, p. 632. Spm- 
 ner on Gavelkind, p. 72. 
 
440 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 After this tremendous rebellion, it 
 might be expected that the legislature 
 would use little indulgence towards the 
 lower commons. Such unhappy tumults 
 are doubly mischievous, not more from 
 the immediate calamities that attend 
 them, than from the fear and hatred of 
 the people which they generate in the 
 elevated classes. The general charter 
 of manumission extorted from the king 
 by the rioters at Blackheath was annul- 
 led by proclamation to the sheriffs;* and 
 this revocation approved by the lords 
 and commons in parliament, who added, 
 as was very true, that such enfranchise- 
 ment could not be made without their 
 consent ; " which they would never give 
 to save themselves from perishing alto- 
 gether in one day."f Riots were turn- 
 ed into treason by a law of the same 
 parliament.:}: By a very harsh statute in 
 the 12th of Richard II., no servant or la- 
 bourer could depart, even at the expira- 
 tion of his service, from the hundred in 
 which he lived, without permission under 
 the king's seal ; nor might any who 
 had been bred to husbandry till twelve 
 years old exercise any other calling. A 
 few years afterward, the commons peti- 
 tioned that villeins might not put their 
 children to school, in order to advance 
 them by the church; "and this for the 
 honour of all the freemen of the king- 
 dom." In the same parliament they 
 complained that villeins fly to cities and 
 boroughs, whence their masters cannot 
 recover them ; and, if they attempt it, 
 are hindered by the people : and prayed 
 that the lords might seize their villens in 
 such places, without regard to the fran- 
 chises thereof. But on both these peti- 
 tions the king put in a negative. || 
 
 From henceforward we find little no- 
 tice taken of villanage in parliamentary 
 
 * Rymer, t. vii., p. 316, &c. The king holds 
 this bitter language to the villeins of Essex, after 
 the death of Tyler and execution of the other 
 leaders had disconcerted them ; Rustici quidem 
 fuistis et estis, in bondagio permanebitis, non ut 
 hactenus, sed incomparabiliter viliori, &c. Wal- 
 singham, p. 269. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p. 100. 
 
 t 5 R. II., c. 7. The words are, riot et rumour 
 n'autres semblables ; rather a general way of crea- 
 ting a new treason : but panic puts an end to 
 jealousy. 
 
 12 R. If., c. 3. 
 
 II Rot. Parl., 15 R. II., vol. Iii., p. 294, 296. 
 The statute 7 H, IV., c. 17, enacts that no one 
 shall put his son or daughter apprentice to any 
 trade in a borough, unless he have land or rent to 
 the value of twenty shillings a year, but that any 
 one may put his children to school. The reason 
 assigned is the scarcity of labourers in husbandry, 
 in consequence of people living in Upland appren- 
 ticing their children. 
 
 records, and there seems to have been a 
 rapid tendency to its entire abolition. 
 But the fifteenth century is barren of ma- 
 terials ; and we can only infer, that as the 
 same causes which in Edward III.'s time 
 had converted a large portion of the peas- 
 antry into free labourers, still continued 
 to operate, they must silently have ex- 
 tinguished the whole system of personal 
 and territorial servitude. The latter in- 
 deed was essentially changed by the es- 
 tablishment of the law of copyhold. 
 
 I cannot presume toconjedta^jnwhat 
 degree voluntary manumiM B to be 
 reckoned among the means*^^contrib- 
 uted to the abolition of villanage. Char- 
 ters of enfranchisement were very com- 
 mon upon the continent. **They may 
 perhaps have been less sqfim England. 
 Indeed, the statute de dorai must have 
 operated very injuriously to prevent the 
 enfranchisement of villeins regardant, 
 who were entailed along with the land. 
 Instances, however, occur from time to 
 time ; and we cannot expect to discover 
 many. One appears as early as the 15th 
 year of Henry III., who grants to all 
 persons born or to be born within his vil- 
 lage of Contishall, that they shall be free 
 from all villanage in body and blood, pay- 
 ing an aid of twenty shillings to knight 
 the king's eldest son, and six shillings a 
 year as a quit rent.* So, in the 12th 
 of Edward III., certain of the king's vil- 
 leins are enfranchised on payment of a 
 fine.f In strictness of law, a fine from 
 the villein for the sake of enfranchise- 
 ment was nugatory, since all he could 
 possess was already at his lord's disposal. 
 But custom and equity might easily in- 
 troduce different maxims ; and it was 
 plainly for the lord's interest to encourage 
 his tenants in the acquisition of money 
 to redeem themselves, rather than to 
 quench the exertions of their industry 
 by availing himself of an extreme right. 
 Deeds of enfranchisement occur in the 
 reigns of Mary and Elizabeth ;| and per- 
 haps a commission of the latter princess 
 in 1574, directing the enfranchisement 
 of her bondmen and bondwomen on cer- 
 tain manors upon payment of a fine, is 
 
 * Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii., p. 571. 
 
 t Rymer, t. v., p. 44. 
 
 t Gurdon on Courts Baron, p. 596. Madox, 
 Formulare Anglicanum, p. 420. Harrington on 
 Ancient Statutes, p. 278. It is said in a modern 
 book, that villanage was very rare in Scotland, and 
 even that no instance exists in records, of an es- 
 tate sold with the labourers and their families at- 
 tached to the soil. Pinkerton's Hist, of Scotland, 
 vol. i., p. 147. But Mr. Chalmers, in his Caledo- 
 nia, has brought several proofs that this assertion 
 is too general. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 441 
 
 the last unequivocal testimony to the ex- 
 istence of villanage ;* though it is highly 
 probable that it existed in remote parts 
 of the country some time longer.f 
 
 From this general view of the English 
 Reign of constitution, as it stood about the 
 iienry vi. t j me o f Henry VI., we must turn 
 our eyes to the political revolutions which 
 clouded the latter years of his reign. The 
 minority of this prince, notwithstanding 
 the vices and dissensions of his court, and 
 the ing^^us discomfiture of our arms 
 in Fj^i^^Hre not perhaps a calamitous 
 peridSj Runtry grew more wealthy : 
 the "NH |Bp^> n the whole, better ob- 
 served ;*lw power of parliament more 
 complete and effectual than in preceding 
 times. BuflriHenry's weakness of under- 
 standing bNgBSning evident as he reached 
 manhood, re%$red his reign a perpetual 
 minority, ms marriage with a princess 
 of strong mind, but ambitious and vindic- 
 tive, rather tended to weaken the gov- 
 ernment and to accelerate his downfall ; 
 a certain reverence that had been paid to 
 the gentleness of the king's disposition 
 being overcome by her unpopularity. By 
 degrees Henry's natural feebleness de- 
 generated almost into fatuity; and this 
 unhappy condition seems to have over- 
 taken him nearly about the time when it 
 became an arduous task to withstand the 
 assault in preparation against his govern- 
 ment. This may properly introduce a 
 great constitutional subject, to which 
 some peculiar circumstances of our own 
 age have imperiously directed the con- 
 sideration of parliament. Though the 
 proceedings of 1788 and 1810 are un- 
 doubtedly precedents of far more author- 
 ity than any that can be derived from 
 our ancient history, yet as the seal of 
 the legislature has not yet been set upon 
 this controversy, it is not perhaps alto- 
 gether beyond the possibility of future 
 discussion ; and at least it cannot be un- 
 interesting to look back on those parallel 
 or analogous cases, by which the deliber- 
 ations of parliament upon the question 
 of regency were guided. 
 
 While the kings of England retained 
 
 r Barrington, ubi supra, from Rymer. 
 
 t There are several later cases reported, wherein 
 villanage was pleaded, and one of them as late as 
 the 15th of James I. (Noy, p. 27.) See Margrave's 
 argument, State Trials, vol. xx., p. 41. But these 
 are so briefly stated, that it is difficult in general to 
 understand them. It is obvious, however, that 
 judgment was in no case given in favour of the 
 plea ; so that we can infer nothing as to the actual 
 continuance of villanage. 
 
 It is remarkable, and may be deemed by some 
 persons a proof of legal pedantry, that Sir E. Coke, 
 while he dilates on the law of villanage, never in- 
 timates that it was become antiquated. 
 
 their continental dominions, and Historical 
 were engaged in the wars to instances of 
 which those gave birth, they re g encies: 
 were of course frequently absent from 
 this country. Upon such occasions the 
 administration seems at first to have de- 
 volved officially on the justiciary, as chief 
 servant of the crown. But Henry III. be- 
 gan the practice of appointing lieutenants, 
 or guardians of the realm (custodesregni), 
 as they were more usually he 
 
 termed, by way of temporary absence of 
 substitutes. They were usu- our kings in 
 ally nominated by the king F 
 without consent of parliament ; and their 
 office carried with it the right of exerci- 
 sing all the prerogatives of the crown. It 
 was of course determined by the king's 
 return ; and a distinct statute was neces- 
 sary, in the reign of Henry V., to provide 
 that a parliament called by the guardian 
 of the realm during the king's absence 
 should not be dissolved by that event.* 
 The most remarkable circumstance at- 
 tending those lieutenancies was, that they 
 were sometimes conferred on the heir 
 apparent during his infancy. The Black 
 Prince, then Duke of Cornwall, was left 
 guardian of the realm in 1339, when he 
 was but ten years old ;f and Richard his 
 son, when still younger, in 1372, during 
 Edward III.'s last expedition into France. J 
 These do not however bear a very close 
 analogy to regencies in the strictest 
 sense, or substitutions during the natural 
 incapacity of the sovereign. Of such 
 there had been several instances, before 
 it became necessary to supply the defi- 
 ciency arising from Henry's derange- 
 ment. 1. At the death of John, At the ac . 
 William, earl of Pembroke as- cession of 
 sumed the title of rector regis Henr y m -'> 
 et regni, with the consent of the loyal 
 barons who had just proclaimed the young 
 king, and probably conducted the gov- 
 ernment in a great measure by their ad- 
 vice. But the circumstances were too 
 critical, and the time is too remote., to 
 give this precedent any material weight. 
 2. Edward I. being in Sicily at O f Edward 
 his father's death, the nobility !; 
 met at the Temple church, as we are in- 
 formed by a contemporary writer, and, 
 after making a new great seal, appointed 
 the Archbishop of York, Edward, earl of 
 Cornwall, and the Earl of Glocester, to 
 be ministers and guardians of the realm ; 
 who accordingly conducted the adminis- 
 
 * 8 H. V., c. 1. 
 
 t This prince having been sent to Antwerp, six 
 commissioners were appointed to open parliament. 
 Rot. Parl., 13 E. IIL,vol. ii., p. 107. 
 
 t Rymer, t. vi., p. 748, $ Matt. Paris, p. 243. 
 
442 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 . VIII. 
 
 tration in the king's name until his return.* 
 It is here observable, that the Earl of 
 Cornwall, though nearest prince of the 
 blood, was not supposed to enjoy any su- 
 perior title to the regency, wherein he 
 was associated with two other nobles. 
 But while the crown itself was hardly 
 acknowledged to be unquestionably he- 
 reditary, it would be strange if any no- 
 tion of such a right to the regency had 
 been entertained. 3.. At the accession 
 of Edward of Edward III., then fourteen 
 In - ' years old, the parliament, which 
 was immediately summoned, nominated 
 four bishops, four earls, and six barons 
 as a standing council, at the head of 
 which the Earl of Lancaster seems to 
 have been placed, to advise the king in 
 all business of government. It was an 
 article in the charge of treason, or, as it 
 was then styled, of accroaching royal 
 power, against Mortimer, that he inter- 
 meddled in the king's household without 
 the assent of this council. f They may 
 be deemed therefore a sort of parliament- 
 ary regency, though the duration of their 
 functions does not seem to be defined, 
 of Richard 4. The proceedings at the com- 
 n -; mencement of the next reign 
 
 are more worthy of attention. Edward 
 III. dying June 21, 1377, the keepers of 
 the great seal next day, in absence of the 
 chancellor beyond sea, gave it into the 
 
 S3ung king's hands before his council, 
 e immediately delivered it to the Duke 
 of Lancaster, and the duke to Sir Nicho- 
 las Bonde for safe custody. Four days 
 afterward, the king in council delivered 
 the seal to the bishop of St. Davids, who 
 affixed it the same day to divers letters 
 patent.:}: Richard was at this time ten 
 years and six months old; an age cer- 
 tainly very unfit for the personal execu- 
 tion of sovereign authority. Yet he was 
 supposed capable of reigning without the 
 aid of a regency. This might be in vir- 
 tue of a sort of magic ascribed by law- 
 yers to the great seal, the possession of 
 which bars all further inquiry, and ren- 
 ders any government legal. The prac- 
 tice of modern times, requiring the con- 
 stant exercise of the sign manual, has 
 made a public confession of incapacity 
 necessary in many cases, where it might 
 have been concealed or overlooked in 
 earlier periods of the constitution. But 
 though no one was invested with the of- 
 fice of regent, a council of twelve was 
 named by the prelates and peers at the 
 
 * Matt. Westmonast. ap. Brady's History of 
 England, vol. ii., p. 1. 
 t Rot.Parl.,vol. ii., p. 52. 
 i Rymer, t. vii., p. 171. 
 
 king's coronation, July 16, 1377, without 
 whose concurrence no public measure 
 was to be carried into effect. I have 
 mentioned in another place the modifica- 
 tions introduced from time to time by 
 parliament, which might itself be deemed 
 a great council of regency during the 
 first years of Richard. 
 
 5. The next instance is at the acces- 
 sion of Henry VI. This prince of Henry 
 was but nine months old at his VI - 
 father's death ; and whether fmm a more 
 evident incapacity for the^gj^iict of 
 government in his case tl Biat of 
 Richard II., or from the prSJI |Fof con- 
 stitutional principles in the fr5rty years 
 elapsed since the latter's accession, far 
 more regularity and deliberation were 
 shown in supplying the deflHt in the ex- 
 ecutive authority. Upon^fe news ar- 
 riving that Henry V. was^ead, several 
 lords spiritual and temporal assembled, 
 on account of the imminent necessity, in 
 order to preserve peace, and provide for 
 the exercise of officers appertaining to 
 the king. These peers accordingly is- 
 sued commissions to judges, sheriffs, es- 
 cheators, and others, for various purposes, 
 and writs for a new parliament. This 
 was opened by commission under the 
 great seal directed to the Duke of Gloces- 
 ter, in the usual form, and with the king's 
 test.* Some ordinances were made in 
 this parliament by the Duke of Gloces- 
 ter as commissioner, and some in the 
 king's name. The acts of the peers, who 
 had taken on themselves the administra- 
 tion, and summoned parliament, were 
 confirmed. On the twenty-seventh day 
 of its session, it is entered upon the roll, 
 that the king, "considering his tender 
 age, and inability to direct in person the 
 concerns of his realm, by assent of lords 
 and commons, appoints the Duke of Bed- 
 ford, or, in his absence beyond sea, the 
 Duke of Glocester, to be protector and 
 defender of the kingdom and English 
 church, and the king's chief counsellor." 
 Letters patent were made out to this ef- 
 fect : the appointment being however ex- 
 pressly during the king's pleasure. Six- 
 teen counsellors were named in parlia- 
 ment to assist the protector in his admin- 
 istration; and their concurrence was 
 made necessary to the removal and ap- 
 pointment of officers, except some infe- 
 rior patronage specifically reserved to 
 the protector. In all important business 
 that should pass by order of council, the 
 whole or major part were to be present ; 
 " but if it were such matter that the king 
 
 * Rot. Par!., vol. iv., p. 169. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 443 
 
 hath been accustomed to be counselled 
 of, that then the said lords proceed not 
 therein without the advice of my lords 
 of Bedford or Glocester."* A few more 
 counsellors were added by the next par- 
 liament, and divers regulations estab- 
 lished for their observance. f 
 
 This arrangement was in contraven- 
 tion of the late king's testament, which 
 had conferred the regency on the Duke 
 of Glocester, in exclusion of his elder 
 the nature and spirit of 
 as will be better imder- 
 stodj markable passage in a roll 
 
 of a"lH Moment; where the house 
 of lorcHP^Bfewer to a request of Glo- 
 cester, that he might know what authori- 
 ty he possflbjpd as protector, remind him 
 that in the^fet parliament of the king,! 
 "ye desirec^rjiave had ye governaunce 
 of yis land ; -affermyng yat hit belonged 
 unto you of rygzt, as well by ye mene of 
 your birth, as by ye laste wylle of ye 
 kyng yat was your broyer, whome God 
 assoile ; alleggyng for you such groundes 
 and motyves as it was y ought to your dis- 
 cretion made for your intent ; whereupon, 
 the lords spiritual and temporal assembled 
 there in parliament, among which were 
 there my lordes your uncles, the Bishop 
 of Winchester that now liveth, and the 
 Duke of Exeter, and your cousin the 
 Earl of March that be gone to God, and 
 of Warwick, and other in great number 
 that now live, had great and long delib- 
 eration and advice, searched precedents 
 of the governail of the land in time and 
 case semblable, when kings of this land 
 have been tender of age, took also infor- 
 mation of the laws of the land, of such 
 persons as be notably learned therein, 
 and finally found your said desire not 
 caused nor grounded in precedent, nor 
 in the law of the land ; the which the 
 king that dead is, in his life nor might by 
 his last will nor otherwise altre, change, 
 nor abroge, without the assent of the 
 three estates, nor commit or grant to 
 any person governance or rule of this 
 land longer than he lived ; but on that 
 other behalf, the said lords found your 
 said desire not according with the laws 
 of this land, and against the right and 
 freedome of the estates of the same 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol.iv., p. 174, 176. t Id., p. 201. 
 
 \ I follow the orthography of the roll, which I 
 hope will not be inconvenient to the reader. Why 
 this orthography, from obsolete and difficult, so 
 frequently becomes almost modern, as will appear 
 in the course of these extracts, 1 cannot conjec- 
 ture. The usual irregularity of ancient spelling is 
 hardly sufficient to account for such variations ; 
 but if there be any error, it belongs to the super- 
 intendents of that publication, and is not mine. 
 
 land. Howe were it, that it be not 
 thought, that any such thing wittingly 
 proceeded of your intent ; and neverthe- 
 less to keep peace and tranquillity, and 
 to the intent to ease and appease you, it 
 was advised and appointed by authority 
 of the king, assenting the three estates 
 of this land, that ye in absence of my 
 lord your brother of Bedford, should be 
 chief of the king's council, and devised 
 unto you a name different from other 
 counsellors, not the name of tutor, lieu- 
 tenant, governor, nor of regent, nor no 
 name that should import authority of 
 governance of the land, but the name of 
 protector and defensor, which importeth 
 a personal duty of attendance to the ac- 
 tual defence of the land, as well against 
 enemies outward, if case required, as 
 against rebels inward, if any were, that 
 God forbid ; granting you therewith cer- 
 tain power, the which is specified and 
 contained in an act of the said parlia- 
 ment, to endure as long as it liked the 
 king. In the which if the intent of the 
 said estates had been, that ye more pow- 
 er and authority should have had, more 
 should have been expressed therein ; to 
 the which appointment, ordinance, and 
 act, ye then agreed you as for your per- 
 son, making nevertheless protestation, 
 that it was not your intent in any wise to 
 deroge, or do prejudice unto my lord 
 your brother of Bedford by your said 
 agreement, as toward any right that he 
 would pretend or claim in the gov- 
 ernance of this land, and as toward any 
 pre-eminence that you might have or be- 
 long unto you as chief of council, it is 
 plainly declared in the said act and arti- 
 cles, subscribed by my said Lord of Bed- 
 ford, by yourself, and the other lords of 
 the council. But as in parliament to 
 which ye be called upon your faith and 
 ligeance as Duke of Glocester, as other 
 lords be, and not otherwise, we know no 
 power nor authority that ye have, other 
 than ye as Duke of Glocester should 
 have, .the king being in parliament, at 
 years of mest discretion : We marvail- 
 ing with all our hearts that considering 
 the open declaration of the authority and 
 power belonging to my Lord of Bedford, 
 and to you in his absence, and also to 
 the king's council, subscribed purely and 
 simply by my said Lord of Bedford, and 
 by you, that you should in any wise be 
 stirred or moved not to content you 
 therewith or to pretend you any other : 
 Namely considering that the king, bles- 
 sed be our lord, is sith the time of the 
 said power granted unto you, far gone 
 and grown in person, in wit, and under- 
 
444 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 standing, and like with the grace of 
 God to occupy his own royal power 
 within few years : and forasmuch con- 
 sidering the things and causes abovesaid, 
 and other many that long were to write, 
 We lords aforesaid pray, exhort, and re- 
 quire you, to content you with the power 
 above said and declared, of the which my 
 lord your brother of Bedford, the king's 
 eldest uncle, contented him ; and that ye 
 none larger power desire, will, nor use ; 
 giving you this that is aboven written 
 for our answer to your foresaid demand, 
 the which we will dwell and abide with, 
 withouten variance or changing. Over 
 this beseeching and praying you in our 
 most humble and lowly wise, and also 
 requiring you in the king's name, that ye. 
 according to the king's commandment, 
 contained in his writ sent unto you in 
 that behalf, come to this his present par- 
 liament, and intend to the good effect 
 and speed of matters to be demesned and 
 treted in the same, like as of right ye 
 owe to do."* 
 
 It is evident that this plain, or rather 
 rude address to the Duke of Glocester, 
 was dictated by the prevalence of Cardi- 
 nal Beaufort's party in council and par- 
 liament. But the transactions in the for- 
 mer parliament are not unfairly repre- 
 sented; and comparing them with the 
 passage extracted above, we may per- 
 haps be entitled to infer: 1. That the 
 king does not possess any constitutional 
 prerogative of appointing a regent during 
 the minority of his successor; and 2. 
 That neither the heir presumptive, nor 
 any other person, is entitled to exercise 
 the royal prerogative during the king's 
 infancy (or, by parity of reasoning, his 
 infirmity), nor to any title that conveys 
 them ; the sole right of determining the 
 persons by whom, and fixing the limita- 
 tions under which, the executive govern- 
 ment shall be conducted in the king's 
 name and behalf, devolving upon the 
 great council of parliament. 
 
 The expression used in the lords' ad- 
 dress to the Duke of Glocester relative 
 to the young king, that he was far gone 
 and grown in person, wit, and understand- 
 ing, was not thrown out in mere flattery. 
 In two years the party hostile to Gloces- 
 ter's influence had gained ground enough 
 to abrogate his office of protector, leav- 
 ing only the honorary title of chief coun- 
 sellor.! For this the king's coronation, 
 at eight years of age, was thought a fair 
 pretence ; and undoubtedly the loss of 
 
 * Rot. Parl., 6 H. VI., vol. iv., p. 326. 
 fid., 8H.VL, p. 336. 
 
 that exceedingly limited authority which 
 had been delegated to the protector could 
 not have impaired the strength of govern- 
 ment. This was conducted as before by 
 a selfish and disunited council ; but the 
 king's name was sufficient to legalize 
 their measures, nor does any objection 
 appear to have been made in parliament 
 to such a mockery of the name of mon- 
 archy. 
 
 In the year 1454, the thirty-second of 
 Henry's reign, his unhappy rq^^^enry's 
 ady, transmitted perhaps &MII 
 his maternal grandfather,! 
 med so decided a charactB [BFange- 
 ment or imbecility, that parliament could 
 no longer conceal from itself the neces- 
 sity of a more efficient rul^fc This as- 
 sembly, which had been^Ritinued by 
 successive prorogations fo^Jparly a year, 
 met at Westminster on the 14th of Feb- 
 ruary, when the session was opened by 
 the Duke of York as king's commission- 
 er. Kemp, archbishop of Canterbury and 
 chancellor of England, dying soon after- 
 ward, it was judged proper to acquaint 
 the king at Windsor by a deputation of 
 twelve lords with this and other subjects 
 concerning his government. In fact, per- 
 haps this was a pretext chosen in order 
 to ascertain his real condition. These 
 peers reported to the lords' house two 
 days afterward, that they had opened to 
 his majesty the several articles of their 
 message, but " could get no answer ne 
 sign for no prayer ne desire," though they 
 repeated their endeavours at three differ- 
 ent interviews. This report, with the in- 
 struction on which it was founded, was, 
 at their prayer, entered of record in par- 
 liament. Upon so authentic a Duke of 
 testimony of their sovereign's York made 
 infirmity, the peers, adjourning prot 
 two days for solemnity or deliberation, 
 "elected and nominated Richard, duke 
 of York, to be protector and defender of 
 the realm of England during the king's 
 pleasure." The duke, protesting his in- 
 sufficiency, requested, " that in this pres- 
 ent parliament, and by authority thereof, 
 it be enacted, that of yourself and of your 
 ful and mere disposition, ye desire, name, 
 and call me to the said name and charge, 
 and that of any presumption of myself, I 
 take them not upon me, but only of the 
 due and humble obeisance that I owe to 
 do unto the king, our most dread and sov- 
 ereign lord, and to you the peerage of this 
 land, in whom, by the occasion of the in- 
 firmity of our said sovereign lord, resteth 
 the exercise of his authority, whose no- 
 ble commandments I am as ready to per- 
 form and obey as any of his liegeman 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, 
 
 445 
 
 alive, and that at such time as it shall 
 please our blessed Creator to restore his 
 most noble person to healthful disposi- 
 tion, it shall like you so to declare and 
 notify to his good grace." To this prot- 
 estation the lords answered, that for his 
 and their discharge an act of parliament 
 should be made, conformably to that en- 
 acted in the king's infancy, since they 
 were compelled by an equal necessity 
 and name a protector 
 to the Duke of York's 
 
 rmed how far the pow- 
 er ^n of his charge should 
 extewl ^ied, that he should be 
 's council, and " devised 
 therefore tfljjyie said duke a name differ- 
 ent from Ptfk counsellors, not the name 
 of tutor, lie^fciant, governor, nor of re- 
 gent, nor no^Pime that shall import au- 
 thority of govWnance of the land ; but the 
 said name" of protector and defensor;" 
 and so forth, according to the language 
 of their former address to the Duke of 
 Glocester. An act was passed accord- 
 ingly, constituting the Duke of York pro- 
 tector of the church and kingdom, and 
 chief counsellor of the king during the 
 latter's pleasure ; or until the Prince of 
 Wales should attain years of discretion, 
 on whom the said dignity was immedi- 
 ately to devolve. The patronage of cer- 
 tain spiritual benefices was reserved to 
 the protector, according to the precedent 
 of the king's minority, which parliament 
 was resolved to follow in every partic- 
 ular.* 
 
 It may be conjectured, by the provision 
 made in favour of the Prince of Wales, 
 then only two years old, that the king's 
 condition was supposed to be beyond 
 hope of restoration. But in about nine 
 months he recovered sufficient speech 
 and recollection to supersede the Duke 
 of York's protectorate.! The succeed- 
 ing transactions are matter of familiar, 
 though not, perhaps, very perspicuous 
 history. The king was a prisoner in his 
 enemies' hands after the affair at St. Al- 
 bans,J when parliament met in July, 1455. 
 
 * Rot. Par!., vol. v., p. 241. 
 
 t Pastpn Letters, vol. i., p. 81. The proofs of 
 sound mind given in this letter are not very deci- 
 sive, but the wits of sovereigns are never weighed 
 in golden scales. 
 
 t This may seem an improper appellation for 
 what is usually termed a battle, wherein 5000 men 
 are said to have fallen. But I rely here upon my 
 faithful guide, the Paston Letters, p. 100, one of 
 which, written immediately after the engagement, 
 says that only six score were killed. Surely this 
 testimony outweighs a thousand ordinary chroni- 
 clers. And the nature of the action, which was a 
 sudden attack on the town of St. Albans, without 
 any pitched combat, renders the larger number im- 
 
 In this session little was done except re- 
 newing the strongest oaths of allegiance 
 to Henry and his family. But the two 
 houses meeting again after a prorogation 
 to November 12, during which time the 
 Duke of York had strengthened his par- 
 ty, and was appointed by commission the 
 king's lieutenant to open the parliament, 
 a proposition was made by the commons, 
 that " whereas the king had deputed the 
 Duke of York as his commissioner to 
 proceed in this parliament, it was thought 
 by the commons, that if the king hereaf- 
 ter could not attend to the protection of 
 the country, an able person should be ap- 
 pointed protector, to whom they might 
 have recourse for redress of injuries; 
 especially as great disturbances had late- 
 ly arisen in the west through the feuds 
 of the Earl of Devonshire and Lord Bon- 
 vile."* The Archbishop of Canterbury 
 answered for the lords, that they would 
 take into consideration what the com- 
 mons had suggested. Two days after- 
 ward, the latter appeared again with a re- 
 quest conveyed nearly in the same terms. 
 Upon their leaving the chamber, the 
 archbishop, who was also chancellor, mo- 
 ved the peers to answer what should be 
 done in respect of the requesj of the com- 
 mons ; adding that, " it is understood 
 that they will not further proceed in mat- 
 ters of parliament to the time that they 
 have answer to their desire and request." 
 This naturally ended in the reappoint- 
 ment of the Duke of York to his charge 
 of protector. The commons indeed were 
 determined to bear no delay. As if ig- 
 norant of what had been resolved in con- 
 sequence of their second request, they 
 urged it a third time on the next day of 
 meeting; and received for answer that 
 " the king our said sovereign lord, by the 
 advice and assent of his lords spiritual 
 and temporal being in this present parlia- 
 ment, had named and desired the Duke 
 of York to be protector and defensor of 
 this land." It is worthy of notice, that 
 in these words, and indeed in effect, as 
 appears by the whole transaction, the 
 house of peers assumed an exclusive 
 right of choosing the protector, though in 
 the act passed to ratify their election, the 
 commons' assent, as a matter of course, 
 is introduced. The last year's precedent 
 was followed in the present instance, ex- 
 cepting a remarkable deviation ; instead 
 of the words " during the king's pleas- 
 
 Drobable. Whethamstede, himself abbot of St. Al- 
 lans at the time, makes the Duke of York's army 
 but 3000 fighting men, p. 352. 
 
 * See some account of these in Paston Letters, 
 vol. i., p. 114. 
 
446 
 
 EUROPE DtJRlNG THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. VIII; 
 
 ure," the duke was to hold his office " un- 
 til he should be discharged of it by the 
 lords in parliament."* 
 
 This extraordinary clause, and the 
 slight allegations on which it was thought 
 fit to substitute a vicegerent for the 
 reigning monarch, are sufficient to prove, 
 even if the common historians were si- 
 lent, that whatever passed as to this sec- 
 ond protectorate of the Duke of York 
 was altogether of a revolutionary com- 
 plexion. In the actual circumstances of 
 civil blood already spilled and the king in 
 captivity, we may justly wonder that so 
 much regard was shown to the regular 
 forms and precedents of the constitution. 
 But the duke's natural moderation will 
 account for part of this, and the temper 
 of the lords for much more. That as- 
 sembly appears for the most part to have 
 been faithfully attached to the house of 
 Lancaster. The partisans of Richard 
 were found in the commons and among 
 the populace. Several months elapsed 
 after the victory of St. Albans, before an 
 attempt was thus made to set aside a 
 sovereign, not labouring, so far as we 
 know, under any more notorious infir- 
 mity than before. It then originated in 
 the commons, and seems to have receiv- 
 ed but an unwilling consent from the 
 upper house. Even in constituting the 
 Duke of York protector over the head 
 of Henry, whom all men despaired of 
 ever seeing in a state to face the dangers 
 of such a season, the lords did not forget 
 the rights of his son, By this latter in- 
 strument, as well as by that of the pre- 
 ceding year, the duke's office was to 
 cease upon the Prince of Wales arriving 
 at the age of discretion. 
 
 But what had been long propagated in 
 Duke of secret, soon became familiar to 
 York's the public ear ; that the Duke 
 claim to the o f York laid claim to the throne. 
 He was unquestionably heir 
 general of the royal line, through his 
 mother, Anne, daughter of Roger Morti- 
 mer, earl of March, son of Philippa, 
 daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence, 
 third son of Edward III. Roger Morti- 
 mer's eldest son, Edmund, had been de- 
 clared heir presumptive by Richard II. ; 
 but his infancy during the revolution that 
 placed Henry IV. on the throne had 
 caused his pretensions to be passed over 
 in silence. The new king, however, was 
 induced, by a jealousy natural to his situ- 
 ation, to detain the Earl of March in cus- 
 tody. Henry V. restored his liberty ; 
 and though he had certainly connived for 
 
 * Rot. Parl., vol. v., p. 284290. 
 
 a while at the conspiracy planned by his 
 brother-in-law the Earl of Cambridge and 
 Lord Scrop of Masham to place the crown 
 on his head, that magnanimous prince 
 gave him a free pardon, and never testi- 
 fied any displeasure. The present Duke 
 of York was honoured by Henry VI. with 
 the highest trusts in France and Ireland ; 
 such as Beaufort and Glocester could 
 never have dreamed of conferring on 
 him, if his title to the cro wMtaiot been 
 reckoned obsolete. 
 pertinently remarked, t 
 petrated by Margaret a 
 in the death of the Duke 
 the destruction of the hdtisc mcas- 
 
 ter.* From this time the Duke of York, 
 next heir in presumption \J^ the king 
 was childless, might innp^Kiy contem- 
 plate the prospect of royaB '; and when 
 such ideas had long been passing through 
 his mind, we may judge how reluctantly 
 the birth of Prince Edward, nine years 
 after Henry's marriage, would be admitted 
 to disturb them. The queen's administra- 
 tion unpopular, careless of national inter- 
 ests, and partial to his inveterate enemy, 
 the Duke of Somerset ;f the king incapa- 
 ble of exciting fear or respect ; himself 
 conscious of powerful alliances and uni- 
 versal favour ; all these circumstances 
 combined could hardly fail to nourish 
 these opinions of hereditary right, which 
 he must have imbibed from his infancy. 
 
 The Duke of York preserved through 
 the critical season of rebellion such mod- 
 eration and humanity, that we may par- 
 don him that bias in favour of his own 
 pretensions to which he became himself 
 a victim. Margaret perhaps, by her san- 
 guinary violence in the Coventry parlia- 
 ment of 1460, where the duke and all his 
 adherents were attainted, left him not the 
 choice of remaining a subject with impu- 
 nity. But with us, who are to weigh 
 these ancient factions in the balance of 
 wisdom and justice,. there should be no 
 hesitation in deciding that the house of 
 Lancaster were lawful sovereigns of 
 England. I am indeed astonished, that 
 not only such historians as Carte, who 
 wrote undisguisedly upon a Jacobite sys- 
 tem, but even men of juster principles, 
 have been inadvertent enough to mention 
 the right of the house of York. If the 
 original consent of the nation, if three 
 descents of the crown, if repeated acts 
 of parliament, if oaths of allegiance from 
 
 * Hall, p. 210. 
 
 f The ill-will of York and the queen began as 
 early as 1449, as we learn from an unequivocal tes- 
 timony, a letter of that date in the Paston collec- 
 tion, vol. i., p. 26. 
 
PAT III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 447 
 
 the whole kingdom, and more particularly 
 from those who now advanced a contrary 
 pretension, if undisturbed, unquestioned 
 possession during sixty years could not 
 secure the reigning family against a mere 
 defect in their genealogy, when were the 
 people to expect tranquillity ] Sceptres 
 were committed, and governments were 
 instituted, for public protection and pub- 
 lic hanuiiLess^iiot certainly for the benefit 
 Jie security of particular 
 prejudice has less in its 
 jas been more fatal to 
 dnd, than that which 
 '*tf subjects as a family's 
 leritance. For, as this opinion 
 induces reigning princes and their cour- 
 tiers to looBuiihe people as made only 
 to obey the^Hkr when the tide of events 
 has swept \ftfh from their thrones, it be- 
 gets a fond twpe of restoration, a sense 
 of injury and of imprescriptible rights, 
 which give the show of justice to fresh 
 disturbances of public order and rebell- 
 ions against established authority. Even 
 in cases of unjust conquest, which are far 
 stronger than any domestic revolution, 
 time heals the injury of wounded inde- 
 pendence, the forced submission to a vic- 
 torious enemy is changed into spontane- 
 ous allegiance to a sovereign, and the 
 laws of God and nature enjoin the obe- 
 dience that is challenged by reciprocal 
 benefits. But far more does every na- 
 tional government, however violent in 
 its origin, become legitimate, when uni- 
 versally obeyed and justly exercised, 
 the possession drawing after it the right; 
 not certainly that success can alter the 
 moral character of actions, or privilege 
 usurpation before the tribunal of human 
 opinion, or in the pages of history, but 
 that the recognition of a government 
 by the people is the binding pledge of 
 their allegiance so long as its corre- 
 sponding duties are fulfilled.* And thus 
 the law of England has been held to 
 annex the subject's fidelity to the reign- 
 ing monarch, by whatever title he may 
 have ascended the throne, and whoever 
 else may be its claimant. f But the stat- 
 ute of llth of Henry VII., c. 1, has fur- 
 nished an unequivocal commentary upon 
 this principle ; when, alluding to the con- 
 
 * Upon this great question the fourth discourse 
 in Sir Michael Foster's Reports ought particularly 
 to be read. Strange doctrines have been revived 
 lately, and though not exactly referred to the con- 
 stitution of this country, yet, as general principles, 
 easily applicable to it ; which, a century since, 
 would have tended to shake the present family in 
 the throne. 
 
 t Male's Pleas of the Crown, vol. i., p. 61, 101 
 (edit. 1736). 
 
 demnations and forfeitures by which 
 those alternate successes of the whit 
 and red roses had almost exhausted the 
 noble blood of England, it enacts that 
 " no man for doing truth and faithful ser- 
 vice to the king for the time being, be 
 convict, or attaint of high treason, nor of 
 other offences, by act of parliament or 
 otherwise." 
 
 Though all classes of men and all parts 
 of England were divided into War of the 
 factions by this unhappy con- Lancas- 
 test, yet the strength of the triansand 
 Yorkists lay in London and the 
 neighbouring counties, and generally 
 among the middling and lower people. 
 And this is what might naturally be ex- 
 pected. For notions of hereditary right 
 take easy hold of the populace, who feel 
 an honest sympathy for those whom they 
 consider as injured ; while men of noble 
 birth and high station have a keener sense 
 of personal duty to their sovereign, and 
 of the baseness of deserting their al- 
 legiance. Notwithstanding the wide- 
 spreading influence of the Nevils, most 
 of the nobility were well affected to the 
 reigning dynasty. We have seen how 
 reluctantly they acquiesced in the second 
 protectorate of the Duke of York, after 
 the battle of St. Albans. Thirty-two- 
 temporal peers took an oath of fealty to 
 Henry and his issue in the Coventry par- 
 liament of 1460, which attainted the 
 Duke of York and the earls of Warwick 
 and Salisbury.* And, in the memorable 
 circumstances of the cfake's claim person- 
 ally made in parliament, it seems mani- 
 fest that the lords complied not only 
 with hesitation, but unwillingness ; and in 
 fact testified their respect and duty for 
 Henry by confirming the crown to him 
 during his life.f The rose of Lancaster 
 blushed upon the banners of the Staf- 
 fords, the Percies, the Veres, the Hol- 
 lands, and the Courtneys. All these il- 
 lustrious families lay crushed for a time 
 under the ruins of their party. But the 
 course of fortune, which has too great a 
 mastery over crowns and sceptres to be 
 controlled by men's affections, invested 
 
 * Rot. ParL, vol. v., p. 351. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., p. 375. This entry in the roll is 
 highly interesting and important. It ought to be 
 read in preference to any of our historians. Hume, 
 who drew from inferior sources, is not altogether 
 accurate. Yet one remarkable circumstance, told 
 by Hall and other chroniclers, that the Duke of 
 York stood by the throne, as if to claim it, though 
 omitted entirely in the roll, is confirmed by Wheth- 
 amstede, abbot of St. Albans, who was probably 
 then. present (p. 484, edit. Hearne). This shows 
 that we should only doubt and not reject, -unless 
 upon real grounds of suspicion, the assertions of 
 secondary writers. 
 
448 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [ClIAP. VIII. 
 
 Edward IV. with a possession, which the 
 general consent of the nation both sanc- 
 tioned and secured. This was effected 
 in no slight degree by the furious spirit 
 of Margaret, who began a system of ex- 
 termination by acts of attainder, and ex- 
 ecution of prisoners, that created abhor- 
 rence, though it did not prevent imitation. 
 And the barbarities of her northern army, 
 whom she led towards London after the 
 battle of Wakefield, lost the Lancastrian 
 cause its former friends,* and might just- 
 ly convince reflecting men, that it were 
 better to risk the chances of a new dy- 
 nasty, than trust the kingdom to an ex- 
 asperated faction. 
 
 A period of obscurity and confusion 
 Edward iv ensu . es > during which we have 
 as little insight into constitu- 
 tional as general history. There are no 
 contemporary chroniclers of any value, 
 and the rolls of parliament, by whose 
 light we have hitherto steered, become 
 mere registers of private bills, or of peti- 
 tions relating to commerce. The reign 
 of Edward IV. is the first during which 
 no statute was passed for the redress of 
 grievances or maintenance of the sub- 
 ject's liberty. Nor is there, if I am cor- 
 rect, a single petition of this nature upon 
 the roll. Whether it Avere that the com- 
 mons had lost too much of their ancient 
 courage to present any remonstrances, 
 or that a wilful omission has vitiated the 
 record, is hard to determine ; but we cer- 
 tainly must not imagine, that a govern- 
 ment cemented with blood poured on the 
 scaffold as well as in the field, under a 
 passionate and unprincipled sovereign, 
 would afford no scope for the just ani- 
 madversion of parliament.! The reign 
 of Edward IV. was a reign of terror. 
 One half of the noble families had been 
 thinned by proscription ; and though gen- 
 erally restored in blood by the reversal 
 of their attainders, a measure certainly 
 deserving of much approbation, were 
 still under the eyes of vigilant and invet- 
 erate enemies. The opposite faction 
 
 * The abbey of St. Albans was stripped by the 
 queen and her army after the second battle fought 
 at that place, Feb. 17, M61 ; which changed Wheth- 
 amstede, the abbot and historiographer, from a vio- 
 lent Lancastrian into a Yorkist. His change of 
 party is quite sudden, and amusing enough. See 
 too the Paston Letters, vol. i., p. 206. Yet the 
 Paston family were originally Lancastrian, and re- 
 turned to that side in 1470. 
 
 f There are several instances of violence and 
 oppression apparent on the rolls during this reign, 
 but not proceeding from the crown. One of a re- 
 markable nature, vol. v., p. 173, was brought for- 
 ward to throw an odium on the Duke of Clarence, 
 who had been concerned in it. Several passages 
 indicate the character of the Duke of Glocester. 
 
 would be cautious how they resisted a 
 dng of their own creation, while the 
 hopes of their adversaries were only dor- 
 mant. And indeed, without relying on 
 this supposition, it is commonly seen, 
 that when temporary circumstances have 
 given a king the means of acting in dis- 
 regard of his subjects' privileges, it is a 
 very difficult undertaking for them to re- 
 cover a liberty which has .nrit so 
 effectual as habitual 
 Besides the several p 
 
 the Lancastrian partj^ : t >e 
 
 extenuated by the comm 
 ;aliation of similar pro^rrp imty 
 
 "or the actual government, or just'pun- 
 
 shment of rebellion agains^^ legitimate 
 heir, there are several rep^B instances 
 of violence and barbarity J He reign of 
 Edward IV., which have. 9 Jr< such plau- 
 sible excuses. Every orre*- knows the 
 common stones of the citizen who was 
 attainted of treason for an idle speech 
 that he would make his son heir to the 
 
 rown, the house where he dwelt; and 
 of Thomas Burdett, who wished the 
 horns of his stag in the belly of him 
 who had advised the king to shoot it. 
 3f the former I can assert nothing, though 
 I do not believe it to be accurately re- 
 Dorted. But certainly the accusation 
 against Burdett, however iniquitous, was 
 
 ot confined to these frivolous words ; 
 which indeed do not appear in his en- 
 dictment,* or in a passage relative to his 
 
 onviction in the roll of parliament. 
 Burdett was a servant and friend of the 
 Duke of Clarence, and sacrificed as a 
 preliminary victim. It was an article 
 of charge against Clarence that he had 
 attempted to persuade the people that 
 
 Thomas Burdett his servant, which was 
 [awfully and truly attainted of treason, 
 was wrongfully put to death."f There 
 could indeed be no more oppressive 
 usage inflicted upon meaner persons than 
 this attainder of the Duke of Clarence, 
 an act for which a brother could not be 
 pardoned had he been guilty ; and which 
 deepens the shadow of a tyrannical age, 
 if, as it seems, his offence towards Ed- 
 ward was but levity and rashness. 
 
 < See in Cro. Car. 120, the endictment against 
 Burdett for compassing the king's death and for 
 that purpose conspiring with Stacie and Blake to 
 calculate his nativity and his son's, ad sciendum 
 quando iidem rex et Edwardns ejus films morion- 
 tur : Also for the same end dispersing divers rhymes 
 and ballads de murmuratiombus, seditionibus et 
 proditoriis excitationibus, factas et fabricatas apud 
 Holbourn, to the intent that the people might 
 withdraw their love from the king and desert him, 
 ac erga ipsum regem levarent, ad finalem destruc- 
 tionem ipsorum regis ac domini principis, &c. 
 
 f Rot. Parl., vol. vi., p. 193. 
 
PART III.] 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 449 
 
 But whatever acts of injustice we may 
 attribute, from authority or conjecture, to 
 Edward's government, it was very far 
 from being unpopular. His love of pleas- 
 ure, his affability, his courage, and beauty, 
 gave him a credit with his subjects which 
 he had no real virtue to challenge. This 
 restored him to the throne, even against 
 the prodigious influence of Warwick, and 
 VII. to treat his mem- 
 an( * ac knowledge him 
 > The latter years of 
 sed in repose at home 
 aue: ufearalleled convulsions, 
 
 ad after more than a 
 warfare. His de- 
 mans of subsidy were therefore moder- 
 ate, and e^fct defrayed by a nation who 
 were mlkBBapid advances towards op- 
 
 The rotts^plefiry VU.'s first parliament are 
 full of an absirmXwifusion in thought and language, 
 which is rendered odious by the purposes to which 
 it is applied. Both Henry VI. and Edward IV. are 
 considered as lawful kings ; except in one instance, 
 where Alan Cotterell, petitioning for the reversal 
 of his attainder, speaks of Edward "late called 
 Edward IV." (vol. vi., p. 290). But this is only the 
 language of a private Lancastrian. And Henry 
 VI. passes for having been king during his short 
 restoration in 1470, when Edward had been nine 
 years upon the throne. For the Earl of Oxford is 
 said to have been attainted " for the true allegiance 
 and service he owed and did to Henry VI., at 
 Barnet field and otherwise" (p. 281). This might 
 be reasonable enough on the true principle that 
 allegiance is due to a king de facto ; if indeed we 
 could determine who was the king de facto on the 
 morning of the battle of Barnet. But this princi- 
 ple was not fairly recognised. Richard III. is al- 
 ways called, "in deed and not in right, King of 
 England." Nor was this merely founded on his 
 usurpation as against his nephew. For that un- 
 fortunate boy is little better treated, and in the act 
 of resumption, 1 H. VII., while Edward IV. is 
 styled " late king," appears only with the denomi- 
 nation of " Edward his son, late called Edward 
 V.," p. 336. Who then was king after the death 
 of Edward IV. ? And was his son really illegiti- 
 mate, as a usurping uncle pretended ? Or did 
 the crime of Richard, though punished in him, 
 enure to the benefit of Henry ? These were points 
 which, like the fate of the young princes m the 
 Tower, he chose to wrap in discreet silence. But 
 the first question he seems to have answered in 
 his own favour. For Richard himself, Howard, 
 duke of Norfolk, Lord Lovel, and some others, are 
 attainted (p. 276), for ' traitorously intending, com- 
 passing, and imagining' the death of Henry ; of 
 course before or at the battle of Bosworth ; and 
 while his right, unsupported by possession, could 
 have rested only on an hereditary title, which it 
 was an insult to the nation to prefer. These mon- 
 strous proceedings explain the necessity of that 
 conservative statute to which I have already allu- 
 ded, which passed in the eleventh year of his reign, 
 and afforded as much security for men following 
 the plain line of rallying round the standard of their 
 country as mere law can offer. There is some ex- 
 traordinary reasoning upon this act in Carte's His- 
 tory, vol. ii., p. 844, for the purpose of proving that 
 the adherents of George II. would not be protected 
 by it on the restoration of the true blood. 
 Ff 
 
 ulence. According to Sir John Fortes- 
 cue, nearly one fifth of the whole king- 
 dom had come to the king's hand by for- 
 feiture, at some time or other since the 
 commencement of his reign.* Many in- 
 deed of these lands had been restored, 
 and others lavished away in grants, but 
 the surplus revenue must still have been 
 considerable. 
 
 Edward IV. was the first who practised 
 a new method of taking his subjects 1 
 money without consent of parliament, 
 under the plausible name of benevolen- 
 ces. These came in place of the still 
 more plausible loans of former monarchs, 
 and were principally levied on the weal- 
 thy traders. Though no complaint ap- 
 pears in the parliamentary records of his 
 reign, which, as has been observed, com- 
 plain of nothing, the illegality was un- 
 doubtedly felt and resented. In the re- 
 markable address to Richard by that 
 tumultuary meeting which invited him 
 to assume the crown, we find, among 
 general assertions of the state's decay 
 through misgovernment, the following 
 strong passage : " For certainly we be 
 determined rather to aventure and com- 
 mitte us to the perill of owre lyfs and 
 jopardie of deth, than to lyve in such 
 thraldome and bondage as we have lyved 
 long tyme heretofore oppressed and in- 
 jured by extortions and newe impositions, 
 ayenst the lawes of God and man, and the 
 libertie, old policie, and laws of this 
 realme, whereyn every Englishman is in- 
 herited."! Accordingly, in Richard III.'s 
 only parliament, an act was passed, 
 which, after reciting in the strongest 
 terms the grievances lately endured, 
 abrogates and annuls for ever all exac- 
 tions under the name of benevolence. J 
 The liberties of this country were at 
 least not directly impaired by the usur- 
 pation of Richard. But from an act so 
 deeply tainted with moral guilt, as well 
 as so violent in all its circumstances, no 
 substantial benefit was likely to spring* 
 Whatever difficulty there may be, and I 
 confess it is not easy to be surmounted, 
 in deciding upon the fate of Richard's 
 nephews after they were immured in 
 the Tower, the more public parts of the 
 transaction bear unequivocal testimony 
 to his ambitious usurpation, It would 
 therefore be foreign to the purpose of 
 this chapter to dwell upon his assumption 
 of the regency, or upon the sort of elec- 
 tion, however curious and remarkable, 
 which gave a pretended authority to his 
 usurpation of the throne. Neither of 
 
 * Diff. of Absolute and Limited Monarchy, p. 83 
 t Rot. Parl., vol.-vi., p. 241. J 1 R. III., c. 2- 
 
450 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 these has ever been alleged by any 
 party in the way of constitutional prece- 
 dent. 
 At this epoch I terminate these inqui- 
 
 Conciusion r * es mto tne English constitu- 
 tion ; a sketch very imperfect I 
 fear and unsatisfactory, but which may 
 at least answer the purpose of fixing the 
 reader's attention on the principal ob- 
 jects, and of guiding him to the purest 
 fountains of constitutional knowledge. 
 From the accession of the house of Tu- 
 dor a new period is to be dated in our 
 history ; far more prosperous in the dif- 
 fusion of opulence and the preservation 
 of general order than the preceding, but 
 less distinguished by the spirit of free- 
 dom and jealousy of tyrannical power. 
 We have seen, through the twilight of 
 our Anglo-Saxon records, a form of civil 
 policy established by our ancestors, 
 marked, like the kindred governments 
 of the continent, with aboriginal Teu- 
 tonic features ; barbarous indeed, and in- 
 sufficient for the great ends of society, 
 but capable and worthy of the improve- 
 ment it has received, because actuated by 
 a sound and vital spirit, the love of free- 
 dom and of justice. From these princi- 
 ples arose that venerable institution, 
 which none but a free and simple people 
 could have conceived, trial by peers ; an 
 institution common in some degree to 
 other nations, but which, more widely 
 extended, more strictly retained, and bet- 
 ter modified among ourselves, has be- 
 come perhaps the first, certainly among 
 the first, of our securities against arbitra- 
 ry government. We have seen a foreign 
 conqueror and his descendants trample 
 almost alike upon the prostrate nation, 
 and upon those who had been compan- 
 ions of their victory, introduce the ser- 
 vitudes of feudal law with more than 
 
 j their usual rigour, and establish a large 
 | revenue by continual precedents upon a 
 j system of universal and prescriptive ex- 
 i tortion. But the Norman and English 
 races, each unfit to endure oppression, 
 forgetting their animosities in a common 
 interest, enforce by arms the concession 
 of a great charter of liberties. Privile- 
 ges, wrested from one faithless monarch, 
 are preserved with continuilance 
 against the machin 
 rights of the people bee 
 and their spirit more 
 ring the long reign of 
 greater ambition an* 
 than his father, Edwafo rams n 
 
 vain to govern in an arbitrary wanner, 
 and has the mortificatiofi^fc^eeing his 
 prerogative fettered by^H Bore impor- 
 tant limitations. The ^BcQuncil of 
 the nation is opened to me representa- 
 tives of the commons. They proceed 
 by slow and cautious steps to remonstrate 
 against public grievances, to check the 
 abuses of administration, and sometimes 
 to chastise public delinquency in the offi- 
 cers of the crown. A number of reme- 
 dial provisions are added to the statutes ; 
 every Englishman learns to remember 
 that he is the citizen of a free state, and 
 to claim the common law as his birth- 
 right, even though the violence of power 
 should interrupt its enjoyment. It were 
 a strange misrepresentation of history to 
 assert that the constitution had attained 
 any thing like a perfect state in the fif- 
 teenth century ; but I know not whether 
 there are any essential privileges of our 
 countrymen, any fundamental securities 
 against arbitrary power, so far as they 
 depend upon positive institution, which 
 may not be traced to the time when the 
 house of Plantagenet filled the English 
 throne. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Introduction. Decline of Literature in the latter 
 period of the Roman Empire. Its Causes 
 Corruption of the Latin Language. Means by 
 which it was effected. Formation of new Lan- 
 guages. General Ignorance of the Dark Ages. 
 Scarcity of Books. Cattses that prevented the 
 total Extinction of Learning. Prevalence of 
 Superstition and Fanaticism. General Corrup- 
 tion of Religion. Monasteries their Effects. 
 Pilgrimages. Love of Field Sports. State of 
 
 Agriculture of Internal and Foreign Trade 
 down to the End of the Eleventh Century. Im- 
 provement of Europe dated from that Age. 
 
 IT has been the object of every prece- 
 ding chapter of this work either to trace 
 the civil revolutions of states during the 
 period of the middle ages, or to investi- 
 gate, with rather more minute attention, 
 their political institutions. There re- 
 mains a large tract to be explored, if we 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 451 
 
 would complete the circle of historica 
 information, and give to our knowledg 
 that copiousness and clear perceptio 
 which arise from comprehending a sub 
 'ject under numerous relations. Th 
 philosophy of history embraces far mor 
 than the wars and treaties, the faction 
 and cabals of common political nar 
 ration^j^^tends to whatever illustrate 
 
 Hthe human species in 
 to their reasonings an> 
 |sive survey merely in 
 peculative philosopher 
 statesman would form 
 very ^rrone(^^stimates of events, an< 
 find hijjra ^Kantly misled in any an 
 alogicaH ^Hs 11 ^ them to presen 
 circums f? or * s ^ a11 uncommon 
 
 source of eilBpto neglect the genera 
 signs of th^^mes, and to deduce a prog 
 nostic from some partial coincidence 
 with past events, where a more enlargec 
 comparison of all the facts that ought to 
 enter into the combination would destroy 
 the whole parallel. The philosophica 
 student, however, will not follow the 
 antiquary into his minute details; anc 
 though it is hard to say what may not 
 supply matter for a reflecting mind, there 
 is always some danger of losing sight of 
 grand objects in historical disquisition, 
 by too laborious a research into trifles. 
 I may possibly be thought to furnish, in 
 some instances, an example of the error 
 I condemn. But in the choice and dis- 
 position of topics to which the present 
 chapter relates, some have been omitted 
 on account of their comparative insignif- 
 icance, and others on account of their 
 want of connexion with the leading sub- 
 ject. Even of those treated I can only 
 undertake to give a transient view ; and 
 must bespeak the reader's candour to re- 
 member, that passages which, separately 
 taken, may often appear superficial, are 
 but parts of the context of a single chap- 
 ter, as the chapter itself is of an entire 
 work. 
 
 The Middle Ages, according to the di- 
 vision I have adopted, comprise about 
 one thousand years, from the invasion of 
 France by Clovis to that of Naples by 
 Charles VIII. This period, considered 
 as to the state of society, has been es- 
 teemed dark through ignorance, and bar- 
 barous through poverty and want of re- 
 finement. And although this character 
 is much less applicable to the two last 
 centuries of the period than to those 
 which preceded its commencement, yet 
 we cannot expect to feel, in respect of 
 ages at %est imperfectly civilized and 
 F f 2 
 
 slowly progressive, that interest which 
 attends a more perfect development of 
 human capacities, and more brilliant ad- 
 vances in improvement. The first moi- 
 ety indeed of these ten ages is almost 
 absolutely barren, and presents little but 
 a catalogue of evils. The subversion of 
 the Roman empire, and devastation of its 
 provinces by barbarous nations, either 
 immediately preceded, or were coinci- 
 dent with the commencement of the 
 middle period. ^We begin in darkness 
 and calamity; and though the shadows 
 grow fainter as we advance, yet we are 
 to break off our pursuit as the morning 
 breathes upon us, and the twilight red- 
 dens into the lustre of day.) 
 
 No circumstance is so prominent on 
 the first survey of society du- Decljne 
 ring the earlier centuries of this learning in 
 period as the depth of ignorance Roman em- 
 in which it was immersed ; and pire> 
 as from this, more than any single cause, 
 the moral and social evils which those 
 ages experienced appear to have been 
 derived and perpetuated, it deserves to 
 occupy the first place in the arrangement 
 of our present subject. We must not 
 altogether ascribe the ruin of literature 
 to the barbarian destroyers of the Roman 
 empire. So gradual, and apparently so 
 irretrievable a decay, had long before 
 spread over all liberal studies, that it is 
 "mpossible to pronounce whether they 
 would not have been almost equally ex- 
 inguished if the august throne of the 
 3esars had been left to moulder by its 
 ntrinsic weakness. Under the paternal 
 sovereignty of Marcus Aurelius, the ap- 
 )roaching declension oif learning might 
 )e scarcely perceptible to an incurious 
 observer. There was much, indeed to 
 distinguish his times from those of Au- 
 gustus ; much lost in originality of ge- 
 aius, in correctness of taste, in the mas- 
 erly conception and consummate finish 
 )f art, in purity of the Latin, and even 
 f the Greek language. But jhere were 
 nen who made the age famous, grave 
 awyers, judicious historians, wise phi- 
 osophers; the name of learning was 
 lonourable, its professors were encour- 
 iged ; and along the vast surface of the 
 Ionian empire there was perhaps a great- 
 r number, whose minds were cultivated 
 y intellectual discipline, than under the 
 lore brilliant reign of the first emperor. 
 It is not, I think, very easy to give a 
 erfectly satisfactory solution of 
 he rapid downfall of literature 
 etween the ages of Antonine and of 
 Diocletian. Perhaps the prosperous con- 
 ition of the empire from Trajan to Mar- 
 

 452 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 cus Aurelius, and the patronage which 
 those good princes bestowed on letters, 
 gave an artificial health to them for a 
 moment, and suspended the operation of 
 a disease which had already begun to un- 
 dermine their vigour. Perhaps the in- 
 tellectual energies of mankind can never 
 remain stationary; and a nation that 
 ceases to produce original and inventive 
 minds, born to advance the landmarks of 
 knowledge or skill, will recede from step 
 to step, till it loses even the secondary 
 merits of imitation and industry. During 
 the third century, not only there were no 
 great writers, but even few names of in- 
 different writers have been recovered by 
 the diligence of modern inquiry.* Law 
 neglected, philosophy perverted till it be- 
 came contemptible, history nearly silent, 
 the Latin tongue growing rapidly barba- 
 rous, poetry rarely and feebly attempted, 
 art more and more vitiated; such were 
 the symptoms by which the age previous 
 to Constantine announced the decline 
 of human intellect. If we cannot fully 
 account for this unhappy change, as I 
 have observed, we must, however, assign 
 much weight to the degradation of Rome 
 and Italy in the system of Severus and 
 his successors, to the admission of bar- 
 barians into the military and even civil 
 dignities of the empire, to the discour- 
 aging influence of provincial and illiterate 
 sovereigns, and to the calamities which 
 followed for half a century the first inva- 
 sion of the Goths and the defeat of De- 
 cius. To this sickly condition of literan 
 ture the fourth century supplied no per- 
 manent remedy. If under the house 
 of Constantine the Roman world suf- 
 fered rather less from civil warfare or 
 barbarous .invasions than in the prece- 
 ding age, yet every other cause of de- 
 cline just enumerated prevailed with ag- 
 gravated force ; and the fourth century 
 set in storms, sufficiently destructive in 
 themselves, and ominous of those calam- 
 ities which humbled the majesty of Rome 
 at the commencement of the ensuing pe- 
 riod, and overwhelmed the Western Em- 
 pire in absolute and final ruin before its 
 termination. 
 
 The diffusion of literature is perfectly 
 distinguishable from its advancement, and ' 
 whatever obscurity we may find in ex- 
 plaining the variations of the one, there* 
 are a few simple causes which seem to 
 
 * The authors of Histoire Litteraire de la 
 France, t. i., can only find three writers of Gaul, 
 no inconsiderable part of the Roman empire, men- 
 tioned upon any authority : two of whom are now 
 lost. In the preceding century the number was 
 considerably greater. 
 
 account for the other.^ Knowledge will 
 be spread over the surface of a nation in 
 proportion to the facilities of education, 
 to the free circulation of books, to the 
 emoluments and distinctions which lit- 
 erary attainments are found to produce, 
 and still more to the reward which they 
 meet in the general respect and applause 
 of society. This cheering jjicitement, 
 the genial sunshine of a 
 at all times promoted 
 literature in small rep 
 large empires, and i 
 with the country, 
 sources which noun 
 should naturally exp 
 have become scanty or. 
 ing languishes or expijl 
 1 
 
 we 
 ust 
 learn- 
 Jdingly, 
 tipire, a 
 cultiva- 
 racteristic 
 
 in the later ages of th 
 general indifference to 
 tion of letters became 
 of its inhabitants. Laws were indeed 
 enacted by Constantine, Julian, Theodo- 
 sius, and other emperors, for the encour- 
 agement of learned men and the promo- 
 tion of liberal education. But these 
 laws, which would not perhaps have 
 been thought necessary in better times, 
 were unavailing to counteract the leth- 
 argy of ignorance in which even the na- 
 tive citizens of the empire were content- 
 ed to repose. This alienation of men 
 from their national literature may doubt- 
 less be imputed, in some measure, to its 
 own demerits. A jargon of mystical phi- 
 losophy, half fanaticism and half impos- 
 ture, a barren and inflated eloquence, a 
 frivolous philology, were not among 
 those charms of wisdom by which man 
 is to be diverted from pleasure or arous- 
 ed from indolence. 
 
 In this temper of the public mind, there 
 was little probability that new composi- 
 tions of excellence would be produced, 
 and much doubt whether the old would 
 be preserved. Since the invention of 
 printing, the absolute extinction of any 
 considerable work seems a danger too 
 improbable for apprehension. The press 
 pours forth in a few days a thousand vol- 
 umes, which scattered, like seed in the 
 air, over the republic of Europe, could 
 hardly be destroyed without the extirpa- 
 tion of its inhabitants. But in the times 
 of antiquity, manuscripts were copied 
 with cost, labour, and delay; and if the 
 diffusion of knowledge be measured by 
 the multiplication of books, no unfair 
 standard, the most golden ages of ancient 
 learning could never bear the least com- 
 parison with the three last centuries. 
 The destruction of a few libraries by ac- 
 cidental fire, the desolation of a, few prov- 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 453 
 
 inces by unsparing and illiterate barba 
 rians, might annihilate every vestige of 
 an author, or leave a few scattered 
 copies, which, from the public indiffer- 
 ence, there was no inducement to multi- 
 ply, exposed to similar casualties in suc- 
 ceeding times. 
 
 We are warranted by good authorities 
 to assign, as a collateral cause of this ir- 
 retrievable revolution, the neglect of hea- 
 then litetfctpre by the Christian church. 
 I am-ttot versed enough in ecclesiastical 
 writers tg estimate the degree of this 
 neglect ; nor am I disposed to deny that 
 the mischief was beyond recovery before 
 the accession of Constantine. From the 
 primitive ages, however, it seems that a 
 dislike of pagan learning was pretty gen- 
 eral among Christians. Many of the fa- 
 thers undoubtedly were accomplished in 
 liberal studies, and we are indebted to 
 them for valuable fragments of authors 
 whom we have lost. But the literary 
 character of the church is not to be meas- 
 ured by that of its more illustrious lead- 
 ers. Proscribed and persecuted, the 
 early Christians had not perhaps access 
 to the public schools, nor inclination to 
 studies which seemed, very excusably, 
 uncongenial to the character of their pro- 
 fession. Their prejudices, however, sur- 
 vived the establishment of Christianity. 
 The fourth council of Carthage, in 398, 
 prohibited the reading of secular books 
 by bishops. Jerome plainly condemns 
 the study of them, except for pious ends. 
 All physical science, especially, was held 
 in avowed contempt, as inconsistent with 
 revealed truths. Nor do there appear to 
 have been any canons made^in favour of 
 learning, or any restriction on the ordi- 
 nation of persons absolutely illiterate.* 
 There was, indeed, abundance of what is 
 f called theological learning displayed in 
 I the controversies of the fourth and fifth 
 centuries. And those who admire such 
 disputations may consider the principal 
 champions in them as contributing to the 
 glory, or at least retarding the decline of 
 literature. But I believe rather that po- 
 lemical disputes will be found not only 
 to corrupt the genuine spirit of religion, 
 but to degrade and contract the faculties. 
 What keenness and subtlety these may 
 sometimes acquire by such exercise is 
 more like that worldly shrewdness we 
 see in men whose trade it is to outwit i 
 
 * Mosheim, Cent. 4. Tiraboschi endeavours to 
 elevate higher the learning of the early Christians, 
 t. ii., p. 328. Jortin, however, asserts that many 
 of the bishops in the general councils of Ephesus 
 and Chalcedon could not write their names. Re- 
 marks on Ecclesiast. Hist., vol. ii., p. 417. 
 
 their neighbours, than the clear and calm 
 discrimination of philosophy. However 
 this may be, it cannot be doubted that 
 the controversies agitated in the church 
 during these two centuries must have di- 
 verted studious minds from profane liter- 
 ature, and narrowed more and more the 
 circle of that knowledge which they were 
 desirous to attain. 
 
 The torrent of irrational superstitions, 
 which carried all before it in the fifth 
 century, and the progress of ascetic en- 
 thusiasm, had an influence still more de- 
 qidedly inimical to learning. I cannot 
 indeed conceive any state of society 
 niore adverse to the intellectual improve- 
 ment of mankind, than one which admit- 
 ted of no middle line between gross dis- 
 soluteness and fanatical mortification. 
 An equable tone of public morals, social 
 and humane, verging neither to voluptu- 
 ousness nor austerity, seems the most 
 adapted to genius, or at least to letters, 
 as it is to individual comfort and national 
 prosperity. After the introduction of 
 monkery and its unsocial theory of du- 
 ties, the serious and reflecting part of 
 mankind, on whom science most relies, 
 were turned to habits which, in the most 
 favourable view, could not quicken the 
 intellectual energies ; and it might be a 
 difficult question, whether the cultivators 
 and admirers of useful literature were 
 less likely to be found among the profli- 
 gate citizens of Rome and their barbarian 
 conquerors, or the melancholy recluses 
 of the wilderness. 
 
 Such therefore was the state of learn- 
 ing before the subversion of the Western 
 Empire. And we may form some notion 
 how little probability there was of its 
 producing any excellent fruits, even if 
 that revolution had never occurred, by 
 considering what took place in Greece 
 during the subsequent ages; where, al- 
 though there was some attention shown 
 o preserve the best monuments of anti- 
 quity, and diligence in compiling from 
 them, yet no one original writer of any 
 superior merit arose, and learning, though 
 plunged but for a short period into mere 
 larkness, may be said to have languished 
 in a middle region of twilight for the 
 reater part of a thousand years., 
 
 But not to delay ourselves in this spec- 
 ulation, the final settlement of barbarous 
 nations in Gaul, Spain, and Italy consum- 
 mated the ruin of literature. Their first 
 rruptions were uniformly attended with 
 devastation; and if some of the Gothic 
 dngs, after their establishment, proved 
 humane and civilized sovereigns, yet the 
 lation gloried in its original rudeness, 
 
454 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 and viewed with no unreasonable disdain 
 arts which had neither preserved their 
 cultivators from corruption, nor raised 
 them from servitude. Theodoric, the 
 most famous of the Ostrogoth kings in 
 Italy, could not write his name, and is 
 said to have restrained his countrymen 
 from attending those schools of learning, 
 by which he, or rather perhaps his min- 
 ister Cassiodprus, endeavoured to re- 
 vive the studies of his Italian subjects. 
 Scarcely one of the barbarians, so long 
 as they continued uncpnfused with the 
 native inhabitants, acquired the slightest 
 tincture of letters; and the praise of 
 equal ignorance was soon aspired to and 
 attained by the entire mass of the Roman 
 laity. They, howeyer, could hardly have 
 divested themselves so completely of all 
 acquaintance with even the elements of 
 learning, if the language in which books 
 were written had not ceased to be their 
 natural dialect. This remarkable change 
 in the speech of France, Spain, and Italy, 
 is most intimately connected with the 
 extinction of learning; and there is 
 enough of obscurity, as well as cf inter- 
 est, in the subject, to deserve some dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 It is obvious, on the most cursory 
 Corruption of view of the French and Span- 
 the Latin ian- ish languages, that they, as 
 well as the Italian, are derived 
 from one common source, the Latin. 
 That must therefore have been at some 
 period, and certainly not since the estab- 
 lishment of the barbarous nations in 
 Spain and Gaul, substituted in ordinary 
 use for the original dialects of those 
 countries, which are generally supposed 
 to have been Celtic, not essentially dif- 
 fering from that which is spoken in 
 Wales and Ireland. Rome, says Augus- 
 tin, imposed not only her yoke, but her 
 language, upon conquered nations. The 
 success of such an attempt is indeed 
 very remarkable. Though it is the natu- 
 ral effect of conquest, or even of com- 
 mercial intercourse, to ingraft fresh 
 words and foreign idioms on the stock 
 of the original language, yet the entire 
 disuse of the latter, and adoption of one 
 radically different, scarcely takes place 
 in the lapse of a far longer period than 
 that of the Roman dominion in Gaul. 
 Thus, in part of Britany, the people 
 speak a language which has perhaps 
 sustained no essential alteration from 
 the revolution of two thousand years ; 
 and we know how steadily another Cel- 
 tic dialect has kept its ground in Wales, 
 notwithstanding English laws and gov- 
 ernment, and the long line of contiguous 
 
 frontier, which brings the natives of that 
 principality into contact with English- 
 men. Nor did the Romans ever estab- 
 lish their language, I know not whether 
 they wished to do so, in this island, as 
 we perceive by that stubborn British 
 tongue which has. survived two con- 
 quests.* 
 
 In Gaul and in Spain, however, they 
 did succeed, as the present state of the 
 French and peninsular languages renders 
 undeniable, though by gradual changes, 
 and not, as the Benedictine authors of 
 the Histpire Litteraire de la France 
 seem to imagine, by a sudden and arbi- 
 trary innovation.! This is neither pos- 
 sible in itself, nor agreeable to the testi- 
 mony of IrenaBus, bishop of Lyons, at 
 the end of the second century, who la- 
 ments the necessity of learning Celtic. | 
 But although the inhabitants of these 
 provinces came at length to make use of 
 Latin so completely as their mother- 
 tongue, that few vestiges of their origi- 
 nal Celtic could perhaps be discovered in 
 their common speech, it does not follow 
 that they spoke with the pure pronuncia- 
 tion of Italians, far less with that confor- 
 mity to the written sounds, which we as- 
 sume to be essential to the expression 
 of Latin words. 
 
 It appears to be taken for granted that 
 the Romans pronounced their Ancient Lat- 
 language as we do at present, in pronunci- 
 so far at least as the enuncia- atlon - 
 tion of all the consonants, however we 
 may admit our deviations from the clas- 
 sical standard in propriety of sounds 
 and in measure of time. Yet the exam- 
 ple of our own language and of the French 
 might show us that orthography may be- 
 come a very inadequate representative 
 
 * Gibbon roundly asserts, " that the language 
 of Virgil and Cicero, though with some inevita- 
 ble mixture of corruption, was so universally 
 adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, Great Britain, and 
 Pannonia. that the faint traces of the Punic or Cel- 
 tic idioms*were preserved only in the mountains 
 or among the peasants." Decline and Fall, vol. i., 
 p. 60 (8vo. edit.). For Britain he quotes Tacitus'a 
 Life of Agricola as his voucher. But the only 
 passage in this work that gives the least colour to 
 Gibbon's assertion, is one in which Agricola is said 
 to have encouraged the children of British chief- 
 tains to acquire a taste for liberal studies, and to 
 have succeeded so much by judicious commenda- 
 tion of their abilities, ut qui modo linguam Ro- 
 manam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent (c. 
 21). This, it is sufficiently obvious, is very differ- 
 ent from the national adoption of Latin as a moth- 
 er-tongue. 
 
 f T. vii., preface. 
 
 i It appears by a passage quoted from the digest 
 by M. Bonamy, Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscriptions, 
 t. xxiv., p. 589, that Celtic was spoken in Gaul, or 
 at least parts of it, as well as Punic in Africa. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 455 
 
 of pronunciation. It is indeed capable 
 of proof, that in the purest ages of Latin- 
 ity, some variation existed between these 
 two. Those numerous changes in spell- 
 ing which distinguish the same words 
 in the poetry of Ennius and of Virgil are 
 best explained by the supposition of 
 their being accommodated to the current 
 pronunciation. Harsh combinations of 
 letters, softened down through delicacy 
 of ear or rapidity of utterance, gradual- 
 ly lost their place in the written lan- 
 guage. Thus exfregit and adrogavit as- 
 sumed a form representing their more 
 liquid sound; and auctor was latterly 
 spelled autor, which has been followed in 
 French and Italian. Autor was probably 
 so pronounced at all times ; and the or- 
 thography was afterward corrected or 
 corrupted, which ever we please to say, 
 according to the sound. We have the 
 best authority to assert, that the final m 
 was very faintly pronounced, rather, it 
 seems, as a rest and short interval between 
 two syllables, than an articulate letter ; 
 nor indeed can we conceive upon what 
 other ground it was subject to elision be- 
 fore a vowel in verse ; since we cannot 
 suppose that the nice ears of Rome 
 would have submitted to a capricious 
 rule of poetry, for which Greece pre- 
 sented no analogy.* 
 
 A decisive proof, in my opinion, of the 
 deviation which took place, through the 
 rapidity of ordinary elocution, from the 
 strict laws of enunciation, may be found 
 in the metre of Terence. His verses, 
 which are absolutely refractory to the 
 common laws of prosody, may be readi- 
 ly scanned by the application of this 
 principle. Thus, in the first act of the 
 Heautontimorumenos, a part selected at 
 random, I have found, I. Vowels con- 
 tracted or dropped, so as to shorten the 
 word by a syllable ; in m, via, diutius, 
 et, solius, earn, unius, suam, divitias, senex, 
 voluptatem, illius, semel ; II. The pro- 
 celeusmatic foot, or four short syllables, 
 instead of the dactyl ; seen, i., v. 59, 73, 
 76, 88, 109; seen, ii., v. 36; III. The 
 elision of s in words ending with us, or 
 i* short, and sometimes even of the 
 whole syllable, before the next word be- 
 
 inning with a vowel ; in seen, i., v. 30, 
 1, 98, 101, 116, 119 ; seen, ii., v. 28. IV. 
 
 * Atque eadem ilia litera, qnoties ultima est, et 
 vocalem verbi sequentis ita contingit, ut in earn 
 transire possit, etiam si sciihitur, tamen parum ex- 
 primitur, ut Multum ille, et Quantum erat ; adeo ut 
 pene cujusdam nova? litera sonum reddat. Neque 
 enim eximitur, sed obscuratur, et tantfim aliqua 
 inter duos vocales velut nota est,ne ipsae cqeaut. 
 Quintilian, Institut., 1. ix., c. 4, p. 585, edit. Cap- 
 peronier. 
 
 The first syllable of ille is repeatedly 
 shortened, and indeed nothing is more 
 usual in Terence than this license ; 
 whence we may collect how ready this 
 word was for abbreviation into the 
 French and Italian articles. V. The last 
 letter of apud is cut off, seen, i., v. 120, 
 and seen, ii., v. 8. VI. Hodie is used as 
 a pyrrhichius, in seen, ii., v. 11. VII. 
 Lastly, there is a clear instance of a 
 short syllable, the antepenultimate of 
 impulerim, lengthened on account of the 
 accent, at the 113th verse of the first 
 scene. 
 
 These licenses are in all probability 
 chiefly colloquial, and would not uscomip 
 have been adopted in public har- tionbythe 
 angues, to which the precepts PP ulace - 
 of rhetorical writers commonly relate. 
 But if the more elegant language of the 
 Romans, since such we must suppose to 
 have been copied by Terence for his 
 higher characters, differed so much in or- 
 dinary discourse from their orthography, 
 it is probable that the vulgar went into 
 much greater deviations. The popular 
 pronunciation errs generally, we might 
 say perhaps invariably, by abbreviation 
 of words, and by liquefying consonants, 
 as is natural to the rapidity of colloquial 
 speech.* It is by their knowledge of or- 
 thography and etymology that the more 
 educated part of the community are pre- 
 served from these corrupt modes of pro- 
 nunciation. There is always, therefore, a 
 standard by which common speech may 
 be rectified ; and in proportion to the dif- 
 fusion of knowledge and politeness, the 
 deviations from it will be more slight and 
 gradual. But in distant prov- andthepro- 
 inces, and especially where the v inciuis. 
 language itself is but of recent introduc- 
 tion, many more changes may be ex- 
 pected to occur. Even in France and 
 England, there are provincial dialects, 
 which, if written with all their anomalies 
 of pronunciation as well as idiom, would 
 seem strangely out of unison with the 
 regular language ; and in Italy, as is well 
 
 * The following passage of Quintilian is an ev- 
 idence both of the omission of harsh or superfliii 
 ous letters by the best speakers, and of the cor- 
 rupt abbreviation usual with the worst, Dilucida 
 vero erit pronunciatio primum, si verba tota exe- 
 gerit, quorum parsdevorari, pars destitui solet, pie- 
 risque extremas syllabas non proferentibus, dum 
 priorum sono indulgent. Ut est autem necessaria 
 verbortim explanatio, ita omnes computare et velut 
 adnumerare literas, molestum et odiosum. Nam 
 et voeales frequentissime coeunt, et consonantium 
 quasdam ineequente vocali dissimulantur ; utri- 
 usque exemplum posuimus ; Multum ille et terris. 
 Vitatur etiam dunorum inter se congressus, unde, 
 pellexit et collegit, et quse alio loco dicta sunt, i. ii,, 
 c. 3, p t 696, 
 

 456 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 tCHAP. IX. 
 
 known, the varieties of dialect are still 
 more striking. Now in an advancing 
 state of society, and especially with 
 such a vigorous political circulation as 
 we experience in England, language will 
 constantly approximate to uniformity, as 
 provincial expressions are more and 
 more rejected for incorrectness or inele- 
 gance. But where literature is on the 
 decline, and public misfortunes contract 
 the circle of those who are solicitous 
 about refinement, as in the last ages of 
 the Roman empire, there will be no 
 longer any definite standard of living 
 speech, nor any general desire to con- 
 form to it, if one could be found ; and 
 thus the vicious corruptions of the vulgar 
 will entirely predominate. The niceties 
 of ancient idiom will be totally lost; 
 while new idioms will be formed out of 
 violations of grammar sanctioned by 
 usage, which, among a civilized people, 
 would have been proscribed at their ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 Such appears to have been the prog- 
 ress of corruption in the Latin language. 
 The adoption of words from the Teu- 
 tonic dialects of the barbarians, which 
 took place very freely, would not of it- 
 self have destroyed the character of that 
 language, though it sullied its purity. The 
 worst law Latin of the middle ages is 
 still Latin, if its barbarous terms have 
 been bent to the regular inflections. It is 
 possible, on the other hand, to write 
 whole pages of Italian, wherein every 
 word shall be of unequivocal Latin deri- 
 vation, though the character and person- 
 ality, if I may so say, of the language be 
 entirely dissimilar. But, as I conceive, 
 the loss of literature took away the only 
 check upon arbitrary pronunciation and 
 upon erroneous grammar. Each people 
 innovated through caprice, imitation of 
 their neighbours, or some of those inde- 
 scribable causes which dispose the or- 
 gans of different nations to different 
 sounds. The French melted down the 
 middle consonants ; the Italians omitted 
 the final. Corruptions arising out of ig- 
 norance were mingled with those of pro- 
 nunciation. It would have been marvel- 
 lous if illiterate and semi-barbarous pro- 
 vincials had preserved that delicate pre- 
 cision in using the inflections of tenses, 
 which our best scholars do not clearly 
 attain. The common speech of any peo- 
 ple whose language is highly complicated 
 will be full of solecisms. The French 
 inflections are not comparable in number 
 or delicacy to the Latin, and yet the vul- 
 gar confuse their most ordinary forms. 
 
 But, in all probability, the variation of 
 
 these derivative languages from popular 
 Latin has been considerably less than it 
 appears. In the purest ages of Latinity, 
 the citizens of Rome itself made use of 
 many terms which we deem barbarous, 
 and of many idioms which we should re- 
 ject as modern. That highly complica- 
 ted grammar, which the best writers em- 
 ployed, was too elliptical and obscure, too 
 deficient in the connecting parts of 
 speech, for general use. We cannot in- 
 deed ascertain in what degree the vulgar 
 Latin differed from that of Cicero or 
 Seneca. It would be highly absurd to 
 imagine, as some are said to have done, 
 that modern Italian was spoken at Rome 
 under Augustus.* But I believe it may 
 be asserted, not only that much the 
 greater part of those words in the pres- 
 ent language of Italy, which strike us as 
 incapable of a Latin etymology, are in 
 fact derived from those current in the 
 Augustan Age, but that very many 
 phrases which offended nicer ears pre- 
 vailed in the same vernacular speech, 
 and have passed from thence into the 
 modern French and Italian. Such, for 
 example, was the frequent use of prepo- 
 sitions, to indicate a relation between 
 two parts of a sentence which a classical 
 writer would have made to depend on 
 mere inflection,! 
 
 From the difficulty of retaining a right 
 discrimination of tense seems to have 
 proceeded the active auxiliary verb. It 
 is possible that this was borrowed from 
 the Teutonic languages of the barbarians, 
 and accommodated both by them and by 
 the natives to words of Latin origin. 
 The passive auxiliary is obtained by a 
 very ready resolution of any tense in 
 that mood, and has not been altogether 
 dispensed with even in Greek, while in 
 Latin it is used much more frequently. 
 It is not quite so easy to perceive the 
 propriety of the active habeo or teneo, 
 one or both of which all modern lan- 
 guages have adopted as their auxiliaries 
 
 * Tiraboschi (Storia dell, Lett, Ital., t. iii,, pref. 
 ace, p. v.) imputes this paradox to Bembo and 
 Quadrio ; but I can hardly believe that either of 
 them could maintain it in a literal sense. 
 
 t M. Bonamy, in an essay printed in Me"m. de 
 PAcademie des Inscriptions, t. xxiv,, has produced 
 several proofs of this from the classical writers on 
 agriculture and other arts, though some of his in- 
 stances are not in point, as any schoolboy would 
 have told him. This essay, which, by some acci- 
 dent, had escaped my notice till I had nearly fin- 
 ished the observations in my text, contains, I think, 
 the best view that I have seen of the process of 
 transition by which Latin was changed into French 
 and Italian. Add, however, the preface to Tira- 
 boschi's third volume, and the thirty-second disser. 
 tation of Muratori. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 457 
 
 in conjugating the verb. But in some 
 instances this analysis is not improper ; 
 and it may be supposed that nations, 
 careless of etymology or correctness, 
 applied the same verb by a rude analogy 
 to cases where it ought not strictly to 
 have been employed.* 
 
 Next to the changes founded on pro- 
 nunciation, and to the substitution of 
 auxiliary verbs for inflections, the usage 
 of the definite and indefinite articles in 
 nouns appears the most considerable step 
 in the transmutation of Latin into its de- 
 rivative languages. None but Latin, I 
 believe, has ever wanted this part of 
 speech ; and the defect to which custom 
 reconciled the Romans, would be an in- 
 superable stumbling-block to nations who 
 were to translate their original idiom into 
 that language. A coarse expedient of 
 applying unus ipse or ille to the purposes 
 of an article might perhaps be no unfre- 
 quent vulgarism of the provincials ; and 
 after the Teutonic tribes brought in their 
 own grammar, it was natural that a cor- 
 ruption should become universal, which 
 in fact supplied a real and essential defi- 
 ciency. 
 That the quantity of Latin syllables is 
 
 neglected, or rather lost in mod- 
 tton 00 ern pronunciation, seems to be 
 longer regu- generally admitted. Whether 
 quantity indeed the ancient Romans, in 
 
 their ordinary speaking, distin- 
 guished the measure of syllables with 
 such uniform musical accuracy as we 
 imagine, giving a certain time to those 
 termed long, and exactly half that dura- 
 tion to the short, might perhaps be ques- 
 tioned ; though this was probably done, 
 or attempted to be done, by every reader 
 of poetry. Certainly, however, the laws 
 of quantity were forgotten, and an ac- 
 centual pronunciation came to predomi- 
 nate, before Latin had ceased to be a liv- 
 ing language. A Christian writer, named 
 Commodianus, who lived before the end 
 of the third century, according to s<5me, 
 or, as others think, in the reign of Con- 
 stantine, has left us a philological curios- 
 ity, in a series of attacks on the pagan 
 superstitions, composed in what are 
 meant to be verses, regulated by accent 
 instead of quantity, exactly as we read 
 Virgil at present.f 
 
 c. 
 
 632. 
 
 * See Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, t. i., 
 431 ; Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscrip., t. xxiv., p. 
 
 t No description can give so adequate a notion 
 of this extraordinary performance as a short speci- 
 men. Take the introductory lines ; which really, 
 prejudices of education apart, are by no means in- 
 harmonioui : 
 
 It is not improbable that Commodianus 
 may have written in Africa, the province 
 in which, more than any, the purity of 
 Latin was debased. At the end of the 
 fourth century, St. Augustin assailed his 
 old enemies, the Donatists, with nearly 
 the same arms that Commodianus had 
 wielded against heathenism. But as the 
 refined and various music of hexameters 
 was unlikely to be relished by the vulgar, 
 he prudently adopted a different meas- 
 ure.* All the nations of Europe seem to 
 love the trochaic verse ; it was frequent 
 on the Greek and Roman stage; it is 
 more common than any other in the pop- 
 ular poetry of modern languages. This 
 proceeds from its simplicity, its liveli- 
 ness, and its ready accommodation to 
 dancing and music. In St. Austin's 
 poem, he united to a trochaic measure 
 the novel attraction of rhyme. 
 
 As Africa must have lost all regard to 
 the rules of measure in the fourth centu- 
 ry, so it appears that Gaul was not more 
 correct in the two next ages. A poem 
 addressed by Auspicius, bishop of Toul, 
 to Count Arbogastes, of earlier date 
 probably than the invasion of Clovis, 
 
 Praefatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat, 
 
 Respectumque bonum, cum venerit saeculi meta, 
 
 JEternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda. 
 
 Ego similiter erravi tempore multo, 
 
 Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis. 
 
 Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege. 
 
 Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh ! civica turba 
 
 Inscia quod perdit, pergens deos quaerere vanos. 
 
 Ob ea perdoctus ignores instruo verum. 
 Commodianus however did not keep up to this ex- 
 cellence in every part. Some of his lines are not 
 reducible to any pronunciation, without the sum- 
 mary rules of Procrustes ; as for instance 
 
 Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere prsecepta ; or, 
 Capillos inficitis, oculos fuligine relinitis. 
 
 It must be owned that his text is exceedingly 
 corrupt, and I should not despair of seeing a truly 
 critical editor improve his lines into unblemished 
 hexameters. Till this time arrives, however, we 
 must consider him either as utterly ignorant of 
 metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the 
 populace whom he addressed did not observe them 
 in speaking. Commodianus is published by Dawes 
 at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some 
 specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological In- 
 quiries. 
 
 * Archaeologia, vol. xiv., p. 188. The following 
 are the first lines : 
 
 Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare ; 
 Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere, 
 Comparans regnum ccelorum reticulo misso in 
 
 mare, 
 Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et 
 
 inde, 
 Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tune coeperunt sep- 
 
 arare, 
 Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare. 
 
 This trash seems below the level of Augustin ; 
 but it could not have been much later than his 
 age. 
 
453 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 is written with no regard to quantity.* 
 The bishop by whom this was composed 
 is mentioned by his contemporaries as a 
 man of learning. Probably he did not 
 choose to perplex the barbarian to whom 
 he was writing (for Arbogastes is plainly 
 a barbarous name) by legitimate Roman 
 metre. In the next century, Gregory of 
 Tours informs us that Chilperic attempt- 
 ed to write Latin verses ; but the lines 
 could not be reconciled to any division 
 of feet ; his ignorance having confounded 
 long and short syllables together.! Now 
 Chilperic must have learned to speak 
 Latin like other kings of the Franks, and 
 was a smatterer in several kinds of litera- 
 ture. If Chilperic therefore was not 
 master of these distinctions, we may con- 
 clude that the bishops and other Romans 
 with whom he conversed did not observe 
 them ; and that his blunders in versifica- 
 tion arose from ignorance of rules, which, 
 however fit to be preserved in poetry, 
 were entirely obsolete in the living Latin 
 of his age. Indeed, the frequency of false 
 quantities in the poets even of the fifth, 
 but much more of the sixth century, is 
 palpable. Fortunatus is quite full of 
 them. This seems a decisive proof that 
 the ancient pronunciation was lost. Avi- 
 tus tells us, even at the beginning of the 
 same age, that few preserved the proper 
 measure of syllables in singing. Yet he 
 was Bishop of Vienne. where a purer 
 pronunciation might be expected than in 
 the remoter parts of Gaul.f 
 
 Defective, however, as it had become 
 Change of in respect of pronunciation, Lat- 
 Latininto in was still spoken in France 
 Romance. during the sixth an( j seventh cen- 
 
 turies. We have compositions of that 
 time, intended for the people, in gram- 
 matical language. A song is still extant, 
 in rhyme and loose accentual measure, 
 written upon a victory of Clotaire II. 
 over the Saxons in 622, and obviously in- 
 tended for circulation among the people. 
 
 * Recueil des Historiens, t. i., p. 815.; it begins 
 in the following manner : 
 
 Prsecelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comiti 
 
 Auspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam. 
 
 Magnas coelesti Domino rependo corde gratias 
 
 Quod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidi- 
 mus. 
 
 Multis me tuis artibus laetificabas antea, 
 
 Sed nunc fecisti rnaximo me exultare gaudio. 
 
 f Chilpericus rex .... confecit duos libros, quo- 
 rum versiculi debiles nullis pedibus subsistere 
 ppssunt : in quibus, dum non intelligebat, pro lon- 
 gis syllabas breves posuit, et pro brevibus longas 
 statuebat, 1. vi., c. 46. 
 
 t M6m. de l'Acade"mie des Inscriptions, t. xvii. 
 Hist. Litt6raire de la France, t. ii., p. 28. 
 
 $ One stanza of this song will suffice to show 
 that the Latin language was yet unchanged. 
 
 Fortunatus says, in his life of St. Aubin 
 of Angers, that he should take care not 
 to use any expression unintelligible to 
 the people.* Baudemind, in the middle 
 of the seventh century, declares, in his 
 life of St. Amand, that he writes in a rus- 
 tic and vulgar style, that the reader may 
 be excited to imitation.! Not that these 
 legends were actually perused by the 
 populace, for the very art of reading was 
 confined to a few. But they were read 
 publicly in the churches, and probably 
 with a pronunciation accommodated to 
 the corruptions of ordinary language. 
 Still the Latin syntax must have been 
 tolerably understood; and we may there- 
 fore say that Latin had not ceased to be 
 a living language in Gaul during the sev- 
 enth century. Faults indeed against the 
 rules of grammar, as well as unusual 
 idioms, perpetually occur in the best 
 writers, of the Merovingian period, such 
 as Gregory of Tours; while charters 
 drawn up by less expert scholars deviate 
 much farther from purity.J 
 
 The corrupt provincial idiom became 
 gradually more and more dissimilar to 
 grammatical Latin ; and the lingua Ro- 
 mana rustica, as the vulgar patois (to 
 borrow a word that I cannot well trans- 
 late) had been called, acquired a distinct 
 character as a new language in the eighth 
 century. $ Latin orthography, which had 
 been hitherto pretty well maintained in 
 books, though not always in charters, 
 gave way to a new spelling, conformably 
 to the current pronunciation. Thus we 
 find lui, for illius, in the Formularies of 
 Marculfus ; and Tu lo juva in a liturgy 
 of Charlemagne's age, for Tu ilium juva. 
 When this barrier was once broken 
 down, such a deluge of innovation pour- 
 ed in, that all the characteristics of Lat- 
 in were effaced in writing as well as 
 speaking, and the existence of a new 
 language became undeniable. In a coun- 
 cil held at Tours in 813, the bishops are 
 ordered to have certain homilies of the 
 
 De Clotario est canere rege Francorum, , 
 , Qui ivi pugnare cum gente Saxonum, 
 
 Quam graviter provenisset missis Saxonum, 
 
 Si non fuisset inclitus Faro de gente Burgundi- 
 onum. 
 
 * Praecavendum est, ne ad aures populi minus 
 aliquid intelligibile proferatur. Mem. de 1'Acad., t. 
 xvii., p. 712. 
 
 f Rustico et plebeio sermone propter exemplum 
 et imitationem, id. ibid. 
 
 \ Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iii., p. 5. Mem. 
 de 1' Academic, t. xxiv., p. 617 Nouveau Trait6 
 de Diplomatique, t. iv., p. 485. 
 
 t) Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. vii., p. 12. 
 The editors say that it is mentioned by name even 
 in the seventh century, which is very natural, as 
 the corruption of Latin had then become striking. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 459 
 
 fathers translated into the rustic Roman, 
 as well as the German tongue.* After 
 this it is unnecessary to multiply proofs 
 of the change which Latin had under- 
 gone. 
 
 In Italy, the progressive corruptions of 
 itscorrup- tne Latin language were anal- 
 tion in" ogous to those which occurred 
 Italy. m France, though we do not find 
 in writings any unequivocal specimens 
 of a new formation at so early a period. 
 But the old inscriptions, even of the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, are full of sol- 
 ecisms and corrupt orthography. In le- 
 gal instruments under the Lombard kings, 
 the Latin inflections are indeed used, but 
 with so little regard to propriety that it is 
 obvious the writers had not the slightest 
 tincture of grammatical knowledge. This 
 observation extends to a very large pro- 
 portion of such documents down to the 
 twelfth century, and is as applicable to 
 France and Spain as it is to Italy. In 
 these charters the peculiar characteris- 
 tics of Italian orthography and grammar 
 frequently appear. Thus we find, in the 
 eighth century, diveatis for debeatis, da 
 for de in the ablative, avendi for habendi, 
 dava for dabat, cedo a deo, and ad eccle- 
 sia, among many similar corruptions.! 
 Latin was so changed, it is said by a 
 writerof Charlemagne's age, that scarce- 
 ly any part of it was popularly known. 
 Italy indeed had suffered more than 
 France itself by invasion, and was re- 
 duced to a lower state of barbarism, 
 though probably from the greater dis- 
 tinctness of pronunciation habitual to the 
 Italians, they lost less of their original 
 language than the French. I do not 
 find, however, in the writers who have 
 treated this subject, any express evi- 
 dence of a vulgar language distinct from 
 Latin earlier than the close of the tenth 
 century, when it is said in the epitaph of 
 Pope Gregory V., who died in 999, that 
 he instructed the people in three dialects ; 
 the Frankish or German, the vulgar, 
 and the Latin.| 
 
 When Latin had thus ceased to be a 
 ignorance living language, the whole treas- 
 conse- ury of knowledge was locked up 
 
 IKS fr m the e y es . f the P e P le - 
 
 use of The few who might have im- 
 ^n- bibed a taste for literature, if 
 
 * Mem. de 1'Acad. des Insc., t. xvii. See two 
 Memoirs in this volume by Du Clos and Le Boeuf, 
 especially the latter, as well as that already men- 
 tioned in t. xxiv., p. 582, by M. Bonamy. 
 
 t Muratori, Dissert, i. and xliii. 
 
 | Usus Francisca, vulgari, et voce Latind. 
 Instituit populos eloquio triplici. 
 
 Fontanini dell' Eloquenza Italians, p. 15. Mu- 
 ratori, Dissert, zzxii. 
 
 books had been accessible to them, were 
 reduced to abandon pursuits that could 
 only be cultivated through a kind of ed- 
 ucation not easily within their reach. 
 Schools, confined to cathedrals and mon- 
 asteries, and exclusively designed for the 
 purposes of religion, afforded no encour- ( 
 agement or opportunities to the laity.* 
 The worst effect was, that, as the newly- \ 
 formed languages were hardly made use 
 of in writing, Latin being still preserved 
 in all legal instruments and public corre- 
 spondence, the very use of letters, as 
 well as of books, was forgotten. For 
 many centuries, to sum up the account 
 of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a 
 layman, of whatever rank, to know how 
 to sign his name.f Their charters, till 
 the use of seals became general, were 
 subscribed with the mark of the cross. 
 Still more extraordinary it was to find 
 one who had any tincture of learning. 
 Even admitting every indistinct com- 
 mendation of a monkish biographer (with 
 whom a knowledge of church-music 
 would pass for literature), | we could 
 make out a very short list of scholars. 
 None certainly were more distinguished 
 as such than Charlemagne and Alfred. 
 But the former, unless we reject a very 
 plain testimony, was incapable of wri- 
 ting ; and Alfred found difficulty in ma- 
 king a translation from the pastoral in- 
 struction of St. Gregory, on account of 
 his imperfect knowledge of Latin. || 
 
 "Whatever mention, therefore, we find 
 of learning and the learned during these 
 
 * Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. vi., p. 20. 
 Muratori, Dissert, xliii. 
 
 t Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique, t. ii., p. 419. 
 This became, the editors say, much less unusual 
 about the end of the thirteenth century ; a pretty 
 late period ! A few signatures to deeds appear in 
 the fourteenth century ; in the next they are more 
 frequent. Ibid. The emperor Frederick Barba- 
 rossa could not read (Struvius, Corpus Hist. Ger- 
 man., t. i., p. 377), nor John, king of Bohemia, in the 
 middle of the fourteenth century (Sismondi, t. v., 
 p. 205), nor Philip the Hardy, king of France, al- 
 though the son of St. Louis. (Velly, t. vi., p. 
 426.) 
 
 t Louis IV., king of France, laughing at Fulk, 
 count of Anjou, who sang anthems among the 
 choristers at Tours, received the following pithy 
 epistle from his learned vassal : Noveritis, domine, 
 quod rex illiteratus est asinus coronatus. Gesta 
 Comitum Andegavensium. In the same book, 
 Geoffrey, father of our Henry II., is said to be op- 
 time literatus ; which perhaps imports little more 
 learning than his ancestor Fulk possessed. 
 
 $ The passage in Eginhard which has occa- 
 sioned so much dispute speaks for itself: Tenta- 
 bat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad hoc in 
 lecticula sub cervicalibus circumferre solebat, ut, 
 cum vacuum tempus esset, manum effigiandis lit- 
 eris assuefaceret ; sed parum prosper^ successit 
 labor praeposterus ac sero mchoatus. 
 
 I! Spelman, Vit. Alfred., Append. 
 
460 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 dark ages, must be understood to relate 
 only to such as were within the pale of 
 clergy, which indeed was pretty ex- 
 tensive, and comprehended many who 
 did not exercise the offices of religious 
 ministry. But even the clergy were, 
 for a long period, not very materially su- 
 perior, as a body, to the uninstructed la- 
 ity. An inconceivable cloud of igno- 
 rance overspread the whole face of the 
 church, harmy broken by a few glimmer- 
 ing lights, who owe almost the whole of 
 their distinction to the surrounding dark- 
 ness. In the sixth century, the best wri- 
 ters in Latin were scarcely read ;* and 
 perhaps fronl the middle of this age to 
 the eleventh, there was, in a general 
 view of literature, little difference to be 
 discerned. If we look more accurately,: 
 there will appear certain gradual shades 
 of twilight on each side of the greatest 
 obscurity. France reached her lowest 
 point at the beginning of the eighth cen- 
 tury ; but England was at that time more 
 respectable, and did not fall into complete 
 degradation till the middle of the ninth. 
 There could be nothing more deplorable 
 than the state of letters in Italy and in 
 England during the succeeding century ; 
 but France seems to have been uniform- 
 ly, though very slowly, progressive from 
 the time of Charlemagne. | 
 
 Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy 
 to produce abundant testimony. Con- 
 tracts were made verbally, for want of 
 notaries capable of drawing up charters ; 
 and these, when written, were frequently 
 barbarous and ungrammatical to an in- 
 credible degree. For some considerable 
 intervals scarcely any monument of lit- 
 erature has been preserved, except a few 
 jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of 
 saints, or verses equally destitute of spirit 
 and metre. In almost every council, the 
 ignorance of the clergy forms a subject 
 for reproach. It is asserted, by one held 
 in 992, that scarcely a single person was 
 to be found in Rome itself who knew the 
 first elements of letters. J Not one priest 
 
 * Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iii., p. 5. 
 
 f These four dark centuries, the eighth, ninth, 
 tenth, and eleventh, occupy five large quarto vol- 
 umes of the Literary History of France, by the 
 fathers of St. Maur. But the most useful part 
 will be found in the general view at the com- 
 mencement of each volume ; the remainder is ta- 
 ken up with biographies, into which the reader 
 may dive at random, and sometimes bring up a cu- 
 rious fact. 
 
 Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iii., and 
 M-ura tori's forty-third Dissertation, are good au- 
 thorities for the condition of letters in Italy ; but I 
 cannot easily give references to all the books 
 which I have consulted. 
 
 t Tiraboschi, t. iii., p. 198. 
 
 of a thousand in Spain, about the age of 
 Charlemagne, could address a common 
 letter of salutation to another.* In Eng- 
 land, Alfred declares that he could not 
 recollect a single priest south of the 
 Thames (the most civilized part of Eng- 
 land), at the time of his accession, who 
 understood the ordinary prayers, or could 
 translate Latin into his mother tongue, f 
 Nor was this better in the time of Dun- 
 stan, when, it is said, none of the clergy 
 knew how to write or translate a Latin 
 letter.! The homilies which they preach- 
 ed were compiled for their use by some 
 bishops, from former works of the same 
 kind, or the writings of the fathers. 
 
 This universal ignorance was render- 
 ed unavoidable, among other Scarcity of 
 causes, by the scarcity of books, books - 
 which could only be procured at an im- 
 mense price. From the conquest of Al- 
 exandria by the Saracens at the begin- 
 ning of the seventh century, when the 
 Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be 
 imported into Europe, to the close of the 
 tenth, about which time the art of ma- 
 king paper from cotton rags seems to have 
 been introduced, there were no materials 
 for writing except parchment, a sub- 
 stance too expensive to be readily spared 
 for mere purposes of literature. $ Hence 
 
 * Mabillon, De Re Diplomatics, p. 55. 
 
 f Spelman, Vit. Alfred., Append. The whole 
 drift of Alfred's preface to this translation is to de- 
 fend the expediency of rendering books into Eng- 
 lish, on account of the general ignorance of Latin. 
 The zeal which this excellent prince shows for lit- 
 erature is delightful. Let us endeavour, he says, 
 that all the English youth, especially the children 
 of those who are freeborn, and can educate them, 
 may learn to read English before they take to any 
 employment. Afterward, such as please may be 
 instructed in Latin. Before the Danish invasion 
 indeed, he tells us, churches were well furnished 
 with books ; but the priests got little good from 
 them, being written in a foreign language which 
 they could not understand. 
 
 J Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, p. 55. Orderi- 
 cus Vitalis, a more candid judge of our unfortu- 
 nate ancestors than other contemporary annalists, 
 says, that the English were, at the conquest, rude 
 and almost illiterate, which he ascribes to the 
 Danish invasion. Du Chesne, Hist. Norm. Script., 
 p. 518. However, Ingulfus tells us, that the libra- 
 ry of Croyland contained above three hundred vol- 
 umes, till the unfortunate fire that destroyed that 
 abbey in 1091. Gale, xv. Scriptores, t. i., 93. 
 Such a library was very extraordinary in the elev- 
 enth century, and could not have been equalled for 
 some ages afterward. Ingulfus mentions at the 
 same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, 
 executed in various metals. This had been pre- 
 sented to Abbot Turketul in the tenth century by a 
 king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Ara- 
 bian, or perhaps Greek manufacture. 
 
 Parchment was so scarce that none could be 
 procured about 1120 for an illuminated copy of the 
 Bible. Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, Dissert. 
 II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 461 
 
 an unfortunate practice gained ground, 
 of erasing a manuscript in order to sub- 
 stitute another on the same skin. This 
 occasioned the loss of many ancient au- I 
 thors, who have made way for the le- 
 gends of saints or other ecclesiastical 
 rubbish. 
 
 If we would listen to some literary* 
 Want of historians, we should believed 
 eminent that the darkest ages contained j 
 men in lit- many individuals, not only dis- 
 tinguished among their contem- 
 poraries, but positively eminent for abil- 
 ities and knowledge. A proneness to 
 extol every monk, of whose production 
 a few letters or a devotional treatise sur- 
 vives, every bishop, of whom it is related 
 that he composed homilies, runs through 
 the laborious work of the Benedictins of 
 St. Maur, the Literary History of France, 
 and, in a less degree, is observable even 
 in Tiraboschi, and in most books of this 
 class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, 
 and a number of inferior names, become 
 real giants of learning in their uncritical 
 panegyrics. But one might justly say, 
 that ignorance is the smallest defect of 
 the writers of these dark ages. Several 
 of them were tolerably acquainted with 
 books ; but that wherein they are uni- 
 formly deficient is original argument or 
 expression. Almost every one is a com- 
 piler of scraps from the fathers, or from 
 such semi-classical authors as Boethius, 
 Cassiodorus, or Martianus Capella.* In- 
 deed I am not aware that there appeared 
 more than two really considerable men 
 
 enough for this purpose ; it cannot be meant that 
 there was no parchment for legal instruments. 
 
 Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be sup- 
 posed from the fragility of the material, as well as 
 the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme rarity. 
 That in the British Museum, being a charter to a 
 church at Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the 
 most curious ; and indeed both Mabillon and Mu- 
 ratori seem never to have seen any thing written 
 on papyrus ; though they trace its occasional use 
 down to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Mabil- 
 lon, De Re Diplomatica, 1. ii. Muratori, Antichita 
 Italiane, Dissert, xliii., p. 602. But the authors of 
 the Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique speak of sev- 
 eral manuscripts on this material as extant in 
 France and Italy. T. i., p. 493. 
 
 As to the general scarcity and high price of books 
 in the middle ages, Robertson (Introduction to Hist. 
 Charles V., note x.) and Warton, in the above cited 
 dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, 
 have collected some of the leading facts ; to whom 
 I refer the reader. 
 
 * Lest I should seem to have spoken too per- 
 emptorily, I wish it to be understood that I pre- 
 tend to hardly any direct acquaintance with these 
 writers, and found my censure on the authority of 
 others, chiefly indeed on the admissions of those 
 who are too disposed to fall into a strain of pane- 
 gyric. See Histoire LittSraire de la France, t. iv., 
 p. 281, et alibi. 
 
 in the republic of letters, from the sixth 
 to the middle of the eleventh century; 
 John, surnamed Scotus or Erigena, a na- 
 tive of Ireland; and Gerbert, who be- 
 came pope by the name of Silvester II. : 
 the first endowed with a bold and acute 
 metaphysical genius : the second excel- 
 lent, for the time when he lived, in math- 
 ematical science and mechanical inven- 
 tions.* 
 
 If it be demanded by what cause it hap- 
 pened that a few sparks of an- 
 cient learning survived through- {tepreser- 
 put this long winter, we can only vation of 
 kscribe their preservation to the r eSI, g ~ 
 establishment of Christianity. 
 Religion alone made a bridge, as it were, 
 across the chaos, and has linked the two 
 periods of ancient and modern civiliza- 
 tion. Without this connecting principle 
 Europe might indeed have awakened to 
 intellectual pursuits, and the genius of re- 
 cent times needed not to be invigorated 
 by the imitation of antiquity. But the 
 memory of Greece and Rome would 
 have been feebly preserved by tradition* 
 and the monuments of those nations 
 might have excited, on the return of civ- 
 ilization, that vague sentiment of specu- 
 lation and wonder with which men now 
 contemplate Persepolis or the Pyramids. 
 It is not, however, from religion simply 
 that we have derived this advantage, but 
 from religion as it was modified in the 
 dark ages. Such is the complex recipro- 
 cation of good and evil in the dispensa- 
 tions of Providence, that we may assert, 
 with only an apparent paradox, that, had 
 religion been more pure, it would have 
 been less permanent, and that Christian- 
 ity has been preserved by means of its 
 corruptions. The sole hope for literature 
 depended on the Latin language ; and I 
 do not see why that should not have 
 been lost, if three circumstances in the 
 prevailing religious system, all of which 
 we are justly accustomed to disapprove, 
 had not conspired to maintain it; the 
 papal supremacy, the monastic institu- 
 tions, and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. 
 A continual intercourse was kept up in 
 consequence of the first, between Rome 
 and the several nations of Europe ; her 
 laws were received by the bishops, her 
 legates presided in councils; so that a 
 
 * John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, 
 must not be confounded with the still more famous 
 metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived under Charles 
 the Bald, in the middle of the ninth century. Sil- 
 vester II. died in 1003. Whether he first brought 
 the Arabic numeration into Europe, as has been 
 commonly said, seems uncertain ; it was at least 
 not much practised for some centuries after hi* 
 death. 
 
462 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 (CHAP. IX. 
 
 common language was as necessary in 
 the church as it is at present in the diplo- 
 matic relations of kingdoms. 2. Through 
 out the whole course of the middle ages 
 there was no learning, and very little reg 
 ularity of manners, among the parochia 
 clergy. Almost every distinguished man 
 was either the member of a chapter or 
 of a convent. The monasteries were 
 subjected to strict rules of discipline, am 
 held out, at the worst, more opportuni- 
 ties for study than the secular clergy pos- 
 sessed, and fewer for worldly dissipa- 
 tions. But their most important service 
 was as secure repositories for books^ 
 All our manuscripts have been preserved 
 in this manner, and could hardly have 
 descended to us by any other channel 
 at least there were intervals when I do 
 not conceive that any royal or private 
 libraries existed. 3. Monasteries, how- 
 ever, would probably have contributec 
 very little towards the preservation of 
 learning, if the Scriptures and the liturgy 
 had been translated out of Latin when 
 that language ceased to be intelligible 
 Every rational principle of religious wor- 
 ship called for such a change ; but i 
 would have been made at the expense of 
 posterity. One might presume, if such 
 refined conjectures were consistent with 
 historical caution, that the more learn 
 ed and sagacious ecclesiastics of those 
 times, deploring the gradual corruption 
 of the Latin tongue, and the danger of its 
 absolute extinction, were induced to main- 
 tain it as a sacred language, and the de 
 positary, as it were, of that truth and tha 
 science which would be lost in the bar 
 barous dialects of the vulgar. But a sim 
 pier explanation is found in the radica 
 dislike of innovation which is natural to 
 an established clergy. Nor did they wan 
 as good pretexts, on the ground of conve 
 nience, as are commonly alleged by th( 
 opponents of reform. They were habit 
 uated to the Latin words of the church 
 service, which had become, by this as 
 sociation, the readiest instruments of de 
 votion, and with the majesty of which 
 the Romance jargon could bear no com 
 parison. Their musical chants were 
 adapted to these sounds, and their hymn 
 depended for metrical effect on the 
 marked accents and powerful rhyme 
 which the Latin language affords. Th' 
 vulgate Latin of the Bible was still mor< 
 venerable. It was like a copy of a los 
 original ; and a copy attested by one o 
 the most eminent fathers, and by the gen 
 eral consent of the church. These ar 
 certainly no adequate excuses for keep 
 ing the people in ignorance; and th 
 
 gross corruption of the middle ages is in 
 a great degree assignable to this policy. 
 But learning, and consequently religion, 
 have eventually derived from it the ut- 
 most advantage. 
 
 In the shadows of this universal igno- 
 rance, a thousand superstitions, supersii- 
 Jike foul animals of night, were lions< 
 propagated and nourished. It would be 
 very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few spe- 
 cimens of this odious brood, when the 
 real character of those times is only to 
 be judged by their accumulated multi- 
 tude. In every age, it would be easy to 
 select proofs of irrational superstition, 
 which, separately considered, seem to 
 degrade mankind from its level in the 
 creation; and perhaps the contempora- 
 ries of Swedenborg and Southcote have 
 no right to look very contemptuously 
 upon the fanaticism of their ancestors. 
 There are many books from which a suf- 
 ficient number of instances may be col- 
 lected to show the absurdity and igno- 
 rance of the middle ages in this respect. 
 I shall only mention two, as affording 
 more general evidence than any local or 
 obscure superstition. In the tenth cen- 
 tury, an opinion prevailed everywhere 
 that the end of the world was approach- 
 ing. Many charters begin with these 
 words : " As the world is now drawing to 
 its close." An army marching under the 
 Emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an 
 eclipse of the sun, which it conceived to 
 announce this consummation, as to dis- 
 perse hastily on all sides. As this notion 
 seems to have been founded on some 
 confused theory of the millenniuni, it nat- 
 urally died away when the seasons pro- 
 ceeded in the eleventh century with their 
 usual regularity.* A far more remarka- 
 ble and permanent superstition was the 
 appeal to heaven in judicial controver- 
 sies, whether through tha means^of com- 
 bat or of ordeal. The principle of these 
 was the same"; but in the former, it was 
 mingled with feelings independent of re- 
 ligion ; the natural dictates of resentment 
 in a brave man unjustly accused, and the 
 sympathy of a warlike people with the 
 display of skill and intrepidity. These, 
 in course of time, almost obliterated the 
 primary character of judicial combat, and 
 ultimately changed it into the modern 
 duel, in which assuredly there is no mix- 
 ture of superstition.! But, in the various 
 
 * Robertson, Introduction to Hist. Charles V., 
 note 13. Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. ii., p. 
 380. Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. vi. 
 
 t Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, ex- 
 clusive of casual frays and single combat during 
 war, was unknown before the sixteenth century. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 463 
 
 tests of innocence which were called or- 
 deals, this stood undisguised and unqual- 
 ified. It is not necessary to describe 
 what is so well known ; the ceremonies 
 of trial by handling hot iron, by plunging 
 the arm into boiling fluids, by floating or 
 sinking in cold water, or by swallowing 
 a piece of consecrated bread. It is ob- 
 servable that, as the interference of 
 Heaven was relied upon as a matter of 
 course, it seems to have been reckoned 
 nearly indifferent, whether such a test was 
 adopted as must, humanly considered, ab- 
 solve all the guilty, or one that must con- 
 vict all the innocent. The ordeals of hot 
 iron or water were, however, more com- 
 monly used ; and it has been a perplex- 
 ing question, by what dexterity these tre- 
 mendous proofs were eluded. They seem 
 at least to have placed the decision of 
 all judicial controversies in the hands of 
 the clergy, who must have known the 
 secret, whatever that might be, of sat- 
 isfying the spectators that an accused 
 person had held a mass of burning iron 
 with impunity. For several centuries this 
 mode of investigation was in great re- 
 pute, though not without opposition from 
 some eminent bishops. It does discredit 
 to the memory of Charlemagne that he 
 was one of its warmest advocates.* But. 
 the judicial combat, which indeed might 
 be reckoned one species of ordeal, grad- 
 ually put an end to the rest ; and as the 
 church acquired better notions of law, 
 and a code of her own, she strenuously 
 exerted herself against all these barba- 
 rous superstitions.! 
 
 But we find one anecdote, which seems to illus- 
 trate its derivation from the judicial combat. The 
 dukes of Lancaster and Brunswick, having some 
 differences, agreed to decide them by duel before 
 John, king of France. The lists were prepared 
 with the solemnity of a real trial by battle ; but 
 the king interfered to prevent the engagement. 
 Villaret, t. ix., p. 71. The barbarous practice of 
 wearing swords as a part of domestic dress, which 
 tended very much to the frequency of duelling, 
 was not introduced till the latter part of the fif- 
 teenth century. I can only find one print in 
 Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monar- 
 chy where a sword is worn without armour before 
 the reign of Charles VIII. : though a few, as early 
 as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers in 
 their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles 
 VII., t. iii., pi. 47. 
 
 * Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was abolished 
 by Louis the Debonair, a man, as I have noticed in 
 another place, not inferior, as a legislator, to his 
 father, ibid , p. 668. 
 
 f Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, 
 notwithstanding the law of Louis above mention- 
 ed, so late as the eleven:h century. Bouquet, t. 
 xi., p. 430; nor in England till the reign of Hen- 
 ry III. Some of the stories we read, wherein ac- 
 cused persons have passed triumphantly through 
 these severe proofs, are perplexing enough : and 
 perhaps it is safer, as well as easier, to deny than 
 
 But the religious ignorance of the mid- 
 dle ages sometimes burst out in Enthusias- 
 ebullitions of epidemical enthu- l 'c risings, 
 siasm, more remarkable than these su- 
 perstitious usages, though proceeding in 
 fact from similar causes. For enthusi- 
 asm is little else than superstition put in 
 motion, and is equally founded on a strong 
 conviction of supernatural agency with- 
 out any just conception of its nature. 
 Nor has any denomination of Christians 
 produced, or even sanctioned, more fa- 
 naticism than the church of Rome.* 
 These epidemical phrensies, however, 
 to which I am alluding, were merely tu- 
 multuous, though certainly fostered by 
 the creed of perpetual miracles, which 
 the clergy inculcated, and drawing a 
 legitimate precedent for religious insur- 
 rection from the crusades. For these, 
 among their other evil consequences, 
 seem to have principally excited a wild 
 fanaticism that did not sleep for several 
 centuries. f 
 
 The first conspicuous appearance of it 
 was in the reign of Philip Augustus, when 
 the mercenary troops, dismissed from 
 the pay of that prince and of Henry II., 
 committed the greatest outrages in the 
 south of France. One Durand, a carpen- 
 ter, deluded, it is said, by a contrived ap- 
 pearance of the Virgin, put himself at the 
 head of an army of the populace, in or- 
 der to destroy these marauders. His 
 
 to explain them. For example, a writer in the Ar- 
 chaeologia, vol. xv., p. 172, has shown that Emma, 
 queen of Edward the Confessor, did not perform 
 her trial by stepping between, as Blackstone ima- 
 gines, but upon nine redhot ploughshares. But 
 he seems not aware that the whole story is unsup- 
 ported by any contemporary or even respectable 
 testimony. A similar anecdote is related of Cune- 
 gunda, wife of the Emperor Henry II., which prob- 
 ably gave rise to that of Emma. There are, how- 
 ever, medicaments, as is well known, that protect 
 the skin to a certain degree against the effect of 
 fire. This phenomenon would pass for miracu- 
 lous, and form the basis of those exaggerated sto- 
 ries in monkish books. 
 
 * Besides the original lives of popish saints, and 
 especially that of St. Francis in Wadding's Annales 
 Mmorum, the reader will find amusement in Bishop 
 Lavington's Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists 
 compared. 
 
 t The most singular effect of this crusading 
 spirit was witnessed in 1211, when a multitude, 
 amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly com- 
 posed of chillren, and commanded by- a child, set 
 out for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land 
 They came for the most part from Germany, and 
 reached Genoa without harm. But finding there 
 an obstacle which their imperfect knowledge of 
 geography had not anticipated, they soon dispersed 
 in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at 
 Marseilles, where part were murdered, part proba- 
 bly starved, and the rest sold to the Saracens. 
 Annali di Muratori, A. D. 1211. Velly, Hist, da 
 France, t. iv., p. 206. 
 
464 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 followers were styled Brethren of the 
 White Caps, from the linen coverings of 
 their heads. They bound themselves not 
 to play at dice, nor frequent taverns ; to 
 wear no affected clothing, to avoid per- 
 jury and vain swearing. After some 
 successes over the plunderers, they went 
 so far as to forbid the lords to take any 
 dues from their vassals, on pain of incur- 
 ring the indignation of the brotherhood. 
 It may easily be imagined that they were 
 soon entirely discomfited, so that no one 
 dared to own that he had belonged to 
 them.* 
 
 During the captivity of St. Louis in 
 Egypt, a more extensive and terrible fer- 
 ment broke out in Flanders, and spread 
 from thence over great part of France. 
 An impostor declared himself commis- 
 sioned by the Virgin to preach a crusade, 
 not to the rich and noble, who, for their 
 pride, had beenrejected of God, but the 
 poor. His disciples were called Pastou- 
 reaux, the simplicity of shepherds having 
 exposed them more readily to this delu- 
 sion. In a short time they were swelled 
 by the confluence of abundant streams to 
 a moving mass of a hundred thousand 
 men, divided into companies, with ban- 
 ners bearing a cross and a lamb, and 
 commanded by the impostor's lieuten- 
 ants. He assumed a priestly character, 
 preaching, absolving, annulling marriages. 
 At Amiens, Bourges, Orleans, and Paris 
 itself, he was received as a divine prophet. 
 Even the regent Blanche, for a time, was 
 led away by the popular tide. His main 
 topic was reproach of the clergy for their 
 idleness and corruption, a theme well 
 adapted to the ears of the people, who 
 had long been uttering similar strains of 
 complaint. In some towns his followers 
 massacred the priests and plundered the 
 monasteries. The government at length 
 began to exert itself; and the public sen- 
 timent turning against the authors of so 
 much confusion, this rabble was put to the 
 sword or dissipated, f Seventy years af- 
 terward, an insurrection almost exactly 
 parallel to this burst out under the same 
 pretence of a crusade. These insurgents 
 too bore the name of Pastoureaux, and 
 their short career was distinguished by a 
 general massacre of the Jews.J 
 
 But though the cpjaiagj&J 1 ofjanaticism 
 spreads much more rapidly^fnTtnig tRe 
 populace, and in modern times is almost 
 
 * Velly, t. iii., p, 295. Du Cange, v. Capuciati. 
 
 t Id., Hist, de France, t. v., p. 7. Du Cange, v. 
 Pastorielli. 
 
 t Id., t. viii., p. 99. The continuator of Nangis 
 says, sicut fumus subito evanuit tola ilia commotio. 
 Spicilegium, t. iii., p. 77. 
 
 entirely confined to it, there were exam- 
 ples in the middle ages of an epidemical 
 religious lunacy, from which no class 
 was exempt. One of these occurred 
 about the year 1260, when a multitude 
 of every rank, age, and sex, marching two 
 by two in procession along the streets 
 and public roads, mingled groans and 
 dolorous hymns with the sound of leath- 
 ern scourges which they exercised upon 
 their naked backs. From this mark of 
 penitence, which, as it bears at least all 
 the appearance of sincerity, is not un- 
 common in the church of Rome, they 
 acquired the name of Flagellants. Their 
 career began, it is said, at Perugia, whence 
 they spread over the rest of Italy, and 
 into Germany and Poland. As this spon- 
 taneous fanaticism met with no encour- 
 agement from the church, and was pru- 
 dently discountenanced by the civil ma- 
 gistrate, it died away in a very short 
 time.* But it is more surprising, that, 
 after almost a century and a half of 
 continual improvement and illumination, 
 another irruption of popular extravagance 
 burst out under circumstances exceeding- 
 ly similar.f In the month of August, 
 1399, says a contemporary historian, 
 there appeared all over Italy a descrip- 
 tion of persons called Bianchi, from the 
 white linen vestments that they wore. 
 They passed from province to province, 
 and from city to city, crying out Miseri- 
 cordia! with their faces covered and 
 bent towards the ground, and bearing 
 before them a great crucifix. Their con- 
 stant song was, Stabat Mater dolorosa. 
 This lasted three months ; and whoever 
 did not attend their procession was re- 
 puted a heretic. | Almost every Italian 
 writer of the time takes notice of these 
 Bianchi; and Muratori ascribes a re- 
 markable reformation of manners (though 
 certainly a very transient one) to their 
 influence. $ Nor were they confined to 
 Italy, though no such meritorious exer- 
 tions are reputed to them in other coun- 
 tries. In France, their practice of cov- 
 
 * Velly, t. v., p. 279. Du Cange, Verberatio. 
 
 f Something of a similar kind is mentioned by 
 G. Villani, under the year 1310, 1. viii., c. 122. 
 
 Annal. Mediolan. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital., 
 t. xvi., p. 832. G. Stella, Ann. Genuens., t. xvii., p. 
 1072. Chron. Foroliviense, t. xix., p. 874. Ann. 
 Bonincontri, t. xxi., p. 79. 
 
 $ Dissert. 75. Sudden transitions from profli- 
 gate to austere manners were so common among 
 individuals, that we cannot be surprised at their 
 sometimes becoming in a manner national. Aza- 
 rius, a chronicler of Milan, after describing the al- 
 most incredible dissoluteness of Pavia, gives an ac- 
 count of an instantaneous reformation wrought by 
 the preaching of a certain friar. This was about 
 1360. Script. Rer. Ital., t. xvi., p. 375. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 465 
 
 ering the face gave such opportunity to 
 crime as to be prohibited by the govern- 
 ment ;* and we have an act on the rolls 
 of the first parliament of Henry IV., for- 
 bidding any one, " under pain of forfeit- 
 ing all his worth, to receive the new sect 
 in white clothes, pretending to great 
 sanctity," which had recently appeared 
 in foreign parts. f 
 
 The devotion of the multitude was 
 Pretended wrought to this feverish height 
 miracles, by fa e prevailing system of the 
 clergy. In that singular polytheism 
 which had been grafted on the language 
 rather than the principles of Christianity, 
 nothing was so conspicuous as the belief 
 of perpetual miracles; if indeed those 
 could properly be termed miracles, which, 
 by their constant recurrence, even upon 
 trifling occasions, might seem within the 
 ordinary dispensations of Providence. 
 These superstitions arose in what are call- 
 ed primitive times, and are certainly no 
 part of popery, if in that word we include 
 any especial reference to the Roman see. 
 But successive ages of ignorance swelled 
 the delusion to such an enormous pitch, 
 that it was as difficult to trace, we may 
 say without exaggeration, the real reli- 
 gion of the Gospel in the popular belief 
 of the laity, as the real history of Charle- 
 magne in the romance of Turpin. It 
 must not be supposed that these absurd- 
 ities were produced, as well as nour- 
 ished, by ignorance. In most cases they 
 were the work of deliberate imposture. 
 Every cathedral or monastery had its 
 tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, 
 fabricated in order to enrich the church- 
 es under his protection, by exaggerating 
 his virtues, his miracles, and consequent- 
 ly his power of serving those who paid 
 liberally for his patronage.^ Many of 
 those saints were imaginary persons ; 
 sometimes a blundered inscription added 
 a name to the calendar; and sometimes, 
 it is said, a heathen god was surprised at 
 the company to which he was introduced, 
 and the rites with which he was honour- 
 ed.^ 
 
 It would not be consonant to the na- 
 
 Mischiefs ture ^ ^ e P re s ent work, to 
 arising from dwell upon the eiToneousness 
 
 * Villaret, t. xii., p. 327. 
 
 t Rot. Par!., v. iii., p. 428. 
 
 j This is confessed by the authors of Histoire 
 Litteraire de la France, t. ii., p. 4, and indeed by 
 many Catholic writers. I need not quote Mo- 
 sheim, who more than confirms every word of my 
 text. 
 
 Middleton's Letter from Rome. If some of 
 our eloquent countrymen's positions should be dis- 
 puted, there are still abundant Catholic testimo- 
 nies, that imaginary saints have been canonized. 
 
 of this religion ; but its effect upon this super- 
 the moral and intellectual charac- 8titio - 
 ter of mankind was so prominent, that no 
 one can take a philosophical view of the 
 middle ages without attending more than 
 is at present fashionable to their ecclesi- 
 astical history. That the exclusive wor- 
 ship of saints, under the guidance of an 
 artful though illiterate priesthood, de- 
 graded the understanding, and begot a 
 stupid credulity and fanaticism, is suffi- 
 ciently evident. But it was also so man- 
 aged as to loosen the bonds of religion, 
 and pervert the standard of morality. If 
 these inhabitants of heaven had been rep- 
 resented as stern avengers, accepting no 
 slight atonement for heavy offences, and 
 prompt to interpose their control over 
 natural events for the detection and pun- 
 ishment of guilt, the creed, however im- 
 possible to be reconciled with experience, 
 might have proved a salutary check upon 
 a rude people, and would at least have 
 had the only palliation that can be offer- 
 ed for a religious imposture, its political 
 expediency. In the legends of those 
 times, on the contrary, they appeared 
 only as perpetual intercessors, so good- 
 natured and so powerful, that a sinner 
 was more emphatically foolish than he is 
 usually represented, if he failed to secure 
 himself against any bad consequences. 
 For a little attention to the saints, and 
 especially to the Virgin, with due liberal- 
 ity to their servants, had saved, we would 
 be told, so many of the most atrocious 
 delinquents, that he might equitably pre- 
 sume upon similar luck in his own case. 
 This monstrous superstition grew to 
 its height in the twelfth century. For 
 the advance that learning then made was 
 by no means sufficient to counteract the 
 vast increase of monasteries, and the op- 
 portunities which the greater cultivation 
 of modern languages afforded for the dif- 
 fusion of legendary tales. It was now 
 too that the veneration paid to the Virgin, 
 in early times very great, rose to an al- 
 most exclusive idolatry. It is difficult to 
 conceive the stupid absurdity, and the 
 disgusting profaneness of those stories, 
 which were invented by the monks to do 
 her honour. A few examples have been 
 thrown into a note.* 
 
 * Le Grand d'Aussy has given us, in the fifth vol- 
 ume of his Fabliaux, several of the religious tales 
 by which the monks endeavoured to withdraw the 
 people from romances of chivalry. The following 
 specimens will abundantly confirm my assertions, 
 which may perhaps appear harsh and extravagant 
 to the reader. 
 
 There was a man whose occupation was high- 
 way robbery ; but, whenever he set out on any such 
 expedition, he was careful to address a prayer to 
 
466 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX, 
 
 Whether the superstition of these dark 
 Not aito- a es ^ actually passed that 
 getherun- point, when it becomes more 
 mixed with injurious to public morals and 
 the welfare of society than the 
 entire absence of all religious notions, is 
 
 the Virgin. Taken at last, he was sentenced to 
 be hanged. While the cord was round his neck, 
 he made his usual prayer, nor was it ineffectual. 
 The, Virgin supported his feet "with her white 
 hands," and thus kept him alive two days, to the 
 no small surprise of the executioner, who attempt- 
 ed to complete his work with strokes of a sword. 
 But the same invisible hand turned aside the wea- 
 pon, and the executioner was compelled to release 
 his victim, acknowledging the miracle. The thief 
 retired into a monastery, which is always the ter- 
 mination of these deliverances. 
 
 At the monastery of St. Peter, near Cologne, 
 lived a monk perfectly dissolute and irreligious, 
 but very devout towards the Apostle. Unluckily, 
 he died suddenly without confession. The fiends 
 came as usual to seize his soul. St. Peter, vexed 
 at losing so faithful a votary, besought God to ad- 
 mit the monk into Paradise. His prayer was re- 
 fused, and though the whole body of saints, apos- 
 tles, angels, and martyrs joined at his request to 
 make interest, it was of no avail. In this extremi- 
 ty he had recourse to the Mother of God. " Fair 
 lady," he said, " my monk is lost if you do not in- 
 terfere for him ; but what is impossible for us will 
 be but sport to you, if you please to assist us. Your 
 son, if you but speak a word, must yield, since it is 
 in your power to command him." The Queen 
 Mother assented, and, followed by all the virgins, 
 moved towards her Son. He who had himself 
 given the precept, Honour thy father and thy moth- 
 er, no sooner saw his own parent approach, than he 
 rose to receive her ; and, taking her by the hand, 
 inquired her wishes. The rest may be easily con- 
 jectured. Compare the gross stupidity, or rather 
 the atrocious impiety of this tale, with the pure the- 
 ism of the Arabian Nights, and judge whether the 
 Deity was better worshipped at Cologne or at Bag- 
 dad. 
 
 It is unnecessary to multiply instances of this 
 kind. In one tale the Virgin takes the shape of a 
 nun, who had eloped from the convent, and per- 
 forms her duties ten years, till, tired of a liber- 
 tine life, she returns unsuspected. This was in 
 consideration of her having never omitted to say 
 an Ave as she passed the Virgin's image. In an- 
 other, a gentleman, in love with a handsome wid- 
 ow, consents, at the instigation of a sorcerer, to 
 renounce God and the saints, but cannot be per- 
 suaded to give up the Virgin, well knowing that, 
 if he kept her his friend, he should obtain pardon 
 through her means. Accordingly, she inspired his 
 mistress with so much passion, that he married 
 her within a few days. 
 
 These tales, it may be said, were the production 
 of ignorant men, and circulated among the popu- 
 lace. Certainly they would have excited contempt 
 and indignation in the more enlightened clergy. 
 But I am concerned with the general character of 
 religious notions among the people : and for this 
 it is better to take such popular compositions, 
 adapted to what the laity already believed, than 
 the writings of comparatively learned and reflect- 
 ing men. However, stories of the same cast are 
 frequent in the monkish historians. Matthew Par- 
 is, one of the most respectable of that class, and 
 no friend to the covetousness or relaxed lives of 
 the priesthood, tells us of a knight who was on the 
 point of being damned for frequenting tournaments, 
 
 a very complex question, upon which I 
 would by no means pronounce an affirm- 
 ative decision. A salutary influence, 
 breathed from the spirit of a more gen- 
 uine religion, often displayed itself among 
 the corruptions of a degenerate supersti- 
 tion. In the original principles of mo- 
 nastic orders, and the rules by which they 
 ought at least to have been governed, 
 there was a character of meekness, self- 
 denial, and charity, that could not wholly 
 be effaced. These virtues, rather than 
 justice and veracity, were inculcated by 
 the religious ethics of the middle ages ; 
 and in the relief of indigence, it may, 
 upon the whole, be asserted, that the 
 monks did not fall short of their profes- 
 sion.* This eleemosynary spirit, indeed, 
 remarkably distinguishes both Christian- 
 ity and Mahometanism from the moral 
 systems of Greece and Rome, which 
 were very deficient in general humanity 
 and sympathy with suffering. Nor do we 
 find in any single instance during ancient 
 times, if I mistake not, those public in- 
 stitutions for the alleviation of human 
 miseries, which have long been scattered 
 over every part of Europe. The virtues 
 of the monks assumed a still higher char- 
 acter when they stood forward as pro- 
 tectors of the oppressed. By an estab- 
 lished law, founded on very ancient su- 
 perstition, the precincts of a church af- 
 forded sanctuary to accused persons. 
 Under a due administration of justice, 
 this privilege would have been simply 
 and constantly mischievous, as we prop- 
 erly consider it to be in those countries 
 where it still subsists. But in the rapine 
 and tumult of the middle ages, the right 
 of sanctuary might as often be a shield 
 to innocence as an immunity to crime. 
 We can hardly regret, in reflecting on the 
 desolating violence which prevailed, that 
 
 but saved by a donation he had formerly made to 
 the Virgin, p. 290. 
 
 * I am inclined to acquiesce in this general 
 opinion ; yet an account of expenses at Bolton 
 Abbey, about the reign of Edward II., published in 
 Whitaker's History of Craven, p. 51, makes a very 
 scanty show of almsgiving in this opulent monas- 
 tery. Much, however, was no doubt given in vict- 
 uals. But it is a strange error to conceive that 
 English monasteries before the dissolution fed the 
 indigent part of the nation, and gave that general 
 relief which the poor-laws are intended to afford. 
 
 Piers Plowman is indeed a satirist ; but he 
 plainly charges the monks with want of charity. 
 Little had lordes to do to give landes from their 
 
 heires, 
 To religious that have no ruthe though it rain on 
 
 their aultres ; 
 In many places there the parsons be themself at 
 
 ease, 
 Of the poor they have no pitie, and that is their 
 
 poor charitie. 
 
PART I/j 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 467 
 
 there should have been some green spots 
 in the wilderness, where the feeble and 
 the persecuted could find refuge. How 
 must this right have enhanced the ven- 
 eration for religious institutions ! How 
 gladly must the victims of internal war- 
 fare have turned their eyes from the 
 baronial castle, the dread and scourge of 
 the neighbourhood, to those venerable 
 walls, within which not even the clam- 
 our of arms could be heard, to disturb the 
 chant of holy men, and the sacred service 
 i of the altar ! The protection of the sanc- 
 \ tuary was never withheld. A son of 
 ' Chilperic, king of France, having fled to 
 that of Tours, his father threatened to 
 ravage all the lands of the church unless 
 they gave him up. Gregory, the histo- 
 rian, bishop of the city, replied in the 
 name of his clergy, that Christians could 
 not be guilty of an act unheard of among 
 pagans. The king was as good as his 
 word, and did not spare the estate of the 
 church, but dared not infringe its privi- 
 leges. He had indeed previously ad- 
 dressed a letter to St. Martin, which was 
 laid on his tomb in the church, request- 
 ing permission to take away his son by 
 force ; but the honest saint returned no 
 answer.* 
 
 The virtues, indeed, or supposed vir- 
 Vices of the tues > which had induced a cred- 
 monksand ulous generation to enrich so 
 clergy.^ many of the monastic orders, 
 were not long preserved. We must re- 
 ject, in the excess of our candour, all 
 testimonies that the middle ages present, 
 from the solemn declaration of councils, 
 and reports of judicial inquiry, to the 
 casual evidence of common fame in the 
 ballad or romance, if we would extenu- 
 ate the general corruption of those insti- 
 tutions. In vain new rules of discipline 
 were devised, or the old corrected by re- 
 forms. Many of their worst vices grew 
 so naturally out of their mode of life, that 
 a stricter discipline could have no ten- 
 dency to extirpate them. Such were the 
 frauds I have already noticed, and the 
 I whole scheme of hypocritical austerities. 
 Their extreme licentiousness was some- 
 times hardly concealed by the cowl of 
 sanctity. I know not by what right we 
 should disbelieve the reports of the visit- 
 ation under Henry VIII., entering as they 
 do into a multitude of specific charges, 
 both probable in their nature and conso- 
 nant to the unanimous opinion of the 
 world. f Doubtless there were many 
 
 * Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. i., p. 374. 
 
 t See Fosbrooke's British Monachism, vol. i., 
 p. 127, and vol. ii.,p. 8, for a farrago of evidence 
 against the monks. Clemangis, a French theolo- 
 Gg2 
 
 communities, as well as individuals, to 
 whom none of these reproaches would 
 apply. In the very best view, however, 
 that can be taken of monasteries, their 
 existence is deeply injurious to the gen- 
 eral morals of a nation. They withdraw 
 men of pure conduct and conscientious 
 principles from the exercise of social du- 
 ties, and leave the common mass of hu- 
 man vice more unmixed. Such men are 
 always inclined to form schemes of as- 
 cetic perfection, which can only be ful- 
 filled in retirement; but, in the strict 
 rules of monastic life, and under the in- 
 fluence of a grovelling superstition, their 
 virtue lost all its usefulness. They fell 
 implicitly into the snares of crafty priests, 
 who made submission to the church not 
 only the condition, but the measure of all 
 praise. He is a good Christian, says 
 Eligius, a saint of the seventh century, 
 who comes frequently to church ; who 
 presents an oblation that it may be of- 
 fered to God on the altar ; who does not 
 taste the fruits of his land till he has con- 
 secrated a part of them to God ; who can 
 repeat the Creed or the Lord's Prayer. 
 Redeem your souls, from punishment 
 while it is in your power ; offer presents 
 and tithes to churches, light candles in 
 holy places as much as you can afford, 
 come more frequently to church, implore 
 the protection of the saints ; for, if you 
 observe these things, you may come with 
 security at the day of judgment to say, 
 Give unto us, Lord, for we have given 
 unto thee.* 
 
 gian of considerable eminence at the beginning of 
 the fifteenth century, speaks of nunneries in the 
 following terms : Quid aliud sunt hoc tempore 
 puellarum monasteria, nisi quaedam non dico Dei 
 sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda prostibula, sed 
 lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines 
 explendas receptacula '( ut idem sit hodie puellam 
 elare, quod et publice ad scortandum exponere. 
 William Prynne, from whose records, vol. ii., p. 
 229, I have taken this passage, quotes it on occa- 
 sion of a charter of King John, banishing thirty 
 nuns of Ambresbury into different convents, prop- 
 ter vitae suae turpitudinem. 
 
 * Mosheim, cent, vii., c. 3. Robertson has 
 quoted this passage, to whom perhaps I am imme- 
 diately indebted for it. Hist. Charles V., vol. i., 
 note 11. 
 
 I leave this passage as it stood in former edi- 
 tions. But it is due to justice that this extract 
 from Eligius should never be quoted in future, as 
 the translator of Mosheim has induced Robertson 
 and many others, as well as myself, to do. Dr. 
 Lingard has pointed out that it is a very imperfect 
 representation of what Eligius has written; for 
 though he has dwelled on these devotional prac- 
 tices as parts of the definition of a good Christian, 
 he certainly adds a great deal more to which no 
 one could object. Yet no one is in fact to blame 
 for this misrepresentation, which, being contained 
 in popular books, has gone forth so widely. Mo- 
 sheim, as will appear on referring to him, did not 
 
468 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX, 
 
 With such a definition of the Christian 
 character, it is not surprising that any 
 fraud and injustice became honourable 
 when it contributed to the riches of the 
 clergy and glory of their order. Their 
 frauds, however, were less atrocious than 
 the savage bigotry with which they main- 
 tained their own system and infected the 
 laity. In Saxony, Poland, Lithuania, and 
 the countries on the Baltic Sea, a san- 
 guinary persecution extirpated the origi- 
 nal idolatry. The Jews were every- 
 where the objects of popular insult and 
 oppression, frequently of a general mas- 
 sacre, though protected, it must be con- 
 fessed, by the laws of the church, as well 
 as, in general, by temporal princes.* Of 
 the crusades it is only necessary to re- 
 peat, that they began in a tremendous 
 eruption of fanaticism, and ceased only 
 because that spirit could not be constant- 
 ly kept alive. A similar influence pro- 
 duced the devastation of Languedoc, the 
 stakes and scaffolds of the Inquisition, 
 and rooted in the religious theory of Eu- 
 rope those maxims of intolerance which 
 it has so slowly, and still, perhaps, so im- 
 perfectly, renounced. 
 
 From no other cause are the dictates 
 of sound reason and the moral sense of 
 mankind more confused than by this nar- 
 row theological bigotry. For as it must 
 often happen that men, to whom the ar- 
 rogance of a prevailing faction imputes 
 religious error, are exemplary for their 
 performance of moral duties, these vir- 
 tues gradually cease to make their 
 proper impression, and are depreciated 
 by the rigidly orthodox, as of little value 
 
 quote the passage as containing a complete defini' 
 tion of the Christian character. His translator, 
 Maclaine, mistook this, and wrote, in consequence, 
 the severe note which Robertson has copied. I 
 have seen the whole passage in D'Achery's Spici- 
 legium (vol. v., p. 213, 4to. edit.), and can testify 
 that Dr. Lingard is perfectly correct. Upon the 
 whole, this is a striking proof how dangerous it is 
 to take any authorities at second hand. Note to 
 Fourth Edition. 
 
 * Mr. Turner has collected many curious facts 
 relative to the condition of the Jews, especially in 
 England. Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 95. Others 
 may be found dispersed in Velly's History of 
 France ; and many in the Spanish writers, Mari- 
 ana and Zurita. The following are from Vais- 
 sette's History of Languedoc. It was the custom 
 at Toulouse to give a blow on the face to a Jew 
 every Easter ; this was commuted in the twelfth 
 century for a tribute, t. ii., p. 151. At Beziers an- 
 other usage prevailed, that of attacking the Jews' 
 houses with stones from Palm Sunday to Easter. 
 No other weapon was to be used ; but it generally 
 produced bloodshed. The populace were regularly 
 instigated to the assault by a sermon from the 
 bishop. At length a prelate wiser than the rest 
 abolished this ancient practice, but not without re- 
 ceiving a good sum from the Jews, p. 485. 
 
 in comparison with just opinions in 
 speculative points. On the other hand, 
 vices are forgiven to those who are zeal- 
 ous in the faith. I speak too gently, and 
 with a view to later times ; in treating 
 of the dark ages, it would be more cor- 
 rect to say that crimes were commend- 
 ed. Thus Gregory of Tours, a saint of 
 the church, after relating a most atro- 
 cious story of Clovis, the murder of a 
 prince whom he had previously instiga- 
 ted to parricide, continues the sentence : 
 " For God daily subdued his enemies to 
 his hand, and increased his kingdom ; 
 because he walked before him in upright- 
 ness, and did what was pleasing in his 
 eyes."* 
 
 It is a frequent complaint of ecclesias- 
 tical writers, that the rigorous c om muta- 
 penances, imposed by the prim- tion of 
 itive canons upon delinquents, peni 
 were commuted in a laxer state of dis- 
 cipline for less severe atonements, and 
 ultimately indeed for money.f We must 
 not, however, regret that the clergy 
 should have lost the power of compelling 
 men to abstain fifteen years from eating 
 meat, or to stand exposed to public de- 
 rision at the gates of a church. Such 
 implicit submissiveness could only have 
 produced superstition and hypocrisy 
 among the laity, and prepared the road 
 for a tyranny not less oppressive than 
 that of India or ancient Egypt. Indeed, 
 the two earliest instances of ecclesiasti- 
 cal interference with the rights of sov- 
 ereigns, namely, the deposition of Wam- 
 ba in Spain, and that of Louis the Debo- 
 nair, were founded upon this austere sys- 
 tem of penitence. But it is true that a 
 repentance redeemed by money, or per- 
 
 * Greg. Tur., 1. ii., c. 40. Of Theodebert, 
 grandson of Clovis, the same historian says, mag- 
 num se et in omni bonitate praecipuum reddidit. In 
 the next paragraph we find a story of his having 
 two wives, and looking so tenderly on the daugh- 
 ter of one of them, that her mother tossed her over 
 a bridge into the river, 1. iii., c. 25. This indeed is 
 a trifle to the passage in the text. There are con- 
 tinual proofs of immorality in the monkish histori- 
 ans. In the history of Ramsey Abbey, one of our 
 best documents for Anglo-Saxon times, we have an 
 anecdote of a bishop who made a Danish nobleman 
 drunk that he might cheat him of an estate, which 
 is told with much approbation. Gale, Script. An- 
 glic., t. i., p. 441. Walter de Hemingford recounts 
 with excessive delight the well-known story of the 
 Jews who were persuaded by the captain of their 
 vessel to walk on the sands at low water, till the 
 rising tide drowned them ; and adds that the cap- 
 tain was both pardoned and rewarded for it by the 
 king, gratiam promeruit et premium. This is a 
 mistake, inasmuch as he was hanged ; but it ex- 
 hibits the character of the historian. Hemingford, 
 p. 21. 
 
 t Fleury, Troisi&me discours sur PHistoire Ec- 
 clesiastique. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 469 
 
 formed by a substitute, could have no 
 salutary effect on the sinner ; and some 
 of the modes of atonement which the 
 church most approved were particularly 
 hostile to public morals. None was so 
 usual as pilgrimage, whether to Jerusa- 
 lem or Rome, which were the great ob- 
 jects of devotion; or to the shrine of 
 some national saint, a James of Compos- 
 tella, a David, or a Thomas Becket. 
 This licensed vagrancy was naturally 
 productive of dissoluteness, especially 
 among the women. Our English ladies, 
 in their zeal to obtain the spiritual treas- 
 ures of Rome, are said to have relaxed 
 the necessary caution about one that 
 was in their own custody.* There is 
 a capitulary of Charlemagne directed 
 against itinerant penitents, who probably 
 considered the iron chain around their 
 necks an expiation of future as well as 
 past offences. f 
 
 The crusades may be considered as 
 martial pilgrima^s on an enormous 
 scale, and thejd^Hlluence upon general 
 morality seem^PPiave been altogether 
 pernicious. Those who served under 
 the cross would not indeed have lived 
 very virtuously at home ; but the confi- 
 dence in their own merits, which the 
 principle of such expeditions inspired, 
 must have aggravated the ferocity and 
 dissoluteness of their ancient habits. 
 Several historians attest the depravation 
 of morals which existed both among the 
 crusaders and in the states formed out of 
 their conquests. J 
 
 While religion had thus lost almost 
 want of every quality that renders it con- 
 law - ducive to the good order of soci- 
 ety, the control of human law was still 
 less efficacious. But this part of my 
 subject has been anticipated in other 
 passages of the present work ; arid I 
 shall only glance at the want of regular 
 subordination, which rendered legislative 
 and judicial edicts a dead letter, and at 
 the incessant private warfare, rendered 
 legitimate by the usages of most conti- 
 nental nations. Such hostilities, con- 
 ducted, as they must usually have been, 
 with injustice and cruelty, could not fail 
 to produce a degree of rapacious feroci- 
 ty in the general disposition of a people. 
 
 * Henry, Hist, of England, vol. ii., c. 7. 
 
 f Du Cange.v. Peregrinatio. Non sinantur va- 
 gari isti nudi cum ferro, qui dicunt se data poeni- 
 tentia ire vagantes. Melius videtur, ut si aliquod 
 inconsuetum et capitale crimen commiserint, in 
 uno loco permaneant laborantes et servientes et 
 poenitentiam agentes, secundum quod canonice iis 
 impositum sit. 
 
 t I. de Vitriaco, in Gesta Dei per Francos, t. i. 
 Villani, 1. vii., c. 144. 
 
 And this certainly was among the char- 
 acteristics of every nation for many 
 centuries. 
 
 It is easy to infer the degradation of 
 society during the dark ages from Degrada- 
 the state of religion and police, tionof 
 Certainly there are a few great morals - 
 landmarks of moral distinctions so deep- 
 ly fixed in human nature, that no degree 
 of rudeness can destroy, nor even any 
 superstition remove them. Wherever 
 an extreme corruption has, in any par- 
 ticular society, defaced these sacred 
 archetypes that are given to guide and 
 correct the sentiments of mankind, it is 
 in the course of Providence that the so- 
 ciety itself should perish by internal dis- 
 cord or the sword of a conqueror. Irf* 
 the worst ages of Europe there must 
 have existed the seeds of social virtues, 
 of fidelity, gratitude, and disinterested- 
 ness ; sufficient at least to preserve the 
 public approbation of more elevated prin- 
 ciples than the public conduct displayed. 
 Without these imperishable elements, 
 there could have been no restoration of 
 the moral energies ; nothing upon which 
 reformed faith, revived knowledge, re- 
 newed law, could exercise their nourish- 
 ing influences. But history, which re- 
 flects only the more prominent features 
 of society, cannot exhibit the virtues that 
 were scarcely able to struggle through 
 the general depravation. I am aware 
 that a tone of exaggerated declamation 
 is at all times usual with those who la- 
 ment the vices of their own time; and 
 writers of the middle ages are in abun- 
 dant need of allowance on this score./ 
 Nor is it reasonable to found any infer- 
 ences as to the general condition of soci- 
 ety on single instances of crimes, how- 
 ever atrocious, especially when commit- 
 ted under the influence of violent pas- 
 sion. Such enormities are the fruit of 
 every age, and none is to be measured 
 by them. They make, however, a strong 
 impression at the moment, and thus find 
 a place in contemporary annals, from 
 which modern writers are commonly 
 glad to extract whatever may seem to 
 throw light upon manners. I shall there- 
 fore abstain from producing any particu- 
 lar cases of dissoluteness or cruelty from 
 the records of the middle ages, lest I 
 should weaken a general proposition by 
 offering an imperfect induction to sup- 
 port it, and shall content myself with ob- 
 serving, that times to which men some- 
 times appeal, as to a golden period, were 
 far inferior in every moral comparison to 
 those in which we are thrown.* One 
 
 * Henry has taken pains in drawing a picture 
 
470 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 crime, as more universal and character- 
 istic than others, may be particularly no- 
 ticed. All writers agree in the preva- 
 lence of judicial perjury. It seems to 
 have almost invariably escaped human 
 punishment; and the barriers of super- 
 stition were in this, as in every other in- 
 stance, too feeble to prevent the com- 
 mission of crimes. Many of the proofs 
 by ordeal were applied to witnesses as 
 well as those whom they accused ; and 
 undoubtedly trial by combat was pre- 
 served, in a considerable degree, on ac- 
 count of the difficulty experienced in se- 
 curing a just cause against the perjury 
 of witnesses. Robert, king of France, 
 perceiving how frequently men forswore 
 'themselves upon the relics of saints, and 
 less shocked, apparently, at the crime 
 than at the sacrilege, caused an empty 
 reliquary of crystal to be used, that those 
 who touched it might incur less guilt in 
 fact, though not in intention. Such an 
 anecdote characterizes both the man and 
 the times.* 
 
 The favourite diversions of the middle 
 Love of ages, in the intervals of war, 
 Held sports. wer e those of hunting and 
 hawking. The former must in all coun- 
 tries be a source of pleasure; but it 
 seems to have been enjoyed in modera- 
 tion by the Greeks and the Romans. With 
 the northern invaders, however, it was 
 rather a predominant appetite than an 
 amusement ; it was their pride and their 
 ornament, the theme of their songs, the 
 object of their laws, and the business of 
 their lives. Falconry, unknown as a di- 
 
 not very favourable, of Anglo-Saxon manners. 
 Book II., chap. 7. This perhaps is the best chap- 
 ter, as the volume is the best volume, of his une- 
 qual work. His account of the Anglo-Saxons is 
 derived in a great degree from William of Malms- 
 bury, who does not spare them. Their civil histo- 
 ry, indeed, and their laws speak sufficiently against 
 the character of that people. But the Normans 
 had little more to boast of in respect of moral cor- 
 rectness. Their luxurious and dissolute habits are 
 as much noticed as their insolence ; et peccati cu- 
 jusdam, ab hoc solo admodum alieni, flagrasse in- 
 famia testantur veteres. Vid. Ordericus Vitalis, 
 
 ?. 602. Johann. Sarisburiensis Policraticus, p. 
 94. Velly, Hist, de France, t. hi., p. 59. The 
 state of manners in France under the two first 
 races of kings, and in Italy both under the Lom- 
 bards and the subsequent dynasties, may be col- 
 lected from their histories, their laws, and those 
 miscellaneous facts which books of every descrip- 
 tion contain. Neither Velly, nor Muratori, Dis- 
 sert. 23, is so satisfactory as we might desire. 
 
 * Velly, Hist, de France, t. ii., p. 335. It has 
 been observed, that Quid mores sine legibus ? is as 
 iust a question as that of Horace; and that bad 
 laws must produce bad morals. The strange prac- 
 tice of requiring numerous compurgators to prove 
 the innocence of an accused person had a most 
 obvious tendency to increase perjury. 
 
 version to the ancients, became from the 
 fourth century an equally delightful occu- 
 pation. * From the Salique and other bar- 
 barous codes of the fifth century to the 
 close of the period under our review, 
 every age would furnish testimony to the 
 ruling passion for these two species of 
 chase, or, as they were sometimes called, 
 the mysteries of woods and rivers. A 
 knight seldom stirred from his house with- 
 out a falcon on his wrist or a greyhound 
 that followed him. Thus are Harold and 
 his attendants represented, in the famous 
 tapestry of Bayeux. And in the monu- 
 ments of those who died anywhere but 
 on the field of battle, it is usual to find 
 the greyhound lying at their feet, or the 
 bird upon their wrists. Nor are the 
 tombs of ladies without their falcon; for 
 this diversion being of less danger and 
 fatigue than the chase, was shared by the 
 delicate sex.f 
 
 It was impossible to repress the eager- 
 ness with which the^j^rgy, especially 
 after the barbariansWRe tempted by 
 rich bishoprics to take^^n them the sa- 
 cred functions, rushed into these secular 
 amusements. Prohibitions of councils, 
 however frequently repeated, produced 
 little effect. In some instances, a par- 
 ticular monastery obtained a dispensa- 
 tion. Thus that of St. Denis, in 774, rep- 
 resented to Charlemagne that the flesh 
 of hunted animals was salutary for sick 
 monks, and that their skins would serve 
 to bind the books in the library.;}: Rea- 
 sons equally cogent, we may presume, 
 could not be wanting in every other case. 
 As the bishops and abbots were perfectly 
 feudal lords, and often did not scruple to 
 lead their vassals into the field, it was not 
 to be expected that they should debar 
 themselves of an innocent pastime. It 
 was hardly such indeed, when practised 
 at the expense of others. Alexander 
 III., by a letter to the clergy of Berk- 
 shire, dispenses with their keeping the 
 archdeacon in dogs and hawks during 
 his visitation. This season gave jovial 
 ecclesiastics an opportunity of trying 
 different countries. An archbishop of 
 York, in 1321, seems to have carried a 
 train of two hundred persons, who were 
 maintained at the expense of the abbeys 
 on his road, and to have hunted with a 
 pack of hounds from parish to parish. [| 
 
 * Muratori, Dissert. 23, t. i., p. 306. (Italian.) 
 Beckman's Hist, of Inventions, vol. i., p. 319. Vie 
 privee des Fran<jais, t. ii., p. 1. 
 
 t Vie privee des Frantjais, t. i., p. 320 ; t. ii. p. 1 1. 
 
 i Idem, t. i., p. 324. $ Rymer, t. i., p. 61. 
 
 || Whitaker's Hist, of Craven, p. 340, and of 
 Whalley, p. 171. 
 
PART 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 471 
 
 The third council of Lateran, in 1180, 
 had prohibited this amusement on such 
 journeys, and restricted bishops to a train 
 of forty or fifty horses.* 
 
 Though hunting had ceased to be a ne- 
 cessary means of procuring food, it was 
 a very convenient resource, on which the 
 wholesomeness and comfort, as well as 
 the luxury of the table depended. Be- 
 fore the natural pastures were improved, 
 and new kinds of fodder for cattle dis- 
 covered, it was impossible to maintain 
 the summer stock during the cold sea- 
 son. Hence a portion of it was regularly 
 slaughtered and salted for winter provis- 
 ion. We may suppose, that when no al- 
 ternative was offered but these salted 
 meats, even the leanest venison was de- 
 voured with relish. There was some- 
 what more excuse, therefore, for the se- 
 verity with which the lords of forests 
 and manors preserved the beasts of 
 chase, than if they had been considered 
 as merely objects of sport. The laws 
 relating to presentation of game were 
 in every country^ncommonly rigorous. 
 They formed in England that odious 
 system of forest-laws which distinguish- 
 ed- the tyranny of our Norman kings. 
 Capital punishment for killing a stag or 
 wild boar was frequent, and perhaps war- 
 ranted by law, until the charter of John.f 
 The French code was less severe, but 
 even Henry IV. enacted the pain of death 
 against the repeated offence of chasing 
 deer in the royal forests. The privilege 
 of hunting was reserved to the nobility 
 till the reign of Louis IX,, who extended 
 it in some degree to persons of lower 
 birth.} 
 
 This excessive passion for the sports 
 of the field produced those evils which 
 are apt to result from it ; a strenuous 
 idleness, which disdained all useful occu- 
 pations, and an oppressive spirit towards 
 the peasantry. The devastation com- 
 mitted under the pretence of destroying 
 wild animals, which had been already 
 protected in their depredations, is noticed 
 in serious authors, and has also been the 
 topic of popular ballads. What effect this 
 
 * Velly, Hist, tie France, t. iii., p. 236. 
 
 t John of Salisbury inveighs against the game- 
 laws of his age, with an odd transition from the 
 Gospel to the Pandects. Nee veriti sunt hominem 
 
 Cuna bestiolA perdere, quern unigenitus Dei Fi- 
 5 sanguine redernit suo. Quae ferae naturae 
 sunt, et de jure occupantium fiunt, sibi audet hu- 
 mana temeritas vindicare, &c. Policraticus, p. 18. 
 
 t Le Grand, Vie privee des Franqais. t i., p. 325. 
 
 () For the injuries which this people sustained 
 from the seignorial rights of the chase in the elev- 
 enth century, see the Recueil des Historiens, in the 
 valuable preface to the eleventh volume, p. 181. 
 This continued to be felt in France down to the , 
 
 f must have had on agriculture, it is easy 
 to conjecture. The levelling of forests, 
 the draining of morasses, and the extir- 
 pation of mischievous animals which in- 
 habit them, are the first objects of man's 
 labour in reclaiming the earth to its use ; 
 and these were forbidden by a landed 
 aristocracy, whose control over the prog- 
 ress of agricultural improvement was 
 unlimited, and who had not yet learned 
 to sacrifice their pleasures to their ava- 
 rice. 
 
 These habits of the rich, and the mis- 
 erable servitude of those who Bad state of 
 cultivated the land, rendered agriculture, 
 its fertility unavailing. Predial servitude 
 indeed, in some of its modifications, has 
 always been the great bar to improve- 
 ment. In the agricultural economy of 
 Rome, the labouring husbandman, a me- 
 nial slave of some wealthy senator, had 
 not even that qualified interest in the soil 
 which the tenure of villanage afforded to 
 the peasant of feudal ages. Italy, there- 
 fore, a country presenting many natural 
 impediments, was but imperfectly re- 
 duced into cultivation before the irrup- 
 tion of the barbarians.* That revolution 
 destroyed agriculture with every other 
 art, and succeeding calamities during five 
 or six centuries, left the finest regions 
 of Europe unfruitful and desolate. There 
 are but two possible modes in which the 
 produce of the earth can be increased ; 
 one by rendering fresh land serviceable ; 
 the other by improving the fertility of 
 that which is already cultivated. The 
 last is only attainable by the application 
 of capital and of skill to agriculture : 
 neither of which could be expected in 
 the ruder ages of society. The former 
 is, to a certain extent, always practicable 
 while waste lands remain ; but it was 
 checked by laws hostile to improvement, 
 such as the manorial and commonable 
 rights in England, and by the general 
 tone of manners. 
 
 Till the reign of Charlemagne there 
 were no towns in Germany, except a 
 few that had been erected on the Rhine 
 
 revolution, to which it did not perhaps a little con- 
 tribute. (See Young's Travels in France.) The 
 monstrous privilege of free-warren (monstrous, I 
 mean, when not originally founded upon the prop- 
 erty of the soil) is recognised by our own laws, 
 though in this age it is not often that a court and 
 jury will sustain its exercise. Sir Walter Scott's 
 ballad of the Wild Huntsman, from a German ori- 
 ginal, is well known ', and I believe there are sev- 
 eral others in that country not dissimilar in subject. 
 * Muratori, Dissert. 21. This dissertation con- 
 tains ample evidence of the wretched state of cul- 
 ture in Italy, at least in the northern parts, both 
 before the irruption of the barbarians, and, in a 
 much greater degree, under the Lombard kings, 
 
472 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 and Danube by the Romans, A hous 
 with its stables and farm-buildings, sur 
 rounded by a hedge or enclosure, was 
 called a court, or, as we find it in ou: 
 law-books, a curtilage ; the toft or home 
 stead of a more genuine English dialect 
 One of these, with the adjacent domain oi 
 arable fields and woods, had the name ol 
 a villa or manse. Several manses com 
 posed a march ; and several marches 
 formed a pagus, or district.* From these 
 elements in the progress of population 
 arose villages and towns. In France 
 undoubtedly there were always cities of 
 some importance. Country parishes 
 contained several manses or farms of 
 arable land, around a common pasture 
 where every one was bound by custom to 
 feed his cattle. f 
 
 The condition even of internal trade 
 or inter- was hardly preferable to that of 
 nai trade, agriculture. There is not a ves- 
 tige perhaps to be discovered for several 
 centuries of any considerable manufac- 
 ture ; I mean of working up articles of 
 common utility to an extent beyond what 
 the necessities of an adjacent district re- 
 quired.;}: Rich men kept domestic arti- 
 sans among their servants ; even kings, 
 in the ninth century, had their clothes 
 made by the women upon their farms : 
 but the peasantry must have been suppli- 
 ed with garments and implements of la- 
 bour by purchase, and every town, it can- 
 not be doubted, had its weaver, its smith, 
 *and its currier. But there were almost 
 insuperable impediments to any extended 
 
 * Schmidt, Hist, des Allem., t. i., p. 408. The 
 following passage seems to illustrate Schmidt's 
 account of German villages in the ninth century, 
 though relating to a different age and country. 
 " A toft," says Dr. Whitaker, " is a homestead in a 
 village, so called from the small tufts of maple, 
 elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling- 
 houses were anciently overhung. Even now it is 
 impossible to enter Craven without being struck 
 with the insulated homesteads, surrounded by their 
 little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. 
 These are the genuine tofts and crofts of our an- 
 cestors, with the substitution only of stone to the 
 wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." 
 Hist, of Craven, p. 380. 
 
 t It is laid down in the Speculum Saxonicum, a 
 collection of feudal customs which prevailed over 
 most of Germany, that no one might have a sep- 
 arate pasture for his cattle unless he possessed 
 three mansi. Du Cange, Mansus. There seems 
 to have been a price paid, I suppose to the lord, for 
 agistment in the common pasture. 
 
 t The only mention of a manufacture, as early 
 as the ninth or tenth centuries, that I remember to 
 have met with, is in Schmidt, t. ii., p. 146, who 
 says, that cloths were exported from Friseland to 
 England and other parts. He quotes, no authori- 
 ty, but I am satisfied that he has not advanced the 
 fact gratuitously. 
 
 4 Schmidt, t i., p. 411 j t. ii., p. 146. 
 
 traffic; the insecurity of moyeable wealth, 
 and difficulty of accumulating it ; the ig- 
 norance of mutual wants ; the peril of 
 robbery in conveying merchandise, and 
 -Jhe certainty of extortion. In the do- 
 mains of every lord, a toll was to be paid 
 in passing his bridge, or along his high- 
 way, or at his market.* These customs, 
 equitable and necessary in their princi- 
 ple, became in practice oppressive, be- 
 cause they were arbitrary, and renewed 
 in every petty territory which the road 
 might intersect. Several of Charle- 
 magne's capitularies repeat complaints 
 of these exactions, and endeavour to 
 abolish such tolls as were not founded on 
 prescription.! One of them rather amu- 
 singly illustrates the modesty and mod- 
 eration of the landholders. It is enacted 
 that no one shall.be compelled to go out 
 of his way in order to pay toll at a par- 
 ticular bridge, when he can cross the 
 river more conveniently at another 
 place. | These provisions, like most 
 others of that age, weA unlikely to pro- 
 duce much amendmWt. It was only 
 the milder species, however, of feudal 
 lords who were content with the tribute 
 of merchants. The more ravenous de- 
 scended from their fortresses to pillage 
 the wealthy traveller, or shared in the 
 spoil of inferior plunderers, whom they 
 both protected and instigated. Proofs 
 occur, even in the later periods of the 
 middle ages, when government had re- 
 gained its energy, and civilization had 
 made considerable progress, of public 
 robberies systematically perpetrated by 
 men of noble rank. In the more savage 
 times, before the twelfth century, they 
 were probably too frequent to excite 
 much attention. It was a custom in 
 some places to waylay travellers, and 
 not only to plunder, but to sell them as 
 slaves, or compel them to pay a ransom. 
 Harold, son of Godwin, having been 
 wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, was 
 imprisoned by the lord, says an historian, 
 according to the custom of that territo- 
 ry. $ Germany appears to have been, 
 upon the whole, the country where down- 
 right robbery was most unscrupulously 
 practised by the great. Their castles, 
 erected on almost inaccessible heights 
 
 * Du Cange, Pedagium, Pontaticum, Telone- 
 um, Mercatum, Stallagium, Lastagium, &c. 
 
 t Baluz. Capit., p. 621, et alibi. 
 
 J Ut nullus cogatur ad pontem ire ad fluvium 
 transeundum propter telonei causas quando ille in 
 alio loco compendiosius illud flumen transire po- 
 test, p. 764, et alibi. 
 
 Eadmer apud Recueil des Historiens des 
 Gaules, t. xi., preface, p. 192. Pro ritu illius loci, 
 a domino terras captivitati addicitur. 
 
PART I.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 473 
 
 among the woods, became the secure re- 
 ceptacles of predatory bands, who spread 
 terror over the country. From these 
 barbarian lords of the dark ages, as from 
 a living model, the romancers are said -to 
 have drawn their giants and other disloy- 
 al enemies of true chivalry. Robbery 
 indeed is the constant theme both of the 
 Capitularies and of the Anglo-Saxon 
 laws ; one has more reason to wonder at 
 the intrepid thirst of lucre, which indu- 
 ced a very few merchants to exchange 
 the products of different regions, than to 
 ask why no general spirit of commer- 
 cial activity prevailed. 
 
 Under all these circumstances, it is 
 And of for- obvious that very little oriental 
 eign com- trade could have existed in these 
 merce. western countries of Europe. 
 Destitute as they have been created, 
 speaking comparatively, of national pro- 
 ductions fit for exportation, their inven- 
 tion and industry are the great resources 
 from which they can supply the demands 
 of the east. Beijire any manufactures 
 were established In Europe, her com- 
 mercial intercourse with Egypt and Asia 
 must of necessity have been very trifling ; 
 because, whatever inclination she migh 
 feel to enjoy the luxuries of those genia 
 regions, she wanted the means of obtain 
 ing them. It is not therefore necessaiy 
 to rest the miserable condition of orienta 
 commerce upon the Saracen conquests 
 because the poverty of Europe is an ade- 
 quate cause ; and, in fact, what little traf- 
 fic remained was carried on with no ma- 
 terial inconvenience through the channe 
 of Constantinople. Venice took the leac 
 in trading with Greece and more eastern 
 countries.* Amalfi had the second place 
 in the commerce of those dark ages 
 These cities imported, besides natural 
 productions, the fine clothes of Constan 
 tinople ; yet, as this traffic seems to have 
 been illicit, it was not probably exten- 
 sive, f Their exports were gold and sil- 
 
 * Heeren has frequently referred to a work pub 
 lished in 1789, by Marini, entitled Storia civile e 
 politica del Commerzio de' Veneziani, which casts 
 a new light upon the early relations of Venice with 
 the east. Of this book I know nothing; but a 
 memoir by De Guignes, in the thirty-seventh vol 
 ume of the Academy of Inscriptions, on the com 
 merce of France with the east before the crusades 
 is singularly unproductive ; the fault of the sub 
 ject, not of the author. 
 
 f There is an odd passage in Luitprand's relation 
 of his embassy from the Emperor Otho to Nice 
 phqrus Phocas. The Greeks making a display of 
 their dress, he told them that in Lombardy the 
 common people wore as good clothes as they 
 How, they said, can you procure them ? Through 
 the Venetian and Amalfitan dealers, he replied 
 who gain their subsistence by selling them to us 
 The foolish Greeks were very angry, and declared 
 
 ver, by which, as none was likely to re- 
 turn, the circulating money of Europe 
 was probably less in the eleventh centu- 
 ry than at the subversion of the Roman 
 empire ; furs, which were obtained from 
 the Sclavonian countries ; and arms, the 
 sale of which to pagans or Saracens was 
 vainly prohibited by Charlemagne and by 
 the Holy See.* A. more scandalous traf- 
 fic, and one that still more fitly called for 
 prohibitory laws, was carried on in slaves. 
 It is an humiliating proof of the degra- 
 dation of Christendom, that the Vene- 
 tians were reduced to purchase the lux- 
 uries of Asia by supplying the slave- 
 market of the Saracens. f Their apology 
 would perhaps have been, that these 
 were purchased from their heathen neigh- 
 bours ; but a slave-dealer was probably 
 not very inquisitive as to the faith or ori- 
 gin of his victim. This trade was not 
 peculiar to Venice. In England it was 
 very common, even after the conquest, 
 to export slaves to Ireland; till, in the 
 reign of Henry II., the Irish came to a 
 non-importation agreement, which put a 
 stop to the practice. | 
 
 From this state of degradation and 
 poverty all the countries of Europe have 
 recovered, with a progression in some 
 respects tolerably uniform, in others 
 more unequal; and the course of their 
 improvement more gradual, and less de- 
 
 that any dealer presuming to export their fine 
 clothes should be flogged. Luitprandi Opera, p. 
 155, edit. Antwerp, 1640. 
 
 * Baluz. Capital., p. 775. One of the main ad- 
 vantages which the Christian nations possessed 
 over the Saracens was the coat of mail, and other 
 defensive armour; so that this prohibition was 
 founded upon very good political reasons. 
 
 t Schmidt, Hist, des Allem., t. ii., p. 146. Hee- 
 ren, sur 1'Influence des Croisades, p. 316. In Ba- 
 luze we find a law of Carloman, brother to Charle- 
 magne ; Ut mancipia Christiana paganis non ven- 
 dantur. Capitularia, t. i., p. 150, vide quoque, p. 
 361. 
 
 t "William of Malmsbury accuses the Anglo- 
 Saxon nobility of selling their female servants, 
 even when pregnant by them, as slaves to foreign- 
 ers, p. 102. I hope there were not many of these 
 Yaricoes ; and should not perhaps have given credit 
 to an historian, rather prejudiced against the Eng- 
 lish, if I had not found too much authority for the 
 general practice. In the canons of a council at 
 London, in 1102, we read : Let no one from hence- 
 forth presume to carry on that wicked traffic, by 
 which men of England have hitherto been sold like 
 brute animals. Wilkins's Concilia, t. i., p. 383. 
 And Giraldus Cambrensis says that the English 
 before the conquest were generally in the habit of 
 selling their children and other relations to be 
 slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext 
 of distress or famine, till the Irish, in a national 
 synod, agreed to emancipate all the English slaves 
 in the kingdom, id., p. 471. This seems to have 
 been designed to take away all pretext for the 
 threatened invasion of Henry II. Lyttleton, vol. 
 iii., p. 70. 
 
474 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 pendant upon conspicuous civil revolu- 
 tions than their decline, affords one of 
 the most interesting subjects into which 
 a philosophical mind can inquire. The 
 commencement of this restoration has 
 usually been dated from about the close 
 of the eleventh century ; though it is un- 
 necessary to observe, that the subject 
 does not admit of arty thing approxima- 
 ting to chronological accuracy. It may 
 therefore be sometimes not improper to 
 distinguish the six first of the ten centu- 
 ries, which the present work embraces, 
 under the appellation of the dark ages ; 
 an epithet which I do not extend to the 
 twelfth and three following. In tracing 
 the decline of society from the sub- 
 version of the Roman empire, we have 
 been led, not without connexion, from ig- 
 norance to superstition, from superstition 
 to vice and lawlessness, and from thence 
 to general rudeness and poverty. I shall 
 pursue an inverted order in passing along 
 the ascending scale, and class the vari- 
 ous improvements which took place be- 
 tween the twelfth and fifteenth centuries 
 under three principal heads, as they re- 
 late to the wealth, the manners, or the 
 taste and learning of Europe. Different 
 arrangements might probably be suggest- 
 ed, equally natural and convenient ; but 
 in the disposition of topics that have not 
 always an unbroken connexion with each 
 other, no method can be prescribed as 
 absolutely more scientific than the rest. 
 That which I have adopted appears to 
 me as philosophical and as little liable to 
 transitions as any other. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Progress of Commercial Improvement in Germany, 
 Flanders, and England. In the North of Europe. 
 In the Countries upon the Mediterranean Sea. 
 Maritime Laws. Usury. Banking Compa- 
 nies. Progress of Refinement in Manners. 
 Domestic Architecture. Ecclesiastical Archi- 
 tecture. State of Agriculture in England. 
 Value of Money. Improvement of the Moral 
 Character of Society its Causes. Police. 
 Changes in Religious Opinion. Various Sects. 
 
 . Chivalry its Progress, Character, and Influ- 
 ence. Causes of the Intellectual Improvement 
 of European Society. 1. The Study of Civil 
 Law. 2. Institution of ^Universities their Cele- 
 brity. Scholastic Philosophy. 3. Cultivation 
 of Modern Languages. Provencal Poets. 
 Norman Poets. French Prose Writers. Italian 
 early Poets in that Language. Dante. 
 Petrarch. English Language its Progress. 
 Chaucer. 4. Revival of Classical Learning. 
 Latin writers of the Twelfth Century. Litera- 
 ture of the Fourteenth Century. Greek Litera- 
 ture its Restoration in Italy. Invention of 
 Printing. 
 
 THE geographical position of Europe 
 naturally divides its maritime European 
 commerce into two principal commerce, 
 regions ; one comprehending those coun- 
 tries which border on the Baltic, the 
 German, and the Atlantic oceans, another, 
 those situated around the Mediterranean 
 Sea. During the four centuries which 
 preceded the discovery of America, and 
 especially the two former of them, this 
 separation was more remarkable than at 
 present, inasmuch as their intercourse, 
 either by land or sea, was extremely lim- 
 ited. To the first region belonged the 
 Netherlands, the coasts of France, Ger- 
 many, and Scandinavia, and the maritime 
 districts of England. In the second we 
 may class the provinces of Valencia and 
 Catalonia, those of Provence and Lan- 
 guedoc, and the whole of Italy. 
 
 1. The former, or northern division, 
 was first animated by the Woonen 
 woollen manufacture of Flan- manufacture 
 ders. It is not easy either to f Flanders, 
 discover the early beginnings of this, or to 
 account for its rapid advancement.. The 
 fertility of that province and its facilities 
 of interior navigation were doubtless 
 necessary causes; but there must have 
 been some temporary encouragement 
 from the personal character of its sover- 
 eigns, or other accidental circumstances. 
 Several testimonies to the flourishing 
 condition of Flemish manufactures occur 
 1n the twelfth century, and some might 
 perhaps be found even earlier.* A wri- 
 ter of the thirteenth asserts that all the 
 world was clothed from English wool 
 wrought in Flanders. f This indeed is 
 an exaggerated vaunt; but the Flemish 
 stuffs were probably sold wherever the 
 sea or a navigable river permitted them 
 to be carried. Cologne was the chief 
 trading city upon the Rhine ; and its 
 merchantSijtvho had been considerable 
 even under the Emperor Henry IV., es- 
 tablished a factory at London in 1220. 
 The woollen manufacture, notwithstand- 
 ing frequent wars and the impolitic regu- 
 lations of magistrates,! continued to 
 
 * Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 
 270. Meyer ascribes the origin of Flemish trade to 
 Baldwin, count of Flanders, in 958, who established 
 markets at Bruges and other cities. Exchanges 
 were in that, age, he says, chiefly effected by bar- 
 ter, little money circulating in Flanders. Annales 
 Flandrici, fol. 18 (edit. 1561). 
 
 t Matthew Westmonast. apud Macpherson's 
 Annals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 415. 
 
 t Such regulations scared away those Flemish 
 weavers who brought their art into England under 
 Edward III. Macpherson, p. 467, 494, 546. Sev- 
 eral years later, the magistrates of Ghent are said 
 by Meyer (Annales Flandrici, fol. 156) to have im 
 posed a tax on every loom. Though the seditious 
 
PART If.] 
 
 STATE OP SOCIETY. 
 
 475 
 
 flourish in the Netherlands (for Brabant 
 and Hainault shared it in some degree 
 with Flanders), until England became not 
 only capable of supplying her own de- 
 rival in all the marts of 
 
 fifteenth century some share of the 
 woollen manufacture. 
 
 For the two first centuries after the 
 conquest, our English towns, as Export of 
 has been observed in a different wool from 
 
 mand, but a 
 
 Europe. All Christian kingdoms, and 
 
 even the Turks themselves, says an his- ! towards improvement, though still very 
 
 torian of the sixteenth century, lamented 
 
 place, made some forward steps En land - 
 
 the desperate war between the Flemis 
 cities and their Count Louis, that brok 
 out in 1380. For at that time Flander 
 was a market for the traders of all th 
 world. Merchants from seventeen king 
 doms had their settled domiciles at Bru 
 ges, besides strangers from almost un 
 known countries who repaired thither. 
 During this war, and on all other occa 
 sions, the weavers both of Ghent an 
 Bruges distinguished themselves by a 
 democratical spirit, the consequence m 
 doubt of their numbers and prosperity. 
 Ghent was one of the largest cities ir 
 Europe, and in the opinion of many th( 
 best situated. ;{: But Bruges, though ii 
 circuit but half the former, was more 
 splendid in its buildings, and the seat of 
 far more trade ; being the great stapl< 
 both of Mediterranean and northern mer 
 chandise.^ Antwerp, which early in the 
 sixteenth century drew away a large part 
 of this commerce from Bruges, was no 
 considerable in the preceding ages ; nor 
 were the towns of Zealand and Hollanc 
 much noted except for their fisheries 
 though those provinces acquired in the 
 
 spirit of the weavers' company had perhaps justly 
 provoked them, such a tax on their staple manu- 
 facture was a piece of madness, when English 
 goods were just coming into competition. 
 
 * Terra marique mercatura, rerumque commer- 
 cia et quasstus peribant. Non solum totius Europse 
 mercatores, verum etiam ipsi Turcae aliaeque sepo- 
 sitae nationes ob bellum istud Flandriae magno 
 afficiebantur dolore. Erat nempe Flandria totius 
 prope orbis stabile mercatoribus emporium. Sep- 
 temdecim regnorum negotiatores turn Brugis sua 
 certa habuere domicilia ac sedes, praeter complures 
 incognitas pasne gentes quss undique contiuebant. 
 Meyer, fol. 205, ad ann. 1385. 
 I Meyer, Froissart, Comines. 
 + It contained, according to Ludovico Guicciar- 
 dini, 35,000 houses, and the circuit of its walls was 
 45,640 Roman feet. Description des Pais Bas, p. 
 350, &c. (edit. 1609). Part of this enclosure was 
 not built upon. The population of Ghent is reck- 
 oned by Guicciardini at 70,000, but in his time it 
 had greatly declined. It is certainly, however, 
 much exaggerated by earlier historians. And I en- 
 tertain some doubt as to Guicciardini's estimate of 
 the number of houses. If at least he was accurate, 
 more than half of the city must since have been 
 demolished or become uninhabited, which its pres- 
 ent appearance does not indicate ; for Ghent, though 
 not very flourishing, by no means presents the de- 
 cay and dilapidation of an Italian town. 
 
 Guicciardini, p. 262. Mem. de Comines, l.v., 
 c. 17. Meyer, fol. 354. Macpherson's Annals of 
 Commerce, vol. i., p. 647, 651. 
 
 inferior to those of the continent. Their 
 commerce was almost confined to the 
 exportation of wool, the great staple 
 commodity of England, upon which, more 
 than any other, in its raw or manufac- 
 tured state, our wealth has been founded. 
 A woollen manufacture, however, indis- 
 putably existed under Henry II. ;* it is 
 noticed in regulations of Richard I. ; and 
 by the importation of woad under John, 
 it may be inferred to have still flourished. 
 The disturbances of the 'next reign, per- 
 haps, or the rapid elevation of the Flem- 
 ish towns, retarded its growth ; though a 
 remarkable law was passed by the Ox- 
 ford parliament in 1261, prohibiting the 
 export of wool and the importation of 
 cloth. This, while it shows the defer- 
 ence paid by the discontented barons, 
 who predominated in that parliament, to 
 their confederates the burghers, was evi- 
 dently too premature to be enforced. 
 We may infer from it, however, that 
 cloths were made at home, though not 
 sufficiently for the peoples' consump- 
 tion.! 
 
 Prohibitions of the same nature, though 
 with a different object, were frequently 
 imposed on the trade between England 
 and Flanders by Edward I. and his son. 
 As their political connexions fluctuated, 
 these princes gave full liberty and settle- 
 ment to the Flemish merchants, or ban- 
 shed them at once from the country.^ 
 Nothing could be more injurious to Eng- 
 and than this arbitrary vacillation. The 
 Flemings were in every respect our nat- 
 iral allies ; but besides those connexions 
 with France, the constant enemy of 
 Flanders, into which both the Edwards 
 occasionally fell, a mutual alienation had 
 3een produced by the trade of the former 
 )eople with Scotland, a trade too lucra- 
 
 Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, thinks 
 hat a colony of Flemings settled as early as this 
 eign at Worsted, a village in that county, and im- 
 mortalized its name by their manufacture. It soon 
 cached Norwich, though not conspicuous till the 
 eign of Edward I. Hist, of Norfolk, vol. ii. Mac- 
 herson speaks of it for the first time in 1327. 
 "here were several gilds of weavers in the time of 
 Henry II. Lyttleton, vol. ii., p. 174. 
 
 t Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 
 12, from Walter Hemingford. I am considerably 
 ndebted to this laborious and useful publication, 
 hich has superseded that of Anderson. 
 t Rymer, t. ii., p. 32, 50, 737, 949, 965; t. iii., p. 
 33, 1106, et alibi. 
 
476 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX, 
 
 live to be resigned at the King of Eng- 
 land's request.* An early instance of 
 that conflicting selfishness of belligerants 
 and neutrals, which was destined to ag- 
 gravate the animosities and misfortunes 
 of our own time !f 
 
 A more prosperous era began with Ed- 
 Engiisn ward III., the father, as he 
 woollen man- may almost be called, of Eng- 
 ufacture. lisn commerce , a title not in- 
 deed more glorious, but by which he may 
 perhaps claim more of our gratitude than 
 as the hero of Crecy. In 1331, he took 
 advantage of discontents among the 
 manufacturers of Flanders to invite them 
 as settlers into his dominions. J They 
 brought the finer manufacture of woollen 
 cloths, which had been unknown in Eng- 
 land. The discontents alluded to re- 
 sulted from the monopolizing spirit of 
 their corporations, who oppressed all ar- 
 tisans without the pale of their commu- 
 nity. The history of corporations brings 
 home to our minds one cardinal truth, 
 that political institutions have very fre- 
 quently but a relative and temporary use- 
 fulness, and that what forwarded im- 
 provement during one part of its course, 
 may prove to it in time a most pernicious 
 obstacle. Corporations in England, we 
 may be sure, wanted nothing of their 
 usual character ; and it cost Edward no 
 little trouble to protect his colonists from 
 the selfishness, and from the blind na- 
 tionality of the vulgar.^ The emigration 
 of Flemish weavers into England contin- 
 ued during this reign, and we find it men- 
 tioned at intervals for more than a cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Commerce now became, next to lib- 
 increase of ert 7> the leading object of par- 
 English liament. For the greater part 
 commerce. o f our statutes from the acces- 
 sion of Edward III. bear relation to this 
 subject ; not always well devised, or lib- 
 eral, or consistent, but by no means 
 worse in those respects than such as 
 have been enacted in subsequent ages. 
 
 * Rymer, t. iii., p. 759. A Flemish factory was 
 established at Berwick about 128G. Macpherson. 
 
 I In 1295, Edward I. made masters of neutral 
 ships in English ports find security not to trade 
 with France. Rymer, t. ii., p. 679. 
 
 t Rymer, t. iv., p. 591, &c. Fuller draws a no- 
 table picture of the inducements held out to the 
 Flemings. " Here they should feed on fat beef and 
 mutton, till nothing but their fulness should stint 
 their stomachs ; their beds should be good, and 
 their bedfellows better, seeing the richest yeomen 
 in England would not disdain to marry their 
 daughters unto them, and such the English beau- 
 ties that the most envious foreigners could not but 
 commend them." Fuller's Church History, quoted 
 in Blomefield's Hist, of Norfolk. 
 
 $ Rymer, t. v., p. 137, 430, 540. 
 
 The occupation of a merchant became 
 honourable ; and notwithstanding the nat- 
 ural jealousy of the two classes, he was 
 placed in some measure on a footing with 
 landed proprietors. By the statute of 
 apparel, in 37 Edw. III., merchants and 
 artificers who had five hundred pounds 
 value in goods and chattels might use the 
 same dress as squires of one hundred 
 pounds a year. And those who were 
 worth more than this might dress like 
 men of double that estate. Wool was 
 still the principal article of export and 
 source of revenue. Subsidies granted 
 by every parliament upon this article 
 were, on account of the scarcity of 
 money, commonly taken in kind. To 
 prevent evasion of this duty seems to 
 have been the principle of those multifa- 
 rious regulations, which fix the staple, 
 or market for wool, in certain towns, 
 either in England, or, more commonly, on 
 the continent. To these all wool was to 
 be carried, and the tax was there col- 
 lected. It is not easy, however, to com- 
 prehend the drift of all the provisions re- 
 lating to the staple, many of which tend 
 to benefit foreign at the expense of Eng- 
 lish merchants. By degrees, the expor- 
 tation of woollen cloths increased so as 
 to diminish that of the raw material, but 
 the latter was not absolutely prohibited 
 during the period under review;* al- 
 though some restrictions were imposed 
 upon it by Edward IV. For a much ear- 
 lier statute, in the llth of Edward III., 
 making the exportation of wool a capital 
 felony, was in its terms provisional, until 
 it should be otherwise ordered by the 
 council ; and the king almost immediate- 
 ly set it aside. f 
 
 * In 1409, woollen cloths formed great part of 
 our exports, and were extensively used over Spain 
 and Italy. And in 1449, English cloths having 
 been prohibited by the Duke of Burgundy, it was 
 enacted, that, until he should repeal this ordinance, 
 no merchandise of his dominions should be admit- 
 ted into England. 27 H. VI., c. 1. The system 
 of prohibiting the import of foreign wrought goods 
 was acted upon very extensively in Edward IV.'s 
 reign. 
 
 t Stat. 11 E. III., c. 1. Blackstone says that 
 transporting wool out of the kingdom, to the detri- 
 ment of our staple manufacture, was forbidden at 
 common law (vol. iv., c. 19), not recollecting that 
 we had no staple manufactures in the ages when 
 the common law was formed, and that the export 
 of wool was almost the only means by which this 
 country procured silver, or any other article of 
 which it stood in need from the continent. In fact, 
 the landholders were so far from neglecting this 
 source of their wealth, that a minimum was fixed 
 upon it by a statute of 1343 (repealed indeed the 
 next year, 18 E. III., c. 3), below which price it 
 was not to be sold ; from a laudable apprehension, 
 as it seems, that foreigners were getting it too 
 cheap. And this was revived in the 32d of H. VI., 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 477 
 
 A manufacturing district, as we see in 
 . our own country, sends out, as 
 tu?? s u o a f c " it were, suckers into all its 
 France and neighbourhood. Accordingly, 
 the woollen manufacture spread 
 from Flanders along the banks of the 
 Rhine, and into the northern provinces of 
 France.* I am not, however, prepared 
 to trace its history in these regions. In 
 Germany, the privileges conceded by 
 Henry V. to the free cities, and especial- 
 ly to their artisans, gave a soul to indus- 
 try ; though the central parts of the em- 
 pire were, for many reasons, very ill cal- 
 culated for commercial enterprise during 
 the middle ages.f But the French towns 
 were never so much emancipated from 
 arbitrary power as those of Germany or 
 Flanders ; and the evils of exorbitant tax- 
 ation, with those produced by the Eng- 
 lish wars, conspired to retard the advance 
 of manufactures in France. That of 
 linen made some progress ; but this -work 
 was still perhaps chiefly confined to the 
 labour of female servants. J 
 
 The manufactures of Flanders and 
 Baltic England found a market not only 
 trade. m these adjacent countries, but in 
 a part of Europe which for many ages 
 
 though the act is not printed among the statutes. 
 Rot. Par!., t. v., p. 275. The exportation of 
 sheep was prohibited in 1338. Rymer, t. v., p. 
 36 ; and by act of parliament in 1425. 3 H. VI., c. 
 2. But this did not prevent our improving the 
 wool of a foreign country to our own loss. It is 
 worthy of notice, that English wool was superior 
 to any other for fineness during these ages. Henry 
 II., in his patent to the Weavers' Company, directs 
 that if any weaver mingled Spanish wool with 
 English, it should be burnt by the lord mayor. 
 Macpherson, p. 382. An English flock, transported 
 into Spain about 1348, is said to have been the 
 source of the fine Spanish wool, ibid., p. 539. But 
 the superiority of English wool, even as late as 
 1438, is proved by the laws of Barcelona, forbidding 
 its adulteration, p. 654. Another exportation of 
 English sheep to Spain took place about 1465, in 
 consequence of a commercial treaty. Rymer, t. 
 xi., p. 534, et alibi. In return, Spain supplied 
 England with horses, her breed of which was reck- 
 oned the best in Europe ; so that the exchange 
 was tolerably fair. Macpherson, p. 596. The best 
 horses had been very dear in England, being im- 
 ported from Spain and Italy, ibid. 
 
 * Schmidt, t. iv., p. 18. 
 
 t Considerable woollen manufactures appear to 
 have existed in Picardy about 1315. Macpherson, 
 ad annum. Capmany, t. iii., part 2, p. 151. 
 
 t The sheriffs of Wiltshire and Sussex are di- 
 rected, in 1253, to purchase for the king 1000 ells of 
 fine linen, lineae telae pulchrae et delicatae. This 
 Macpherson supposes to be of domestic manufac- 
 ture, which, however, is not demonstrable. Linen 
 was made at that time in Flanders ; and as late as 
 1417, the fine linen used in England was imported 
 from France and the Low Countries. Macpher- 
 son, from Rymer, t. ix., p. 334. Velly's history is 
 defective in giving no account of the French com- 
 merce and manufactures, or at least none that is at 
 all satisfactory. 
 
 had only been known enough to be dread- 
 ed. In the middle of the eleventh cen- 
 tury, a native of Bremen, and a writer 
 much superior to most others of his time, 
 was almost entirely ignorant of the ge- 
 ography of the Baltic ; doubting whether 
 any one had reached Russia by that 
 sea, and reckoning Esthonia and Cour- 
 land among its islands.* But in one 
 hundred years more, the maritime re- 
 gions of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, 
 inhabited by a tribe of heathen Sclavo- 
 nians, were subdued by some German 
 princes; and the Teutonic order some 
 time afterward, having conquered Prus- 
 sia, extended a line of at least compara- 
 tive civilization as far as the Gulf of Fin- 
 land. The first town erected on the 
 coasts of the Baltic was Lubec, which 
 owes its foundation to Adolphus, count 
 of Holstein, in 1140. After several vi- 
 cissitudes, it became independent of any 
 sovereign but the emperor in the thir- 
 teenth century. Hamburgh and Bremen, 
 upon the other side of the Cimbric pen- 
 insula, emulated the prosperity of Lubec ; 
 the former city purchased independence 
 of its bishop in 1225. A colony from 
 Bremen founded Riga in Livonia, about 
 1162. The city of Dantzic grew into im- 
 portance about the end of the following 
 century. Koningsberg was founded by 
 Ottecar, king of Bohemia, in the same 
 age. 
 
 But the real importance of these cities 
 is to be dated from their famous union 
 into the Hanseatic confederacy. The 
 origin of this is rather obscure, but it 
 may certainly be nearly referred in point 
 of time to the middle of the thirteenth 
 century,f an( i accounted for by the ne- 
 cessity of mutual defence, which piracy 
 by sea and pillage by land had taught the 
 merchants of Germany. The nobles en- 
 deavoured to obstruct the formation of 
 this league, which indeed was in great 
 measure designed to withstand their ex- 
 actions. It powerfully maintained the 
 influence which the free imperial cities 
 were at this time acquiring. Eighty of 
 he most considerable places constituted 
 the Hanseatic confederacy, divided into 
 bur colleges, whereof Lubec, Cologne, 
 Brunswick, and Dantzic were the leading 
 towns. Lubec held the chief rank, and 
 became, as it were, the patriarchal see 
 of the league ; whose province it was to 
 preside in all general discussions for 
 
 * Adam Bremensis, de Situ Daniae, p. 13. (El- 
 ;evir edit.) 
 
 t Schmidt, t. iv., p. 8. Macpherson, p. 392, 
 The latter writer thinks they were not known by 
 :he name of Hanse so early. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 mercantile, political, or military purposes, 
 and to carry them into execution. The 
 league had four principal factories in for- 
 eign parts, at London, Bruges, Bergen, 
 and Novogorod ; endowed by the sover- 
 eigns of those cities with considerable 
 privileges, to which every merchant be- 
 longing to a Hanseatic town was enti- 
 tled.* In England the German guildhall 
 or factory was established by concession 
 of Henry III. ; and in later periods, the 
 Hanse traders were favoured above many 
 others in the capricious vacillations of 
 our mercantile policy. | The English had 
 also their factories on the Baltic coast as 
 far as Prussia, and in the dominions of 
 Denmark.;}: 
 
 This opening of a northern market 
 powerfully accelerated the growth of our 
 Rapid prog- own commercial opulence, es- 
 ress of Eng- pecially after the woollen man- 
 lish trade. u f acture had begun to thrive. 
 From about the middle of the fourteenth 
 century, we find continual evidences of a 
 rapid increase in wealth. Thus, in 1363, 
 Picard, who had been lord mayor some 
 years before, entertained Edward III. 
 and the Black Prince, the kings of 
 France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with many 
 of the nobility, at his own house in the 
 Vintry, and presented them with hand- 
 some gifts. Philpot, another eminent 
 citizen in Richard II. 's time, when the 
 trade of England was considerably an- 
 noyed by privateers, hired 1000 armed 
 men, and despatched them to sea, where 
 they took fifteen Spanish vessels with 
 their prizes. || We find Richard obtaining 
 a great deal from private merchants and 
 trading towns. In 1379 he got 5000 
 from London, 1000 marks from Bristol, 
 and in proportion from smaller places. 
 In 1386 London gave 4000 more, and 
 10,000 marks in 1397.^[ The latter sum 
 was obtained also for the coronation of 
 Henry VI.** Nor were the contributions 
 of individuals contemptible, considering 
 the high value of money. Hinde, a citi- 
 zen of London, lent to Henry IV. 2000 
 in 1407, and Whittington one half of that 
 sum. The merchants of the staple ad- 
 vanced 4000 at the same time. ft Our 
 commerce continued to be regularly and 
 rapidly progressive during the fifteenth 
 century. The famous Canynges of Bris- 
 tol, under Henry VI. and Edward IV., 
 
 * Pfeffel, t. i., p. 443. Schmidt, t. iv., p. 18; t. 
 v., p. 512. Macpherson's Annals, vol. i., p. 693. 
 t Macpherson, vol. i., passim. 
 j Rymer, t. viii., p. 360. 
 6 Macpherson (who quotes Stow), p. 415. 
 || Walsingham, p. 211. 
 IF Rymer, t. vii., p. 210, 341 ; t. viii., p. 9. 
 ** Id. t. x., p. 461. ft Id., t. viii., p. 483. 
 
 had ships of 900 tons burden.* The 
 trade and even the internal wealth of 
 England reached so much higher a pitch 
 in the reign of the last mentioned king 
 than at any former period, that we may 
 perceive the wars of York and Lancaster 
 to have produced no very serious effect 
 on national prosperity. Some battles 
 were doubtless sanguinary ; but the loss 
 of lives in battle is soon repaired by a 
 flourishing nation ; and the devastation 
 occasioned by armies was both partial 
 and transitory. 
 
 A commercial intercourse between 
 these northern and southern Inter course 
 regions of Europe began about with the 
 the early part of the fourteenth g^^ f 
 century, or, at most, a little 
 sooner. Until, indeed, the use of the 
 magnet was thoroughly understood, and 
 a competent skill in marine architecture, 
 as well as navigation, acquired, the Ital- 
 ian merchants were scarce likely to at- 
 tempt a voyage perilous in itself, and 
 rendered more formidable by the imagin- 
 ary difficulties which had been supposed 
 to attend an expedition beyond the straits 
 of Hercules. But the English, accus- 
 tomed to their own rough seas, were al- 
 ways more intrepid, and probably more 
 skilful navigators. Though it was ex- 
 tremely rare, even in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, for an English trading vessel to ap- 
 pear in the Mediterranean,! yet a famous 
 
 * Macpherson, p. 667. 
 
 t Richard III., in 1485, appointed a Florentine 
 merchant to be English consul at Pisa, on the 
 ground that some of his subjects intended to trade 
 to Italy. Macpherson, p. 705, from Rymer. Per- 
 haps we cannot positively prove the existence of a 
 Mediterranean trade at an earlier time ; and even 
 this instrument is not conclusive. But a consid- 
 erable presumption arises from two documents in 
 Rymer, of the year 1412, which inform us of a 
 great shipment of wool and other goods made by 
 some merchants of London for the Mediterranean 
 under supercargoes, whom, it being a new under- 
 taking, the king expressly recommended to the 
 Genoese republic. But that people, impelled prob- 
 ably by commercial jealousy, seized the vessels 
 and their cargoes ; which induced the king to 
 grant the owners letters of reprisal against all Ge- 
 noese property. Rymer, t. viii., p. 717, 773. 
 Though it is not perhaps evident that the vessels 
 were English, the circumstances render it highly 
 probable. The bad success, however, of this at- 
 tempt might prevent its imitation. A Greek au- 
 thor, about the beginning of the fifteenth century, 
 reckons the IyyX?voi among the nations who 
 traded to a port in the Archipelago. Gibbon, vol. 
 xii., p. 52. But these enumerations are generally 
 swelled by vanity or the love of exaggeration ; and 
 a few English sailors on board a foreign vessel 
 would justify the assertion. Benjamin of Tudela, 
 a Jewish traveller, pretends that the port of Alex- 
 andria, about 1160, contained vessels not only from 
 England, but from Russia, and even Cracow. 
 Harris's Voyages, vol. i., p. 554. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 470 
 
 military armament, that was destined for 
 the crusade of Richard I., displayed at a 
 very early time the seamanship of our 
 countrymen. In the reign of Edward 
 II., we find mention in Rymer's collec- 
 tion of Genoese ships trading to Flanders 
 and England. His son was very solicit- 
 ous to preserve the friendship of that op- 
 ulent republic ; and it is by his letters to 
 his senate, or by royal orders restoring 
 ships unjustly seized, that we come by a 
 knowledge of those facts which histori- 
 ans neglect to relate. Pisa shared a lit- 
 tle in this traffic, and Venice more consid- 
 erably; but Genoa was beyond all com- 
 petition at the head of Italian commerce 
 in these seas during the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. In the next, her general decline 
 left it more open to her rival; but I 
 doubt whether Venice ever maintain- 
 ed so strong a connexion with England. 
 Through London, and Bruges, their chief 
 station in Flanders, the merchants ef It- 
 aly and of Spain transported oriental 
 produce to the farthest parts of the north. 
 The inhabitants of the Baltic coast were 
 stimulated by the desire of precious lux- 
 uries which they had never known ; and 
 these wants, though selfish and frivolous, 
 are the means by which nations acquire 
 civility, and the earth is rendered fruitful 
 of its produce. As the carriers of this 
 trade, the Hanseatic merchants resident 
 in England^and Flanders derived prof- 
 its through which eventually, of course, 
 those countries were enriched. It seems 
 that the Italian vessels unloaded at the 
 marts of London or Bruges, and that 
 such parts of their cargoes as were in- 
 tended for a more northern trade came 
 there into the hands of the German mer- 
 chants. In the reign of Henry VI., Eng- 
 land carried on a pretty considerable traf- 
 fic with the countries around the Medi- 
 terranean, for whose commodities her 
 wool and woollen clothes enabled her to 
 pay. 
 The commerce of the southern division, 
 
 Commerce though it did not, I think, pro- 
 of the Med- duce more extensively benefi- 
 
 cSJST cial effects u P n tne progress of 
 society, was both earlier and 
 more splendid than that of England and 
 the neighbouring countries. Besides 
 Venice, which has been mentioned al- 
 Amaifi. rea( ty 5 Amalfi kept up the commer- 
 cial intercourse of Christendom 
 with the Saracen countries before the 
 first crusade.* It was the singular fate 
 
 * The Amalfitans are thus described by William 
 of Apulia, apud Muratori, Dissert. 30. 
 Urbs haec dives opum, populoque referta videtur, 
 Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus. auro. 
 
 of this city to have filled up ftie interval 
 between two periods of civilization, in 
 neither of which she was destined to be 
 distinguished. Scarcely known before 
 the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran 
 a brilliant career, as a free and trading 
 republic, which was checked by the arms 
 of a conqueror in the middle of the 
 twelfth. Since her subjugation by Roger, 
 king of Sicily, the name of a people 
 who for a while connected Europe with 
 Asia has hardly been repeated, except 
 for two discoveries falsely imputed to 
 them, those of the Pandects and of the 
 compass. 
 
 But the decline of Amalfi was amply 
 compensated to the rest of Italy pi sa , Genoa, 
 by the constant elevation of Venice. 
 Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the twelfth 
 and ensuing ages. The crusades led im- 
 mediately to this growing prosperity of 
 the commercial cities. Besides the profit 
 accruing from so many naval armaments 
 which they supplied, and the continual 
 passage of private adventurers in their 
 vessels, they were enabled to open a 
 more extensive channel of oriental traffic 
 than had hitherto been known. These 
 three Italian republics enjoyed immuni- 
 ties in the Christian principalities of 
 Syria ; possessing separate quarters in 
 Acre, Tripoli, and other cities, where 
 they were governed by their own laws 
 and magistrates. Though the progress 
 of commerce must, from the condition 
 of European industry, have been slow, it 
 was uninterrupted ; and the settlements 
 in Palestine were becoming important as 
 factories, a use of which Godfrey and 
 Urban little dreamed, when they were 
 lost through the guilt and imprudence of 
 their inhabitants.* Villani laments the 
 injury sustained by commerce in conse- 
 quence of the capture of Acre, " situated, 
 as it was, on the coast of the Mediterra- 
 nean, in the centre of Syria, and, as we 
 might say, of the habitable world, a haven 
 for all merchandise, both from the east 
 and the west, which all the nations of 
 the earth frequented for this trade. "f 
 
 Partibus innumeris ac plurimus urbe moratur 
 Nauta, maris coglique vias aperire peritus. 
 Hue et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe, 
 Regis et Antiochi. Haec [etiam?] freta plurima 
 
 transit. 
 
 Hie Arabes, Indi, Siculi noscuntur, et Afri. 
 Haec gens est totum prope nobilitata per orbem, 
 Et mercanda ferens, et amans mercata referre. 
 
 * The inhabitants of Acre were noted, in an age 
 not very pure, for the excess of their vices. In 
 1291 they plundered some of the subjects of a 
 neighbouring Mahometan prince, and refusing rep- 
 aration, the city was besieged and taken by storm. 
 Muratori, ad ann. Gibbon, c. 59, 
 
 t Villani, 1. vii., c. 144. 
 
430 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX, 
 
 But the loss was soon retrieved, not per- 
 haps by Pisa and Genoa, but by Venice, 
 who formed connexions with the Saracen 
 governments, and maintained her com- 
 mercial intercourse with Syria and Egypt 
 by their license, though subject probably 
 to heavy exactions. Sanuto, a Venetian 
 author at the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century, has left a curious account of the 
 Levant trade which his countrymen car- 
 ried on at that time. Their imports it is 
 easy to guess, and it appears that timber, 
 brass, tin, and lead, as well as the pre- 
 cious metals, were exported to Alexan- 
 dria, besides oil, saffron, and some of the 
 productions of Italy, and even wool and 
 woollen cloths.* The European side of 
 the account had therefore become re- 
 spectable. 
 
 The commercial cities enjoyed as great 
 privileges at Constantinople as in Syria, 
 and they bore an eminent part in the vi- 
 cissitudes of the eastern empire. After 
 the capture of Constantinople by the 
 Latin crusaders, the Venetians, having 
 been concerned in that conquest, became 
 of course the favoured traders under the 
 new dynasty ; possessing their own dis- 
 trict in the city, with their magistrate or 
 podesta, appointed at Venice, and sub- 
 ject to the parent republic. When the 
 Greeks recovered the seat of their empire, 
 the Genoese, who from jealousy of their 
 rivals had contributed to that revolution, 
 obtained similar immunities. This pow- 
 erful and enterprising state, in the four- 
 teenth century, sometimes the enemy of 
 the Byzantine court, maintained its in- 
 dependent settlement at Pera. From 
 thence she spread her sails into the Eux- 
 ine, and, planting a colony at Caffa in the 
 Crimea, extended a line of commerce 
 with the interior regions of Asia, which 
 even the skill and spirit of our own times 
 have not yet been able to revive.f 
 
 * Macpherson, p. 490. 
 
 t Capmany, Memorias Historicas, t. iii., preface, 
 p. 11 ; and part 2, p. 131. His authority is Bal- 
 ducci Pegalotti, a Florentine writer upon com- 
 merce about 1340, whose work I have never seen. 
 It appears from Balducci that the route to China 
 was from Azoph to Astrakan, and thence by a va- 
 riety of places which cannot be found in modern 
 maps, to Cambalu, probably Pekin, the capital city 
 of China, which he describes as being one hundred 
 miles in circumference. The journey was of rath- 
 er more than eight months, going and returning ; 
 and he assures us it was perfectly secure, not only 
 for caravans, but for a single traveller with a couple 
 of interpreters and a servant. The Venetians had 
 also a settlement in the Crimea, and appear, by a 
 passage in Petrarch's letters, to have possessed 
 some of the trade through Tartary. In a letter 
 written from Venice, after extolling in too rhetor- 
 ical a manner the commerce of that republic, he 
 mentions a particular ship that had just sailed for 
 
 The French provinces which border on 
 the Mediterranean Sea partook in the 
 advantages which it offered. Not only 
 Marseilles, whose trade had continued in 
 a certain degree throughout the worst 
 ages, but Narbonne, Nismes, and especi- 
 ally Montpelier, were distinguished for 
 commercial prosperity.* A still greater 
 activity prevailed in Catalonia. From 
 the middle of the thirteenth century (for 
 we need not trace the rudiments of its 
 history) Barcelona began to emulate the 
 Italian cities in both the branches of na- 
 val energy, war and commerce. En- 
 gaged in frequent and severe hostilities 
 with Genoa, and sometimes with Con- 
 stantinople, while their vessels traded to 
 every part of the Mediterranean, and 
 even of the English channel, the Catalans 
 might justly be reckoned among the first 
 of maritime nations. The commerce of 
 Barcelona has never since attained so 
 great a height as in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury.f 
 
 The introduction of a silk manufacture 
 at Palermo, by Roger Guiscard, Their man- 
 in 1148, gave perhaps the ear- "foctures. 
 liest impulse to the industry of Italy. 
 Nearly about the same time, the Genoese 
 plundered two Moorish cities of Spain, 
 from which they derived the same art. 
 In the next age, this became a staple 
 manufacture of the Lombard and Tuscan 
 republics, and the cultivatio^ pf mulber- 
 ries was enforced by their laws.J Wool- 
 len stuffs, though the trade was perhaps 
 less conspicuous than that of Flanders, 
 and though many of the coarser kinds 
 were imported from thence, employed a 
 multitude of workmen in Italy, Catalonia, 
 and the south of France. $ Among the 
 trading companies into which the mid- 
 
 the Black Sea. Et ipsa quidem Tanaim it visura, 
 nostri enim maris navigatio non ultra tenditur; 
 eorum vero aliqui, quos haec fert, illic iter [institu- 
 ent] earn egressuri, nee antea substituri, quam 
 Gange et Caucaso superato, ad Indos atque ex- 
 tremos Seres et Orientalem perveniatur Oceanum. 
 En quo ardens et inexplebilis habendi sitis hoini- 
 num mentes rapit ! Petrarcaj Opera, Senil., 1. ii., 
 ep. 3, p. 760, edit. 1581. 
 
 * Hist, de Languedoc, t. iii., p. 531 ; t. iv., p. 
 517. Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xxxvii. 
 
 t Capmany, Memorias Historicas de Barcelona, 
 t. i., part 2. See particularly p. 36. 
 
 J Muratori, Dissert. 30. Denina, Rivoluzione 
 d'ltalia, 1. xiv., c. 11. The latter writer is of opin- 
 ion that mulberries were not cultivated as an im- 
 portant object till after 1300, nor even to any great 
 extent till after 1500; the Italian manufacturers 
 buying most of their silk from Spain or the Levant. 
 
 The history of Italian states, and especially 
 Florence, will speak for the first country. Cap- 
 many attests the woollen manufacture of the sec- 
 ond. Mem. Hist, de Barcel., t. i., part 3, p. 7, &c. ; 
 and Vaissette that of Carcasonne and its vicinity. 
 Hist, de Lang., t. iv., p. 517. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 481 
 
 dling ranks were distributed, those con- 
 cerned in silk and woollens were most 
 numerous and honourable.* 
 
 A property of a natural substance, long 
 invention overlooked even though it at- 
 mar- tracted observation by a differ- 
 ^ 8 C m " ent eciu i ar i tv 5 nas influence^ 
 
 B 
 
 by its accidental discovery tne 
 
 fortunes of mankind, more than all the 
 deductions of philosophy. It is perhaps 
 impossible to ascertain the epoch when 
 the polarity of the magnet was first 
 known in Europe. The common opin- 
 ion, which ascribes its discovery to a cit- 
 izen of Amalfi in the fourteenth centu- 
 ry, is undoubtedly erroneous. Guiot de 
 Provins, a French poet, who lived about 
 the year 1200, or, at the latest, under St. 
 Louis, describes it in the most unequivo- 
 cal language. James de Vitry, a bishop 
 in Palestine, before the middle of the 
 thirteenth century, and Guido Guinizzelli, 
 an Italian poet of the same time, are 
 equally explicit. The French, as well 
 as Italians, claim the discovery as their 
 own ; but whether it were due to either 
 of these nations, or rather learned from 
 their intercourse with the Saracens, is 
 not easily to be ascertained.! For some 
 
 * None were admitted to the rank of burgesses 
 in the towns of Aragon who used any manual 
 trade, with the exception of dealers in fine cloths. 
 The woollen manufacture of Spain did not at any 
 time become a considerable article of export, nor 
 even supply the internal consumption, as Capmany 
 has well shown. Memorias Historicas, t. iii., p. 
 325, et seqq., and Edinburgh Review, vol. x. 
 
 f Boucher, the French translator of II Consolato 
 del Mare, says, that Edrissi, a Saracen geographer, 
 who lived about 1100, gives an account, though in 
 a confused manner, of the polarity of the magnet, 
 t. ii., p. 280. However, the lines of Guiot de Pro- 
 vins are decisive. These are quoted in Hist Lit- 
 te"raire de la France, t. ix., p. 199 ; M6m. de 1'Acad. 
 des Inscript., t. xxi., p. i92, and several other 
 works. Guinizzelli has the following passage, in a 
 canzone quoted by Ginguene, Hist. Litteraire de 
 1'Italie, t.i., p. 413. 
 
 " In quelle parti sotto tramontana, 
 
 Sono li nwnti della calamita, 
 
 Che dan virtute all' aere 
 
 Di trarre il ferro ; ma perch& lontana, 
 
 Vole di simil pietra aver aita, 
 
 A far la adoperare, 
 
 E dirizzar lo ago in ver la stella." 
 We cannot be diverted by the nonsensical theory 
 these lines contain, from perceiving the positive 
 testimony of the last verse to the poet's knowledge 
 of the polarity of the magnet. But, if any doubt 
 could remain, Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 171, has fully 
 established, from a series of passages, that this 
 phenomenon was well known in the thirteenth 
 century ; and puts an end altogether to the preten- 
 sions of Flavio Gioja, if such a person ever existed. 
 See also Macpherson's Annals, p. 364 and 418. It 
 is provoking to find an historian like Robertson as- 
 serting without hesitation, that this citizen of Amalfi 
 was the inventor of the compass, and thus accred- 
 iting an error which had long before been detected. 
 Hh 
 
 time, perhaps, even this wonderful im- 
 provement in the art of navigation might 
 not be universally adopted by vessels 
 sailing within the Mediterranean, and ac- 
 customed to their old system of observa- 
 tions. But when it became more estab- 
 lished, it naturally inspired a more fear- 
 less spirit of adventure. It was not, as 
 has been mentioned, till the beginning of 
 the fourteenth century, that the Genoese 
 and other nations around that inland sea 
 steered into the Atlantic Ocean towards 
 England and Flanders. This intercourse 
 with the northern countries enlivened 
 their trade with the Levant by the ex- 
 change of productions which Spain and 
 Italy do not supply, and enriched the mer- 
 chants by means of whose capital the ex- 
 ports of London and of Alexandria were 
 conveyed into each other's harbours. 
 
 The usual risks of navigation, and those 
 incident to commercial adven- Maritime 
 ture, produce a variety of ques- law*, 
 tions in every system of jurisprudence, 
 which, though always to be determined, 
 as far as possible, by principles of natu- 
 ral justice, must in many cases depend 
 upon established customs. These cus- 
 toms of maritime law were anciently re- 
 duced into a code by the Rhodians, and 
 the Roman emperors preserved or re- 
 formed the constitutions of that republic. 
 It would be hard to say how far the tra- 
 dition of this early jurisprudence survived 
 the decline of commerce in the darker 
 ages ; but after it began to recover it- 
 self, necessity suggested, or recollection 
 prompted, a scheme of regulations re- 
 sembling in some degree, but much more 
 enlarged than those of antiquity. This 
 was formed into a written code, II Con- 
 solato del Mare, not much earlier, proba- 
 bly, than the middle of the thirteenth 
 century; and its promulgation seems 
 rather to have proceeded from the citi- 
 zens of Barcelona than from those of 
 Pisa or Venice, who have also claimed 
 to be the first legislators of the sea.* 
 
 It is a singular circumstance, and only to be ex- 
 plained by the obstinacy with which men are apt 
 to reject improvement, that the magnetic needld 
 was not generally adopted in navigation till very 
 long after the discovery of its properties ; and even 
 after their peculiar importance had been perceiv- 
 ed. The writers of the thirteenth century who 
 mention the polarity of the needle, mention also its 
 use in navigation ; yet Capmany has found no dis- 
 tinct proof of its employment till 1403, and does not 
 believe that it was frequently on board Mediterra- 
 nean ships at the latter part of the preceding age. 
 Memorias Historicas, t. iii., p. 70. Perhaps 
 however he has inferred too much from his nega- 
 tive proof; and this subject seems open to further 
 inquiry. 
 
 * Boucher supposes it to have been compiled at 
 
482 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. 
 
 Besides regulations simply mercantile, 
 this system has defined the mutual rights 
 of neutral and belligerant vessels, and 
 thus laid the basis of the positive law 
 of nations in its most important and dis- 
 puted cases. The King of France and 
 Count of Provence solemnly acceded to 
 this maritime code, which hence acqui- 
 red a binding force within the Mediterra- 
 nean Sea ; and in most respects, the law 
 merchant of Europe is at present con- 
 formable to its provisions. A set of reg- 
 ulations, chiefly borrowed from the Con- 
 solato, was compiled in France under 
 the reign of Louis IX., and prevailed in 
 their own country. These have been de- 
 nominated the laws of Oleron, from an 
 idle story that they were enacted by 
 Richard I., while his expedition to the 
 Holy Land lay at anchor in that island.* 
 Nor was the north without its peculiar 
 code of maritime jurisprudence ; name- 
 ly, the ordinances of Wisbuy, a town in 
 the isle of Gothland, principally compiled 
 from those of Oleron, before the year 
 1400, by which the Baltic traders were 
 governed.! 
 
 There was abundant reason for estab- 
 Frequency lishing among maritime nations 
 of piracy. some theory of mutual rights, 
 and for securing the redress of injuries, 
 as far as possible, by means of acknowl- 
 edged tribunals. In that state of barba- 
 
 Barcelona about 900 ; but his reasonings are in- 
 conclusive, t. i., p. 72 ; and indeed Barcelona at that 
 time was little, if at all, better than a fishing-town. 
 Some arguments might be drawn in favour of Pisa 
 from the expressions of Henry IV.'s charter grant- 
 ed to that city in 1081. Consuetudines, quas ha- 
 bent de mari, sic iis observabimus sicut illorum est 
 consuetudo. Muratori, Dissert. 45. Giannone 
 seems to think the collection was compiled about 
 the reign of Louis IX., 1. xi., c. 6. Caprnany, the 
 last Spanish editor, whose authority ought perhaps 
 to outweigh every other, asserts, and seems to 
 prove them to have been enacted by the mercantile 
 magistrates of Barcelona, under the reign of James 
 the Conqueror, which is much the same period. 
 (Codigo de las Costrumbres maritimas de Barcelo- 
 na, Madrid, 1791.) But, by whatever nation they 
 were reduced into their present form, these laws 
 were certainly the ancient and established usages 
 of the Mediterranean states ; and Pisa may very 
 probably have taken a great share in first practi- 
 sing what a century or two afterward was render- 
 ed more precise at Barcelona. 
 
 * Macpherson, p. 358. Boucher supposes them 
 to be registers of actual decisions. 
 
 t I have only the authority of Boucher for re- 
 ferring the Ordinances of Wisbuy to the year 
 1400. Beckman imagines them to be older than 
 those of Oleron. But Wisbuy was not enclosed by 
 a wall till 1288, a proof that it could not have been 
 previously a town of much importance. It flour- 
 ished chiefly in the first part of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, and was at that time an independent repub- 
 lic ; but fell under the yoke of Denmark before 
 the end of the same age. 
 
 rous anarchy which so long resisted the 
 coercive authority of civil magistrates, 
 the sea held out even more temptation 
 and more impunity than the land ; and 
 when the laws had regained their sover- 
 eignty, and neither robbery nor private 
 warfare was any longer tolerated, there 
 remained that great common of mankind, 
 unclaimed by any king, and the liberty 
 of the sea was another name for the se- 
 curity of plunderers. A pirate, in a well- 
 armed, quick-sailing vessel, must feel, I 
 suppose, the enjoyments of his exemp- 
 tion from, control more exquisitely than 
 any other freebooter ; and darting along 
 the bosom of the ocean, under the 
 impartial radiance of the heavens, may 
 deride the dark concealments and hur- 
 ried flights of the forest robber. His 
 occupation is indeed extinguished by 
 the civilization of later ages, or con- 
 fined to distant climates. But in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a 
 rich vessel was never secure from at- 
 tack ; and neither restitution nor punish- 
 ment of the criminals was to be obtained 
 from governments who sometimes fear- 
 ed the plunderer and sometimes con- 
 nived at the offence.* Mere piracy, 
 however, was not the only danger. The 
 maritime towns of Flanders, France, and 
 England, like the free republics of Italy, 
 prosecuted their own quarrels by arms, 
 without asking the leave of their respect- 
 ive sovereigns. This practice, Law of 
 exactly analogous to that of pri- reprisals- 
 vate war in the feudal system, more than 
 once involved the kings of France and 
 England in hostility.! But where the 
 quarrel did not proceed to such a length 
 as , absolutely to engage two opposite 
 towns, a modification of this ancient 
 right of revenge formed part of the regu- 
 lar law of nations, under the name of re- 
 prisals. Whoever was plundered or in- 
 jured by the inhabitants of another town 
 obtained authority from his own magis- 
 trates to seize the property of any other 
 person belonging to it, until his loss 
 should be compensated. This law of 
 
 * Hugh Despenser seized a Genoese vessel val- 
 ued at 14,300 marks, for which no restitution was 
 ever made. Rymer, t. iv., p. 701. Macpherson, 
 A. D. 1336. 
 
 f The Cinque Ports and other trading towns of 
 England were in a state of constant hostility with 
 their opposite neighbours during the reigns of Ed- 
 ward I. and II. One might quote almost half the 
 instruments in Rymer in proof of these conflicts, 
 and of those with the mariners of Norway and Den- 
 mark. Sometimes mutual envy produced frays 
 between different English towns. Thus, in 1254, 
 the Winchelsea mariners attacked a Yarmouth 
 galley, and killed some of her men. Matt . Paris, 
 apud Macpherson. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 483 
 
 reprisal was not confined to maritime 
 places. It prevailed in Lombardy, and 
 probably in the German cities. Thus, if 
 a citizen of Modena was robbed by a Bo- 
 lognese, he complained to the magis- 
 trates of the former city, who represent- 
 ed the case to those of Bologna, demand- 
 ing redress. If this were not immedi- 
 ately granted, letters of reprisals were 
 issued, to plunder the territory of Bo- 
 logna till the injured party should be re- 
 imbursed by sale of the spoil.* In the 
 laws of Marseilles it is declared, " If a 
 foreigner take any thing from a citizen 
 of Marseilles, and he who has jurisdic- 
 tion over the said debtor or unjust taker 
 does not cause right to be done in the 
 same, the rector or consuls, at the peti- 
 tion of the said citizen, shall grant him 
 reprisals upon all the goods of the said 
 debtor or unjust taker, and also upon the 
 goods of others, who are under the juris- 
 diction of him who ought to do justice, 
 and would not, to the said citizen of Mar- 
 seilles, "f Edward III. remonstrates, in 
 an instrument published by Rymer, 
 against letters of marque granted by the 
 King of Aragon to one Berenger de la 
 Tone, who had been robbed by an Eng- 
 lish pirate of 2000 ; alleging that, inas- 
 much as he had always been ready to 
 give redress to the party, it seemed to 
 his counsellors that there was no just 
 cause for reprisals upon the king's or his 
 subjects' property.^ This passage is so 
 far curious, as it asserts the existence of 
 a customary law of nations, the knowl- 
 edge of which was already a sort of 
 learning. Sir E. Coke speaks of this 
 right of private reprisals as if it still ex- 
 isted ; and, in fact, there are instances 
 of granting such letters as late as the 
 reign of Charles the First. 
 
 A practice founded on the same prin- 
 Liabiit of ciples as reprisal, though rather 
 aliens for less violent, was that of attach- 
 each other's m g t| ie goods or persons of res- 
 ident foreigners for the debts of 
 their countrymen. This indeed, in Eng- 
 land, was not confined to foreigners until 
 the statute of Westminster I., c. 23, which 
 enacts that " no stranger who is of this 
 realm shall be distrained in any town or 
 market for a debt wherein he is neither 
 
 * Muratori, Dissert. 53. 
 
 t Du Cange, voc. Laudum. 
 
 i Rymer, t. iv., p. 576. Videtur sapientibus et 
 peritis, quod causa, de jure, non subfuit marcham 
 seu reprisaliam in nostris, seu subditorum nostro- 
 rum, bonis concedendi. See too a case of neutral 
 goods on board an enemy's vessel claimed by the 
 owners, and a legal distinction taken in favour of 
 the captors, t. vi., p. 14. 
 
 $ 27 E. III., stat. 11., c. 17. 2 Inst, p. 205. 
 Hh2 
 
 principal nor surety." Henry III. had 
 previously granted a charter to the bur- 
 gesses of Lubec, that they should not be 
 arrested for the debt of any of their coun- 
 trymen, unless the magistrates of Lubec 
 neglected to compel payment.* But by 
 a variety of grants from Edward II., the 
 privileges of English subjects under the 
 statute of Westminster were extended to 
 most foreign nations, f This unjust re- 
 sponsibility had not been confined to civil 
 cases. One of a company of Italian mer- 
 chants, the Spini, having killed a man, 
 the officers of justice seized the bodies 
 and effects of all the rest.J 
 
 If, under all these obstacles, whether 
 created by barbarous manners, Great prof- 
 by national prejudice, or by the s of trade, 
 fraudulent and arbitrary measures of prin- 
 ces, the merchants of different countries 
 became so opulent as almost to rival the 
 ancient nobility, it must be ascribed to 
 the greatness of their commercial profits. 
 The trading companies possessed either 
 a positive or a virtual monopoly, and held 
 the keys of those eastern regions, for the 
 luxuries of which the progressive refine- 
 ment of manners produced an increasing 
 demand. It is not easy to determine the 
 average rate of profit $ but we know that 
 the interest of money was exceed- And high 
 ingly high throughout the middle rate of 
 ages. At Verona, in 1228, it was iQtereat - 
 fixed by law at twelve and a half per 
 cent. ; at Modena, in 1270, it seems to 
 have been as high as twenty. || The re- 
 public of Genoa, towards the end of the 
 fourteenth century, when Italy had grown 
 wealthy, paid only from seven to ten per 
 cent, to her creditors. 1[ But in France 
 and England the rate was far more op- 
 pressive. An ordinance of Philip the 
 Fair, in 1311, allows twenty per cent, af- 
 ter the first year of the loan.** Under 
 Henry III., according to Matthew Paris, 
 the debtor paid ten per cent, every two 
 months,tf but this is absolutely incredible 
 
 * Rymer, t. i., p. 839. 
 
 t Idem, t. iii., p. 458, 647, 678, et infra. See too 
 the ordinances of the staple, in 27 Edw. III., which 
 confirm this among other privileges, and contain 
 manifold evidence of the regard paid to commerce 
 in that reign. 
 
 t Rymer, t. ii., p. 891. Madox, Hist. Exche- 
 quer, c. xxii., s. 7. 
 
 In the remarkable speech of the Doge Moceni- 
 go, quoted in another place, p. 177, the annual 
 profit made by Venice on her mercantile capital is 
 reckoned at forty per cent. 
 
 II Muratori, Dissert. 16. 
 
 IT Bizarri Hist. Genuens, p. 797. The rate of dis- 
 count on bills, which may not have exactly cor- 
 responded to the average annual interest of money, 
 was ten per cent, at Barcelona in 1435. Cap- 
 many, t. i., p. 209. 
 
 ** Du Cange, v. Usuia. ft Muratori, Diss. 16. 
 
484 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 as a general practice. This was nol 
 merely owing to scarcity of money, but 
 to the discouragement which a strange 
 prejudice opposed to one of the most use- 
 ful and legitimate branches of commerce 
 Usury, or lending money for profit, was 
 treated as a crime by the theologians of 
 the middle ages ; and though the super- 
 stition has been eradicated, some part of 
 the prejudice remains in our legislation. 
 Money This trade in money, and indeed 
 dealings of a great part of inland trade in 
 the Jews, general, had originally fallen to 
 the Jews, who were noted for their usury 
 so early as the sixth century.* For sev- 
 eral subsequent ages they continued to 
 employ their capital and industry to the 
 same advantage, with little molestation 
 from the clergy, who always tolerated 
 their avowed and national infidelity, and 
 often with some encouragement from 
 princes. In the twelfth century we find 
 them not only possessed of landed prop- 
 erty in Languedoc, and cultivating the 
 studies of medicine and Rabbinical liter- 
 ature in their own academy at Montpe- 
 lier, under the protection of the Count of 
 Toulouse, but invested with civil offices.! 
 Raymond Roger, viscount of Carcas- 
 sonne, directs a writ " to his bailiffs 
 Christian and Jewish.":}: It was one of 
 the conditions imposed by the church on 
 the Count of Toulouse, that he should al- 
 low no Jews to possess magistracy in his 
 dominions. In Spain they were placed 
 by some of the municipal laws on the 
 footing of Christians, with respect to the 
 composition for their lives, and seem in 
 no other European country to have been 
 so numerous or considerable. || The dili- 
 gence and expertness of this people in all 
 pecuniary dealings recommended them 
 to princes who were solicitous about the 
 improvement of their revenue. We find 
 an article in the general charter of priv- 
 ileges granted by Peter III. of Aragon, in 
 1283, that no Jew should hold the office 
 of a bayle or judge. And two kings of 
 Castile, Alonzo XL and Peter the Cruel, 
 incurred much odium by employing Jew- 
 ish ministers in their treasury. But, in 
 other parts of Europe, their condition 
 had, before that time, begun to change 
 for the worse ; partly from the fanatical 
 spirit of the crusades, which prompted 
 the populace to massacre, and partly 
 from the jealousy which their opulence 
 excited. Kings, in order to gain money 
 and popularity at once, abolished the 
 
 * Greg. Turon., 1. iv. 
 
 t Hist, de Languedoc, t. ii., p. 517 ; t. iii., p. 531. 
 t Id., t. iii., p. 121. t) Id., p. 163. 
 
 II Marina, Ensayo Historico-Critico, p. 143. 
 
 debts due to the children of Israel, ex- 
 cept a part which they retained as the 
 price of their bounty. One is at a loss 
 to conceive the process of reasoning in 
 an ordinance of St. Louis, where, " for 
 the salvation of his own soul and those 
 of his ancestors, he releases to all Chris- 
 tians a third part of what was owing 
 by them to Jews."* Not content with 
 such edicts, the kings of France some- 
 times banished the whole nation from 
 their dominions, seizing their effects at 
 the same time ; and a season of alterna- 
 tive severity and toleration continued till 
 under Charles VI. they were finally ex- 
 pelled from the kingdom, where they 
 never afterward possessed any legal set- 
 tlement, f In England they were not so 
 harshly treated; but they became less 
 remarkable for riches after the thirteenth 
 century. This decline of the Jews was 
 owing to the transference of their trade 
 in money to other hands. In the early 
 part of the thirteenth century the mer- 
 chants of Lombardy and of the south of 
 France^ took up the business of remit- 
 ting money by bills of exchange,^ and 
 of making profit upon loans. The utility 
 of this was found so great, especially by 
 the Italian clergy, who thus in an easy 
 manner drew the income of their trans- 
 alpine benefices, that, in spite of much 
 obloquy, the Lombard usurers established 
 themselves in every country; and the 
 general progress of commerce wore off 
 the bigotry that had obstructed their 
 reception. A distinction was made be- 
 tween moderate and exorbitant interest ; 
 and though the casuists did not acquiesce 
 
 * Martenue, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i., p. 
 984. 
 
 t Velly, t. iv., p, 136. 
 
 J The city of Cahors, in Quercy, the modern 
 department of the Lot, produced a tribe of money- 
 dealers. The Caursini are almost as often noticed 
 as the Lombards. See the article in Du Cange. 
 In Lombardy, Asti, a city of no great note in other 
 respects, was famous for the same department of 
 commerce. 
 
 There were three species of paper credit in 
 the dealings of merchants : 1. General letters of 
 credit, not directed to any one, which are not un- 
 common in the Levant ; 2. Orders to pay money 
 ;o a particular person ; 3. Bills of exchange regu- 
 .arly negotiable. Boucher, t. ii., p. 621. Instances 
 >f the first are mentioned by Macpherson about 
 1200, p. 367. The second species was introduced 
 jy the Jews about 1183 (Capmany, t. i., p. 297), 
 Kit it may be doubtful whether the last stage of 
 the progress was reached nearly so soon. An in- 
 strument in Rymer, however, of the year 1364 (t. 
 vi., p. 495), mentions litene cambitoriae, which seem 
 to have been negotiable bills; and by 1400 they 
 were drawn in sets, and worded exactly as at 
 present. Macpherson, p. 614, and Beckman, His- 
 tory of Inventions, vol. iii., p. 430, give from Cap- 
 many an actual precedent of a bill dated in 1404. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 in this legal regulation, yet it satisfied, 
 even in superstitious times, the conscien- 
 ces of provident traders.* The Italian 
 bankers were frequently allowed to farm 
 the customs in England, as a security, 
 perhaps, for loans which were not very 
 punctually repaid. f In 1345, the Bardi 
 at Florence, the greatest company in 
 Italy, became bankrupt, Edward III. 
 owing them in principal and interest. 
 900,000 gold florins. Another, the Pe- 
 ruzzi, failed at the same time, being 
 creditors to Edward for 600,000 florins. 
 The King of Sicily owed 100,000 florins 
 to each of these bankers. Their failure 
 involved, of course, a multitude of Flor- 
 entine citizens, and was a heavy misfor- 
 tune to the state. | 
 
 The earliest bank of deposite, institu- 
 Banks of te ^ f r tne accommodation of pri- 
 Genoaand vate merchants, is said to have 
 others. been that of Barcelona, in 1401. 
 The banks of Venice and Genoa were 
 of a different description. Although the 
 former of these two has the advantage 
 of greater antiquity, having been formed, 
 as we are told, in the twelfth century, 
 yet its early history is not so clear as 
 that of Genoa, nor its political impor- 
 tance so remarkable, however similar 
 might be its origin. || During the wars 
 of Genoa in the fourteenth century, she 
 had borrowed large sums of private citi- 
 
 * Usury was looked upon with horro'r bv our 
 English divines long after the reformation. Fleury, 
 in his Institutions au Droit Ecclesiastique, t. ii., p. 
 129, has shown the subterfuges to which men had 
 recourse in order to evade this prohibition. It is 
 an unhappy truth, that great part of the attention 
 devoted to the best of sciences, ethics and juris- 
 prudence, has been employed to weaken principles 
 that ought never to have been acknowledged. 
 
 One species of usury, and that of the highest im- 
 portance to commerce, was always permitted, on 
 account of the risk that attended it. This was 
 marine ensurance, which could not have existed 
 until money was considered in itself as a source 
 of profit. The earliest regulations on the subject 
 of ensurance are those of Barcelona in 1433 ; but 
 the practice was, of course, earlier than these, 
 though not of great antiquity. It is not mentioned 
 in the Consolato del Mare, nor in any of the Han- 
 seatic laws of the fourteenth century. Beckman, 
 vol. i., p. 388. This author, not being aware of the 
 Barcelonese laws on this subject published by 
 Capmany, supposes the first provisions regulating 
 marine assurance to have been made at Florence 
 in 1523. 
 
 t Macpherson, p. 487, et alibi. They had prob- 
 ably excellent bargains : in 1329 the Bardi farmed 
 all the customs in England for 201. a day. But, 
 in 1282, the customs had produced 841 U., and half 
 a century of great improvement had elapsed. 
 
 t Villani, 1. xii., c. 55, 87. He calls these two 
 banking-houses the pillars which sustained great 
 part of the commerce of Christendom. 
 
 Capmany, t. i., p. 213. 
 
 II Macpherson, p. 341, from Sanuto. The bank 
 of Venice is referred to 1171. 
 
 zens, to whom the revenues were pledged 
 for repayment. The republic of Florence 
 had set a recent, though not a very en- 
 couraging example of a public loan, to 
 I defray the expense of her war against 
 Mastino della Scala, in 1336. The chief 
 mercantile firms, as well as individual 
 citizens, furnished money on an assign- 
 ment of the taxes, receiving fifteen per 
 cent, interest ; which appears to have 
 been above the rate of private usury.* 
 The slate was not unreasonably consid- 
 ered a worse debtor than some of her 
 citizens ; for in a few years these loans 
 were consolidated into a general fund, or 
 monte, with some deduction from the cap- 
 ital, and a great diminution of interest ; 
 so that an original debt of one hundred 
 florins sold only for twenty-five.f But 
 I have not found that these creditors 
 formed at Florence a corporate body, or 
 took any part, as such, in the affairs of 
 the republic. The case was different at 
 Genoa. As a security at least for their 
 interest, the subscribers to public loans 
 were permitted to receive the produce 
 of the taxes by their own collectors, 
 paying the excess into the treasury. 
 The number and distinct classes of these 
 subscribers becoming at length inconve- 
 nient, they were formed about the year 
 1407 into a single corporation, called the 
 Bank of St. George, which was from 
 that time the sole national creditor and 
 mortgagee. The government of this was 
 intrusted to eight protectors. It soon 
 became almost independent of the state. 
 Every senator, on his admission, swore 
 to maintain the privileges of the bank, 
 which were confirmed by the pope, and 
 even by the emperor. The bank inter- 
 posed its advice in every measure of 
 government, and generally, as is admit- 
 ted, to the public advantage. It equip- 
 ped armaments at its own expense, one 
 of which subdued the Island of Corsica ; 
 and this acquisition, like those of our 
 great Indian corporation, was long sub- 
 ject to a company of merchants, without 
 any interference of the mother country. J 
 The increasing wealth of Europe, 
 whether derived from internal i ncr ease of 
 improvement or foreign com- domestic ex- 
 merce, displayed itself in more P enditure - 
 expensive consumption, and greater re- 
 finements of domestic life. But these 
 effects were for a long time very grad- 
 ual, each .generation making a few steps 
 
 * G. Villani, 1. xi., c. 49. 
 
 t Matt. Villani, p. 227 (in Muratori, Script. Rer. 
 Ital., t. xiv.). 
 
 BizarriHist. Genuens., p. 797 (Antwerp. 1579). 
 Machiavelli, Storia Fiorentina, I. viii. 
 
486 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 (CHAP. IX. 
 
 in the progress, which are hardly discern- 
 ible except by an attentive inquirer. It 
 is not till the latter half of the thirteenth 
 century that an accelerated impulse ap- 
 pears to be given to society. The just 
 government and suppression of disorder 
 under St. Louis, and the peaceful temper 
 of his brother Alfonzo, count of Toulouse 
 and Poitou, gave France leisure to avail 
 herself of her admirable fertility. Eng- 
 land, that to a soil not perhaps inferior 
 to that of France, united the inestimable 
 advantage of an insular position, and was 
 invigorated, above all, by her free consti- 
 tution, and the steady industriousness of 
 her people, rose with a pretty uniform 
 motion from the time of Edward I. It- 
 aly, though the better days of freedom 
 had passed away in most of her repub- 
 lics, made a rapid transition from simpli- 
 city to refinement. "In those times," 
 says a writer about the year 1300, speak- 
 ing of the age of Frederick II., "the 
 manners of the Italians were rude. A 
 man and his wife ate off the same plate. 
 There was no wooden-handled knives, 
 nor more than one or two drinking-cups 
 in the house. Candles of wax or tallow 
 were unknown : a servant held a torch 
 during supper. The clothes of men 
 were of leather imlined : scarcely any 
 gold or silver was seen on their dress. 
 The common people ate flesh but three 
 times a week, and kept their cold meat 
 for supper. Many did not drink wine in 
 summer. A small stock of corn seemed 
 riches. The portions of women were 
 small ; their dress, even after marriage, 
 was simple. The pride of men' was to 
 be well provided with arms and horses ; 
 that of the nobility to have lofty towers, 
 of which all the cities in Italy were full. 
 But now frugality has been changed for 
 sumptuousness ; every thing exquisite is 
 sought after in dress : gold, silver, pearls, 
 silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and 
 rich meats are required. Hence usury, 
 rapine, fraud, tyranny,"* &c. This pas- 
 sage is supported by other testimonies 
 nearly of the same time. The conquest 
 of Naples by Charles of Anjou, in 1266, 
 
 * Ricobaldus Ferrarensis, apud Murat., Dissert. 
 23. Francisc. Pippinus, ibidem. Muratori en- 
 deavours to extenuate the authority of this passage, 
 on account of some more ancient writers who com- 
 plain of the luxury of their times, and of some par- 
 ticular instances of magnificence and expense. But 
 Ricobaldi alludes, as Muratori himself admits, to the 
 mode of living in the middle ranks, and not to that 
 of courts, which in all ages might occasionally dis- 
 play considerable splendour. I see nothing to 
 weaken so explicit a testimony of a contemporary, 
 which in fact is confirmed by many writers of the 
 next age, who, according to the practice of Italian 
 chroniclers, have copied it as their own. 
 
 seems to have been the epoch of increas- 
 ing luxury throughout Italy. His Pro- 
 vencal knights with their plumed helmets 
 and golden collars, the chariot of his 
 queen covered with blue velvet, and 
 sprinkled with lilies of gold, astonished 
 the citizens of Naples.* Provence had 
 enjoyed a long tranquillity, the natural 
 source of luxurious magnificence ; and 
 Italy, now liberated from the yoke of the 
 empire, soon reaped the same fruit of a 
 condition more easy and peaceful than 
 had been her lot for several ages. Dante 
 speaks of the change of manners at Flor- 
 ence, from simplicity and virtue to re- 
 finement and dissoluteness, in terms very 
 nearly similar to those quoted above. f 
 
 Throughout the fourteenth century, 
 there continued to be a rapid but steady 
 progression in England, of what we may 
 denominate elegance, improvement, or 
 luxury ; and if this was for a time sus- 
 pended in France, it must be ascribed to 
 the unusual calamities which befell that 
 country under Philip of Valois and his 
 son. Just before the breaking out of the 
 English wars, an excessive fondness for 
 dress is said to have distinguished not 
 only the higher ranks, but the burghers, 
 whose foolish emulation at least indicates 
 their easy circumstances. ! Modes of 
 dress hardly perhaps deserve our notice 
 on their own account ; yet, so far as their 
 univer-salprevalence was a symptom of 
 diffused wealth, we should not overlook 
 either the invectives bestowed by the 
 clergy on the fantastic extravagances of 
 fashion, or the sumptuary laws by which 
 it was endeavoured to restrain them. 
 
 -The principle of sumptuary laws was 
 partly derived from the small sumptuary 
 republics of antiquity, which laws - 
 might perhaps require that security for 
 public spirit and equal rights ; partly 
 from the austere and injudicious theory 
 
 * Murat., Dissert. 23. 
 f Bellincion Berti vid' io andar cinto 
 Di cuojo e d'osso, e venir dallo specchio 
 La donna sua senza '1 viso dipinto. 
 E vidi quel di Nerli, e quel del Vecchio 
 Esser contenti alia pelle scoverta, 
 E sue donne al fuso ed al pennechio. 
 
 Paradis., canto xv. 
 
 See too the rest of this canto. But this is put 
 in the mouth of Cacciaguida, the poet's ancestor, 
 who lived in the former half of the twelfth century. 
 The change, however, was probably subsequent to 
 1250, when the times of wealth and turbulence be- 
 gan at Florence. 
 
 t Velly, t. viii., p. 352. The second continuator 
 of Nangis vehemently inveighs against the long 
 beards and short breeches of his age ; after the in- 
 troduction of which novelties, he judiciously ob- 
 serves, the French were much more disposed to run 
 away from their enemies than before. Spicile- 
 gium, t. iii., p. 105. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 487 
 
 of religion disseminated by the clergy. 
 These prejudices united to render all in- 
 crease of general comforts odious under 
 the name of luxury ; and a third motive, 
 more powerful than either, the jealousy 
 with which the great regard any thing 
 like imitation in those beneath them, co- 
 operated to produce a sort of restrictive 
 code in the laws of Europe. Some of 
 these regulations are more ancient; but 
 the chief part were enacted, both in 
 France and England, during the four- 
 teenth century ; extending to expenses 
 of the table as well as apparel. The 
 first statute of this description in our own 
 country was, however, repealed the next 
 year ;* and subsequent provisions were 
 entirely disregarded by a nation which 
 valued liberty and commerce too much 
 to obey laws conceived in a spirit hostile 
 to both. Laws indeed designed by those 
 governments to restrain the extravagance 
 of their subjects, may well justify the se- 
 vere indignation which Adam Smith has 
 poured upon all such interference with 
 private expenditure. The kings of France 
 and England were undoubtedly more 
 egregious spendthrifts than any others 
 in their dominions ; and contributed far 
 more by their love of pageantry to excite 
 a taste for dissipation in their people, 
 than by their ordinances to repress it. 
 
 Mussus, an historian of Placentia, has 
 Domestic ^ e ^ a Pretty copious account of 
 manners the prevailing manners among 
 ontaiy. kjg countrymen about 1388, and 
 expressly contrasts their more luxurious 
 living with the style of their ancestors 
 seventy years before ; when, as we have 
 seen, they had already made considera- 
 ble steps towards refinement. This pas- 
 sage is highly interesting; because it 
 shows the regular tenour of domestic 
 economy in an Italian city, rather than 
 a mere display of individual magnifi- 
 cence, as in most of the facts collected 
 by our own and the French antiquaries. 
 But it is much too long for insertion in 
 this place. t No other country, perhaps, 
 could exhibit so fair a picture of middle 
 life : in France, the burghers and even 
 the inferior gentry were for the most part 
 
 * 37 E. III. Rep. 38 E. III. Several other 
 statutes of a similar nature were passed in this 
 and the ensuing reign. In France there were 
 sumptuary laws as old as Charlemagne, prohibiting 
 or taxing the use of furs ; but the first extensive 
 regulation was under Philip the Fair. Velly, t. 
 vii., p. 64; t. xi., p. 190. These attempts to re- 
 strain what cannot be restrained continued even 
 down to 1700. De la Mare, Traite de la Police, t. 
 i., 1. iii. 
 
 t Muratori, Antichita Italiane, Dissert. 23, t. i., 
 p. 325. 
 
 in a state of poverty at this period, which 
 they concealed by an affectation of orna- 
 ment ; while our English yeomanry and 
 tradesmen were more anxious to invigo- 
 rate their bodies by a generous diet, than 
 to dwell in well-furnished houses, or to 
 find comfort in cleanliness and elegance.* 
 The German cities, however, had acqui- 
 red with liberty the spirit of improvement 
 and industry. From the time that Henry 
 V. admitted their artisans to the privi- 
 leges of free burghers, they became more 
 and more prosperous ;f while the steadi- 
 ness and frugality of the German char- 
 acter compensated for some disadvanta- 
 fes arising out of their inland situation, 
 pire, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, and Augs- 
 burg, were not indeed like the rich mar- 
 kets of London and Bruges, nor could 
 their burghers rival the princely mer- 
 chants of Italy; but they enjoyed the 
 blessings of competence diffused over a 
 large class of industrious freemen:; and 
 in the fifteenth century, one of the poli- 
 test Italians -could extol their splendid 
 and well-furnished dwellings, their rich 
 apparel, their easy and affluent mode of 
 living, the security of their rights, and just 
 equality of their laws.J 
 
 * These English, said the Spaniards who came 
 over with Philip II., have their houses made of 
 sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as 
 the king. Harrison's Description of Britain, pre- 
 fixed to Holingshed, vol. i., p. 315 (edit. 1807). 
 
 t Pfeffel, t. i., p. 293. 
 
 J ^Eneas Sylvius, de Moribus Germanorum. 
 This treatise is an amplified panegyric upon Ger- 
 many, and contains several curious passages : they 
 must be taken perhaps with some allowance ; for 
 the drift of the whole is to persuade the Germans 
 that so rich and noble a country could afford a lit- 
 tle money for the poor pope. Civitates quas vocant 
 liberas, cum, Imperatori solum subjiciuntur, cujus 
 jugum est instar libertatis ; nee profecto usquam 
 gentium tanta libertas est, quanta fruuntur hujus- 
 cemodi civitates. Nam populi quos Itali vocant 
 liberos, hi potissimum serviunt, sive Venetias in- 
 spectes, sive Florentiam aut Caenas, in quibus ci- 
 ves, praeter paucos qui reliquos ducunt, loco man- 
 cipioruni habentur. Cum nee rebus suis uti, utli- 
 bet, vel fari quae velint, et gravissimis opprimuntur 
 pecuniarum exactionibus. Apud Germanos omnia 
 laeta sunt, omnia jucunda ; nemo suis privatur 
 bonis. Salva cutque sua hsereditas est, nulli nisi 
 nocenti magistratus nocent. Nee apud eos factio- 
 nes sicut apud Italas urbes grassantur. Sunt au- 
 tem supra centum civitates hac libertate fruentes, 
 p. J058. 
 
 In another part of his work p. 719, he gives a 
 specious account of Vienna. The houses, he says, 
 had glass windows and iron doors. Fenestrae un- 
 dique vitreae perlucent, et ostia plerumque ferrea. 
 In domibus multa et munda supellex. Altae domus 
 magnificsque visuntur. Unum id dedecori est, 
 quod tecta plerumque tigno contegunt, pauca la- 
 tere. Caetera aedificia muro lapideo consistent. 
 Pictae domus et exterius et interius splendent. Ci- 
 vitatis populus 50,000 communicantium creditur. I 
 suppose this gives at least double for the total pop- 
 ulation. He proceeds to represent the manners of 
 
488 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 No chapter in the history of national 
 manners would illustrate so well, if duly 
 executed, the progress of social life, as 
 civil archi- that dedicated to domestic archi- 
 tecture, tecture. The fashions of dress 
 and of amusements are generally capri- 
 cious and irreducible to rule ; but every 
 change in the dwellings of mankind, from 
 *the rudest wooden cabin to the stately 
 mansion, has been dictated by some prin- 
 ciple of convenience, neatness, comfort, 
 or magnificence. Yet this most interest- 
 ing field of research has been less beaten 
 by our antiquaries than others compar- 
 atively barren. I do not pretend to a 
 complete knowledge of what has been 
 written by these learned inquirers ; but I 
 can only name one book in which the 
 civil architecture of our ancestors had 
 been sketched, loosely indeed, but with 
 a superior hand ; and another in which it 
 is partially noticed. I mean by the first, 
 a chapter in the Appendix to Dr. Whit- 
 aker's History of Whalley ; and by the 
 second, Mr. King's Essays on ancient 
 Castles in the Archaeologia.* Of these 
 I shall make free use in the following 
 paragraphs. 
 
 The most ancient buildings which we 
 can trace in this island, after the depar- 
 ture of the Romans, were circular tow- 
 ers of no great size, whereof many re- 
 main in Scotland ; erected either on a 
 natural eminence, or on an artificial 
 mound of earth. Such are Conisborough 
 Castle in Yorkshire, and Castleton in 
 Derbyshire, built perhaps before the con- 
 quest, f To the lower chambers of those 
 gloomy keeps there was no admission of 
 light or air, except through long narrow 
 loopholes and an aperture in the roof. 
 Regular windows were made in the upper 
 
 the city in a less favourable point of view, charging 
 the citizens with gluttony and libertinism, the no- 
 bility with oppression, the judges with corruption, 
 &c. Vienna probably had the vices of a flourishing 
 city ; but the love of amplification in so rhetorical 
 a writer as JEneas Sylvius weakens the value of 
 his testimony, on whichever side it is given. 
 
 * Vols. iv. and vi. 
 
 t Mr. Lysons refers Castleton to the age of Will- 
 iam the Conqueror, but without giving any reasons. 
 Lysons's Derbyshire, p. ccxxxvi. Mr. King had 
 satisfied himself that it was built during the Hep- 
 tarchy, and even before the conversion of the Sax- 
 ons to Christianity ; but in this he gave the reins, 
 as usual, to his imagination, which as much ex- 
 ceeded his learning as the latter did his judgment. 
 Conisborough should seem, by the name, to have 
 been a royal residence, which it certainly never 
 was after the conquest. But if the engravings of 
 the decorative parts in Archaeologia, vol. vi., p. 244, 
 are not remarkably inaccurate, the architecture is 
 too elegant for the Danes, much more for the un- 
 converted Saxons, Both these castles are enclo- 
 sed by a court or ballium, with a fortified entrance, 
 like those erected by the Normans. 
 
 apartments. Were it not for the vast 
 thickness of the walls, and some marks 
 of attention both to convenience and dec- 
 oration in these structures, we might be 
 induced to consider them as rather in- 
 tended for security during the transient 
 inroad of an enemy, than for a chieftain's 
 usual residence. They bear a close re- 
 semblance, except by their circular form 
 and more insulated situation, to the peels, 
 or square towers of three or four sto- 
 ries, which are still found contiguous to 
 ancient mansion-houses, themselves far 
 more ancient, in the northern counties,* 
 and seem to have been designed for 
 places of refuge. 
 
 In course of time, the barons who 
 owned these castles began to covet a 
 more comfortable dwelling. The keep 
 was either much enlarged, or altogether 
 relinquished as a place of residence, ex- 
 cept in time of siege ; while more conve- 
 nient apartments were sometimes erect- 
 ed in the tower of entrance, over the 
 great gateway, which led to the inner 
 ballium or courtyard. Thus at Tun- 
 bridge Castle, this part of which is refer- 
 red by Mr. King to the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century, there was a room 
 twenty-eight feet by sixteen on each 
 side of the gateway ; another above, of 
 the same dimensions, with an interme- 
 diate room over the entrance ; and one 
 large apartment on a second floor occu- 
 pying the whole space, and intended for 
 state. The windows in this class of cas- 
 tles were still little better than loopholes 
 on the basement story, but in the upper 
 rooms often large and beautifully orna- 
 mented, though always looking inwards 
 to the court. Edward I. introduced a 
 more splendid and convenient style of 
 castles, containing many habitable tow- 
 ers, with communicating apartments. 
 Conway and Carnarvon will be familiar 
 examples. The next innovation was the 
 castle-palace ; of which Windsor, if not 
 quite the earliest, is the most magnificent 
 instance. Alnwick, Naworth, Harewood, 
 Spofforth, Kenilworth, and Warwick, 
 were all built upon this scheme during 
 the fourteenth century, but subsequent 
 enlargements have rendered caution ne- 
 cessary to distinguish their original re- 
 mains. "The odd mixture," says Mr. 
 King, " of convenience and magnificence 
 with cautious designs for protection and 
 defence, and with the inconveniences of 
 the former confined plan of a close for- 
 tress, is very striking." The provisions 
 for defence became now, however, little 
 
 * Whitaker's Hist, of Whalley. Lysons's Cum- 
 berland, p. ccvi. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 489 
 
 more than nugatory; large arched win- 
 dows, like those of cathedrals, were in- 
 troduced into halls, arid this change in ar- 
 chitecture manifestly bears witness to 
 the cessation of baronial wars, and the 
 increasing love of splendour in the reign 
 of Edward III. 
 
 To these succeeded the castellated 
 houses of the fifteenth century ; such as 
 Herstmonceux in Sussex, Haddon Hall 
 in Derbyshire, and the older part of 
 Knowle in Kent.* They resembled for- 
 tified castles in their strong gateways, 
 their turrets and battlements, to erect 
 which a royal license was necessary, but 
 their defensive strength could only have 
 availed against a sudden affray or attempt 
 at forcible dispossession. They were al- 
 ways built round one or two courtyards, 
 the circumference of the first, when there 
 were two, being occupied by the offices 
 and servants' rooms, that of the second 
 by the state-apartments. Regular quad- 
 rangular houses, not castellated, were 
 sometimes built during the same age, and 
 under Henry VII. became universal in 
 the superior style of domestic architec- 
 ture.! The quadrangular form, as well 
 from security and convenience as from 
 imitation of conventual houses, which 
 were always constructed upon that mod- 
 el, was generally preferred ; even where 
 the dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, 
 only took up one side of the enclosure, 
 and the remaining three contained the 
 offices, stables, and farm-buildings, with 
 walls of communication. Several very old 
 parsonages appear to have been built in 
 this manner.;}; It is, however, very diffi- 
 cult to discover any fragments of nouses 
 inhabited by the gentry before the reign, 
 at soonest, of Edward III., or even to 
 trace them by engravings in the older to- 
 pographical works ; not only from the di- 
 lapidations of time, but because very few 
 considerable mansions had been erected 
 by that class. A great part of England 
 affords no stone fit for building ; and the 
 vast, though unfortunately not inexhaust- 
 ible resources of her oak forests, were 
 easily applied to less durable and magnif- 
 icent structures. A frame of massive 
 timber, independent of walls, and resem- 
 bling the inverted hull of a large ship, 
 formed the skeleton, as it were, of an an- 
 cient hall; the principal beams springing 
 from the ground naturally curved, and 
 
 * The ruins of Herstmonceux are, I believe, 
 tolerably authentic remains of Henry VI.'s age, 
 but a modern antiquary asserts that only one of 
 the courts at Haddon Hall is of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. Lysons's Derbyshire. 
 
 t Archaeologia, vol. vi. 
 
 t Blomefield's Norfolk, voL iii., p. 242. 
 
 forming a Gothic arch overhead. The 
 intervals of these were filled up with hor- 
 izontal planks ; but in the earlier build- 
 ings, at least in some districts, no part 
 of the walls was of stone.* Stone 
 houses are however mentioned as be- 
 longing to citizens of London, even in 
 the reign of Henry II. ;f and, though not 
 often perhaps regularly hewn stones, yet 
 those scattered over the soil, or dug 
 from flint quarries, bound together with 
 a very strong and durable cement, were 
 employed in the construction of manorial 
 houses, especially in the western coun- 
 ties, and other parts where that material 
 is easily procured.^ Gradually, even in 
 timber buildings, the intervals of the 
 main beams, which now became perpen- 
 dicular, not throwing off their curved 
 springers till they reached a considerable 
 height, were occupied by stone walls, or, 
 where stone was expensive, by mortar 
 or plaster, intersected by horizontal or 
 diagonal beams, grooved into the princi- 
 pal piers. This mode of building con- 
 tinued for a long time, and is still famil- 
 iar to our eyes in the older streets of the 
 metropolis and other towns, and in many 
 parts of the country. || Early in the four- 
 teenth century, the art of building with 
 brick, which had been lost since the Ro- 
 man dominion, was introduced, probably 
 from Flanders. Though several edifices 
 of that age are constructed with this ma- 
 terial, it did not come into general use 
 till the reign of Henry VI. Tf Many con- 
 siderable houses as well as public build- 
 ings were erected with bricks during his 
 reign and that of Edward IV., chiefly in 
 the eastern counties, where the deficien- 
 cy of stone was most experienced. Few, 
 if any, brick mansion-houses of the fif- 
 teenth century exist, except in a dilapi- 
 dated state; but Queen's College and 
 Clare Hall at Cambridge, and part of 
 Eton College, are subsisting witnesses to 
 the durability of the material as it was 
 then employed. 
 
 It is an error to suppose Mean nesBof 
 that the English gentry were ordinary 
 lodged in stately or even in 
 
 * Whitaker's Hist, of Whalley. 
 
 f Lyttleton, t. iv., p. 130. 
 
 j Harrison says that few of the houses of the 
 commonalty, except here and there in the west 
 country towns, were made of stone, p. 314. This 
 was about 1570. Hist, of Whalley. 
 
 !! The ancient man ours and houses of our gen- 
 tlemen, says Harrison, are yet, and for the most 
 part, of strong timber, in framing whereof our car- 
 penters have been and are worthily preferred be- 
 fore those of like science among all other nations. 
 Howbeit such as are lately builded are either of 
 brick or bard stone, or both, p. 316. 
 
 T Archaeologia, vol. i., p. 143 ; vol. iv., p. 91. 
 
490 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CftAfr. IX. 
 
 well-sized houses. Generally speaking, 
 their dwellings were almost as inferi- 
 or to those of their descendants in 
 capacity as they were in convenience. 
 The usual arrangement consisted of an 
 entrance-passage running through the 
 house, with a hall on one side, a parlour 
 beyond, and one or two chambers above, 
 and on the opposite side a kitchen, pan- 
 try, and other offices.* Such was the 
 ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries, as appears not 
 only from the documents and engravings, 
 but, as to the latter period, from the build- 
 ings themselves, sometimes, though not 
 very frequently, occupied by families 
 of consideration, more often converted 
 into farmhouses or distinct tenements. 
 Larger structures were erected by men 
 of great estates during the reigns of 
 Henry VI. and Edward IV. ; but very 
 few can be traced higher ; and such has 
 been the effect of time, still more througli 
 the advance or decline of families, and 
 the progress of architectural improve- 
 ment, than the natural decay of these 
 buildings, that I should conceive it diffi- 
 cult to name a house in England, still in- 
 habited by a gentleman, and not belong- 
 ing to the order of castles, the principal 
 apartments of which are older than the 
 reign of Henry VII. The instances at 
 least must be extremely few.f 
 
 France by no means appears to have 
 made a greater progress than our own 
 country in domestic architecture. Except 
 fortified castles, I do not find in the work 
 of a very miscellaneous, but apparently 
 
 * Hist, of Whalley. In Strati's View of Man- 
 ners we have an inventory of furniture in the 
 house of Mr. Richard Fermor, ancestor of the Earl 
 of Pomfret, at Easton, in Northamptonshire, and 
 another in that of Sir Adrian Foskewe. Both 
 these houses appear to have been of the dimen- 
 sions and arrangement mentioned. And even in 
 houses of a more ample extent, the bisection of 
 the ground-plot by an entrance-passage was, I be- 
 lieve, universal, and is a proof of antiquity. Had- 
 don Hall and Penshurst still display this ancient 
 arrangement, which has been altered in some old 
 houses. About the reign of James I., or perhaps a 
 little sooner, architects began to perceive the ad- 
 ditional grandeur of entering the great hall at 
 once. 
 
 t Single rooms, windows, doorways, &c., of an 
 earlier date may perhaps not unfrequently be 
 found ; but such instances are always to be verified 
 by their intrinsic evidence, not by the tradition of 
 the place. The most remarkable fragment of early 
 building which I have anywhere found mentioned 
 is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton, where 
 there exists a sort of prodigy, an entrance-passage 
 with circular arches in the Saxon style, which 
 must probably be as old as the reign of Henry II. 
 No other private house in England, as I conceive, 
 can boast of such a monument of antiquity. Ly- 
 sons's Berkshire, p. 212, 234. 
 
 diligent writer,* any considerable dwell- 
 ings mentioned before the reign of 
 Charles VII., and very few of so early a 
 date.f Jacques Coeur, a famous mer- 
 chant, unjustly persecuted by that prince, 
 had a handsome house at Paris, as well 
 as another at Beaumont-sur-Oise.J It is 
 obvious that the long calamities which 
 France endured before the expulsion of 
 the English must have retarded this 
 eminent branch of national improve- 
 ment. 
 
 Even in Italy, where, from the size of 
 her cities and social refinements of her 
 inhabitants, greater elegance and splen- 
 dour in building were justly to be expect- 
 ed, the domestic architecture of the mid- 
 dle ages did not attain any perfection. 
 In several towns the houses were cover- 
 ed with thatch, and suffered consequent- 
 ly from destructive fires. Costanzo, a 
 Neapolitan historian near the end of the 
 sixteenth century, remarks the change 
 of manners that had occurred since the 
 reign of Joanna II., one hundred and 
 fifty years before. The great families 
 under the queen expended all their wealth 
 on their retainers, and placed their chief 
 pride in bringing them into the field. 
 They were ill lodged, not sumptuously 
 clothed, nor luxurious in their tables. 
 The house of Caracciola, high steward 
 of that princess, one of the most power- 
 ful subjects that ever existed, having 
 fallen into the hands of persons incom- 
 parably below his station, had been en- 
 larged by them, as insufficient for their 
 accommodation. If such were the case 
 in the city of Naples so late as the begin- 
 ning of the fifteenth century, we may 
 
 * Melanges tires d'une grande bibliotheque, par 
 M. de Paulmy, t. iii., et xxxi. It is to be regretted 
 that Le Grand d'Aussy never completed that part 
 of his Vie privee des Frangais which was to have 
 comprehended the history of civil architecture. 
 Villaret has slightly noticed its state about 1380, 
 t. ii., p. 141. 
 
 f Chenonceaux in Touraine was built by a 
 nephew of Chancellor Duprat ; Gaillon in the de- 
 partment of Eure by Cardinal Amboise ; both at 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century. These 
 are now considered, in their ruins, as among the 
 most ancient houses in France. A work by Du- 
 cerceau (Les plus excellens Batimens de France, 
 1607) gives accurate engravings of thirty houses ; 
 but, with one or two exceptions, they seem all to 
 have been built in the sixteenth century. Even in 
 that age, defence was naturally an object in con- 
 structing a French mansion-house ; and where de- 
 fence is to be regarded, splendour and convenience 
 must give way. The name of chateau was not 
 retained without meaning. 
 
 t Melanges tires, &c., t. iii. For the prosperity 
 and downfall of Jacques Coeur, see Villaret, t. xvi., 
 p. 11 ; but more especially Mem. de 1'Acad. des In- 
 script., t. xx., p. 509. 
 
 6 Giannone, 1st. di Napoli, t. iii., p. 280. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 401 
 
 guess how mean were the habitations i 
 less polished parts of Europe. 
 
 The two most essential improvement 
 invention of in architecture during this pe 
 chimneys nod, one of which had bee 
 and glass missed by the sagacity o 
 Greece and Rome, were chim 
 neys and glass windows. Nothing ap 
 parently can be more simple than th 
 former ; yet the wisdom of ancient time 
 had been content to let the smoke escap 
 by an aperture in the centre of the roof 
 and a discovery, of which Vitruvius ha< 
 not a glimpse, was made perhaps in thi 
 country, by some forgotten semi-barbari 
 an. About the middle of the fourteenth 
 century the use of chimneys is distinctly 
 mentioned in England and in Italy ; bu 
 they are found in several of our castles 
 which bear a much older date.* This 
 country seems to have lost very early 
 the art of making glass, which was pre 
 served in France, whence artificers were 
 brought into England to furnish the win- 
 dows in some new churches during the 
 seventh century, f It is said that in the 
 reign of Henry III., a few ecclesiastical 
 buildings had glazed windows .J Suger, 
 however, a century before, had adorned 
 his great work, the abbey of St. Denis, 
 with windows, not only glazed, but paint- 
 ed $ and I presume that other churches 
 of the same class, both in France and 
 England, especially after the lancet- 
 shaped window had yielded to one of 
 
 * Muratori, Antich. Ital., Dissert. 25, p. 390. 
 Beckman, in his History of Inventions, vol. i., a 
 work of very great research, cannot trace any ex- 
 plicit mention of chimneys beyond the writings of 
 John Villani, wherein however they are not noticed 
 as a new invention. Piers Plowman, a few years 
 later than Villani, speaks of a " chambre with a 
 chimney" in which rich men usually dined. But 
 in the account-book of Bolton Abbey, under the 
 year 1311, there is a charge pro faciendo camino in 
 the rectory-house of Gargrave. Whitaker's Hist, 
 of Craven, p. 331. This may, I think, have been 
 only an iron stove or firepan ; though Dr. W., 
 without hesitation, translates it a chimney. How- 
 ever, Mr. King, in his observations on ancient cas- 
 tles, Archaeol.,vol. vi.,and Mr. Strutt, in his View 
 of Manners, vol. i., describes chimneys in castles 
 of a very old construction. That at Conisborough 
 in Yorkshire is peculiarly worthy of attention, and 
 carries back this important invention to a remote 
 antiquity. Chimneys are still more modern in 
 France ; and seem, according to Paulmy, to have 
 come into common use since the middle of the 
 seventeenth century. Jadis nos peres n'avoient 
 qu'un unique chauffoir, qui etoit commun a toute 
 une famille, et quelquefois a plusieurs, t. hi., p. 
 133. In another place, however, he says ; II parait 
 que les tuyaux de cheminees etaient deja tres en 
 usage en France, t. xxx., p. 232. 
 
 t Du Cange, v. Vitreae. Bentham's History of 
 Ely, p. 22. 
 
 : Matt. Paris. Vitae Abbatum St. Alb. 122. 
 
 $ Recueildes Hist., t. xii., p. 101. 
 
 ampler dimensions, were generally dec- 
 orated in a similar manner. Yet glass is 
 said not to have been employed in the 
 domestic architecture of France before 
 the fourteenth century;* and its intro- 
 duction into England was probably by no 
 means earlier. Nor indeed did it come 
 into general use during the period of the 
 middle ages. Glazed windows were con- 
 sidered as moveable furniture, and prob- 
 ably bore a high price. When the earls 
 of Northumberland, as late as the reign 
 of Elizabeth, left Ahvwick Castle, the 
 windows were taken out of their frames 
 and carefully laid by.f 
 
 But if the domestic buildings of the 
 fifteenth century would not seem Furniture 
 very spacious or convenient at f houses, 
 present, far less would this luxurious 
 generation be content with their internal 
 accommodations. A gentleman's house 
 ontaining three or four beds was extra- 
 ordinarily well provided; few probably 
 lad more than two. The walls were 
 commonly bare, without wainscot or even 
 plaster ; except that some great houses 
 were furnished with hangings, and that 
 perhaps hardly so soon as the reign of 
 Edward IV. It is unnecessary to add, 
 hat neither libraries of books nor pictures 
 could have found a place among furni- 
 ure. Silver plate was very rare, and 
 lardly used for the table. A few inven- 
 ;ories of furniture that still remain ex- 
 libit a miserable deficiency. | And this 
 vas incomparably greater in private gen- 
 lemen's houses than among citizens, and 
 especially foreign merchants. We have 
 in inventory of the goods belonging to 
 ^ontarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his 
 ouse in St. Botolph's Lane, A. D. 1481. 
 rhere appear to have been no less than 
 en beds, and glass windows are especi- 
 ,lly noticed as moveable furniture. No 
 nention however is made of chairs or 
 ooking-glasses. If we compare this 
 
 Paulmy, t. iii., p. 132. Villaret, t. xi., p. 141. 
 
 lacpherson, p. 679. 
 
 t Northumberland Household Book, preface, 
 , 16. Bishop Percy says, on the authority of Har- 
 son, that glass was not commonly used in the 
 
 eign of Henry VIII. 
 
 t See some curious valuations of furniture and 
 ock in trade at Colchester in 1296 and 1301. 
 den's Introduct. to State of the Poor, p. 20 and 
 
 5, from the rolls of parliament. A carpenter's 
 ock was valued at a shilling, and consisted of five 
 
 >ols. Other tradesmen were almost as poor ; but 
 tanner's stock, if there is no mistake, was worth 
 . 7s. 10d., more than ten times any other. Tanners 
 ere principal tradesmen, the chief part of dress 
 
 eing made of leather. A few silver cups and 
 
 poons are the only articles of plate ; and as the 
 rmer are valued but at one or two shillings, they 
 
 ad, I suppose, but a little silver on the rim. 
 9 Nicholi's Illustrations, p. 119. In this work, 
 
492 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 account, however trifling in our estima- 
 tion, with a similar inventory of furniture 
 in Skipton Castle, the great honour of the 
 earls of Cumberland, and among the most 
 splendid mansions of the north, not at 
 the same period, for I have not found any 
 ' inventory of a nobleman's furniture so 
 ancient, but in 1572, after almost a cen- 
 tury of continual improvement, we shall 
 be astonished at the inferior provision of 
 the baronial residence. There were not 
 more than seven or eight beds in this 
 great castle ; nor had any of the cham- 
 bers either chairs, glasses, or carpets.* 
 It is in this sense, probably, that we must 
 understand ^Eneas Sylvius, if he meant 
 any thing more than to express a travel- 
 ler's discontent, when he declares that 
 the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be 
 as well lodged as the second class of cit- 
 izens at Nuremberg.! Few burghers of 
 that town had mansions, I presume, equal 
 to the palaces of Dumferlin or Stirling, 
 but it is not unlikely that they were bet- 
 ter furnished. 
 In the construction of farmhouses and 
 
 among several interesting facts of the same class, 
 we have another inventory of the goods of " John 
 Port, late the king's servant," who died about 
 1524 ; he seems to have been a man of some con- 
 sideration, and probably a merchant. The house 
 consisted of a hall, parlour, buttery, and kitchen, 
 with two chambers, and one smaller, on the floor 
 above ; a napery, or linen room, and three garrets, 
 besides a shop, which was probably detached. 
 There were five bedsteads in the house, and on the 
 whole a great deal of furniture for those times ; 
 much more than I have seen in any other inven- 
 tory. His plate is valued at 94Z. ; his jewels at 
 231.; his funeral expenses come to 731. 6s. 8d., 
 p. 119. 
 
 * Whitaker's Hist, of Craven, p. 289. A better 
 notion of the accommodations usual in the rank 
 immediately below may be collected from two 
 inventories published by Strutt, one of Mr. Fer- 
 mor's house at Easton, the other Sir Adrian 
 Foskewe's. I have mentioned the size of these 
 gentlemen's houses already. In the former, the 
 parlour had wainscot, a table, and a few chairs ; 
 the chambers above had two best beds, and there 
 was one servant's bed ; but the inferior servants 
 had only mattresses on the floor. The best cham- 
 bers had window -shutters and curtains. Mr. Fer- 
 mor, being a merchant, was probably better sup- 
 plied than the neighbouring gentry. His plate, 
 however, consisted only of sixteen spoons, and a 
 few goblets and ale-pots. Sir Adrian Foskewe's 
 opulence appears to have been greater ; he had a 
 service of silver plate, and his parlour was fur- 
 nished with hangings. This was in 1539 ; it is not 
 * to be imagined that a knight of the shire a hundred 
 years before would have rivalled even this scanty 
 provision of moveables. Strutt's View of Man- 
 ners, vol. iii., p. 63. These details, trifling as they 
 may appear, are absolutely necessary in order to 
 give an idea with some precision of a state of na- 
 tional wealth so totally different from the present, 
 t Cuperent tarn egregie Scotorum reges quam 
 mediocresNurembergae civeshabitare. ^n. Sylv. 
 apud Schmidt, Hist, des Allem., t. v., p. 510. 
 
 cottages, especially the latter, Farm . 
 there have probably been fewer houses and 
 changes ; and those it would be cotta es - 
 more difficult to follow. No building of 
 this class can be supposed to exist of the 
 antiquity to which the present work is 
 confined; and I do not know that we 
 have any document as to the inferior 
 architecture of England, so valuable as 
 one which M. de Paulmy has quoted for 
 that of France, though perhaps more 
 strictly applicable to Italy, an illuminated 
 manuscript of the fourteenth century, 
 being a translation of Crescentio's work 
 on agriculture, illustrating the customs, 
 and, among other things, the habitations 
 of the agricultural class. According to 
 Paulmy, there is no other difference be- 
 tween an ancient and a modern farm- 
 house, than arises from the introduction 
 of tiled roofs.* In the original work of 
 Crescentio, a native of Bologna, who com- 
 posed this treatise on rural affairs about 
 the year 1300, an Italian farmhouse, 
 when built at least according to his plan, 
 appears to have been commodious both 
 in size and arrangement.! Cottages in 
 England seem to have generally consist- 
 ed of a single room, without division of 
 stories. Chimneys were unknown in 
 such dwellings till the early part of Eliz- 
 abeth's reign, when a very rapid and sen- 
 sible improvement took place in the com- 
 forts of our yeomanry and cottagers.J 
 
 It must be remembered, that I have in- 
 troduced this disadvantageous Ecciesias- 
 representation of civil architec- ticai archi- 
 ture as a proof of general pov- te 
 erty and backwardness in the refine- 
 ments of life. Considered in its higher 
 departments, that art is the principal 
 boast of the middle ages. The common 
 buildings, especially those of a public 
 kind, were constructed with skill and at- 
 tention to durability. The castellated 
 style displays these qualities in greater 
 perfection ; the means are well adapted 
 to their objects, and its imposing gran- 
 deur, though chiefly resulting no doubt 
 from massiveness and historical associa- 
 tion, sometimes indicates a degree of 
 
 * JEn. Sylv. apud Schmidt, Hist, des Allem., t. 
 iii., p. 127. 
 
 t Crescentius in Commodum Ruralium. (Lo- 
 vanise, absque anno.) This old edition contains 
 many coarse wooden cuts, possibly taken from the 
 illuminations which Paulmy found in his manu- 
 script. 
 
 t Harrison's account of England, prefixed to 
 Hollingshed's Chronicles. Chimneys were not 
 used in the farmhouses of Cheshire till within 
 forty years of the publication of King's Vale-royal 
 (1656); the fire was in the midst of the house, 
 against a hob of clay, and the oxen lived under the 
 same roof. Whitaker's Craven, p. 334. 
 
PART H.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 493 
 
 architectural genius in the conception. 
 But the most remarkable works of this 
 art are the religious edifices erected in 
 the twelfth and three following centuries. 
 These structures, uniting sublimity in 
 general composition with the beauties of 
 variety and form, intricacy of parts, skil- 
 ful or at least fortunate effects of shadow 
 and light, and in some instances with ex 
 traordinary mechanical science, are nat- 
 urally apt to lead those antiquaries who 
 are most conversant with them into too 
 partial estimates of the times wherein 
 they were founded. They certainly are 
 accustomed to behold the fairest side of 
 the picture. It was the favourite and 
 most honourable employment of eccle- 
 siastical wealth, to erect, to enlarge, to 
 repair, to decorate cathedral and con- 
 ventual churches. An immense capital 
 must have been expended upon these 
 buildings in England between the con- 
 quest and the reformation. And it is 
 pleasing to observe how the seeds of 
 genius, hidden as it were under the frost 
 of that dreary winter, began to bud to 
 the first sunshine of encouragement. In 
 the darkest period of the middle ages, 
 especially after the Scandinavian incur- 
 sions into France and England, ecclesi- 
 astical architecture, though always far 
 more advanced than any other art, be- 
 spoke the rudeness and poverty of the 
 times. It began towards the latter part 
 of the eleventh century, when tranquilli- 
 ty, at least as to former enemies, was re- 
 stored, and some degree of learning re- 
 appeared, to assume a more noble ap- 
 pearance. The Anglo-Norman cathe- 
 drals were perhaps as much distinguished 
 above other works of man in their own 
 age, as the more splendid edifices of a 
 later period. The science manifested in 
 them is not however very great; and 
 their style, though by no means destitute 
 of lesser beauties, is upon the whole an 
 awkward imitation of Roman architec- 
 ture, or perhaps more immediately of the 
 Saracenic buildings in Spain, and those 
 of the lower Greek empire.* But about 
 
 * The Saracenic architecture was once con- 
 ceived to have been the parent of the Gothic. But 
 the pointed arch does not occur, I believe, in any 
 Moorish buildings ; while the great mosque of Cor- 
 dova, built in the eighth century, resembles, ex- 
 cept by its superior beauty and magnificence, one 
 of our oldest cathedrals ; the nave of Glocester for 
 example, or Durham. Even the vaulting is simi- 
 lar, and seems to indicate some imitation, though 
 perhaps of a common model. Compare Archaso- 
 logia, vol. xvii., plate 1 and 2, with Murphy's Ara- 
 bian Antiquities, plate 5. The pillars indeed at 
 Cordova are of the Corinthian order, perfectly ex- 
 ecuted, if we may trust the engraving, and the 
 work, I presume, of Christian architects ; while 
 
 the middle of the twelfth century, this 
 manner began to give place to what is 
 improperly denominated the Gothic ar- 
 chitecture ;* of which the pointed arch, 
 formed by the segments of two inter- 
 secting semicircles, struck from points 
 equidistant from the centre of a common 
 diameter, has been deemed the essential 
 characteristic. We are not concerned at 
 present to inquire whether this style ori- 
 ginated in France or Germany, Italy or 
 England, since it was certainly almost 
 simultaneous in all these countries ;f nor 
 
 those of our Anglo-Norman cathedrals are gener- 
 ally an imitation of the Tuscan shaft, the builders 
 not venturing to trust their roofs to a more slender 
 support, though Corinthian foliage is common in 
 the capitals, especially those of smaller ornamen- 
 tal columns. In fact, the Roman architecture is 
 universally acknowledged to have produced what 
 we call the Saxon or Norman ; but it is remarka- 
 ble that it should have been adopted, with no varia- 
 tion but that of the singular horseshoe arch, by the 
 Moors of Spain. 
 
 The Gothic, or pointed arch, though very uncom- 
 mon in the genuine Saracenic of Spain and the 
 Levant, may be found in some prints from eastern 
 buildings ; and is particularly striking in the facade 
 of the great mosque at Lucknow, in Salt's designs 
 for Lord Valentia's Travels. The pointed arch 
 buildings in the Holy Land have all been traced to 
 the age of the crusades. Some arches, if they 
 deserve the name, that have been referred to 
 this class, are not pointed by their construction, 
 but rendered such by cutting off and hollowing the 
 projections of horizontal stones. 
 
 * Gibbon has asserted, what might justify this 
 appellation, that " the image of Theodoric's palace 
 at Verona, still extant on a coin, represents the 
 oldest and most authentic model of Gothic architec- 
 ture," vol. vii., p. 33. For this he refers to Maffei, 
 Verona Illustrata, p. 31, where we find an engra- 
 ving, not indeed of a coin, but of a seal ; the build- 
 ing represented on which is in a totally dissimilar 
 style. The following passages in Cassiodorus, for 
 which I am indebted to M. Ginguene, Hist. Litter, 
 de 1'Italie, t. i., p. 55, would be more to the pur- 
 pose ; Quid dicamus columnarum junceam proce- 
 ritatem? moles illassublimissimasfabricarum qua- 
 si quibusdam erectis hastilibus contineri. These 
 columns of reedy slenderness, so well described by 
 juncea proceritas, are said to be found in the cathe- 
 dral of Montreale in Sicily, built in the eighth cen- 
 tury. Knight's Principles of Taste, p. 162. They 
 are not however sufficient to justify the denom- 
 ination of Gothic, which is usually confined to the 
 pointed arch style. 
 
 t The famous abbot Suger, minister of Louis 
 VI., rebuilt St. Denis about 1140. The cathedral 
 of Laon is said to have been dedicated in 1114. 
 Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. ix., p. 220. I do 
 not know in what style the latter of these churches 
 is built, but the former is, or rather was, Gothic. 
 Notre Dame at Paris was begun soon after the mid- 
 dle of the twelfth century, and completed under 
 St. Louis. Melanges tires d'une grande bibliothe- 
 que, t. xxxi., p. 108. In England the earliest spe- 
 cimen I have seen of pointed arches is in a print of 
 St. Botolph's priory at Colchester, said by Strutt 
 to have been built in 1110. View of Manners, vol. 
 i., plate 30. These are apertures formed by exca- 
 vating the space contained by the intersection of 
 semicircular or Saxon arches ; which are perpet- 
 
494 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. 
 
 from what source it was derived ; a ques- 
 tion of no small difficulty. I would only 
 venture to remark, that whatever may be 
 thought of the origin of the pointed arch, 
 for which there is more than one mode 
 of accounting, we must perceive a very 
 oriental character in the vast profusion 
 of ornament, especially on the exterior 
 surface, which is as distinguishing a mark 
 of Gothic buildings as their arches, and 
 contributes in an eminent degree both to 
 their beauties and to their defects. This 
 indeed is rather applicable to the later 
 than the earlier stage of architecture, 
 and rather to continental than English 
 churches. Amiens is in a far more florid 
 style than Salisbury, though a contem- 
 porary structure. The Gothic species of 
 architecture is thought by some to have 
 reached its perfection, considered as an 
 object of taste, by the middle of the four- 
 teenth century, or at least to have lost 
 something of its excellence by the cor- 
 responding part of the next age ; an effect 
 of its early and rapid cultivation, since 
 arts appear to have, like individuals, their 
 natural 'progress and decay. Yet this 
 seems, if true at all, only applicable to 
 England; since the cathedrals of Co- 
 logne and Milan, perhaps the most distin- 
 guished monuments of this architecture, 
 are both of the fifteenth century. The 
 mechanical execution, at least, continued 
 to improve, and is so far beyond the ap- 
 parent intellectual powers of those times, 
 that some have ascribed the principal ec- 
 clesiastical structures to the fraternity of 
 freemasons, depositaries of a concealed 
 and traditionary science. There is proba- 
 bly some ground for this opinion; and 
 the earlier archives of that mysterious 
 association, if they existed, might illus- 
 trate the progress of Gothic architecture, 
 and perhaps reveal its origin. The re- 
 markable change into this new style, that 
 was almost contemporaneous in every 
 part of Europe,* cannot be explained by 
 
 ually disposed, by way of ornament, on the outer 
 as well as inner surface of old churches, so as to 
 cut each other, and consequently to produce the 
 figure of a Gothic arch ; and if there is no mistake 
 in the date, they are probably among the most an- 
 cient of that style in Europe. Those at the church 
 of St. Cross near Winchester are of the reign of 
 Stephen ; and, generally speaking, the pointed 
 style, especially in vaulting, the most important 
 object in the construction of a building, is not con- 
 sidered as older than Henry II. The nave of Can- 
 terbury cathedral, of the erection of which by a 
 French architect about 1176 we have a full ac- 
 count in Gervase (Twysden, Decem Scriptores, 
 col. 1289), and the Temple church, dedicated in 
 1183, are the most ancient English buildings alto- 
 gether in the Gothic manner. 
 
 * The curious subject of freemasonry has un- 
 
 any local circumstances, or the capri- 
 cious taste of a single nation. 
 
 It would be a pleasing task to trace 
 with satisfactory exactness the Agriculture 
 slow, and almost perhaps insen- income de- 
 sible progress of agriculture and g J!^JJ 
 internal improvement during the 
 latter period of the middle ages. But no 
 diligence could recover the unrecorded 
 history of a single village ; though consid- 
 erable attention has of late been paid to 
 this interesting subject by those antiqua- 
 ries who, though sometimes affecting to 
 despise the lights of modern philosophy, 
 are unconsciously guided by their efful- 
 gence. I have already adverted to the 
 wretched condition of agriculture during 
 the prevalence of feudal tenures, as well 
 as before their general establishment.* 
 Yet, even in the least civilized ages, there 
 were not wanting partial encouragements 
 
 fortunately been treated only by panegyrists or ca- 
 lumniators, both equally mendacious. I do not 
 wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft ; but it 
 would be interesting to know more of their history 
 during the period when they were literally archi- 
 tects. They are charged by an act. of parliament, 
 3 H. VI., c. 1, with fixing the price of their labour 
 in their annual chapters, contrary to the statute of 
 labourers, and such chapters are consequently pro- 
 hibited. This is their first persecution ; they have 
 since undergone others, and are perhaps reserved 
 for still more. It is remarkable that masons were 
 never legally incorporated, like other traders ; their 
 bond of union being stronger than any charter. 
 The article Masonry, in the Encyclopedia Britan- 
 nica, is worth reading. 
 
 * I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing a 
 lively and eloquent passage from Dr. Whitaker. 
 " Could a curious observer of the present day carry 
 himself nine or ten centuries back, and, ranging the 
 summit of Pendle, survey the forked vale of Cal- 
 deronone side, and the bolder margins ofRibbleand 
 Hadder on the other, instead of populous towns 
 and villages, the castle, the old tower-built house, 
 the elegant modern mansion, the artificial planta- 
 tion, the enclosed park and pleasure-ground : in- 
 stead of uninterrupted enclosures, which have driv- 
 en sterility almost to the summit of the fells, how 
 great must then have been the contrast, when, 
 ranging either at a distance or immediately be- 
 neath, his eye must have caught vast tracts of for- 
 est-ground, stagnating with bog or darkened by na- 
 tive woods, where the wild ox, the roe, -the stag, 
 and the wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy 
 of man, when, directing his view to the intermedi- 
 ate spaces, to the windings of the valleys, or the 
 expanse of plains beneath, he could only have dis- 
 tinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each 
 encircling a village of wretched cabins, among 
 which would still be remarked one rude mansion 
 of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern 
 cottage, yet then rising proudly eminent above the 
 rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his 
 faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary inde- 
 pendence, owning no superior but his sovereign." 
 Hist, of Whalley, p. 133. About a fourteenth part 
 of this parish of Whalley was cultivated at the 
 time of Domesday. This proportion, however, 
 would by no means hold in the counties south of 
 Trent. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 495 
 
 to cultivation, and the ameliorating prin 
 ciple of human industry struggled agains 
 destructive revolutions and barbarous dis 
 order. The devastation of war from th 
 fifth to the eleventh century rendered 
 land the least costly of all gifts, though 
 it must ever be the most truly valuabl 
 and permanent. Many of the grants to 
 monasteries, which strike us as enor 
 mous, were of districts absolutely wast 
 ed, which would probably have been re 
 claimed by no other means. We owe 
 the agricultural restoration of great par 
 of Europe to the monks. They chose 
 for the sake of retirement, secluded re- 
 gions, which they cultivated with the 
 labour of their hands.* Several char- 
 ters are extant, granted to convents 
 and sometimes to laymen, of lands which 
 they had recovered from a desert condi- 
 tion, after the ravages of the Saracens. f 
 Some districts were allotted to a body of 
 Spanish colonists, who emigrated, in the 
 reign of Louis the Debonair, in search of 
 a Christian sovereign. J Nor is this the 
 only instance of agricultural colonies. 
 Charlemagne transplanted part of his 
 conquered Saxons into Flanders, a coun- 
 try at that time almost unpeopled ; and, 
 at a much later period, there was a re- 
 markable reflux from the same country, 
 or rather from Holland, to the coasts of 
 the Baltic Sea. In the twelfth century, 
 great numbers of Dutch colonists settled 
 along the whole line between the Ems 
 and the Vistula. They obtained grants 
 of uncultivated land on condition of fixed 
 rents, and were governed by their own 
 laws under magistrates of their own elec- 
 tion. 
 
 * " Of the Anglo-Saxon husbandry we may re- 
 mark," says Mr. Turner, " that Domesday Survey 
 gives us some indication that the cultivation of the 
 church lands was much superior to that of any 
 other order of society. They have much less wood 
 upon them, and less common of pasture ; and what 
 they had appears often in smaller and more irregu- 
 lar pieces ; while their meadow was more abun- 
 dant, and in more numerous distributions." Hist, 
 of Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii., p. 167. 
 
 f Thus, in Marca Hispanica, Appendix, p. 770, 
 we have a grant from Lothaire I. in 834, to a per- 
 son and his brother, of lands which their father, ab 
 eremo in Septimania trahens, had possessed by a 
 charter of Charlemagne. See too p. 773, and 
 other places. Du Cange, v. Eremus, gives also a 
 few instances. 
 
 J Du Cange, v. Aprisio. Baluze, Capitularia, t. 
 i., p. 549. They were permitted to decide petty 
 suits among themselves, but for more important 
 matters were to repair to the county-court. A lib- 
 eral policy runs through the whole charter. See 
 more on the same subject, id., p. 569. 
 
 () I owe this fact to M. Heeren, Essai sur 1'Influ- 
 ence des Croisades, p. 220. An inundation in their 
 own country is supposed to have immediately pro- 
 duced this emigration; but it was probably sue- 
 
 There cannot be a more striking proof 
 of the low condition of English agricul- 
 ture in the eleventh century, than is ex- 
 hibited by Domesday book. Though al- 
 most all England had been partially cul- 
 tivated, and we find nearly the same ma- 
 nors, except in the north, which exist at 
 present, yet the value and extent of cul- 
 tivated ground are inconceivably small. 
 With every allowance for the inaccura- 
 cies and partialities of those by whom 
 that famous survey was completed,* we 
 are lost in amazement at the constant 
 recurrence of two or three carucates 
 in demesne, with folklands occupied by 
 ten or a dozen villeins, valued altogether 
 at forty shillings, as the return of a manor, 
 which now would yield a competent in- 
 come to a gentleman. If Domesday book 
 can be considered as even approaching to 
 accuracy in respect of these estimates, ag- 
 riculture must certainly have made a very 
 material progress in the four succeeding 
 centuries. This, however, is rendered 
 probable by other documents. Ingulfus, 
 abbot of Croyland under the Conqueror, 
 supplies an early and interesting evidence 
 of improvement. Richard de Rules, lord 
 of Deeping, he tells us, being fond of ag- 
 riculture, obtained permission from the 
 abbey to enclose a large portion of marsh 
 for the purpose of separate pasture, ex- 
 cluding the Welland by a strong dike, 
 upon which he erected a town, and ren- 
 dering those stagnant fens a garden of 
 Eden.f In imitation of this spirited cul- 
 tivator, the inhabitants of Spalding and 
 some neighbouring villages, by a com- 
 non resolution, divided their marshes 
 among them ; when some converting 
 hem to tillage, some reserving them for 
 meadow, others leaving them in pasture 
 "ound a rich soil for every purpose. The 
 
 :essive, and connected with political as well as 
 )hysical causes of greater permanence. The first 
 nstrument in which they are mentioned is a grant 
 rom the Bishop of Hamburgh in 1106. This colo- 
 ly has affected the local usages, as well as the de- 
 lominations of things and places along the north- 
 rn coast of Germany. It must be presumed that 
 large proportion of the emigrants were diverted 
 rom agriculture to people the commercial cities 
 which grew up in the twelfth century upon that 
 oast. 
 
 * Ingulfus tells us that the commissioners were 
 lious enough to favour Croyland, returning its 
 ossessions inaccurately, both as to measurement 
 nd value ; non ad verum pretium, nee ad verum 
 patium nostrum monasterium librabant miseri- 
 orditer, praecaventes in futurum regis exactioni- 
 ius, p. 79. I may just observe, by-the-way, that 
 ngulfus gives the plain meaning of the word 
 )omesday, which has been disputed. The book 
 was so called, he says, pro sua generalitate oinnia 
 enementa totius terrse integre continente ; that is, 
 was as general and conclusive as the last judg- 
 ment will be. f 1 Gale, xv. Script., p. 77. 
 
 
496 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 abbey of Croyland and villages in that 
 neighbourhood followed this example.* 
 This early instance of parochial enclosure 
 is not to be overlooked in the history of 
 social progress. By the statute of Mer- 
 ton, in the 20th of Henry III., the lord is 
 permitted to approve, that is, to enclose, 
 the waste lands of his manor, provided 
 he leave sufficient common or pasture for 
 the freeholders. Higden, a writer who 
 lived about the time of Richard II. , says, 
 in reference to the number of hydes and 
 vills of England at the conquest, that by 
 clearing of woods and ploughing up 
 wastes, there were many more of each 
 in his age than formerly.! And it might 
 be easily presumed, independently of 
 proof, that woods were cleared, marshes 
 drained, and wastes brought into tillage, 
 during the long period that the house of 
 Plantagenet sat on the throne. From 
 manorial surveys indeed, and similar in- 
 struments, it appears that in some places 
 there was nearly as much ground culti- 
 vated in the reign of Edward III. as at 
 the present day. The condition of dif- 
 ferent counties, however, was very far 
 from being alike, and in general the nor- 
 thern and western parts of England were 
 the most backward .{ 
 
 The culture of arable land was very 
 imperfect. Fleta remarks, in the reign 
 of Edward I. or II., that unless an acre 
 yielded more than six bushels of corn, 
 the farmer would be a loser and the land 
 yield no rent. And Sir John Cullum, 
 from very minute accounts, has calcula- 
 ted that nine or ten bushels were a full 
 average crop on an acre of wheat. An 
 amazing excess of tillage accompanied, 
 and partly, I suppose, produced this im- 
 perfect cultivation. In Hawsted, for ex- 
 ample, under Edward 1., there were thir- 
 teen or fourteen hundred acres of arable, 
 and only forty-five of meadow ground. 
 A similar disproportion occurs almost in- 
 variably in every account we possess. || 
 This seems inconsistent with the low 
 price of cattle. But we must recollect 
 that the common pasture, often the most 
 
 * Communi plebiscite viritim inter se diviserunt, 
 et quidam suas portiones agricolantes, quidam ad 
 fcenum conservantes, quidam ut prius ad pasturarn 
 suorum animalium separaliter jacere permittentes, 
 terrain pinguem et uberem repererunt, p. 94. 
 
 t 1 Gale, xv. Script., p. 201. 
 
 j A good deal of information upon the former 
 state of agriculture will be found in Cullum's His- 
 tory of Hawsted. Blomefield's Norfolk is in this 
 respect among the most valuable of our local his- 
 tories. Sir Frederick Eden, in the first part of his 
 excellent work on the poor, has collected several 
 interesting facts. <S L. ii., c. 8. 
 
 II Cullum, p. 100, 220. Eden's State of Poor, 
 &c., p. 48. Whitaker's Craven, p. 45, 336. 
 
 extensive part of a manor, is not inclu- 
 ded, at least by any specific measure- 
 ment, in these surveys. The rent of land 
 differed of course materially ; sixpence 
 an acre seems to have been about the 
 average for arable land in the thirteenth 
 century,* though meadow was at double 
 or treble that sum. But the landlords 
 were naturally solicitous to augment a 
 revenue that became more and more in- 
 adequate to their luxuries. They grew 
 attentive to agricultural concerns, and 
 perceived that a high rate of produce, 
 against which their less enlightened an- 
 cestors had been used to clamour, would 
 bring much more into their coffers than 
 it took away. The exportation of corn 
 had been absolutely prohibited. But the 
 statute of the 15th Henry VI., c. 2, reci- 
 ting that " on this account farmers, and 
 others who use husbandry, cannot sell 
 their corn but at a low price, to the great 
 damage of the realm," permits it to be 
 sent anywhere but to the king's enemies, 
 so long as the quarter of wheat shall not 
 exceed 6s. 8d. in value, or that of barley 
 85. The price of wool was fixed in the 
 thirty-second year of the same reign at a 
 minimum, below which no person was 
 suffered to buy it, though he might give 
 more ;f a provision neither wise nor equi- 
 table, but obviously suggested by the 
 same motive. Whether the rents of land 
 were augmented in any degree through 
 these measures, I have not perceived; 
 their great rise took place in the reign of 
 Henry VIII., or rather afterward. J The 
 usual price of land under Edward IV. 
 seems to have been ten years purchase. $ 
 It may easily be presumed that an Eng- 
 lish writer can furnish very lit- Its condition 
 tie information as to the state in France 
 of agriculture in foreign coun- and Italv - 
 tries. In such works relating to France 
 as have fallen within my reach, I have 
 found nothing satisfactory, and cannot 
 pretend to determine whether the natu- 
 ral tendency of mankind to ameliorate 
 their condition had a greater influence in 
 promoting agriculture, or the vices inhe- 
 rent in the actual order of society, and 
 
 * I infer this from a number of passages in 
 Blomefield, Cullum, and other writers. Hearne 
 says that an acre was often called Solidata terras ; 
 because the yearly rent of one on the best land was 
 a shilling. Lib. Nig. Scacc., p. 31. 
 
 t Rot. Parl., vol. v., p. 275. 
 
 i A passage in Bishop Latimer's sermons, too 
 often quoted to require repetition, shows that land 
 was much underlet about the end of the fifteenth 
 century. His father, he says, kept half a dozen 
 husbandmen, and milked thirty cows, on a farm of 
 three or four pounds a year. It is not surprising 
 that he lived as plentifully as his son describes. 
 
 $ Rymer, t. xii., p. 204. 
 
PART I!.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 497 
 
 those public misfortunes to which that 
 kingdom was exposed, in retarding it.* 
 The state of Italy was far different ; the 
 rich Lombard plains, still more fertili- 
 zed by irrigation, became a garden, and 
 agriculture seems to have reached the 
 excellence which it still retains. The 
 constant warfare indeed of neighbouring 
 cities is not very favourable to industry ; 
 and upon this account we might incline 
 to place the greatest territorial improve- 
 ment of Lombardy at an era rather poste- 
 rior to that of her republican government ; 
 but from this it primarily sprung; and 
 without the subjugation of the feudal ar- 
 istocracy, and that perpetual demand 
 upon the fertility of the earth which an 
 increasing population of citizens produ- 
 ced, the valley of the Po would not have 
 yielded more to human labour than it had 
 done for several preceding centuries. f 
 Though Lombardy was extremely popu- 
 lous in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
 turies, she exported large quantities of 
 corn. | The very curious treatise of Cres- 
 centius exhibits the full details of Italian 
 husbandry about 1300, and might afford 
 an interesting comparison to those who 
 are acquainted with its present state. 
 That state, indeed, in many parts of Italy, 
 displays no symptoms of decline. But 
 whatever mysterious influence of soil or 
 climate has scattered the seeds of death 
 on the western regions of Tuscany, had 
 not manifested itself in the middle ages. 
 Among uninhabitable plains, the travel- 
 ler is struck by the ruins of innumerable 
 castles and villages, monuments of a time 
 when pestilence was either unfelt, or had 
 at least not forbade the residence of man- 
 kind. Volterra, whose deserted walls 
 look down upon that tainted solitude, 
 was once a small but free republic ; Sie- 
 na, round whom, though less depopula- 
 ted, the malignant influence hovers, was 
 once almost the rival of Florence. So 
 melancholy and apparently irresistible a 
 decline of culture and population through 
 physical causes, as seems to have grad- 
 ually overspread a large portion of Italy, 
 has not perhaps been experienced in any 
 other part of Europe, unless we except 
 Iceland. 
 
 The Italians of the fourteenth century 
 seem to have paid some atten- 
 
 Gardening. . \. , . 
 
 tion to an art, of which, both as 
 related to cultivation and to architecture, 
 our own forefathers were almost entirely 
 
 * Velley and Villaret scarcely mention the sub- 
 ject ; and Le Grand merely tells us that it was en- 
 tirely neglected ; but the details of such an art 
 even in its state of neglect might be interesting. 
 
 t Muratori, Dissert. 21. J Denina, 1. xi., c. 7. 
 
 ignorant. Crescentius dilates upon hor- 
 ticulture, and gives a pretty long list of 
 herbs both esculent and medicinal.* His 
 notions about the ornamental department 
 are rather beyond what we should ex- 
 pect, and I do not know that his scheme 
 of a flower-garden could be much amend- 
 ed. His general arrangements, which 
 are minutely detailed with evident fond- 
 ness for the subject, would of course ap- 
 pear too formal at present ; yet less so 
 than those of subsequent times ; and 
 though acquainted with what is called 
 the topiary art, that of training or cutting 
 trees into regular figures, he does not 
 seem to run into its extravagance. Reg- 
 ular gardens, according to Paulmy, were 
 not made in France till the sixteenth or 
 even seventeenth century ;f yet one is 
 said to have existed at the Louvre, of 
 much older construction.! England, I 
 believe, had nothing of the ornamental 
 kind, unless it were some trees regularly 
 disposed in the orchard of a monastery. 
 Even the common horticultural art for 
 culinary purposes, though not entirely 
 neglected, since the produce of gardens 
 is sometimes mentioned in ancient deeds, 
 had not been cultivated with much at- 
 tention. The esculent vegetables now 
 most in use were introduced in the reign 
 of Elizabeth, and some sorts a great deal 
 later. 
 
 I should leave this slight survey of eco- 
 nomical history still more im- changes in 
 perfect, were I to make no ob- value of 
 servation on the relative values mone y- 
 of money. Without something like pre- 
 cision in our notions upon this subject, ev- 
 ery statistical inquiry becomes a source 
 of confusion and error. But consider- 
 able difficulties attend the discussion* 
 These arise principally from two causes ; 
 the inaccuracy or partial representations 
 of historical writers, on whom we are 
 accustomed too implicitly to rely, and 
 the change of manners, which renders a 
 certain command over articles of pur- 
 chase less adequate to our wants than it 
 was in former ages. 
 
 The first of these difficulties is capable 
 of being removed by a circumspect use 
 of authorities. When this part of statis- 
 tical history began to excite attention, 
 which was hardly perhaps before the pub- 
 lication of Bishop Fleetwood's Chronicon 
 Preciosum, so few authentic documents 
 riad been published with respect to prices, 
 that inquirers were glad to have recourse 
 
 * Denina, 1. vi. 
 
 t Idem, t. iii., p. 145 ; t. xxxi., p. 258. 
 
 j De la Mare, Trait6 de la Police, t. iii., p. 380. 
 
 <j Eden's State of Poor, vol. I, p. 51. 
 
498 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 to historians, even when not contempo 
 rary, for such facts as they had thought 
 fit to record. But these historians were 
 sometimes too distant from the times 
 concerning which they wrote, and too 
 careless in their general character, to 
 merit much regard ; and even when con- 
 temporary, were often credulous, remote 
 from the concerns of the world, and, at 
 the best, more apt to register some ex- 
 traordinary phenomenon of scarcity or 
 cheapness, than the average rate of pe- 
 cuniary dealings. The one ought, in my 
 opinion, to be absolutely rejected as tes- 
 timonies, the other to be sparingly and 
 diffidently admitted.* For it is no longer 
 necessary to lean upon such uncertain 
 witnesses. During the last century a 
 very laudable industry has been shown 
 by antiquaries in the publication of ac- 
 count-books belonging to private persons, 
 registers of expenses in convents, returns 
 of markets, valuations of goods, tavern- 
 bills, and, in short, every document, how- 
 ever trifling in itself, by which this im- 
 portant subject can be illustrated. A suf- 
 ficient number of such authorities, pro- 
 ving the ordinary tenour of prices, rather 
 than any remarkable deviations from it, 
 are the true basis of a table, by which all 
 changes in the value of money should be 
 measured. I have little doubt but that 
 such a table might be constructed from 
 the data we possess, with tolerable ex- 
 actness, sufficient at least to supersede 
 one often quoted by political economists, 
 but which appears to be founded upon 
 
 * Sir F. Eden, whose table of prices, though 
 capable of some improvement, is perhaps the best 
 that has appeared, would, 1 think, have acted bet- 
 ter, by omitting all references to mere historians, 
 and relying entirely on regular documents. I do 
 not, however, include local histories, such as the 
 Annals of Dunstaple, when they record the mar- 
 ket-prices of their neighbourhood, in respect of 
 which the book last mentioned is almost in the na- 
 ture of a register. Dr. Whitaker remarks the in- 
 exactness of Stowe, who says that wheat sold in 
 London, A. D. 1514, at 20s. a quarter ; whereas it 
 appears to have been at 9s. in Lancashire, where it 
 was always dearer than in the metropolis. Hist, 
 of Whalley, p. 97. It is an odd mistake, into which 
 SirF. Eden has fallen, when he asserts and argues 
 on the supposition, that the price of wheat fluctua- 
 ted, in the thirteenth century, from Is. to 6Z. 8s. a 
 quarter, vol. i., p. 18. Certainly, if any chronicler 
 had mentioned such a price as the latter, equiva- 
 lent to 150Z. at present, we should either suppose 
 that his text was corrupt, or reject it as an absurd 
 exaggeration. But, in fact, the author has, through 
 haste, mistaken 6s. 8d. for 6/. 8*., as will appear by 
 referring to his own table of prices, where it is set 
 down rightly. It is observed by Mr. Macpherson, 
 a very competent judge, that the arithmetical state- 
 ments of the best historians of the middle ages are 
 seldom correct, owing partly to their neglect of ex- 
 amination, and partly to blunders of transcribers. 
 Annals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 423. 
 
 very superficial and erroneous inqui- 
 ries.* 
 
 It is by no means required that I 
 should here offer such a table of values, 
 which, as to every country except Eng- 
 land, I have no means of constructing, 
 and which, even as to England, would be 
 subject to many difficulties. But a read- 
 er unaccustomed to these investigations 
 ought to have some assistance in com- 
 paring the prices of ancient times with 
 those of his own. I will therefore, with- 
 out attempting to ascend very high, for 
 we have really no sufficient data as to 
 the period immediately subsequent to the 
 conquest, much less that which prece- 
 ded, endeavour at a sort of approxima- 
 tion for the thirteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies. In the reigns of Henry III. and 
 Edward I., previously to the first debase- 
 ment of the coin by the latter in 1301, 
 the ordinary price of a quarter of wheat 
 appears to have been about four shillings, 
 and that of barley and oats in propor- 
 tion. A sheep was rather sold high at a 
 shilling, and an ox might be reckoned at 
 ten or twelve. f The value of cattle is of 
 course dependant upon their breed and 
 condition; and we have unluckily no 
 early account of butcher's meat ; but we 
 can hardly take a less multiple than 
 about thirty for animal food, and eighteen 
 or twenty for corn, in order to bring the 
 prices of the thirteenth century to a 
 level with those of the present day.J 
 Combining the two, and setting the com- 
 parative clearness of cloth against the 
 cheapness of fuel and many other arti- 
 cles, we may perhaps consider any 
 given sum under Henry III. and Edward 
 [. as equivalent in general command 
 
 The table of comparative values by Sir George 
 Shuckburgh (Philosoph. Transact, for 1798, p. 
 196) is strangely incompatible with every result to 
 which my own reading has led me. It is the hasty 
 attempt of a man accustomed to different studies ; 
 and one can neither pardon the presumption of ob- 
 truding such a slovenly performance on a subject 
 where the utmost diligence was required, nor the 
 affectation with which he apologizes for " descend- 
 ng from the dignity of philosophy." 
 
 t Blomefield's History of Norfolk, and Sir J. Cul- 
 um's of Hawsted, furnish several pieces even at 
 ;his early period. Most of them are collected by 
 Sir F. Eden. Fleta reckons four shillings the 
 average price of a quarter of wheat in his time, 1. 
 ii., c. 84. This writer has a digression on agricul- 
 ture, whence, however, less is to be collected than 
 we should expect. 
 
 J The fluctuations of price have unfortunately 
 seen so great of late years, that it is almost as dif- 
 ficult to determine one side of our equation as the 
 other. Any reader, however, has it in his power 
 to correct my proportions, and adopt a greater or 
 less multiple, according to his own estimate of 
 current prices, or the changes that may take place 
 from the time when this is written [1816]. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 499 
 
 over commodities to about twenty-four 
 or twenty-five times their nominal value 
 at present. Under Henry VI. the coin 
 had lost one third of its weight in silver, 
 which caused a proportional increase of 
 money prices ;* but, so far as I can per- 
 ceive, there had been no diminution in 
 the value of that metal. We have not 
 much information as to the fertility of 
 the mines which supplied Europe during 
 the middle ages ; but it is probable that 
 the drain of silver towards the East, 
 joined to the ostentatious splendour of 
 courts, might fully absorb the usual 
 produce. By the statute 15 H. VI., c. 2, 
 the price up to which wheat might be 
 exported is fixed at Qs. 8d., a point no 
 doubt above the average ; and the private 
 documents of that period, which are suf- 
 ficiently numerous, lead to a similar re- 
 sult, f Sixteen will be a proper multiple, 
 
 * I have sometimes been surprised at the facility 
 with which prices adjusted themselves to the 
 quantity of silver contained in the current coin, in 
 ages which appear too ignorant and too little com- 
 mercial for the application of this mercantile prin- 
 ciple. But the extensive dealings of the Jewish 
 and Lombard usurers, who had many debtors in 
 almost all parts of the country, would of itself in- 
 troduce a knowledge, that silver, not its stamp, 
 was the measure of value. I have mentioned in 
 another place (vol. i., p. 185) the heavy discontents 
 excited by this debasement of the coin in France ; 
 but the more gradual enhancement of nominal prices 
 in England seems to have prevented any strong 
 manifestations of a similar spirit at the succes- 
 sive reductions in value which the coin experienced 
 from the year 1300. The connexion however be- 
 tween commodities and silver was well understood. 
 Wykes, an annalist of Edward I.'s age, tells us 
 that the Jews clipped our coin till it retained 
 hardly half its due weight, the effect of which was 
 a general enhancement of prices and decline of 
 foreign trade : Mercatores transmarini cum merci- 
 moniis suis regnum Anglise minus solito frequenta- 
 bant ; necnon quod omnimoda venalium genera in- 
 comparabiliter solito fuerunt cariora. 2 Gale, xv. 
 Script., p. 107. Another chronicler of the same 
 age complains of bad foreign money, alloyed with 
 copper ; nee erat in quatuor aut quinque ex iis 
 
 pondus unius denarii argenti Eratque pessi- 
 
 mum saeculum pro tali moneta, et fiebant commu- 
 tationes plurimae in emptione et venditione rerum. 
 Edward, as the historian informs us, bought in this 
 bad money at a rate below its value, in order to 
 make a profit ; and fined some persons who inter- 
 fered with his traffic. W. Hemingford, ad ann. 
 1299. 
 
 t These will chiefly be found in Sir F. Eden's 
 table of prices ; the following may be added from 
 the account-book of a convent between 1415 and 
 1425. Wheat varied from 4s. to 6s. barley from 
 3s. 2d. to 4s. I0d. oats from 1*. 8d. to 2s. 4d. 
 oxen from 12s. to 16s. sheep from 1*. 2d. to Is. 
 4d. butter %d. per Ib. eggs twenty-five for Id. 
 cheese \d. per Ib. Lansdowne MSS., vol. i.,Nos. 
 28 and 29. These prices do not always agree with 
 those given in other documents of equal authority 
 in the same period; but the value of provisions 
 varied in different countries, and still more so in 
 different seasons of the year 
 I 12 
 
 when we would bring the general value 
 of money in this reign to our present 
 standard,* 
 
 But after ascertaining the proportional 
 values of money at different periods by a 
 comparison of the prices in several of 
 the chief articles of expenditure, which 
 is the only fair process, we shall some- 
 times be surprised at incidental facts of 
 this class which seem irreducible to any 
 rule. These difficulties arise not so 
 much from the relative scarcity of partic- 
 ular commodities, which it is for the 
 most part easy to explain, as from the 
 change in manners and in the usual 
 mode of living. We have reached in 
 this age so high a pitch of luxury, that 
 we can hardly believe or comprehend the 
 frugality of ancient times ; and have in 
 general formed mistaken notions as to 
 the habits of expenditure which then 
 prevailed. Accustomed to judge of feudal 
 and chivalrous ages by works of fiction, 
 or by historians who embellished their 
 writings with accounts of occasional fes- 
 tiv^Js and tournaments, and sometimes 
 inattentive enough to transfer the man- 
 ners of the seventeenth to the fourteenth 
 century, we are not at all aware of the 
 usual simplicity with which the gentry 
 lived under Edward I. or even Henry 
 VI. They drank little wine ; they had 
 no foreign luxuries ; they rarely or never 
 kept male servants, except for husband- 
 ry ; their horses, as we may guess by 
 the price, were indifferent ; thej- seldom 
 travelled beyond their county. And 
 even their hospitality must have been 
 greatly limited, if the value of manors 
 were- really no greater than we find it in 
 many surveys. Twenty-four seems a 
 sufficient multiple when we would raise 
 
 * I insert the following comparative table of 
 English money from Sir Frederick Eden. The 
 unit, or present value, refers of course to that of 
 the shilling before the last coinage, which redu- 
 ced it. 
 
 
 Value of pound 
 sterling present 
 money; 
 
 Proportion. 
 
 Conquest, 1066 
 
 2 18 H 
 
 2.906 
 
 28 E. I., 1300 
 
 2 17 5 
 
 2.871 
 
 18 E. III., 1344 
 
 2 12 5 
 
 2.622 
 
 20 E. III., 1346 
 
 2 11 8 
 
 2.583 
 
 27 E. IH, 1353 
 
 266 
 
 2.325 
 
 13 H. IV. 1412 
 
 1 18 9 
 
 1.937 
 
 4 E. IV., 1464 
 
 1 11 
 
 1.55 
 
 18 H. VIII., 1527 
 
 1 7 6| 
 
 1.378 
 
 34 H. VIII.* 1543 
 
 1 3 31 
 
 1.163 
 
 36 H. VIII., 1545 
 
 13 1H 
 
 0.698 
 
 37 H. VlIL, 1546 
 
 9 3| 
 
 0.466 
 
 5 E. VI., 1551 
 
 4 7} 
 
 0.232 
 
 6 E. VI., 1552 
 
 1 6f 
 
 1.028 
 
 1 Mary, 1553 
 
 1 6| 
 
 1 ..024 
 
 2 Eliz., 1560 
 
 108 
 
 1 .033 
 
 43 Eliz., 1601 1 
 
 1 
 
 1.000 
 
500 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [Cmr. IX. 
 
 a sum mentioned by a writer under Ed- 
 
 ward I. to the same real value expressed 
 
 in our present money, but an income of 
 
 10 or .20 was reckoned a competent 
 
 estate for a gentleman ; at least the lord 
 
 of a single manor would seldom have 
 
 enjoyed more. A knight who possessed 
 
 150 per annum passed for extremely 
 
 rich.* Yet this was not equal in com- 
 
 mand over commodities to j4000 at 
 
 present. But this income was compara- 
 
 tively free from taxation, and its expendi- 
 
 ture lightened by the services of his vil- 
 
 leins. Such a person, however, must 
 
 have been among the most opulent of 
 
 country gentlemen. Sir John Fortescue 
 
 speaks of five pounds a year as " a fair 
 
 living for a yeoman," a class of whom he 
 
 is not at all inclined to diminish the im- 
 
 portance. f So, when Sir William Dru- 
 
 ry, one of the richest men in Suffolk, be- 
 
 queathed in 1493 fifty marks to each of his 
 
 daughters, we must not imagine that this 
 
 was of greater value than four or five 
 
 hundred pounds at this day, but remark 
 
 the family pride, and want of ready 
 
 money, which induced country gentle- 
 
 men to leave their younger children in 
 
 poverty.! Or, if we read that the ex- 
 
 pense of a scholar at the university in 
 
 1514 was but five pounds annually, we 
 
 should err in supposing that he had the 
 
 liberal accommodation which the present 
 
 age deems indispensable, but consider 
 
 how much could be afforded for about 
 
 sixty pounds, which will be not far from 
 
 the proportion. And what would a 
 
 modern lawyer say to the following en- 
 
 try in the churchwarden's accounts of St. 
 
 Margaret, Westminster, for 1476 : ^Also 
 
 Eaid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the 
 iw, for his counsel giving, 3s. Sd., with 
 fourpence for his dinner ?"fy Though 
 fifteen times the fee might not seem alto- 
 gether inadequate at present, five shillings 
 would hardly furnish* the table of a bar- 
 rister, even if the fatidiousness of our 
 
 p. 424, from Matt. 
 
 and Absolute Monarchy, 
 
 * Macpherson's Ann 
 Paris. 
 
 t Difference of Li 
 p. 133. 
 
 t Hist, of Hawsted, p. 141. 
 
 Nicholls's Illustrations, p. 2. One fact of this 
 class did, I own, stagger me. The great Earl of 
 Warwick writes to a private gentleman, Sir 
 Thomas Tudenham, begging the loan of ten or 
 twenty pounds to make up a sum he had to pay. 
 Paston Letters, vol. i., p. 84. What way shall 
 we make this commensurate to the present value 
 of money ? But an ingenious friend suggested, 
 what I do not question is the case, that this was 
 one of many letters addressed to the adherents of 
 Warwick, in order to raise by their contributions a 
 considerable sum. It is curious, in this light, as 
 an illustration of manners. 
 
 manners would admit of his accepting 
 such a dole. But this fastidiousness, 
 which considers certain kinds of remu- 
 neration degrading to a man of liberal 
 condition, did not prevail in those sim- 
 ple ages. It would seem rather strange 
 that a young lady should learn needle- 
 work and good-breeding in a family of 
 superior rank, paying for her board ; yet 
 such was the laudable custom of the fif- 
 teenth and even sixteenth centuries, as 
 we perceive by the Paston Letters, and 
 even later authorities.* 
 
 There is one very unpleasing remark 
 which every one who attends to Labourers 
 the subject of prices will be in- better paid 
 duced to make, that the labour- than at P- 
 ing classes, especially those en- sent ' 
 gaged in agriculture, were better provided 
 with the means of subsistence in the reign 
 of Edward III. or of Henry VI. than they 
 are at present. In the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, Sir John Cullum observes, a harvest- 
 man had fourpence a day, which enabled 
 him in a week to buy a comb of wheat ; 
 but to buy a comb of wheat, a man must 
 now (1784) work ten or twelve days.f 
 So, under Henry VI., if meat was at a 
 farthing and a half the pound, which I 
 suppose was about the truth, a labourer 
 earning threepence a day, or eighteen 
 pence in the week, could buy a bushel of 
 wheat at six shillings the quarter, and 
 twenty-four pounds of meat for his fam- 
 ily. A labourer at present, earning twelve 
 shillings a week, can only buy half a 
 bushel of wheat at eighty shillings the 
 quarter, and twelve pounds of meat at 
 sevenpence. Several acts of parliament 
 regulate the wages that might be paid to 
 Labourers of different kinds. Thus the 
 statute of labourers, in 1350, fixed the 
 wages of reapers during harvest at three- 
 Dence a day without diet, equal to five shil- 
 ings at present ; that of 23 H. VI., c. 12, 
 n 1444, fixed the reapers' wages at five- 
 Dence, and those of common workmen 
 n building at 3d., equal to 6s. 8d. and 
 45. Sd. ; that of 11 H. VIL, c. 22, in 1496, 
 .eaves the wages of labourers in harvest 
 as before, but rather increases those of 
 ordinary workmen. The yearly wages 
 of a chief hind or shepherd, by the act of 
 1444, were l. 4s., equivalent to about 
 20 ; those of a common servant in hus- 
 Dandry, 185. 4d., with meat and drink ; 
 they were somewhat augmented by the 
 statute of 1496.| Yet, although these 
 
 * Paston Letters, vol. i., p. 244. Cullum's 
 Hawsted, p. 182. 
 
 t Hist, of Hawsted, p. 228. 
 
 j See these rates more at length in Eden's State 
 of the Poor, vol. i., p. 32, &c. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 501 
 
 wages are regulated as a maximum, by 
 acts of parliament, which may naturally 
 be supposed to have had a view rather 
 towards diminishing than enhancing the 
 current rate, I am not fully convinced 
 that they were not rather beyond it ; pri- 
 vate accounts at least do not always cor- 
 respond with these statutable prices.* 
 And it is necessary to remember, that the 
 uncertainty of employment, natural to 
 so imperfect a state of husbandry, must 
 have diminished the labourers' means of 
 subsistence. Extreme dearth, not more 
 owing to adverse seasons than to improv- 
 ident consumption, was frequently en- 
 dured, f But, after every allowance of 
 this kind, I should find it difficult to resist 
 the conclusion, that however the labourer 
 has derived benefit from the cheapness 
 of manufactured commodities, and from 
 many inventions of common utility, he is 
 much inferior in ability to support a fam- 
 ily to his ancestors three or four centu- 
 ries ago. I know not why some have 
 supposed that meat was a luxury seldom 
 obtained by the labourer. Doubtless he 
 could not have procured as much as he 
 pleased. But, from the greater cheap- 
 ness of cattle, as compared with corn, it 
 seems to follow, that a more considera- 
 ble portion of his ordinary diet consisted 
 of animal food than at present. It was 
 remarked by Sir John Fortescue, that the 
 English lived far more upon animal diet 
 than their rivals the French ; and it was 
 natural to ascribe their superior strength 
 and courage to this cause.| I should 
 feel much satisfaction in being convinced 
 that no deterioration in the state of the 
 labouring classes has really taken place ; 
 yet it cannot, I think, appear extraordi- 
 nary to those who reflect, that the whole 
 population of England, in the year 1377, 
 
 * In the Archaeologia, vol. xviii., p. 281, we have 
 a bailiff's account of expenses in 1387, where it ap- 
 pears that a ploughman had sixpence a week, and 
 five shillings a year, with an allowance of diet ; 
 which seems to have been only pottage. These 
 wages are certainly not more than fifteen shillings 
 a week in present value ; which, though materially 
 above the average rate of agricultural labour, is 
 less so than some of the statutes would lead us to 
 expect. Other facts may be found of a similar 
 nature. 
 
 f See that singular book, Piers Plowman's Vis- 
 ion, p. 145 (Whitaker's edition), for the different 
 modes of living before and after harvest. The 
 passage may be found in Ellis's Specimens, vol. i., 
 p. 151. 
 
 t Fortescue's Difference between Abs. and Lim. 
 Monarchy, p. 19. The passages in Fortescue 
 which bear on his favourite theme, the liberty and 
 consequent happiness of the English, are very im- 
 portant, and triumphantly refute those superficial 
 writers who would make us believe that they were 
 a set of beggarly slaves. 
 
 did not much exceed 2,300,000 souls, 
 about one fifth of the results upon the last 
 enumeration, an increase with which that 
 of the fruits of the earth cannot be sup- 
 posed to have kept an even pace.* 
 
 The second head to which I referred 
 the improvements of European improve- 
 society in the latter period of the mem in the 
 middle ages, comprehends sev- IS of M 
 eral changes, not always con- Europe, 
 nected with each other, which contributed 
 to inspire a more elevated tone of moral 
 sentiment, or at least to restrain the com- 
 mission of crimes. But the general ef- 
 fect of these upon the human character 
 is neither so distinctly to be traced, nor 
 can it be arranged with so much attention 
 to chronology as the progress of com- 
 mercial wealth, or of the arts that depend 
 upon it. We cannot, from any past ex- 
 perience, indulge the pleasing vision of a 
 constant and parallel relation between 
 the moral and intellectual energies, the 
 virtues and the civilization of mankind. 
 Nor is any problem connected with phi- 
 losophical history more difficult than to 
 compare the relative characters of differ- 
 ent generations, especially if we include 
 a large geographical surface in our esti- 
 mate. Refinement has its evils as well 
 as barbarism ; the virtues that elevate a 
 nation in one century pass in the next to 
 a different region ; vice changes its form 
 without losing its essence; the marked 
 features of individual character stand out 
 in relief from the surface of history, and 
 mislead our judgment as to the general 
 course of manners ; while political revo- 
 lutions and a bad constitution of govern- 
 ment may always undermine or subvert 
 the improvements to which more favour- 
 able circumstances have contributed. In 
 comparing, therefore, the fifteenth with 
 the twelfth century, no one would deny 
 the vast increase of navigation and man- 
 ufactures, the superior refinement of 
 manners, the greater diffusion of litera- 
 ture. But should I assert that man had 
 raised himself in the latter period above 
 the moral degradation of a more barbar- 
 ous age, I might be met by the question 
 whether history bears witness to any 
 greater excesses of rapine and inhuman- 
 ity than in the wars of France and Eng- 
 land under Charles VII., or whether the 
 rough patriotism and fervid passions of 
 the Lombards in the twelfth century 
 
 Besides the books to which I have occasion- 
 ally referred, Mr. Ellis's Specimens of English 
 Poetry, vol. i., chap. 13, contain a short digression, 
 but from well-selected materials, on the private life 
 of the English in the middling and lower ranks 
 about the fifteenth century. 
 
502 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 were not better than the systematic 
 treachery of their servile descendants 
 three hundred years afterward. The 
 proposition must therefore be greatly 
 limited ; yet we can scarcely hesitate to 
 admit, upon a comprehensive view, that 
 there were several changes during the 
 four last of the middle ages, which must 
 naturally have tended to produce, and 
 some of which did unequivocally produce, 
 a meliorating effect, within the sphere of 
 their operation, upon the moral character 
 of society. 
 
 The first, and perhaps the most impor- 
 Eievation of tant of these, was the gradual 
 the lower elevation of those whom unjust 
 systems of polity had long de- 
 pressed ; of the people itself, as opposed 
 to the small number of rich and noble, by 
 the abolition or desuetude of domestic 
 and predial servitude, and by the privi- 
 leges extended to corporate towns. The 
 condition of slavery is indeed perfectly 
 consistent with the observance of moral 
 obligations ; yet reason and experience 
 will justify the sentence of Homer, that 
 he who loses his liberty loses half his 
 virtue. Those who have acquired, or 
 may hope to acquire, property of their 
 own, are most likely to respect that of 
 others; those whom law protects as a 
 parent are most willing to yield her a 
 filial obedience; those who have much 
 to gain by the good- will of their fellow- 
 citizens are most interested in the pres- 
 ervation of an honourable character. I 
 have been led, in different parts of the 
 present work, to consider these great 
 revolutions in the order of society under 
 other relations than that of their moral 
 efficacy ; and it will therefore be unne- 
 cessary to dwell upon them ; especially 
 as this efficacy is indeterminate, though, 
 I think, unquestionable, and rather to be 
 inferred from general reflections, than 
 capable of much illustration by specific 
 facts. 
 
 We may reckon, in the next place, 
 Police amon g tne causes of moral im- 
 provement, a more regular admin- 
 istration of justice according to fixed 
 laws, and a more effectual police. Wheth- 
 er the courts of judicature were guided 
 by the feudal customs or the Roman law, 
 it was necessary for them to resolve liti- 
 gated questions with precison and uni- 
 formity. Hence a more distinct theory 
 of justice and good faith was gradually 
 apprehended ; and the moral sentiments 
 of mankind were corrected, as on such 
 subjects they often require to be, by 
 clearer and better grounded inferences 
 of reasoning. Again, though it cannot 
 
 be said that lawless rapine was perfectly 
 restrained even at the end of the fifteenth 
 century, a sensible amendment had been 
 everywhere experienced. Private war- 
 fare, the licensed robbery of feudal man- 
 ners, had been subjected to so many mor- 
 tifications by the kings of France, and es- 
 pecially by St. Louis, that it can hardly 
 be traced beyond the fourteenth century. 
 In Germany and Spain it lasted longer ; 
 but the various associations for maintain- 
 ing tranquillity in the former country had 
 considerably diminished its violence be- 
 fore the great national measure of public 
 peace adopted under Maximilian.* Acts 
 of outrage committed by powerful men 
 became less frequent as the executive 
 government acquired more strength to 
 chastise them. We read that St. Louis, 
 the best of French kings, imposed a fine 
 upon the Lord of Vernon for permitting a 
 merchant to be robbed in his territory 
 between sunrise and sunset. For, by the 
 customary law, though in general ill ob- 
 served, the lord was bound to keep the 
 roads free from depredators in the day- 
 time, in consideration of the toll he receiv- 
 ed from passengers.f The same prince 
 was with difficulty prevented from passing 
 a capital sentence on Enguerrand de Cou- 
 cy, a baron of France, for a murder.J 
 Charles the Fair actually put to death a 
 nobleman of Languedoc for a series of 
 robberies, notwithstanding the interces- 
 sion of the provincial nobility. $ The 
 towns established a police of their own 
 for internal security, and rendered them- 
 selves formidable to neighbouring plun- 
 
 * Besides the German historians, see Du Cange, 
 v. Ganerbium, for the confederacies in the empire, 
 and Hermandatum for those in Castile. These 
 appear to have been merely voluntary associations, 
 and perhaps directed as much towards the preven- 
 tion of robbery as of what is strictly called pri- 
 ate war. But no man can easily distinguish of- 
 fensive war from robbery except by its scale ; and 
 where this was so considerably reduced, the two 
 modes of injury almost coincide. In Aragon there 
 was a distinct institution for the maintenance of 
 peace, the kingdom being divided into unions or 
 juntas, with a chief officer, called Suprajunctari- 
 us, at their head. Du Cange, v. Juncta. 
 
 f Renault, Abreg6 Chronol. a Pan 1255. The in- 
 stitutions of Louis IX. and his successors relating 
 to police, form a part, though rather a smaller part 
 than we should expect from the title, of an im- 
 mense work, replete with miscellaneous informa- 
 tion, by Delamare, Traite de la Police, 4 vols. in 
 folio. A sketch of them may be found in Velly, t. 
 v., p. 349 ; t. xviii., p. 437. 
 
 $ Velly, t. v., p. 162, where this incident is told in 
 an interesting manner from William de Nangis. 
 Boulainvilliers has taken an extraordinary view of 
 the king's behaviour. Hist, de 1' Ancient Gouverne- 
 ment, t ii., p. 26. In his eyes princes and plebe- 
 ians were made to be the slaves of a feudal aristoc- 
 racy. $ Velly, t. viii., p. 132. 
 
PABT II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 503 
 
 derers. Finally, though not before the 
 reign of Louis XL, an armed force was 
 established for the preservation of po- 
 lice.* Various means were adopted in 
 England to prevent robberies, which in- 
 deed were not so frequently perpetrated 
 as they were on the continent, by men 
 of high condition. None of these, per- 
 haps, had so much efficacy as the fre- 
 quent sessions of judges under commis- 
 sions of jail delivery. But the spirit of 
 this country has never brooked that co- 
 ercive police which cannot exist without 
 breaking in upon personal liberty by irk- 
 some regulations and discretionary exer- 
 cise of power ; the sure instrument of 
 tyranny, which renders civil privileges 
 at once nugatory and insecure, and by 
 which we should dearly purchase some 
 real benefits connected with its slavish 
 discipline. 
 
 I have some difficulty in adverting to 
 Religious another source of moral im- 
 sects. provement during this period, the 
 growth of religious opinions adverse to 
 those of the established church, both on 
 account of its great obscurity, and be- 
 cause many of these heresies were mixed 
 up with an excessive fanaticism. But 
 they fixed themselves so deeply in the 
 hearts of the inferior and more numer- 
 ous classes, they bore, generally speak- 
 ing, so immediate a relation to the state 
 of manners, and they illustrate so much 
 that more visible and eminent revolution 
 which ultimately arose out of them in the 
 sixteenth century, that I must reckon 
 these among the most interesting phe- 
 nomena in the progress of European so- 
 ciety. 
 
 Many ages elapsed, during which no 
 remarkable instance occurs of a popular 
 deviation from the prescribed line of be- 
 lief; and pious Catholics console them- 
 selves by reflecting that their forefathers, 
 in those times of ignorance, slept at least 
 the sleep of orthodoxy, and that their 
 darkness was interrupted by no false 
 lights of human reasoning.! But from 
 the twelfth century this can no longer be 
 their boast. An inundation of heresy 
 broke in that age upon the church, 
 which no persecution was able thor- 
 oughly to repress, till it finally over- 
 spread half the surface of Europe. Of 
 this religious innovation we must seek the 
 commencement in a different part of the 
 globe. The Manicheans afford an emi- 
 nent example of that durable attachment 
 to a traditional creed, which so many 
 ancient sects, especially in the East, have 
 
 Velly, t. xviii., p. 437. 
 
 Fleury, 3 me Discours sur 1'Hist. Eccles. 
 
 cherished through the vicissitudes of 
 ages, in spite of persecution and con- 
 tempt. Their plausible and widely ex- 
 tended system had been in early times 
 connected with the name of Christianity, 
 however incompatible with its doctrines 
 and its history. After a pretty long obscu- 
 rity, the Manichean theory revived with 
 some modification in the western parts 
 of Armenia, and was propagated in the 
 eighth and ninth centuries by a sect de- 
 nominated Paulicians. Their tenets are 
 not to be collected with absolute cer- 
 tainty from the mouths of their adversa- 
 ries, and no apology of their own sur- 
 vives. There seems, however, to be 
 sufficient evidence that the Paulicians, 
 though professing to acknowledge and 
 even to study the apostolical writings, 
 ascribed the creation of the world to an 
 evil deity, whom they supposed also to 
 be the author of the Jewish law, and 
 consequently rejected all the Old Testa- 
 ment. Believing, with the ancient Gnos- 
 tics, that our Saviour was clothed on 
 earth with an impassive celestial body,* 
 they denied the reality of his death 
 
 * The most authentic account of the Paulicians 
 is found in a little treatise of Petrus Siculus, who 
 lived about 870, under Basil the Macedonian. He 
 had been employed on an embassy to Tephrico, 
 the principal town of these heretics, so that he 
 might easily be well informed ; and, though he is 
 sufficiently bigoted, I do not see any reason to ques- 
 tion the general truth of his testimony, especially 
 as it tallies so well with what we learn of the pre- 
 decessors and successors of the Paulicians. They 
 had rejected several of the Manichean doctrines, 
 those, I believe, which were borrowed from the 
 Oriental, Gnostic, and Cabbalistic philosophy of 
 emanation ; and therefore readily condemned Ma- 
 nes, TTpo8v/jn>)s avaQsfimi^aai Mav^ra. But they re- 
 tained his capital errors, so far as regarded the 
 principle of dualism, which he had taken from 
 Zerdusht's religion, and the consequences he had 
 derived from it. Petrus Siculus enumerates six 
 Panlician heresies. 1. They maintained the exist- 
 ence of two deities ; the one evil, and the creator 
 of this world, the other good, called irarqp sirapavio^ 
 the author of that which is to come. 2. They re- 
 fused to worship the Virgin, and asserted that 
 Christ brought his body from Heaven. 3. They 
 rejected the Lord's Supper : 4. And the adoration 
 of the cross. 5. They denied the authority of the 
 Old Testament, but admitted the New, except the 
 epistles of St. Peter, and perhaps the Apocalypse. 
 6. They did not acknowledge the order of priests. 
 
 There seems every reason to suppose that the 
 Paulicians, notwithstanding their mistakes, were 
 endowed with sincere and zealous piety, and stu- 
 dious of the Scriptures. A Paulician woman asked 
 a young man if he had read the Gospels ; he replied, 
 that laymen were not permitted to do so, but only 
 the clergy : UK sl-c^iv fi/Jtiv rotj KOGfiiKois uai TOVTO, 
 avayivuHTKftv, ci prj rots ttpevai fiovois, p. 57. A curious 
 proof that the Scriptures were already forbidden in 
 the Greek church, which, I am inclined to believe, 
 notwithstanding the leniency with which Protest- 
 ant writers have treated it, was always more cor- 
 rupt and more intolerant than the Latin. 
 
504 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 and resurrection. These errors exposed 
 them to a long and cruel persecution, 
 during which a colony of exiles was 
 planted by one of the Greek emperors in 
 Bulgaria.* From this settlement they 
 silently promulgated their Manichean 
 creed over the western regions of Chris- 
 tendom. A large part of the commerce 
 of those countries with Constantinople 
 was carried on for several centuries by 
 the channel of the Danube. This opened 
 an immediate intercourse with the Pau- 
 licians, who may be traced up that river 
 through Hungary and Bavaria, some- 
 times taking the route of Lombardy into 
 Swisserland and France, f In the last 
 
 * Gibbon, c. 54. This chapter of the historian 
 of the Decline and Fall upon the Paulicians ap- 
 pears to be accurate, as well as luminous, and is at 
 least far superior to any modern work on the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 t It is generally agreed that the Manicheans 
 from Bulgaria did not penetrate into the west of 
 Europe before the year 1000; and they seem to 
 have been in small numbers till about 1140. We 
 find them, however, early in the eleventh century. 
 Under the reign of Robert, in 1007, several heretics 
 were burnt at Orleans for tenets which are repre- 
 sented as Manichean. Velly, t. ii., p. 307. These 
 are said to have been imported from Italy ; and the 
 heresy began to strike root in that country about 
 the same time. Muratori, Dissert. 60. (Antichita 
 Italiane, t. iii., p. 304.) The Italian Manicheans 
 were generally called Paterini, the meaning of 
 which word has never been explained. We find 
 few traces of them in France at this time ; but 
 about the beginning of the twelfth century, Gui- 
 bert, bishop of Soissons, describes the heretics of 
 that city, who denied the reality of the death and 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ, and rejected the sacra- 
 ments. Hist. Litte>aire de la France, t. x., p. 451. 
 Before the middle of that age, the Cathari, Henri- 
 cians, Petrobussians, and others appear, and the 
 new opinions attracted universal notice. Some of 
 these sectaries, however, were not Manicheans. 
 Mosheim, vol. iii., p. 116. 
 
 The acts of the inquisition of Toulouse, pub- 
 lished by Limborch, from an ancient manuscript 
 (stolen, as I presume, though certainly not by him- 
 self, out of the archives of that city), contain many 
 additional proofs that the Albigenses held the 
 Manichean doctrine. Limborch himself will guide 
 the reader to the principal passages, p. 30. In 
 fact, the proof of Manicheism among the heretics 
 of the twelfth century is so strong (for I have con- 
 fined myself to those of Languedoc, and could 
 easily have brought other testimony as to the 
 Cathari), that I should never have thought of ar- 
 guing the point, but for the confidence of some 
 modern ecclesiastical writers. What can we think 
 of one who says, " It was not unusual to stigmatize 
 new sects with the odious name of Manichees, 
 though / know no evidence that there were any real 
 remains of that ancient sect in the twelfth cen- 
 tury." Milner's History of the Church, vol. iii., p. 
 380. Though this writer was by no means learn- 
 ed enough for the task he undertook, he could not 
 be ignorant of facts related by Mosheim and other 
 common historians. 
 
 I will only add, in order to obviate cavilling, 
 that I use the word Albigenses for the Manichean 
 sects, without pretending to assert that their doc- 
 
 country, and especially in its southern 
 and eastern provinces, they became 
 conspicuous under a variety of names ; 
 such as Catharists, Picards, Paterins, but, 
 above all, Albigenses. It is beyond a 
 doubt that many of these sectaries owed 
 their origin to the Paulicians ; the appel- 
 lation of Bulgarians was distinctively be- 
 stowed upon them; and, according to 
 some writers, they acknowledged a pri- 
 mate or patriarch resident in that coun- 
 try.* The tenets ascribed to them by all 
 contemporary authorities coincide so re- 
 markably with those held by the Pauli- 
 cians, and in earlier times by the Mani- 
 cheans, that I do not see how we can 
 reasonably deny what is confirmed by 
 separate and uncontradictory testimo- 
 nies, and contains no intrinsic want of 
 probability.! 
 
 trines prevailed more in the neighbourhood of Albi 
 than elsewhere. The main position is, that a large 
 part of the Languedocian heretics against whom 
 the crusade was directed had imbibed the Pauli- 
 cian opinions. If any one chooses rather to call 
 them Catharists, it will not be material. 
 
 * Mat. Paris, p. 267. (A, D. 1223.) Circa dies 
 istos, haeretici Albigenses constituerunt sibi An- 
 tipapam in finibus Bulgarorum, Croatiae et Dal- 
 matiae, nomine Bartholomaeum, &c. We are as- 
 sured by good authorities that Bosnia was full of 
 Manicheans and Arians as late as the middle of the 
 fifteenth century. ^Eneas Sylvius, p. 407. Spon- 
 danus, ad ann. 1460. Mosheim. 
 
 t There has been so prevalent a disposition 
 among English divines to vindicate not only the 
 morals and sincerity, but the orthodoxy of these 
 Albigenses, that I deern it necessary to confirm 
 what I have said in the text by some authorities, 
 especially as few readers have it in their power to 
 examine this very obscure subject. Petrus Mo- 
 nachus, a Cistercian monk, who wrote a history of 
 the crusades against the Albigenses, gives an ac- 
 count of the tenets maintained by the different 
 heretical sects. Many of them asserted two prin- 
 ciples or creative beings ; a good one for things 
 invisible, an evil one for things visible ; the former 
 author of the New Testament, the latter of the 
 Old. Novurn Testamentum benigno deo, vetus 
 vero maligno attribuebant ; et illud omnino repu- 
 diabant, praeter quasdam auctoritates, quas de Ve- 
 teri Testamento, Novo sunt inserts?, quas ob Novi 
 reverentiam Testament!, recipere dignum aestima- 
 bant. A vast number of strange errors are imputed 
 to them, most of which are not mentioned by Ala- 
 nus, a more dispassionate writer. Du Chesne, 
 Scriptores Francorum, t. v., p. 556. This Alanus 
 de Insulis, whose treatise against heretics, written 
 about 1200, was published by Masson at Lyons in 
 1612, has left, I think, conclusive evidence of the 
 Manicheism of the Albigenses. He states their ar- 
 gument upon every disputed point as fairly as pos- 
 sible, though his refutation is of course more at 
 length. It appears that great discrepances of 
 opinion existed among these heretics, but the gen- 
 eral tenour of their doctrines is evidently Mani- 
 chean. Aiunt haeretici temporis nostri quod duo 
 suntprincipiarerum, principiumlucis et principium 
 tenebrarum, &c. This opinion, strange as we may 
 think it, was supported by Scriptural texts ; so in- 
 sufficient is a mere acquaintance with the sacred 
 writings to secure unlearned and prejudiced minds 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 505 
 
 But though the derivation of these her- 
 etics called Albigenses from Bulgaria is 
 sufficiently proved, it is by no means to 
 be concluded that all who incurred the 
 same imputation either derived their faith 
 from the same country, or had adopted 
 the Manichean theory of the Paulicians. 
 From the very invectives of their ene- 
 mies, and the acts of the inquisition, it is 
 manifest that almost every shade of het- 
 erodoxy was found among these dissi- 
 dents, till it vanished in a single protest- 
 ation against the wealth and tyranny of 
 the clergy. Those who were absolutely 
 free from any taint of Manicheism are 
 properly called Waldenses ; a name per- 
 petually confounded in later times with 
 that of Albigenses, but distinguishing a 
 sect probably of separate origin, and at 
 least of different tenets. These, according 
 Waldenses to ^J 16 ma j or ity of writers, took 
 their appellation from Peter 
 Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, the parent, 
 about the year 1160, of a congregation of 
 seceders from the church, who spread 
 very rapidly over France and Germany.* 
 
 from the wildest perversions of their meaning! 
 Some denied the reality of Christ's body ; others 
 his being the Son of God ; many the resurrection 
 of the body; some even of a future state. They 
 asserted in general the Mosaic law to have pro- 
 ceeded from the devil, proving this by the crimes 
 committed during its dispensation, arid by the words 
 of St. Paul, "the law entered that sin might 
 abound." They rejected infant baptism, but were 
 divided as to the reason ; some saying that infants 
 could not sin, and did not need baptism ; others, 
 that they could not be saved without faith, and 
 consequently that it was useless. They held sin 
 after baptism to be irremissible. It does not appear 
 that they rejected either of the sacraments. They 
 laid great stress upon the imposition of hands, 
 which seems to have been their distinctive rite. 
 
 One circumstance, which both Alanus and Rob- 
 ertus Monachus mention, and which other author- 
 ities confirm, is their division into two classes ; the 
 Perfect, and the Credentes, or Consolati, both of 
 which appellations are used. The former abstain- 
 ed from animal food and from marriage, and led in 
 every respect an austere life. The latter were a 
 kind of lay brethren, living in a secular manner. 
 This distinction is thoroughly Manichean, and 
 leaves no doubt as to the origin of the Albigenses. 
 See Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme, t. ii., p. 
 762 and 777. This candid writer represents the 
 early Manicheans as a harmless and austere set 
 of enthusiasts, exactly what the Paulicians and 
 Albigenses appear to have been in succeeding ages. 
 As many calumnies were vented against one as the 
 other. 
 
 * The contemporary writers seem uniformly to 
 represent Waldo as the founder of the Waldenses ; 
 and I arn not aware that they refer the locality of 
 that sect to the valleys of Piedmont, between Ex- 
 iles and Pignerol (see Leger's map), which have 
 so long been distinguished as the native country of 
 the Vaudois. In the acts of the inquisition, we 
 find Waldenses, sive pauperes de Lugduno, used 
 as equivalent terms ; and it can hardly be doubted 
 that the poor men of Lyons were the disciples of 
 Waldo. Alanus, the second book of whose treatise 
 
 According to others, the original Wal- 
 denses were a race of uncorrupted shep- 
 herds, who, in the valleys of the Alps, 
 had shaken off, or perhaps never learned, 
 the system of superstition on which the 
 Catholic church depended for its ascend- 
 ency. I am not certain whether their 
 existence can be distinctly traced beyond 
 the preaching of Waldo, but it is well 
 known that the proper seat of the Wal- 
 denses or Vaudois has long continued to 
 be in certain valleys of Piedmont. These 
 pious and innocent sectaries, of whom 
 the very monkish historians speak well, 
 appear to have nearly resembled the 
 modern Moravians. They had ministers 
 of their own appointment, and denied 
 the lawfulness of oaths and of capital 
 
 against heretics is an attack upon the Waldenses, 
 expressly derives them from Waldo. Petrus Mo- 
 nachus does the same. These seem strong author- 
 ities, as it is not easy to perceive what advantage 
 they could derive from misrepresentation. It has 
 been, however, a position zealously maintained by 
 some modern writers of respectable name, that the 
 people of the valleys had preserved a pure faith 
 for several ages before the appearance of Waldo. 
 I have read what is advanced on this head by Le- 
 ger (Histoire des Eglises Vaudoises), and by Allix 
 (Remarks on the Ecclesiastical History of the 
 Churches of Piedmont), but without finding any 
 sufficient proof for this supposition, which, never- 
 theless, is not to be rejected as absolutely improb- 
 able. Their best argument is deduced from an an- 
 cient poem called La Noble LoiQon, an original 
 manuscript of which is in the public library of 
 Cambridge. This poem is alleged to bear date in 
 1100, more than half a century before the appear- 
 ance of Waldo. But the lines that contain the 
 date are loosely expressed, and may very well suit 
 with any epoch before the termination of the 
 twelfth century. 
 
 Ben ha mil et cent ans compli entierament 
 Che fu scritta loro que sen al derier temp. 
 Eleven hundred years are now gone and past, 
 Since thus it was written ; these times are the last. 
 I have found, however, a passage in a late work, 
 which remarkably illustrates the antiquity of Al- 
 pine protestantism, if we may depend on the date 
 it assigns to the quotation. Mr. Planta's History 
 of Swisserland, p. 93, 4to edit., contains the follow- 
 ing note. " A curious passage, singularly descrip- 
 tive of the character of the Swiss, has lately been 
 discovered in a MS. chronicle of the abbey of Cor- 
 vey, which appears to have been written about the 
 beginning of the twelfth century. Religionem nos- 
 tram, et omnium Latins ecclesiae Christianorum 
 fidem, laici ex Suavia, Suicia, et Bavaria humiliare 
 voluerunt ; homines seducti ab antiqua progenie 
 simplicium hominum, qui Alpes et viciniam habi- 
 tant, et semper amant antiqua. In Suaviam, Ba- 
 variam et Italmm borealem ssepe intrant illorum 
 (ex Suicia) mercatores, qui biblia ediscunt memo- 
 riter, et ritus ecclesise aversantur, quos credunt esse 
 novos. Nolunt imagines veneran, reliquias sanc- 
 torum aversantur, olera comedunt, raro mastican- 
 tes carnem, alii nunquam. Appellamus eos idcir- 
 co Manichaeos. Horum quidam ab Hungaria ad 
 eos convenerunt," &c. It is a pity that the quota- 
 tion has been broken off, as it might have illus- 
 trated the connexion of the Bulgarians with these 
 sectaries. 
 
506 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX, 
 
 punishment. In other respects their 
 opinions probably were not far removed 
 from those usually called Protestant. 
 A simplicity of dress, and especially 
 the use of wooden sandals, was affect- 
 ed by this people.* 
 
 I have already had occasion to relate 
 the severe persecution which nearly ex- 
 terminated the Albigenses of Languedoc 
 at the close of the twelfth century, and 
 involved the counts of Toulouse in their 
 ruin. The Catharists, a fraternity of the 
 same Paulician origin, more dispersed 
 than the Albigenses, had previously sus- 
 tained a similar trial. Their belief was 
 certainly a compound of strange errors 
 with truth ; but it was attended by quali- 
 ties of a far superior lustre to orthodoxy, 
 by a sincerity, a piety, and a self-devo- 
 tion, that almost purified the age in which 
 they lived. f It is always important to 
 
 * The Waldenses were always considered as 
 much less erroneous in their tenets than the Albi- 
 genses or Manicheans. Erant praeterea alii hasre- 
 tici, says Robert Monachus in the passage above 
 quoted, qui Waldenses dicebantur, a quodam Wal- 
 dio nomine Lugdunensi. Hi quidem mali erant, 
 sed comparatipne aliorum haereticorum longe mi- 
 nus perversi; in multis enim nobiscum convenie- 
 bant, in quibusdam dissentiebant. The only faults 
 he seems to impute to them are the denial of the 
 lawfulness of oaths and capital punishment, and 
 the wearing wooden shoes. By this peculiarity of 
 wooden sandals (sabots) they got the name of 
 Sabbatati or Insabbatati. (Du Cange.) William 
 du Puy, another historian of the same time, makes 
 a similar distinction. Erant quidam Ariani, qui- 
 dam Manichaei, quidam etiam Waldenses sive Lug- 
 dunenses, qui licet inter se dissides, omnes tamen 
 in animarum perniciem contra fidem Catholicam 
 conspirabant ; et illi quidem Waldenses contra ali- 
 os acutissime disputant. Du Chesne, t. v., p. 666. 
 Alanus, in his second book, where he treats of the 
 Waldenses, charges them principally with disre- 
 garding the authority of the church and preaching 
 without a regular mission. It is evident, however, 
 from the acts of the Inquisition, that they denied 
 the existence of purgatory ; and I should suppose 
 that, even at that time, they had thrown off most 
 of the popish system of doctrine, which is so near- 
 ly connected with clerical wealth and power. The 
 difference made in these records between the Wal- 
 denses and the Manichean sects, shows that the 
 imputations cast upon the latter were not indiscrim- 
 inate calumnies. See Limborch, p. 201 and 228. 
 
 The History of Languedoc, by Vaissette and 
 Vich, contains a very good account of the secta- 
 ries in that country ; but I have not immediate ac- 
 cess to the book. I believe that proof will be 
 found of the distinction between the Waldenses 
 and Albigenses in t. hi., p. 466. But I am satisfied 
 that no one who has looked at the original author- 
 ities will dispute the proposition. These Beneelic- 
 tin historians represent the Henricians, an early 
 sect of reformers, condemned by the council of 
 Lombez, in 1165, as Manichees. Mosheim consid- 
 ers them as of the Vaudois school. They appeared 
 some time before Waldo. 
 
 t The general testimony of their enemies to the 
 rity of morals among the Langnedocian and 
 y nese sectaries is abundantly sufficient. One 
 
 pu 
 L 
 
 perceive that these high moral excellen- 
 ces have no necessary connexion with 
 speculative truths ; and upon this account 
 I have been more disposed to state ex- 
 plicitly the real Manicheism of the Albi- 
 genses ; especially as Protestant writers, 
 considering all the enemies of Rome as 
 their friends, have been apt to place the 
 opinions of these sectaries in a very false 
 light. In the course of time, undoubtedly, 
 the system of their Paulician teachers 
 would have yielded, if the inquisitors had 
 admitted the experiment, to a more ac- 
 curate study of the Scriptures, and to the 
 knowledge which they would have im- 
 bibed from the church itself. And, in 
 fact, we find that the peculiar tenets of 
 Manicheism died away after the middle 
 of the thirteenth century, although a 
 spirit of dissent from the established 
 creed broke out in abundant instances 
 during the two subsequent ages. 
 
 We are in general deprived of explicit 
 testimonies in tracing the revolutions of 
 popular opinion. Much must therefore 
 be left to conjecture ; but I am inclined 
 to attribute a very extensive effect to the 
 preaching of these heretics. They ap- 
 pear in various countries nearly during 
 the same period, in Spain. Lombardy, 
 Germany, Flanders, and England, as well 
 as France. Thirty unhappy persons con- 
 victed of denying the sacraments, are 
 said to have perished at Oxford by cold 
 
 Regnier, who had lived among them, and became 
 afterward an inquisitor, does them justice in this 
 respect. See Turner's History of England for sev- 
 eral other proofs of this. It must be confessed, 
 that the Catharists are not free from the imputa- 
 tion of promiscuous licentiousness. But whether 
 this was a mere calumny, or partly founded upon 
 truth, I cannot determine. Their prototypes, the 
 ancient Gnostics, are said to have been divided 
 into two parties, the austere and the relaxed ; both 
 condemning marriage for opposite reasons. Ala- 
 nus, in the book above quoted, seems to have 
 taken up several vulgar prejudices against the 
 Cathari. He gives an etymology of their name 
 a catta ; quia osculantur posteriora catti ; in cujus 
 specie, ut aiunt, appareret iis Lucifer, p. 146. This 
 notable charge was brought afterward against the 
 Templars. 
 
 As to the Waldsnses, their innocence is out of 
 all doubt. No book can be written in a more edi- 
 fying manner than La Noble Loi<jon, of which large 
 extracts are given by Leger, in his Histoire des 
 Eglises Vaudoises. Four lines are quoted by Vol- 
 taire (Hist. Universelle, c. 69) as a specimen of 
 the Provencal language, though they belong rather 
 to the patois of the valleys. But as he has not 
 copied them rightly, and as they illustrate the sub- 
 ject of this note, I shall repeat them here from 
 Leger, p. 28. 
 Que sel se troba alcun bon que vollia amar Dio 
 
 e terner Jeshu Xrist, 
 
 Que non vollia maudire, ni jura, ni mentir, 
 Ni avoutrar, ni aucire, ni penre de 1'autruy, 
 Ni venjar se de li sio ennemie, 
 Illi dison quel es Vaudes e degne de murir. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OP SOCIETY. 
 
 507 
 
 and famine in the reign of Henry I 
 In every country the new sects appea 
 to have spread chiefly among the lowe 
 people, which, while it accounts for th 
 imperfect notice of historians, indicate 
 a more substantial influence upon th 
 moral condition of society than the con 
 version of a few nobles or ecclesiastics. 
 But even where men did not absolutel 
 enlist under the banners of any new sec 
 they were stimulated by the temper o 
 their age to a more zealous and inde 
 
 * It would be difficult to specify all the disperse 
 authorities which attest the existence of the sect 
 derived from the Waldenses and Paulicians in th 
 twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Be 
 sides Mosheim, who has paid considerable atten 
 tion to the subject, I would mention some article 
 in Du Cange which supply gleanings; namely 
 Beghardi, Bulgari, Lollardi, Paterini, Picardi, Pifli 
 Populicani. 
 
 Upon the subject of the Waldenses and Albi 
 genses generally, I have borrowed some light from 
 Mr. Turner's History of England, vol. ii., p. 377 
 393. This learned writer has seen some books tha 
 have not fallen into my way ; and I am indebted to 
 him for a knowledge of Alanus's treatise, which '. 
 have since read. At the same time I must observe 
 that Mr. Turner has not perceived the essentia 
 distinction between the two leading sects. 
 
 The name of Albigenses does not frequently 
 occur after the middle of the thirteenth century 
 but the Waldenses, or sects bearing that denomi- 
 nation, were dispersed over Europe. As a term 
 of different reproach was derived from the wore 
 Bulgarian, so vauderie, or the profession of the 
 Vaudois, was sometimes applied to witchcraft. 
 Thus, in the proceedings of the Chambre Brulante 
 at Arras, in 1459, against persons accused of sor- 
 cery, their crime is denominated vauderie. The 
 fullest account of this remarkable story is found in 
 the Memoirs of Du Clercq, first published in the 
 general collection of Historical Memoirs, t. ix., p. 
 430, 471. It exhibits a complete parallel to the 
 events that happened in 1682 at Salem, in New- 
 England. A few obscure persons were accused of 
 vauderie, or witchcraft. After their condemnation, 
 which was founded on confessions obtained by tor- 
 ture, and afterward retracted, an epidemical conta- 
 gion of superstitious dread was diffused all around. 
 Numbers were arrested, burnt alive by order of a 
 tribunal instituted for the detection of this offence, 
 or detained in prison ; so that no person in Arras 
 thought himself safe. It was believed that many 
 were accused for the sake of their possessions, 
 which were confiscated to the use of the church. 
 At length the Duke of Burgundy interfered, and 
 put a stop to the persecutions. The whole narra- 
 tive in Du Clercq is interesting, as a curious docu- 
 ment of the tyranny of bigots, and of the facility 
 with which it is turned to private ends. 
 
 To return to the Waldenses : the principal course 
 of their emigration is said to have been into Bohe- 
 mia, where, in the fifteenth century, the name was 
 borne by one of the seceding sects. By their pro- 
 fession of faith, presented to Ladislaus Posthumus, 
 it appears that they acknowledged the corporal pres- 
 ence in the eucharist, but rejected purgatory and 
 other Romish doctrines. See it in the Fasciculus 
 Rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum, a collection 
 of treatises illustrating the origin of the Reforma- 
 tion, originally published at Cologne in 1535, and 
 reprinted at London in 1690. 
 
 pendent discussion of their religious sys- 
 tem. A curious illustration of this is 
 furnished by one of the letters of Inno- 
 cent III. He had been informed by the 
 Bishop of Metz, as he states to the clergy 
 of the diocess, that no small multitude of 
 laymen and women having procured a 
 translation of the gospels, epistles of St. 
 Paul, the psalter, Job, and other books 
 of Scripture, to be made for them into 
 French, meet in secret conventicles to 
 hear them read, and preach to each other, 
 avoiding the company of those who do 
 not join in their devotion, and having 
 been reprimanded for this by some of 
 their parish priests, have withstood them, 
 alleging reasons from the Scriptures why 
 they should not be so forbidden. Some 
 of them too deride the ignorance of their 
 ministers, and maintain that their own 
 books teach them more than they can 
 learn from the pulpit, and that they can 
 express it better. Although the desire 
 of reading the Scriptures, Innocent pro- 
 ceeds, is rather praiseworthy than rep- 
 rehensible, yet they are to be blamed for 
 frequenting secret assemblies, for usurp- 
 "ng the office of preaching, deriding their 
 own ministers, and scorning the company 
 of such as do not concur in their novel- 
 ies. He presses the bishop and chap- 
 er to discover the author of this trans- 
 ation, which could not have been made 
 without a knowledge of letters, and what 
 were his intentions, and what degree of 
 rthodoxy and respect for the Holy See 
 hose who used it possessed. This let- 
 er of Innocent III., however, consider- 
 ng the nature of the man, is sufficiently 
 emperate and conciliatory. It seems 
 lot to have answered its end; for in 
 another letter he complains that some 
 members of this little association con- 
 inued refractory, and refused to obey 
 ither the bishop or the pope.* 
 In the eighth and ninth centuries, 
 vhen the Vulgate had ceased to be gen- 
 rally intelligible, there is no reason to 
 uspect any intention in the church to 
 eprive the laity of the Scriptures, 
 ^ranslations were freely made into the 
 ernacular languages, and perhaps read 
 n churches, although the acts of saints 
 ere generally deemed more instructive. 
 Louis the Debonair is said to have 
 aused a German version of the New 
 estament to be made. Otfrid, in the 
 ame century, rendered the gospels, or 
 
 * Opera Innocent. III., p. 468, 537. A transla- 
 on of the Bible had been made by direction of 
 eter Waldo; but whether this used in Lomrin 
 as the same, does not appear. Metz was full of 
 the Vaudois, as we find by other authorities. 
 
508 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 rather abridged them, into German verse. 
 This work is still extant, and is in sev- 
 eral respects an object of curiosity.* In 
 the eleventh or twelfth century, we find 
 translations of the Psalms, Job, and the 
 Maccabees into French. f But after the 
 diffusion of heretical opinions, or, what 
 was much the same thing, of free inquiry, 
 it became expedient to secure the ortho- 
 dox faith from lawless interpretation. 
 Accordingly the council of Toulouse, in 
 1229, prohibited the laity from posses- 
 sing the Scriptures ; and this precaution 
 was frequently repeated upon subsequent 
 occasions. 
 
 The ecclesiastical history of the thir- 
 teenth or fourteenth centuries teems 
 with new sectaries and schismatics, va- 
 rious in their aberrations of opinion, but 
 all concurring in detestation of the estab- 
 lished church.J They endured severe 
 persecutions with a sincerity and firm- 
 ness which in any cause ought to com- 
 mand respect. But in general we find 
 an extravagant fanaticism among them ; 
 and I do not know how to look for any 
 amelioration of society from the Fran- 
 ciscan seceders, who quibbled about the 
 property of things consumed by use, or 
 from the mystical visionaries of different 
 appellations, whose moral practice was 
 sometimes more than equivocal. Those 
 who feel any curiosity about such sub- 
 jects, which are by no means unimpor- 
 tant, as they illustrate the history of the 
 human mind, will find them treated very 
 fully by Mosheim. But the original 
 sources of information are not always 
 accessible in this country, and the re- 
 search would perhaps be more fatiguing 
 than profitable. 
 
 I shall, for an opposite reason, pass 
 Loiinrds of lightly over the great revolution 
 England. m religious opinion wrought in 
 England by Wicliffe, which will gen- 
 erally be familiar to the reader from our 
 common historians. Nor am I concern- 
 ed to treat of theological inquiries, or to 
 write a history of the church. Consid- 
 ered in its effect upon manners, the sole 
 point which these pages have in view, 
 the preaching of this new sect certainly 
 
 * Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teutonicorum, 
 t.ii. 
 
 t Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscript., t. xvii., p. 720. 
 j The application of the visions of the Apoca- 
 lypse to the corruptions of Rome has commonly 
 been said to have been first made by the Francis- 
 can seceders. But it may be traced higher, and is 
 remarkably pointed out by Dante. 
 
 Di voi pastor s' accorse '1 Vangelista, 
 Quando colei, chi siede sovra 1' acque, 
 jfyjtaneggiar co' regi a lui fii vista. 
 
 Inferno, cant. xbc. 
 
 produced an extensive reformation. But 
 their virtues were by no means free from 
 some unsocial qualities, in which, as 
 well as in their superior attributes, the 
 Lollards bear a very close resemblance 
 to the Puritans of Elizabeth's reign : a 
 moroseness that proscribed all cheerful 
 amusements, an uncharitable malignity 
 that made no distinction in condemning 
 the established clergy, and a narrow pre- 
 judice that applied the rules of the Jew- 
 ish law to modern institutions.* Some 
 of their principles were far more danger- 
 ous to the good order of society, and 
 cannot justly be ascribed to the Puritans, 
 though they grew afterward out of the 
 same soil. Such was the notion, which 
 is imputed also to the Albigenses, that 
 civil magistrates lose their right to gov- 
 ern by committing sin, or, as it was quaint- 
 ly expressed in the seventeenth century, 
 that dominion is founded in grace. These 
 extravagances, however, do not belong 
 to the learned and politic Wicliffe, how- 
 ever they might be adopted by some of 
 his enthusiastic disciples. f Fostered by 
 the general ill-will towards the church, 
 his principles made vast progress in 
 England, and, unlike those of earlier 
 sectaries, were embraced by men of 
 rank and civil influence. Notwithstand- 
 ing the check they sustained by the san- 
 guinary law of Henry IV., it is highly 
 probable that multitudes secretly cherish- 
 ed them down to the era of the Reform- 
 ation. 
 
 From England the spirit of religious 
 innovation was propagated into Hussites of 
 Bohemia ; for though John Huss Bohemia, 
 was very far from embracing all the doc- 
 trinal systems of Wicliffe, it is manifest 
 that his zeal had been quickened by the 
 
 * Walsingham, p. 238. Lewis's Life of Pea- 
 cock, p. 65. Bishop Peacock's answer to the Lol- 
 lards of his time contains passages well worthy of 
 Hooker, both for weight of matter and dignity of 
 style, setting forth the necessity and importance of 
 " the moral law of kinde, or moral philosophic," in 
 opposition to those who derive all morality from 
 revelation. 
 
 This great man fell afterward under the dis- 
 pleasure of the church for propositions, not indeed 
 heretical, but repugnant to her scheme of spiritual 
 power. He asserted indirectly the right of pri- 
 vate judgment, and wrote on theological subjects 
 in English, which gave much offence. In fact, 
 Peacock seems to have hoped that his acute rea- 
 soning would convince the people, without requi* 
 ring an implicit faith. But he greatly misunder- 
 stood the principle of an infallible church. Lew- 
 is's Life of Peacock does justice to his character, 
 which, I need not say, is unfairly represented by 
 such historians as Collier, and such antiquaries as 
 Thomas Hearne. 
 
 t Lewis's Life of Wicliffe, p. 115. Lenfant, 
 Hist, du Concilede Constance, t. i., p. 213. 
 
PART ll.j 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY 
 
 writings of that reformer.* Inferior to 
 the Englishman in ability, but exciting 
 greater attention by his constancy and 
 sufferings, as well as by the memorable 
 war which his ashes kindled, the Bohe- 
 mian martyr was even more eminently 
 the precursor of the Reformation. But 
 still regarding these dissensions merely in 
 a temporal light, I cannot assign any ben- 
 eficial effect to the schism of the Hussites, 
 at least in its immediate results, and in 
 the country where it appeared. Though 
 some degree of sympathy with their 
 cause is inspired by resentment at the ill 
 faith of their adversaries, and by the as- 
 sociations of civil and religious liberty, 
 we cannot estimate the Taborites and 
 other sectaries of that description but as 
 ferocious and desperate fanatics. f Per- 
 haps beyond the confines of Bohemia, 
 more substantial good may have been 
 produced by the influence of its reforma- 
 tion, and a better tone of morals inspired 
 into Germany. But I must again repeat, 
 that upon this obscure and ambiguous 
 subject I assert nothing definitely, and 
 little with confidence. The tendencies 
 of religious dissent in the four ages be- 
 fore the Reformation appear to have gen- 
 erally conduced towards the moral im- 
 provement of mankind ; and facts of this 
 nature occupy a far greater space in a 
 philosophical view of society during that 
 period than we might at first imagine; 
 but every one who is disposed to prose- 
 cute this inquiry will assign their charac- 
 ter according to the result of his own 
 investigations. 
 
 But the best school of moral discipline 
 institution which the middle ages afforded 
 of chivalry. was the institution of chivalry. 
 There is something perhaps to allow for 
 the partiality of modern writers upon this 
 interesting subject; yet our most skepti- 
 cal criticism must assign a decisive influ- 
 ence to this great source of human im- 
 provement. The more deeply it is con- 
 sidered, the more we shall become sensi- 
 ble of its importance. 
 
 There are, if I may so say, three pow- 
 
 * Huss does not appear to have rejected any of 
 the peculiar tenets of popery. Lenfant, p. 414. He 
 embraced, like Wicliffe, the predestinarian system 
 of Augustin, without pausing at any of those infer- 
 ences, apparently deducible from it, which, in the 
 heads of enthusiasts, may produce such extensive 
 mischief. These were maintained by Huss (id., p. 
 328), though not perhaps so crudely as by Luther. 
 Every thing relative to the history and doctrine of 
 Huss and his followers will be found in Lenfant's 
 three works, on the councils of Pisa, Constance, 
 and Basle. 
 
 t Lenfant, Hist, de la Guerre des Hussites et du 
 Concile de Basle. Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, 
 t.v. 
 
 erful spirits, which have from time to 
 time moved over the face of the waters, 
 and given a predominant impulse to the 
 moral sentiments and energies of man- 
 kind. These are the spirits of liberty, of 
 religion, and of honour. It was the prin- 
 cipal business of chivalry to animate and 
 cherish the last of these three. And 
 whatever high magnanimous energy the 
 love of liberty or religious zeal has ever 
 imparted, was equalled by the exquisite 
 sense of honour which this institution 
 preserved. 
 
 It appears probable, that the custom of 
 receiving arms at the age of Its orj In 
 manhood with some solemnity, 
 was of immemorial antiquity among the 
 nations that overthrew the Roman em- 
 pire. For it is mentioned by Tacitus to 
 have prevailed among their German an- ' 
 cestors ; and his expressions might have 
 been used with no great variation to de- 
 scribe the actual ceremonies of knight- 
 hood.* There was even in that remote 
 age a sort of public trial as to the fitness 
 of the candidate, which, though perhaps 
 confined to his bodily strength and activi- 
 ty, might be the germe of that refined in- 
 vestigation which was thought necessary 
 in the perfect stage of chivalry. Proofs, 
 though rare and incidental, might be ad- 
 duced to show, that in the time of Charle- 
 magne, and even earlier, the sons of 
 monarchs at least did not assume manly 
 arms without a regular investiture. And 
 in the eleventh century, it is evident that 
 this was a general practice. f 
 
 This ceremony, however, would per- 
 haps of itself have done little towards 
 forming that intrinsic principle which 
 characterized the genuine chivalry. But 
 in the reign of Charlemagne we find a 
 military distinction, that appears, in fact 
 as well as in name, to have given birth to 
 that institution. Certain feudal tenants, 
 and I suppose also allodial proprietors, 
 were bound to serve on horseback, 
 equipped with the coat of mail. These 
 were called Caballarii, from which the 
 word chevaliers is an obvious corrup- 
 
 * Nihil neque publicae neque privatae rei nisi ar- 
 mati agunt. Sect arma sumere non ante cuiquam 
 moris, quam civitas suffecturum probaverit. Turn 
 in ipso concilio, vel principum aliquis, vel pater, 
 vel propinquus scuto frameaque juvenem ornant ; 
 haec apud eos toga, hie primus juventae honos ; ante 
 hoc domus pars videntur, mox reipublicse. De 
 Moribus German., c. 13. 
 
 t William of Malmsbury says that Alfred con- 
 ferred knighthood on Athelstan, donatum chla- 
 myde cpccinea, gemmato balteo, ense Saxonico 
 cum vagina aurea, 1. ii., c. 6. St. Palaye (Memoires 
 sur la Chevalerie, p. 2) mentions other instances ; 
 which may also be found in Du Cange's Glossary, 
 v. Arma, and in his 22d dissertation on Joinville. 
 
510 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 tion.* But he who fought on horseback, 
 and had been invested with peculiar arms 
 in a solemn manner, wanted nothing 
 more to render him a knight. Chivalry 
 therefore may, in a general sense, be re- 
 ferred to the age of Charlemagne. We 
 may however go farther, and observe 
 that these distinctive advantages above 
 ordinary combatants were probably the 
 sources of that remarkable valour and 
 that keen thirst for glory which became 
 the essential attributes of a knightly 
 character. (For confidence in our skill 
 and strength is the usual foundation of 
 courage : it is by feeling ourselves able 
 to surmount common dangers, that we 
 become adventurous enough to encounter 
 those of a more extraordinary nature, 
 and to which more glory is attached. 
 The reputation of superior personal 
 prowess, so difficult to be attained in the 
 course of modern warfare, and so liable 
 to erroneous representations, was al- 
 ways within the reach of the stoutest 
 knight, and was founded on claims 
 which could be measured with much ac- 
 curacy. Such is the subordination and 
 mutual dependance in a modern army, 
 that every man must be content to divide 
 his glory with his comrades, his general, 
 or his soldiers. But the soul of chivalry 
 was individual honour, coveted in so en- 
 tire and absolute a perfection, that it 
 must not be shared with an army or a 
 nation. Most of the virtues it inspired 
 were what we may call independent, as 
 opposed to those which are founded upon 
 social relations. The knights-errant of 
 romance perform their best exploits from 
 the love of renown, or from a sort of ab- 
 stract sense of justice, rather than from 
 any solicitude to promote the happiness 
 of mankind. If these springs of action 
 are less generally beneficial, they are, 
 however, more connected with elevation 
 of character than the systematic pru- 
 dence of men accustomed to social life. 
 This solitary and independent spirit of 
 chivalry, dwelling, as it were, upon a 
 rock, and disdaining injustice or false- 
 hood from the consciousness of internal 
 dignity, without any calculation of their 
 consequences, is not unlike what we 
 sometimes read of Arabian chiefs or the 
 North American Indians. f These na- 
 
 * Comites et vassalli nostri qui beneficia habere 
 noscuntur, et caballarii omnes ad placitum nostrum 
 yeniant bene preparati. Capitularia, A. D. 807, 
 in Baluze, t. i., p. 460. 
 
 t We must take for this the more favourable 
 representations of the Indian nations. A deteri- 
 orating intercourse with Europeans, or a race of 
 European extraction, has tended to efface those 
 
 tions, so widely remote from each other, 
 seem to partake of that moral energy, 
 which, among European nations, far re- 
 mote from both of them, was excited by 
 the spirit of chivalry. But the most 
 beautiful picture that was ever portrayed 
 of this character is the Achilles of Ho- 
 mer, the representative of chivalry in its 
 most general form, with all its sincerity 
 and unyielding rectitude, all its courte- 
 sies and munificence. Calmly indiffer- 
 ent to the cause in which he is engaged, 
 and contemplating with a serious and 
 unshaken look the premature death that 
 awaits him, his heart only beats for glory 
 and friendship. To this sublime charac- 
 ter, bating that imaginary completion by 
 which the creations of the poet, like 
 those of the sculptor, transcend all single 
 works of nature, there were probably 
 many parallels in the ages of chivalry : 
 especially before a set education and the 
 refinements of society had altered a little 
 the natural unadulterated warrior of a ru- 
 der period. One illustrious example from 
 this earlier age is the Cid Ruy Diaz, 
 whose history has fortunately been pre- 
 served much at length in several chroni- 
 cles of ancient date, and in one valuable 
 poem ; and though I will not say that the 
 Spanish hero is altogether a counterpart 
 of Achilles in gracefulness and urbanity, 
 yet was he inferior to none that ever 
 lived in frankness, honour, and magna- 
 nimity.* 
 
 virtues, which possibly were rather exaggerated by 
 earlier writers. 
 
 * Since this passage was written, I have found 
 a parallel drawn by Mr. Sharon Turner, in his val- 
 uable History of England, between Achilles and 
 Elichard Cosur de Lion; the superior justness of 
 which I readily acknowledge. The real hero does 
 not indeed excite so much interest in me as the 
 poetical ; but the marks of resemblance are very 
 striking, whether we consider their passions, their 
 talents, their virtues, their vices, or the waste of 
 their heroism. 
 
 The two principal persons in the Iliad, if I may 
 digress into the observation, appear to me repre- 
 sentatives of the heroic character in its two lead- 
 ing varieties ; of the energy which has its sole 
 principle of action within itself, and of that .which 
 borrows its impulse from external relations ; of the 
 spirit of honour, in short, and of patriotism. As 
 every sentiment of Achilles is independent and 
 self-supported, so those of Hector all bear refer- 
 ence to his kindred and his country. The ardour 
 of the one might have been extinguished for want 
 of nourishment in Thessaly ; but that of the other 
 might, we fancy, have never been kindled but for 
 the dangers of Troy. Peace could have brought 
 no delight to the one but from the memory of war ; 
 war had no alleviation to the other but from the 
 images of peace. Compare, for example, the two 
 speeches, beginning II. Z., 441, and II. II., 49 ; or 
 rather compare the two characters throughout the 
 Iliad. So wonderfully were those two great springs 
 of human sympathy, variously interesting accord- 
 

 PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 611 
 
 In the first state of chivalry, it was 
 Its connex- closely connected with the mil- 
 ion with itary service of fiefs. The Ca- 
 feudai ser- ballarii in the Capitularies, the 
 Milites of the eleventh and 
 twelfth centuries, were landholders who 
 followed their lord or sovereign into the 
 field. A certain value of land was term- 
 ed in England a knight's fee, or, in Nor- 
 mandy, feudum loricae, fief de haubert, 
 from the coat of mail which it entitled 
 and required the tenant to wear ; a mil- 
 itary tenure was said to be by service in 
 chivalry. To serve as knights, mounted 
 and equipped, was the common duty of 
 vassals ; it implied no personal merit, it 
 gave of itself a claim to no civil privi- 
 leges. But this knight- service, founded 
 upon a feudal obligation, is to be careful- 
 ly distinguished from that superior chiv- 
 alry, in which all was independent and 
 voluntary. The latter, in fact, could 
 hardly flourish in its full perfection till 
 This con- the military service of feudal ten- 
 nexion ure began to decline ; namely, in 
 the thirteenth century. The or- 
 igin of this personal chivalry I should 
 incline to refer to the ancient usage of 
 voluntary commendation, which I have 
 mentioned in a former chapter. Men 
 commended themselves, that is, did 
 homage and professed attachment to a 
 prince or lord ; generally indeed for pro- 
 tection or the hope of reward, but some- 
 times probably for the sake of distin- 
 guishing themselves in his quarrels. 
 When they received pay, which must 
 have been the usual case, they were lit- 
 erally his soldiers or stipendiary troops. 
 Those who could afford to exert their 
 valour without recompense were like the 
 knights of whom we read in romance, 
 who served a foreign master through 
 love, or thirst of glory, or gratitude. 
 The extreme poverty of the lower nobil- 
 ty, arising from the subdivision of fiefs, 
 and the politic generosity of rich lords, 
 made this connexion as strong as that 
 of territorial dependance. A younger 
 brother, leaving the paternal estate, in 
 which he took a slender share, might 
 look to wealth and dignity in the service 
 of a powerful count. Knighthood, which 
 he could not claim as his legal right, be- 
 came the object of his chief ambition. 
 It raised him in the scale of society, 
 equalling him in dress, in arms, and in 
 title, to the rich landholders. As it was 
 due to his merit, it did much more than 
 
 ing to the diversity of our tempers, first touched 
 by that ancient patriarch, 
 
 a quo, ceu fonte perenni, 
 Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis. 
 
 equal him to those who had no preten- 
 sions but from wealth ; and the territo- 
 rial knights became by degrees ashamed 
 of assuming the title till they could chal- 
 lenge it by real desert. 
 
 This class of noble and gallant cava- 
 liers, serving commonly for Effect of the 
 pay, but on the most honoura- crusades on 
 ble footing, became far more chivalr y- 
 numerous through the crusades ; a great 
 epoch in the history of European socie- 
 ty. In these wars, as all feudal service 
 was out of the question, it was necessa- 
 ry for the richer barons to take into their 
 pay as many knights as they could afford 
 to maintain : speculating, so far as such 
 motives operated, on an influence with 
 the leaders of the expedition, and on a 
 share of plunder proportioned to the 
 number of their followers. During the 
 period of the crusades, we find the insti- 
 tution of chivalry acquire its full vigour 
 as an order of personal nobility ; and 
 its original connexion with feudal ten- 
 ure, if not altogether effaced, became 
 in a great measure forgotten in the 
 splendour and dignity of the new form 
 which it wore. 
 
 The crusaders, however, changed in 
 more than one respect the char- Chivgl 
 acter of chivalry. Before that conne/ted 
 epoch it appears to have had no th reii- 
 particular reference to religion. glon ' 
 Ingulfus indeed tells us that the Anglo- 
 Saxons preceded the ceremony of inves- 
 titure by a confession of their sins, and 
 other pious rites, and they received the 
 order at the hands of a priest instead of 
 a knight. But this was derided by the 
 Normans as effeminacy, and seems to 
 have proceeded from the extreme devo- 
 tion of the English before the conquest.* 
 We can hardly perceive, indeed, why the 
 assumption of arms to be used in butch- 
 ering mankind should be treated as a 
 religious ceremony. The clergy, to do 
 them justice, constantly opposed the 
 private wars in which the courage of 
 those ages wasted itself; and all blood- 
 shed was subject in strictness to a ca- 
 nonical penance. But the purposes for 
 which men bore arms in a crusade so 
 sanctified their use, that chivalry acquired 
 the character as much of a religious as a 
 niilitary institution. For many centu- 
 ries, the recovery of the Holy Land was 
 constantly at the heart of a brave and 
 superstitious nobility ; and every knight 
 
 * Ingulfus in Gale, xv. Scriptores, t. i., p. 70. 
 William Rufus, however, was knighted by Arch- 
 bishop Lanfranc, which looks as if the ceremony 
 was not absolutely repugnant to the Norman prac 
 tice. 
 
512 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 was supposed at his creation to pledge 
 himself, as occasion should arise, to that 
 cause. Meanwhile, the defence of God's 
 law against infidels was his primary and 
 standing duty. A knight, whenever pres- 
 ent at mass, held the point of his sword 
 before him while the gospel was read, 
 to signify his readiness to support it. 
 Writers of the middle ages compare the 
 knightly to the priestly character in an 
 elaborate parallel, and the investiture of 
 the one was supposed analogous to the 
 ordination of the other. The ceremonies 
 upon this occasion were almost wholly 
 religious. The candidate passed nights 
 in prayer among priests in a church ; he 
 received the sacraments ; he entered into 
 a bath, and was clad with a white robe, 
 in allusion to the presumed purification 
 of his life ; his sword was solemnly 
 blessed ; every thing, in short, was con- 
 trived to identify his new condition with 
 the defence of religion, or at least of the 
 church.* 
 
 To this strong tincture of religion, 
 And with which entered into the composi- 
 gaiiantry. tion of chivalry from the twelfth 
 century, was added another ingredient 
 equally distinguishing. A great respect 
 for the female sex had always been a re- 
 markable characteristic of the Northern 
 nations. The German women were high 
 spirited and virtuous; qualities which 
 might be causes or consequences of 
 the veneration with which they were 
 regarded. I am not sure that we could 
 trace very minutely the condition of 
 women for the period between the sub- 
 version of the Roman empire and the 
 first crusade ; but apparently man did not 
 grossly abuse his superiority; and in 
 point of civil rights, and even as to the 
 inheritance of property, the two sexes 
 were placed perhaps as nearly on a level 
 as the nature of such warlike societies 
 would admit. There seems, however, to 
 have been more roughness in the social 
 intercourse between the sexes than we 
 find in later periods. The spirit of gal- 
 lantry, which became so animating a 
 principle of chivalry, must be ascribed to 
 the progressive refinement of society du- 
 ring the twelfth and two succeeding cen- 
 turies. In a rude state of manners, as 
 among the lower people in all ages, 
 woman has not full scope to display 
 
 * Du Cange, v. Miles, and 22d Dissertation on 
 Joinville. St. Palaye, M6m sur la Chevalerie, part 
 ii. A curious original illustration of this, as well 
 as of other chivalrous principles, will be found in 
 I'Ordene de Chevalerie, a long metrical romance 
 published in Barbazan's Fabliaux, t. i., p. 59 (edit. 
 1808). 
 
 those fascinating graces, by which na- 
 ture has designed to counterbalance the 
 strength and energy of mankind. Even 
 where those jealous customs that degrade 
 alike the two sexes have not prevailed, 
 her lot is domestic seclusion ; nor is she 
 fit to share in the boisterous pastimes of 
 drunken merriment, to which the inter- 
 course of an unpolished people is confi- 
 ned. But as a taste for the more elegant 
 enjoyments of wealth arises, a taste 
 which it is always her policy and her de- 
 light to nourish, she obtains an ascend- 
 ency at first in the lighter hour, and from 
 thence in the serious occupations of life. 
 She chases or brings into subjection the 
 god of wine, a victory which might seem 
 more ignoble were it less difficult, and 
 calls in the aid of divinities more propi- 
 tious to her ambition. The love of be- 
 coming ornament is not perhaps to be re- 
 garded in the light of vanity ; it is rather 
 an instinct which woman has received 
 from nature to give effect to those charms 
 that are her defence; and when com- 
 merce began to minister more effectually 
 to the wants of luxury, the rich furs of 
 the North, the gay silks of Asia, the 
 wrought gold of domestic manufacture, 
 illumined the halls of chivalry, and cast, 
 as if by the spell of enchantment, that 
 ineffable grace over beauty which the 
 choice and arrangement of dress are cal- 
 culated to bestow. Courtesy had always 
 been the proper attribute of knighthood ; 
 protection of the weak its legitimate duty ; 
 but these were heightened to a pitch of 
 enthusiasm when woman became their 
 object. There was little jealousy shown 
 in the treatment of that sex, at least in 
 France, the fountain of chivalry; they 
 were present at festivals, at tournaments, 
 and sat promiscuously in the halls of their 
 castle. The romance of Perceforest (and 
 romances have always been deemed good 
 witnesses as to manners) tells of a feast 
 where eight hundred knights had each of 
 them a lady eating off his plate.* For to 
 eat off the same plate was a usual mark 
 of gallantry or friendship. 
 
 Next therefore, or even equal to devo- 
 tion, stood gallantry among the princi- 
 ples of knighthood. But all comparison 
 between the two was saved by blending 
 them together. The love of God and 
 the ladies was enjoined as a single duty. 
 He who was faithful and true to his mis- 
 
 * Y cut huit cens chevaliers s6ant a table ; et si 
 n'y eust celui qui n'eust une dame ou une pucelle 
 a son ecuelle. In Lancelot du Lac, a lady who 
 was troubled with a jealous husband complains 
 that it was a long time since a knight had eaten off 
 her plate. Le Grand, t. i., p. 24. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 513 
 
 tress was held sure of salvation in the 
 theology of castles, though not of clois- 
 ters.* Froissart announces that he had 
 undertaken a collection of amorous poe- 
 try with the help of God and of love ; 
 and Boccace returns thanks to each for 
 their assistance in the Decameron. The 
 laws sometimes united in this general 
 homage to the fair. We will, says 
 James II. of Aragon, that every man, 
 whether knight or no, who shall be in 
 company with a lady, pass safe and un- 
 molested, unless he be guilty of murder.f 
 Louis II., duke of Bourbon, instituting the 
 order of the Golden Shield, enjoins his 
 knights to honour above all the ladies, 
 and not to permit any one to slander 
 them, "because from them, after God, 
 comes all the honour that men can ac- 
 \ quire. "J 
 
 The gallantry of those ages, which 
 was very often adulterous, had certainly 
 no right to profane the name of religion ; 
 but its union with valour was at least 
 more natural, and became so intimate, 
 that the same word has served to express 
 both qualities. In the French and Eng- 
 lish wars especially, the knights of each 
 country brought to that serious conflict 
 the spirit of romantic attachment which 
 had been cherished in the hours of peace. 
 They fought at Poitiers or Verneuil as 
 they had fought at tournaments, bearing 
 over their armour scarves and devices, 
 as the livery of their mistresses, and as- 
 serting the paramount beauty of her they 
 served, in vaunting challenges towards 
 the enemy. Thus, in the middle of a 
 keen skirmish at Cherbourg, the squad- 
 rons remained motionless, while one 
 knight challenged to a single combat the 
 most amorous of the adversaries. Such 
 a defiance was soon accepted ; and the 
 battle only recommenced when one of 
 the champions had lost his life for his 
 love.fy In the first campaign of Edward's 
 war, some young English knights wore a 
 covering over one eye, vowing, for the 
 sake of their ladies, never to see with 
 both till they should have signalized 
 their prowess in the field. || These ex- 
 travagances of chivalry are so common 
 that they form part of its general charac- 
 ter, and prove how far a course of action 
 
 * Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. iii., p. 438. St. Palaye, 
 t. i., p. 41. I quote St. Palaye's Memoirs from the 
 first edition in 1759, which is not the best. 
 
 t Statuimus, quod omnis homo, sive miles sive 
 alius, qui iverit cum domina generosa, salvus sit 
 atque securus, nisi fuerit homicida. De Marca, 
 Marca Hispanica, p. 1428. 
 
 % Le Grand, t. i., p. 120. St. Palaye, t. i., p. 13, 
 134, 221. Fabliaux, Romances, &c., passim. 
 
 St. Palaye, p. 222. I! Froissart, p. 33. 
 
 which depends upon the impulses of sen- 
 timent may come to deviate from com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 It cannot be presumed that this enthu- 
 siastic veneration, this devotedness ill 
 life and death, were wasted upon ungrate- 
 ful natures. The goddesses of that idol- 
 atry knew too well the value of their 
 worshippers. There has seldom been 
 such adamant about the female heart as 
 can resist the highest renown for valour 
 and courtesy, united with the steadiest 
 fidelity. " He loved (says Froissart of 
 Eustace d'Auberthicourt), and afterward 
 married Lady Isabel, daughter of the 
 Count of Juliers. This lady, too, loved 
 Lord Eustace for the great exploits in 
 arms which she heard told of him, and 
 she sent him horses and loving letters, 
 which made the said Lord Eustace more 
 bold than before, and he wrought such 
 feats of chivalry that all in his company 
 were gainers."* It were to be wished 
 that the sympathy of love and valour had 
 always been as honourable. But the 
 morals of chivalry, we cannot deny, were 
 not pure. In the amusing fictions which 
 seem to have been the only popular read- 
 ing of the middle ages, there reigns a li- 
 centious spirit, not of that slighter kind 
 which is usual in such compositions, but 
 indicating a general dissoluteness in the 
 intercourse of the sexes. This has often 
 been noticed of Boccaccio and the early 
 Italian novelists ; but it equally charac- 
 terized the tales and romances of France, 
 whether metrical or in prose, and all the 
 poetry of the Troubadours. f The viola- 
 tion of marriage-vows passes in them for 
 an incontestable privilege of the brave 
 and the fair ; and an accomplished knight 
 seems to have enjoyed as undoubted pre- 
 rogatives, by general consent of opinion, 
 as were claimed by the brilliant courtiers 
 of Louis XV. 
 
 But neither that emulous valour which 
 chivalry excited, nor the religion and 
 gallantry which were its animating prin- 
 ciples, alloyed as the latter were by the 
 corruption of those ages, could have ren- 
 dered its institution materially conducive 
 to the moral improvement of society. 
 There were, however, excellences of a 
 very high class which it equally encour- 
 aged. In the books professedly written 
 to lay down the duties of knighthood, they 
 appear to spread over the whole compass 
 
 * St. Palaye, p. 268. 
 
 t The romances will speak for themselves ; and 
 the character of the Provencal morality may be 
 collected from Millot, Hist, des Troubadours, pas- 
 sim ; and from Sismondi, Literature du Midi, t. i., 
 p. 179, &c. See too St. Palave, t. ii., p. 62 and 68. 
 
514 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 of human obligations. But these, like 
 other books of morality, strain their 
 schemes of perfection far beyond the 
 actual practice of mankind. A juster es- 
 timate of chivalrous manners is to be de- 
 duced from romances. Yet in these, as 
 in all similar fictions, there must be a few 
 ideal touches beyond the simple truth of 
 character; and the picture can only be 
 interesting when it ceases to present im- 
 ages of mediocrity or striking imperfec- 
 tion. But they referred their models of 
 fictitious heroism to the existing standard 
 of moral approbation ; a rule which, if 
 it generally falls short of what reason 
 and religion prescribe, is always beyond 
 the average tenour of human conduct. 
 From these and from history itself we 
 may infer the tendency of chivalry to el- 
 evate and purify the moral feelings. 
 Three virtues may particularly be no- 
 Virtues ti ce d> as essential, in the estima- 
 deemedes- tion of mankind, to the charac- 
 scntiai to ter of a knight ; loyalty, courte- 
 chivalry - sy, and munificence. 
 
 The first of these, in its original sense, 
 Loyalty may be defined ' fidelity to engage- 
 ments ; whether actual promises, 
 or such tacit obligations as bound a vas- 
 sal to his lord, and a subject to his prince. 
 It was applied also, and in the utmost 
 strictness, to the fidelity of a lover to- 
 wards the lady he served. Breach of 
 faith, and especially of an express prom- 
 ise, was held a disgrace that no valour 
 could redeem. False, perjured, disloyal, 
 recreant, were the epithets which he 
 must be compelled to endure who had 
 swerved from a plighted engagement, 
 even towards an enemy. This is one of 
 the most striking changes produced by 
 chivalry. Treachery, the usual vice of 
 savage as well as corrupt nations, be- 
 came infamous during the vigour of that 
 discipline. As personal rather than na- 
 tional feelings actuated its heroes, they 
 never felt that hatred, much less that 
 fear of their enemies, which blind men 
 to the heinousness of ill faith. In the 
 wars of Edward III., originating in no 
 real animosity, the spirit of honourable 
 as well as courteous behaviour towards 
 the foe seems to have arrived at its high- 
 est point. Though avarice may have 
 been the primary motive of ransoming 
 prisoners, instead of putting them to 
 death, their permission to return home 
 on the word of honour, in order to pro- 
 cure the stipulated sum, an indulgence 
 never refused, could only be founded on 
 experienced confidence in the principles 
 of chivalry.* 
 
 * St. Palaye, part ii. 
 
 A knight was unfit to remain a member 
 of the order if he violated his 
 faith ; he was ill acquainted with urtesy ' 
 its duties if he proved wanting in cour- 
 tesy. This word expressed the most 
 highly refined good-breeding, founded 
 less upon a knowledge of ceremonious 
 politeness, though this was not to be 
 omitted, than on the spontaneous mod- 
 esty, self-denial, and respect for others, 
 which ought to spring from his heart. 
 Besides the grace which this beautiful 
 virtue threw over the habits of social 
 life, it softened down the natural rough- 
 ness of war, and gradually introduced 
 that indulgent treatment of prisoners 
 which was almost unknown to antiquity. 
 Instances of this kind are continual in the 
 later period of the middle ages. An Ital- 
 ian writer blames the soldier who wound- 
 ed Eccelin, the famous tyrant of Padua, 
 after he was taken. He deserved, says 
 he, no praise, but rather the greatest in- 
 famy for his baseness ; since it is as vile 
 an act to wound a prisoner, whether no- 
 ble or otherwise, as to strike a dead 
 body.* Considering the crimes of Ecce- 
 lin, this sentiment is a remarkable proof 
 of generosity. The behaviour of Ed- 
 ward III. to Eustace de Ribaumont, after 
 the capture of Calais, and that, still more 
 exquisitely beautiful, of the Black Prince 
 to his royal prisoner at Poitiers, are such 
 eminent instances of chivalrous virtue, 
 that I omit to repeat them only because 
 they are so well known. Those great 
 princes, too, might be imagined to have 
 soared far above the ordinary track of 
 mankind. But, in truth, the knights who 
 surrounded them and imitated their ex- 
 cellences were only inferior in opportu- 
 nities of displaying the same virtue. 
 After the battle of Poitiers, " the English 
 and Gascon knights," says Froissart, 
 having entertained their prisoners, went 
 home each of them with the knights or 
 squires he had taken, whom he then ques- 
 tioned upon their honour, what ransom 
 they could pay without inconvenience, 
 and easily gave them credit; and it was 
 common for men to say that they would 
 not straighten any knight or squire, so 
 that he should not live well and keep up 
 his honour."! Liberality indeed, and 
 
 * Non laudem meruit, sed summae potius oppro 
 brium vilitatis; nam idem facinus est putandum, 
 captum nobilem vel ignobilem offendere, vel ferire, 
 quam gladio caedere cadaver. Rolandinus in 
 Script. Rer. Ital., t. viii., p. 351. 
 
 t Froissart, 1. i., c. 161. He remarks in another 
 place, that all English and French gentlemen 
 treat their prisoners well ; not so the Germans, who 
 put them in fetters, in order to extort more money, 
 c. 136. 
 
PAfcT II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 515 
 
 Liberality disdain of mone y might be reck- 
 oned, as I have said, among the 
 essential virtues of chivalry. All the ro- 
 mances inculcate the duty of scattering 
 their wealth with profusion, especially 
 towards minstrels, pilgrims, and the poor- 
 er members of their own order. The 
 last, who were pretty numerous, had a 
 constant right to succour from the opu- 
 lent ; the castle of every lord, who re- 
 spected the ties of knighthood, was open 
 with more than usual hospitality to the 
 traveller whose armour announced his 
 dignity, though it might also conceal his 
 poverty.* 
 
 Valour, loyalty, courtesy, munificence, 
 formed collectively the character 
 e * of an accomplished knight, so far 
 as was displayed in the ordinary tenour 
 of his life, reflecting these virtues as an 
 unsullied mirror. Yet something more 
 was required for the perfect idea of chiv- 
 alry, and enjoined by its principles; an 
 active sense of justice, an ardent indig- 
 nation against wrong, a determination of 
 courage to its best end, the prevention or 
 redress of injury. It grew up as a salu- 
 tary antidote in the midst of poisons, 
 while scarce any law but that of the 
 strongest obtained regard, and the rights 
 of territorial property, which are only 
 right as they conduce to general good, 
 became the means of general oppression. 
 The real condition of society, it has 
 sometimes been thought, might suggest 
 stories of knight-errantry, which were 
 wrought up into the popular romances 
 of the middle ages. A baron, abusing 
 the advantage of an inaccessible castle 
 in the fastnesses of the Black Forest or 
 the Alps, to pillage the neighbourhood, 
 and confine travellers in his dungeon, 
 though neither a giant nor a Saracen, 
 was a monster not less formidable, and 
 could perhaps as little be destroyed 
 without the aid of disinterested bravery. 
 Knight-errantry, indeed, as a profession, 
 cannot rationally be conceived to have 
 had any existence beyond the precincts 
 of romance. Yet there seems no im- 
 probability in supposing that a knight, 
 journeying through uncivilized regions 
 in his way to the Holy Land or to the 
 court of a foreign sovereign, might find 
 himself engaged in adventures not very 
 
 * St. Palaye, part iv., p. 312, 367, &c. Le 
 Grand, Fabliaux, t. i., p. 115, 167. It was the cus- 
 tom in Great Britain (says the romance of Perce- 
 forest, speaking of course in an imaginary history), 
 that noblemen and ladies placed a helmet on the 
 highest point of their castles, as a sign that all per- 
 sons of such rank travelling that road might boldly 
 enter their houses like their own. St. Palaye, 
 p. 367. 
 
 Kk2 
 
 
 dissimilar to those which are the theme 
 of romance. We cannot indeed expect 
 to find any historical evidence of such 
 incidents. 
 
 The characteristic virtues of chivalry 
 bear so much resemblance to Resem- 
 those which eastern writers of 
 the same period extol, that I am 
 
 a little disposed to SUSpect Eu- manners. 
 
 rope of having derived some improve- 
 ment from imitation of Asia. Though 
 the crusades began in abhorrence of in- 
 fidels, this sentiment wore off in some 
 degree before their cessation; and the 
 regular intercourse of commerce, some- 
 times of alliance, between the Christians 
 of Palestine and the Saracens, must have 
 removed part of the prejudice, while ex- 
 perience of their enemy's courage and 
 generosity in war would with those 
 gallant knights serve to lighten the re- 
 mainder. The romancers expatiate with 
 pleasure on the merits of Saladin, who 
 actually received the honour of knight- 
 hood from Hugh of Tabaria his prisoner. 
 An ancient poem, entitled the Order of 
 Chivalry, is founded upon this story, and 
 contains a circumstantial account of the 
 ceremonies, as well as duties, which the 
 institution required.* One or two other 
 instances of a similar kind bear witness 
 to the veneration in which the name of 
 knight was held among the eastern na- 
 tions. And certainly, excepting that ro- 
 mantic gallantry towards women, which 
 their customs would not admit, the Ma- 
 hometan chieftains were for the most part 
 abundantly qualified to fulfil the duties 
 of European chivalry. Their manners 
 had been polished and courteous, while 
 the western kingdoms were compara- 
 tively barbarous. 
 
 The principles of chivalry were not, I 
 think, naturally productive of Evils produced 
 many evils. For it is unjust by the spirit of 
 to class those acts of oppres- chivfllr y- 
 sion or disorder among the abuses of 
 knighthood, which were committed in 
 spite of its regulations, and were only 
 prevented by them from becoming more 
 extensive. The license of times so im- 
 perfectly civilized could not be expected 
 to yield to institutions which, like those 
 of religion, fell prodigiously short in their 
 practical result of the reformation which 
 they were designed to work. Man's 
 guilt and frailty have never admitted 
 more than a partial corrective. But some 
 bad consequences may be more fairly 
 ascribed to the very nature of chivalry. 
 I have already mentioned the dissolute- 
 
 * Fabliaux de Barbasan, t. 
 
516 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 ness which almost unavoidably resulted 
 from the prevailing tone of gallantry. 
 And yet we sometimes find, in the wri- 
 tings of those times, a spirit of pure but 
 exaggerated sentiment; and the most 
 fanciful refinements of passion are min- 
 gled by the same poets with the coarsest 
 immorality. An undue thirst for mili- 
 tary renown was another fault that chiv- 
 alry must have nourished; and the love 
 of war, sufficiently pernicious in any 
 shape, was more founded, as I have ob- 
 served, on personal feelings of honour, 
 and less on public spirit,' than in the citi- 
 zens of free states. A third reproach 
 may be made to the character of knight- 
 hood, that it widened the separation be- 
 tween the different classes of society, 
 and confirmed that aristocratic al spirit 
 of high birth, by which the large mass of 
 mankind were kept in unjust degradation. 
 Compare the generosity of Edward III. 
 towards Eustace de Ribaumont at the 
 siege of Calais, with the harshness of 
 his conduct towards the citizens. This 
 may be illustrated by a story from Join- 
 ville, who was himself imbued with the 
 full spirit of chivalry, and felt like the 
 best and bravest of his age. He is 
 speaking of Henry, count of Champagne, 
 who acquired, says he, very deservedly, 
 the surname of Liberal, and adduces the 
 following proof of it. A poor knight im- 
 plored of him on his knees one day as 
 much money as would serve to marry his 
 two daughters. One Arthault de Nogent, 
 a rich burgess, willing to rid the count of 
 this importunity, but rather awkward, we 
 must own, in the turn of his argument, 
 said to the petitioner, My lord has al- 
 ready given away so much that he has 
 nothing left. Sir Villain, replied Henry, 
 turning round to him, you do not speak 
 truth in saying that I have nothing left 
 to give when I have got yourself. Here, 
 Sir Knight, I give you this man, and war- 
 rant your possession of him. Then, says 
 Joinville, the poor knight was not at all 
 confounded, but seized hold of the bur- 
 gess fast by the collar, and told him he 
 should not go till he had ransomed him- 
 self. And in the end he was forced to 
 pay a ransom of five hundred pounds. 
 The simple-minded writer who brings 
 this evidence of the Count of Cham- 
 pagne's liberality is not at ail struck 
 with the facility of a virtue that is exer- 
 cised at the cost of others.* 
 
 There is perhaps enough in the nature 
 Circumstan- ^ tn ^ s institution, and its con- 
 ces tending geniality to the habits of a 
 to promote it. wa rlike generation, to account 
 
 * Joinville in Collection des Memoires, t. i., p. 43. 
 
 for the respect in which it was held 
 throughout Europe. But several collat- 
 eral circumstances served to invigorate 
 its spirit. Besides the powerful efficacy 
 with which the poetry and romance of 
 the middle ages stimulated those sus- 
 ceptible minds which were alive to no 
 other literature, we may enumerate four 
 distinct causes tending to the promotion 
 of chivalry. 
 
 The first of these was the regular 
 scheme of education, according Regular ed- 
 to which the sons of gentlemen, ucation for 
 from the age of seven years, knighthood. 
 were brought up in the castles of supe- 
 rior lords, where they at once learned the 
 whole discipline of their future profes- 
 sion, and imbibed its emulous and enthu- 
 siastic spirit. This was an inestimable ad- 
 vantage to the poorer nobility, who could 
 hardly otherwise have given their chil- 
 dren the accomplishments of their sta- 
 tion. From seven to fourteen these 
 boys were called pages or varlets ; at 
 fourteen they bore the name of esquire. 
 They were instructed in the manage- 
 ment of arms, in the art of horsemanship, 
 in exercises of strength and activity. 
 They became accustomed to obedience 
 and courteous demeanour, serving their 
 lord or lady in offices which had not yet 
 become derogatory to honourable birth, 
 and striving to please visiters, and espe- 
 cially ladies, at the ball or banquet. 
 Thus placed in the centre of all that 
 could awaken their imaginations, the 
 creed of chivalrous gallantry, supersti- 
 tion, or honour, must have made indeli- 
 ble impressions. Panting for the glory 
 which neither their strength nor the es- 
 tablished rules permitted them to antici- 
 pate, the young scions of chivalry attend- 
 ed their masters to the tournament, and 
 even to the battle, and riveted with a 
 sigh the armour they were forbidden to 
 wear.* 
 
 It was the constant policy of sover- 
 eigns to encourage this institu- Encourage- 
 tion, which furnished them with JJJ.jJJ e g f 
 faithful supports, and counter- Tounia- 
 acted the independent spirit of ments. 
 feudal tenure. Hence they displayed a 
 lavish magnificence in festivals and tour- 
 naments, which may be reckoned a sec- 
 ond means of keeping up the tone of 
 chivalrous feeling. The kings of France 
 and England held solemn or plenary 
 courts at the great festivals, or at other 
 times, where the name of knight was 
 always a title to admittance ; and the 
 masque of chivalry, if I may use the ex- 
 pression, was acted in pageants and cer- 
 
 St. Palaye, part i. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 517 
 
 emonies, fantastical enough in our ap- 
 prehension, but well calculated for those 
 heated understandings. Here the pea- 
 cock and the pheasant, birds of high 
 fame in romance, received the homage 
 of all true knights.* The most singular 
 festival of this kind was that celebrated 
 by Philip, duke of Burgundy, in 1453. 
 In the midst of the banquet a pageant 
 was introduced, representing the calami- 
 tous state of religion in consequence of 
 the recent capture of Constantinople. 
 This was followed by the appearance of 
 a pheasant, which was laid before the 
 duke, and to which the knights present 
 addressed their vows to undertake a cru- 
 sade, in the following very characteristic 
 preamble : I swear before God my crea- 
 tor in the first place, and the glorious 
 Virgin his mother, and next before the 
 ladies and the pheasant. f Tournaments 
 were a still more powerful incentive to 
 emulation. These may be considered 
 to have arisen about the middle of the 
 eleventh century ; for though every mar- 
 tial people have found diversion in repre- 
 senting the image of war, yet the name 
 of tournaments, and the laws that regu- 
 lated them, cannot be traced any higher.! 
 Every scenic performance of modern 
 times must be tame in comparison of 
 these animating combats. At a tourna- 
 ment, the space enclosed within the lists 
 was surrounded by sovereign princes and 
 their noblest barons, by knights of estab- 
 lished renown, and all that rank and 
 beauty had most distinguished among 
 the fair. Covered with steel, and known 
 only by their emblazoned shield, or by 
 the favours of their mistresses, a still 
 prouder bearing, the combatants rushed 
 forward to a strife without enmity, but 
 not without danger. Though their weap- 
 ons were pointless, and sometimes only 
 of wood, though they were bound by 
 the laws of tournaments to strike only 
 upon the strong armour of the trunk, or, 
 as it was called, between the four limbs, 
 those impetuous conflicts often termina- 
 ted in wounds and death. The church 
 uttered her excommunications in vain 
 against so wanton an exposure to peril ; 
 but it was more easy for her to excite 
 than to restrain that martial enthusiasm. 
 
 * Du Cange, 5 me Dissertation sur Joinville. St. 
 Palaye, t. i., p. 87, 118. Le Grand, t. i., p. 1-1. 
 
 t St. Palaye, t. i., p. 191. 
 
 i Godfrey de Preuilly, a French knight, is said 
 by several contemporary writers to have invented 
 tournaments ; which must of course be understood 
 in a limited sense. The Germans ascribe them to 
 Henry the Fowler; but this, according to Du 
 Cange, is on no authority. 6 me Dissertation sur 
 Joinville. 
 
 Victory in a tournament was little less 
 glorious, and perhaps at the moment 
 more exquisitely felt, than in the field ; 
 since no battle could assemble such wit- 
 nesses of valour. " Honour to the sons 
 of the brave" resounded amid the din of 
 martial music from the lips of the min- 
 strels, as the conqueror advanced to re- 
 ceive the prize from his queen or his 
 mistress; while the surrounding multi- 
 tude acknowledged in his prowess of that 
 day an augury of triumphs that might in 
 more serious contests be blended with 
 those of his country.* 
 
 Both honorary and substantial privi- 
 leges belonged to the condition privileges 
 of knighthood, and had of course of knigiu- 
 a material tendency to preserve hood- 
 its credit. A knight was distinguished 
 abroad by his crested helmet, his weighty 
 armour whether of mail or plate, bear- 
 ing his heraldic coat, by his gilded spurs, 
 his horse barded with iron or clothed in 
 housing of gold ; at home by richer silks 
 and more costly furs than were permit- 
 ted to squires, and by the appropriated 
 colour of scarlet. He was addressed by 
 titles of more respect. f Many civil of- 
 fices, by rule of usage, were confined to 
 his order. But perhaps its chief privi- 
 lege was to form one distinct class of 
 nobility, extending itself throughout great 
 part of Europe, and almost independent, 
 as to its rights and dignities, of any par- 
 ticular sovereign. Whoever had been 
 legitimately dubbed a knight in one 
 country, became, as it were, a citizen of 
 universal chivalry, and might assume 
 most of its privileges in any other. Nor 
 did he require the act of a sovereign to 
 be thus distinguished. It was a funda- 
 mental principle that any knight might 
 confer the order ; responsible only in his 
 own reputation if he used lightly so high 
 a prerogative. But as all the distinctions 
 of rank might have been confounded if 
 this right had been without limit, it was 
 an equally fundamental rule, that it 
 could only be exercised in favour of 
 gentlemen.^ 
 
 * St. Palaye, part ii. and part iii. au commence- 
 ment. Du Cange, Dissert. 6 and 7 : and Glossa- 
 ry, v. Torneamentum. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. i., 
 p. 184. 
 
 t St. Palaye, part iv. Selden's Titles of Hon- 
 our, p. 806. There was not, however, so much 
 distinction in England as in France. 
 
 t St. Palaye, vol. i., p. 70, has forgotten to make 
 this distinction. It is, however, capable of abun- 
 dant proof. Gunther, in his poem called Ligurin- 
 us, observes of the Milanese republic : 
 
 Quqslibet ex humili vulgo, quod Gallia fcedum 
 
 Judicat, accingi gladio concedit equestri. 
 Otho of Frisirigen expresses the same in prose. It 
 is said, in the Establishments of St. Louis, that if 
 
618 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 The privileges annexed to chivalry 
 were of peculiar advantage to the vavas- 
 sors, or inferior gentry, as they tended 
 to counterbalance the influence which 
 territorial wealth threw into the scale 
 of their feudal suzerains. Knighthood 
 brought these two classes nearly to a 
 level ; and it is owing perhaps in no small 
 degree to this institution, that the lower 
 nobility saved themselves, notwithstand- 
 ing their poverty, from being confounded 
 with the common people. 
 
 Lastly, the customs of chivalry were 
 maintained by their connexion with mil- 
 
 any one not being a gentleman on the father's side 
 was knighted, the king or baron in whose territory 
 he resides may hack off his spurs on a dunghill, 
 c. 130. The Count de Nevers, having knighted a 
 person who was not noble ex parte paterna, was 
 lined in the king's court. The king, however 
 (Philip III.), confirmed the knighthood. Daniel, 
 Hist, de la Milice Franchise, p. 98. Fuit proposi- 
 tum (says a passage quoted by Daniel) contra corn- 
 item Flandriensem, quod non poterat, nee debebat 
 1'acere de villano militem, sine auctoritate regis, 
 ibid. Statuimus, says James I. of Aragon, in 1234, 
 ut nullusfaciat militem nisi filium militis. Marca 
 Hispanica, p. 1428. Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 
 592, produces other evidence to the same effect. 
 And the Emperor Sigismund, having conferred 
 knighthood, during his stay at Paris in 1415, on a 
 person incompetent to receive it for want of nobili- 
 ty, the French were indignant at his conduct, as an 
 assumption of sovereignty. Villaret, t. xiii., p. 
 397. We are told, however, by Giannone, 1. xx., 
 C. 3, that nobility was not in fact required for re- 
 ceiving chivalry at Naples, though it was in 
 France. 
 
 The privilege of every knight to associate 
 qualified persons to the order at his pleasure, last- 
 ed very long in France ; certainly down to the 
 English wars of Charles VII. (Monstrelet, part 
 ii., folio 50), and, if I am not mistaken, down to the 
 time of Francis I. But in England, where the 
 spirit of independence did not prevail so much 
 among the nobility, it soon ceased. Selden men- 
 tions one remarkable instance in a writ of the 29th 
 year of Henry III, summoning tenants in capite to 
 come and receive knighthood from the king, ad re- 
 cipiendum a nobis arma militaria ; and tenants of 
 mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they 
 pleased, ad recipiendum arma de quibuscunque 
 voluerint. Titles of Honour, p. 792. But soon 
 after this time it became an established principle 
 of our law, that no subject can confer knighthood 
 except by the king's authority. Thus Edward 
 III. grants to a burgess of Lyndia in Guienne (I 
 know not what place this is) the privilege of re- 
 ceiving that rank at the hands of any knight, his 
 want of noble birth notwithstanding. Rymer, t. 
 v., p. 623. It seems, however, that a different law 
 obtained in some places. Twenty-three of the 
 chief inhabitants of Beaucaire, partly knights, 
 partly burgesses, certified, in 1298, that the im- 
 memorial usage of Beaucaire and of Provence had 
 been, for burgesses to receive knighthood at the 
 hands of noblemen, without the prince's permis- 
 sion. Vaissette, Hist, de Languedpc, t. hi., p. 530. 
 Burgesses in the great commercial towns were 
 considered as of a superior class to the roturiers. 
 and possessed a kind of demi-nobility. Charles 
 V. appears to have conceded a similar indulgence 
 to the citizens of Paris. Villaret, t. x., p. 248. 
 
 itary service. After armies connexion 
 which we may call compara- with mm- 
 tively regular, had superseded tnr service, 
 in a great degree the feudal mi- 
 litia, princes were anxious to bid high for 
 the service of knights, the best equipped 
 and bravest warriors of the time, on 
 whose prowess the fate of battles was 
 for a long period justly supposed to de- 
 pend. War brought into relief the gen- 
 erous virtues of chivalry, and gave lustre 
 to its distinctive privileges. The rank 
 was sought with enthusiastic emulation, 
 through heroic achievements, to which, 
 rather than to mere wealth and station, 
 it was considered to belong. In the 
 wars of France and England, by far the 
 most splendid period of this institution, a 
 promotion of knights followed every suc- 
 cess, besides the innumerable cases 
 where the same honour rewarded indi- 
 vidual bravery.* It may here be men- 
 tioned, that an honorary distinction was 
 made between knights-bannerets and 
 bachelors.f The former were the rich- 
 est and best accompanied. No Knights- 
 man could properly be a ban- bannerets 
 neret unless he possessed a JJ[J bache ~ 
 certain estate, and could bring 
 a certain number of lances into the field.J 
 His distinguishing mark was the square 
 banner, carried by a squire at the point 
 of his lance ; while the knight bachelor 
 had only the coronet or pointed pendant. 
 When a banneret was created, the gen- 
 eral cut off this pendant to render it 
 square. But this distinction, however it 
 
 * St. Palaye, partiii., passim. 
 
 f The word bachelor has been commonly de- 
 rived from has chevalier, in opposition to banneret. 
 But this, however plausible, is unlikely to be right. 
 We do not find any authority for the expression 
 has chevalier, nor any equivalent in Latin, bacca- 
 laureus certainly not suggesting that sense ; and it 
 is strange that the corruption should obliterate ev- 
 ery trace of the original term. Bachelor is a very 
 old word, and is used in early French poetry for a 
 young man, as bachelette is for a girl. So also in 
 Chaucer, 
 
 " A yonge squire, 
 A lover, and a lusty bachelor." 
 
 % Du Cange, Dissertation 9 me sur Joinville. The 
 number of men-at-arms whom a banneret ought to 
 command was properly fifty. But Olivier de la 
 Marche speaks of twenty-five as sufficient ; and it 
 appears that, in fact, knights-banneret often did not 
 bring so many. 
 
 Ibid. Olivier de la Marche (Collection des 
 M6moires, t. viii., p. 337) gives a particular exam- 
 ple of this ; and makes a distinction between the 
 bachelor, created a banneret on account of his es- 
 tate, and the hereditary banneret, who took a pub- 
 lic opportunity of requesting the sovereign to un- 
 fold his family banner, which he had before borne 
 wound round his lance. The first was said relever 
 banniere ; the second, entrer en banniere. This 
 difference is more fully explained by Daniel, Hist. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OP SOCIETY. 
 
 519 
 
 elevated the banneret, gave him no claim 
 to military command, except over his own 
 dependants or men-at-arms. Chandos 
 was still a knight-bachelor when he led 
 part of the Prince of Wales's army into 
 Spain. He first raised his banner at the 
 battle of Navarette; and the narration 
 that Froissart gives of the ceremony will 
 illustrate the manners of chivalry, and 
 the character of that admirable hero, the 
 conqueror of Du Guesclin and pride of 
 English chivalry, whose fame with pos- 
 terity has been a litt.le overshadowed by 
 his master's laurels.* What seems more 
 extraordinary is, that mere squires had 
 frequently the command over knights. 
 Proofs of this are almost continual in 
 Froissart. But the vast estimation in 
 which men held the dignity of knight- 
 hood led them sometimes to defer it for 
 great part of their lives, in hope of signal- 
 izing their investiture by some eminent 
 exploit. 
 
 These appear to have been the chief 
 Decline of means of nourishing the princi- 
 ciuvairy. pies of chivalry among the nobil- 
 ity of Europe. But, notwithstanding all 
 encouragement, it underwent the usual 
 destiny of human institutions. St. Palaye, 
 to whom we are indebted for so vivid a pic- 
 ture of ancient manners, ascribes the de- 
 cline of chivalry in France to the profu- 
 sion with which the order was lavished 
 under Charles VI., the establishment of 
 the companies of ordonnance by Charles 
 VII., and to the extension of knightly 
 honours to lawyers and other men of 
 civil occupation by Francis I.f But the 
 real principle of decay was something 
 different from these three subordinate 
 circumstances, unless so far as it may 
 bear some relation to the second. It 
 was the invention of gunpowder that 
 eventually overthrew chivalry. From 
 the time when the use of fire-arms be- 
 came tolerably perfect, the weapons of 
 former warfare lost their efficacy, and 
 physical force was reduced to a very 
 subordinate place in the accomplishments 
 of a soldier. The advantages of a disci- 
 plined infantry became more sensible ; 
 and the lancers, who continued till almost 
 the end of the sixteenth century to 
 charge in a long line, felt the punishment 
 of their presumption and indiscipline. 
 Even in the wars of Edward III., the dis- 
 advantageous tactics of chivalry must 
 
 de la Milice Franqoise, p. 116. Chandos's banner 
 was unfolded, not cut, at Navarette. We read 
 sometimes of esquire-bannerets, that is, of banner- 
 ets by descent, not yet knighted. 
 
 Froissart, part i., c. 241. 
 
 f M<Sm. sur la Chevalerie, part v. 
 
 have been perceptible; but the milita- 
 ry art had not been sufficiently studied to 
 overcome the prejudices of men eager for 
 individual distinction. Tournaments be- 
 came less frequent ; and, after the fatal 
 accident of Henry II., were entirely dis- 
 continued in France. Notwithstanding 
 the convulsions of the religious wars, the 
 sixteenth century was more tranquil than 
 any that had preceded ; and thus a large 
 part of the nobility passed their lives in 
 pacific habits, and, if they assumed the 
 honours of chivalry, forgot their natural 
 connexion with military prowess. This 
 is far more applicable to England, where, 
 except from the reign of Edward IIL to 
 that of Henry VI., chivalry, as a military 
 institution, seems not to have found a 
 very congenial soil.* To these circum- 
 stances, immediately affecting the milita- 
 ry condition of nations, we must add the 
 progress of reason and literature, which 
 made ignorance discreditable even in a 
 soldier, and exposed the follies of ro- 
 mance to a ridicule which they were 
 very ill calculated to endure. 
 
 The spirit of chivalry left behind it a 
 more valuable successor. The character 
 of knight gradually subsided in that of 
 gentleman; and the one distinguishes 
 European society in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, as much as the 
 other did in the preceding .ages. A jeal- 
 ous sense of honour, less romantic, but 
 equally elevated, a -ceremonious gallantry 
 and politeness, a strictness in devotional 
 observances, a high pride of birth, and 
 feeling of independence upon any sover- 
 eign for the dignity it gave, a sympathy 
 for martial honour, though more subdued 
 
 * The prerogative exercised by the kings of 
 England of compelling men sufficiently qualified 
 in point of estate to take on them the honour of 
 knighthood, was inconsistent with the true spirit 
 of chivalry. This began, according to Lord Lyt- 
 tleton, under Henry III. Hist, of Henry II., vol. 
 ii., p. 238. Independently of this, several causes 
 tended to render England less under the influence 
 of chivalrous principles than France or Germany ; 
 such as her comparatively peaceful state, the 
 smaller share she took in the crusades, her inferi- 
 ority in romances of knight-errantry, but, above all, 
 the democratical character of her laws and govern- 
 ment. Still this is only to be understood relatively 
 to the two other countries above named ; for chiv- 
 alry was aiways in high repute among us, nor did 
 any nation produce more admirable specimens of 
 its excellences. 
 
 I arn not minutely acquainted with the state of 
 chivalry in Spain, where it seems to have flourished 
 considerably. Italy, except in Naples, and perhaps 
 Piedmont, displayed little of its spirit; which 
 neither suited the free republics of the twelfth and 
 thirteenth, nor the jealous tyrannies of the follow- 
 ing centuries. Yet even here we find enough to 
 furnish Muratori with materials for his 53d disser- 
 tation. 
 
520 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 by civil habits, are the lineaments which 
 prove an indisputable descent. The cav- 
 aliers of Charles I. were genuine suc- 
 cessors of Edward's knights ; and the 
 resemblance is much more striking if 
 we ascend to the civil wars of the League. 
 Time has effaced much also of this gen- 
 tlemanly, as it did before of the chival- 
 rous character. From the latter part of 
 the seventeenth century, its vigour and 
 purity have undergone a tacit decay, and 
 yielded, perhaps in every country, to in- 
 creasing commercial wealth, more dif- 
 fused instruction, the spirit of general 
 liberty in some, and of servile obsequi- 
 ousness in others, the modes of life in 
 great cities, and the levelling customs of 
 social intercourse.* 
 It is now time to pass to a very differ- 
 ent subject. The third head 
 e ' under which I classed the im- 
 provements of society during the four 
 last centuries of the middle ages, was 
 that of literature. But I must apprize 
 the reader not to expect any general 
 view of literary history, even in the most 
 abbreviated manner. Such an epitome 
 would not only be necessarily superficial, 
 but foreign, in many of its details, to the 
 purposes of this chapter, which, attempt- 
 ing to develop the circumstances that 
 gave a new complexion to society, con- 
 siders literature only so far as it exer- 
 cised a general and powerful influence. 
 The private researches, therefore, of a 
 single scholar, unproductive of any ma- 
 terial effect in his generation, ought not 
 to arrest us, nor indeed would a series 
 of biographical notices, into which liter- 
 ary history is apt to fall, be very instruc- 
 tive to a philosophical inquirer. But I 
 have still a more decisive reason against 
 taking a large range of literary history 
 into the compass of this work, founded 
 on the many contributions which have 
 been made within the last forty years to 
 that department, some of them even 
 since the commencement of my own 
 
 * The well-known Memoirs of St. Palaye are 
 the best repository of interesting and illustrative 
 facts respecting chivalry. Possibly he may have 
 relied a little too much on romances, whose pic- 
 tures will naturally be overcharged. Froissart 
 himself has somewhat of this partial tendency, and 
 the manners of chivalrous times do not make so 
 fair an appearance in Monstrelet. In the Memoirs 
 of la Tremouille (Collect, des Mem., t. xiv., p. 
 169), we have perhaps the earliest delineation from 
 the life of those severe and stately virtues in high- 
 born ladies, of which our own country furnishes 
 so many examples in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, and which were derived from the influ- 
 ence of chivalrous principles. And those of Bayard 
 in the same collection (t. xiv. and xv.) are a beau- 
 tiful exhibition of the best effects of that discipline. 
 
 labour.* These have diffused so general 
 an acquaintance with the literature of 
 the middle ages, that I must, in treating 
 the subject, either compile secondary in- 
 formation from well-known books, or 
 enter upon a vast field of reading, with 
 little hope of improving upon what has 
 been already said, or even acquiring credit 
 for original research. I shall therefore 
 confine myself to four points : the study 
 of civil law ; the institution of universi- 
 ties ; the application of modern languages 
 to literature, and especially to poetry; 
 and the revival of ancient learning. 
 
 The Roman law had been nominally 
 preserved ever since the de- Civillaw 
 struction of the empire; and a 
 great portion of the inhabitants of France 
 and Spain, as well as Italy, were govern- 
 ed by its provisions. But this was a 
 mere compilation from the Theodosian 
 code ; which itself contained only the 
 more recent laws promulgated after the 
 establishment of Christianity, with some 
 fragments from earlier collections. It 
 was made by order of Alaric, king of the 
 Visigoths, about the year 500, and it is 
 frequently confounded with the Theodo- 
 sian code by writers of the dark ages.f 
 The code of Justinian, reduced into sys- 
 tem after the separation of the two for- 
 mer countries from the Greek empire, 
 never obtained any authority in them; 
 nor was it received in the part of Italy 
 subject to the Lombards. But that this 
 body of laws was absolutely unknown in 
 the West during any period seems to 
 have been too hastily supposed. Some 
 of the more eminent ecclesiastics, as 
 Hincmar and Ivon of Chartres, occasion- 
 ally refer to it, and bear witness to the 
 regard which the Roman church had 
 uniformly paid to its decisions.! 
 
 The revival of the study of jurispru- 
 dence, as derived from the laws of Jus- 
 tinian, has generally been ascribed to the 
 discovery made of a copy of the Pan- 
 dects at Amalfi, in 1135, when that city 
 was taken by the Pisans. This fact, 
 though not improbable, seems not to 
 
 * Four very recent publications (not to mention 
 that of Buhle on modern philosophy) enter much 
 at large into the middle literature ; those of M. 
 Ginguene and M. Sismondi, the History of Eng- 
 land by Mr. Sharon Turner, and the Literary 
 History of the Middle Ages by Mr. Berington. All 
 of these contain more or less useful information 
 and judicious remarks ; but that of Ginguene is 
 among the most learned and important works of 
 this century. I have no hesitation to prefer it, as 
 far as its subjects extend, to Tiraboschi. 
 
 t Heineccius, Hist. Juris German., c. i., s. 15. 
 
 j Giannone, L iv., c. 6. Selden, ad Fletam, 
 p. 1071. 
 

 PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 521 
 
 rest upon sufficient evidence.* But its 
 truth is the less material, as it appears 
 to be unequivocally proved that the study 
 of Justinian's system had recommenced 
 before that era. Early in the twelfth 
 century, a professor named Irneriusf 
 opened a school of civil law at Bologna, 
 where he commented, if not on the Pan- 
 dects, yet on the other books, the Insti- 
 tutes and Code, which were sufficient to 
 teach the principles and inspire the love 
 of that comprehensive jurisprudence. 
 The study of law, having thus revived, 
 made a surprising progress ; within fifty 
 years Lombardy was full of lawyers, on 
 whom Frederick Barbarossa and Alex- 
 ander III., so hostile in every other re- 
 spect, conspired to shower honours and 
 privileges. The schools of Bologna were 
 pre-eminent throughout this century for 
 legal learning. There seem also to have 
 been seminaries at Modena and Mantua ; 
 nor was any considerable city without 
 distinguished civilians. In the next age 
 they became still more numerous, and 
 their professors more conspicuous, and 
 universities arose at Naples, Padua, and 
 other places, where the Roman law was 
 the object of peculiar regard.^ 
 
 There is apparently great justice in 
 the opinion of Tiraboschi, that by acqui- 
 ring internal freedom and the right of de- 
 termining controversies by magistrates 
 of their own election, the Italian cities 
 were led to require a more extensive and 
 accurate code of written laws than they 
 had hitherto possessed. These munici- 
 pal judges were chosen from among the 
 citizens, and the succession to offices 
 was usually so rapid, that almost every 
 freeman might expect in his turn to par- 
 take in the public government, and con- 
 sequently in the administration of jus- 
 tice. The latter had always indeed been 
 exercised in the sight of the people by 
 the count and his assessors under the 
 Lombard and Carlo vingian sovereigns ; 
 but the laws were rude, the proceedings 
 tumultuary, and the decisions perverted 
 by violence. The spirit of liberty begot 
 a stronger sense of right ; and right, it 
 was soon perceived, could only be se- 
 cured by a common standard. Magis- 
 trates holding temporary offices, and 
 little elevated, in those simple times, 
 above the citizens among whom they 
 
 * Tiraboschi, t. iii., p. 359. Ginguene, Hist. 
 Litt. de 1'Italie, t. i., p. 155. 
 
 t Irnerius is sometimes called Guarnerius, 
 sometimes Warnerius ; the German W is changed 
 into Gu by the Italians, and occasionally omitted, 
 especially in latinizing, for the sake of euphony or 
 purity. 
 
 t Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 38 ; t. v., p. 55. 
 
 were to return, could only satisfy the 
 suiters, and those who surrounded their 
 tribunal, by proving the conformity of 
 their sentences to acknowledged authori- 
 ties. And the practice of alleging rea- 
 sons in giving judgment would of itself 
 introduce some uniformity of decision, 
 and some adherence to great rules of 
 justice in the most arbitrary tribunals ; 
 while, on the other hand, those of a free 
 country lose part of their title to respect, 
 and of their tendency to maintain right, 
 whenever, either in civil or criminal 
 questions, the mere sentence of a judge 
 is pronounced without explanation of its 
 motives. 
 
 The fame of this renovated jurispru- 
 dence spread very rapidly from Italy 
 over other parts of Europe. Students 
 flocked from all parts of Bologna; and 
 some eminent masters of that school re- 
 peated its lessons in distant countries. 
 One of these, Placentinus, explained the 
 digest at Montpelier before the end of 
 the twelfth century; and the collection 
 of Justinian soon came to supersede the 
 Theodosian code in the dominions of 
 Toulouse.* Its study continued to flour- 
 ish in the universities of both these cit- 
 ies ; and hence the Roman law, as it is 
 exhibited in the system of Justinian, be- 
 came the rule of all tribunals in the 
 southern provinces of France. Its au- 
 thority in Spain is equally great, or at 
 least is only disputed by that of the can- 
 onists ;f and it forms the acknowledged 
 basis of decision in all the Germanic tri- 
 bunals, sparingly modified by the ancient 
 feudal customaries, which the jurists of 
 the empire reduce within narrow bounds. J 
 In the northern parts of France, where 
 the legal standard was sought in local 
 customs, the civil law met naturally with 
 less regard. But the code of St. Louis 
 borrows from that treasury many of its 
 provisions, and it was constantly cited in 
 pleadings before the parliament of Paris, 
 either as obligatory by way of authority, 
 or at least as written wisdom, to which 
 great deference was shown. Yet its 
 
 * Tiraboschi, t. v. Vaissette, Hist, de Langue- 
 doc, t. ii., p. 517 ; t. iii., p. 527 ; t. iv., p. 504. 
 
 t Duck, De Usu Juris civilis, 1. ii., c. 6. 
 
 j Idem, 1. ii., c. 2. 
 
 () Idem, 1. ii., c. 5, s. 30,31. Fleury, Hist, du 
 Droit Frangois, p. 74 (prefixed to Argou, Institu- 
 tions au Droit Francois, edit. 1787), says that it was 
 a great question among lawyers, and still undeci- 
 ded (i. e., in 1674), whether the Roman law was 
 the common law in the pays coutumiers, as to 
 those points wherein their local customs were si- 
 lent. And, if I understand Denisart (Dictionnaire 
 des Decisions, art. Droit-6crit), the affirmative pre- 
 vailed. It is plain, at least by the Causes Celebres, 
 that appeal was continually made to the principles 
 

 522 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 study was long prohibited in the univer- 
 sity of Paris, from a disposition of the 
 popes to establish exclusively their de- 
 cretals, though the prohibition was si- 
 lently disregarded.* 
 
 As early as the reign of Stephen, Vaca- 
 its intro- rms ' a l aw y er of Bologna, taught 
 auction at Oxford with great success ; but 
 into Eng- t h e students of scholastic theol- 
 ogy opposed themselves, from 
 some unexplained reason, to this new 
 jurisprudence, and his lectures were in- 
 terdicted, t About the time of Henry III. 
 and Edward I., the civil law acquired 
 some credit in England; but a system 
 entirely incompatible with it had estab- 
 lished itself in our courts of justice ; and 
 the Roman jurisprudence was not only 
 soon rejected, but became obnoxious.! 
 Everywhere, however, the clergy com- 
 bined its study with that of their own 
 canons ; it was a maxim that every can- 
 onist must be a civilian, and that no one 
 could be a good civilian unless he were 
 also a canonist. In all universities, de- 
 grees are granted in both laws conjoint- 
 ly ; and in all courts of ecclesiastical ju- 
 risdiction, the authority of Justinian is 
 cited, when that of Gregory or Clement 
 is wanting.^ 
 
 I should earn little gratitude for my ob- 
 The eider scure diligence, were I to dwell 
 civilians n the forgotten teachers of a 
 little re- science that is likely soon to be 
 forgotten. These elder profes- 
 sors of Roman jurisprudence are infect- 
 ed, as we are told, with the faults and ig- 
 norance of their time ; failing in the ex- 
 position of ancient law through incorrect- 
 ness of manuscripts and want of subsid- 
 iary learning, or perverting their sense 
 through the verbal subtleties of scholas- 
 tic philosophy. It appears that, even a 
 hundred years since, neither Azzo and 
 
 of the civil law in the factums of Parisian advo- 
 cates. 
 
 * Crevier, Hist, de PUniversite de Paris, t. i.,p. 
 316; t. ii., p. 275. 
 
 t Johan. Salisburiensis, apud Selden ad Fletam, 
 p. 1082. 
 
 J Selden, ubt supra, p. 10951104. This pas- 
 sage is worthy of attention. Yet, notwithstanding 
 Selden's authority, I am not satisfied that he has 
 not extenuated the effect of Bracton's predilection 
 for the maxims of Roman jurisprudence. No early 
 lawyer has contributed so much to form our own 
 system as Bracton ; and if his definitions and rules 
 are sometimes borrowed from the civilians, as all 
 admit, our common law may have indirectly re- 
 ceived greater modification from that influence 
 than its professors were ready to acknowledge, or 
 even than they knew. A full view of this subject 
 is still, I think, a desideratum in the history of 
 English law, which it would illustrate in a very in- 
 teresting manner. 
 
 $ Duck, De Usu Juris civilis, 1. i., c. 87. 
 
 Accursius, the principal civilians of the 
 thirteenth century, nor Bartolus and 
 Baldus, the more conspicuous luminaries 
 of the next age, nor the later writings of 
 Accolti, Fulgosius, and Panormitanus, 
 were greatly regarded as authorities ; un- 
 less it were in Spain, where improvement 
 is always odious, and the name of Bar- 
 tolus inspired absolute deference.* In 
 the sixteenth century, Alciatus, and the 
 greater Cujacius, became as it were the 
 founders of a new and more enlightened 
 academy of civil law, from which the la- 
 ter jurists derived their lessons. And the 
 But their names, or at least their science it- 
 writings, are rapidly passing to self on the 
 the gulf that absorbed their pre- 
 decessors. The stream of literature, 
 that has so remarkably altered its chan- 
 nel within the last century, has left no 
 region more deserted than those of the 
 civil and canon law. Except among the 
 immediate disciples of the papal court, 
 or perhaps in Spain, no man, I suppose, 
 throughout Europe, will ever again un- 
 dertake the study of the one ; and the 
 new legal systems which the moral and 
 political revolutions of this age have pro- 
 duced and are likely to diffuse, will leave 
 little influence or importance to the oth- 
 er. Yet, as their character, so their fate 
 will not be altogether similar. The can- 
 on law, fabricated only for a usurpation 
 that can never be restored, will become 
 absolutely useless, as if it had never ex- 
 isted ; like a spacious city in the wilder- 
 ness, though not so splendid and interest- 
 ing as Palmyra. But the code of Jus- 
 tinian, stripped of its impurer alloy, and 
 of the tedious glosses of its commenta- 
 tors, will form the basis of other systems, 
 and mingling, as we may hope, with the 
 new institutions of philosophical legisla- 
 tors, continue to influence the social rela- 
 tions of mankind, long after its direct au- 
 thority shall have been abrogated. The 
 ruins of ancient Rome supplied the mate- 
 rials of a new city ; and the fragments 
 of her law, which have already been 
 wrought into the recent codes of France 
 and Prussia, will probably, under other 
 names, guide far distant generations by 
 the sagacity of Modestinus and Ulpian.f 
 
 * Gravina, Origines Juris civilis, p. 196. 
 
 f Those, if any such there be, who feel some cu- 
 riosity about the civilians of the middle ages, will 
 find a concise and elegant account in Gravma, De 
 Origine Juris civilis, p. 166 206. (Lips., 1708.) 
 Tiraboschi contains perhaps more information ; but 
 his prolixity, on a theme so unimportant, is very 
 wearisome. Of what use could he think it to dis- 
 cuss the dates of all transactions in the lives of 
 Bartolus and Baldus (to say nothing of obscurer 
 names) when nobody was left to care who Baldus 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 523 
 
 schools 
 
 The establishment of public schoo 
 Public in France is owing to Charl 
 niagne. At his accession, w 
 are assured that no means o 
 magne. education existed in his domin 
 ions ;* and, in order to restore in som 
 degree the spirit of letters, he was com 
 pelled to invite strangers from countrie 
 where learning was not so thorough] 
 extinguished. Alcuin of England, Cle 
 ment of Ireland, Theodulf of Germany 
 were the true Paladins who repaired t 
 his court. With the help of these he re 
 vived a few sparks of diligence, and estab 
 lished schools in different cities of hi 
 empire ; nor was he ashamed to be th 
 disciple of that in his own palace unde 
 the care of Alcuin. t His two next sue 
 cessors, Louis the Debonair and Oharle 
 the Bald, were also encouragers of let 
 ters ; and the schools of Lyons, Fulda 
 Corvey, Rheims, and some other cities 
 might be said to flourish in the ninth cen 
 tury.J In these were taught the trivium 
 and quadrivium, a long established divis 
 ion of sciences ; the first comprehending 
 grammar, or what we now call philology 
 logic, and rhetoric; the second music 
 arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. 
 But in those ages scarcely anybody mas 
 tered the latter four; and to be perfec 
 in the three former was exceedingly 
 rare. All those studies, however, were 
 referred to theology, and that in the nar 
 rowest manner ; music, for example, be 
 ing reduced to church chanting, and as 
 tronomy to the calculation of Easter.] 
 Alcuin forbade the Latin poets to be 
 read;^f and this discouragement of secu- 
 lar learning was very general; though 
 some, as for instance Raban, permitted a 
 slight tincture of it, as subsidiary to reli- 
 gious instruction.** 
 
 and Bartolus were ? Besides this fault, it is evi- 
 dent that Tiraboschi knew very little of law, and 
 had not read the civilians of whom he treats ; 
 whereas Gravina discusses their merits not only 
 with legal knowledge, but with an acuteness of 
 criticism, which, to say the truth, Tiraboschi never 
 shows except on a date or a name. 
 
 * Ante ipsum dominum Carolum regem in Gal- 
 lia nullumfuit studium liberalium artium. Mona- 
 chus Engolismensis, apud Launoy, De Scholis per 
 occidentem instauratis, p. 5. See too Histoire Lit- 
 teraire de la France, t. iv., p. 1. 
 
 f Idem, ibid. There was a sort of literary club 
 among them, where the members assumed ancient 
 names. Charlemagne was called David ; Alcuin, 
 Horace , another, Demetas, &c. 
 
 } Hist. Litteraire, p. 217, &c. 
 
 This division of the sciences is ascribed to St. 
 Augustin ; and was certainly established early in 
 the sixth century. Brucker, Historia Critica Phi- 
 losophise, t. iii., p. 597. 
 
 || Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. ii., p. 126. 
 
 IT Crevier, Hist, de 1'Univ. de Paris, t. i., p. 28, 
 
 ** Brucker, t. iii., p. 612. Raban Maurus was 
 
 About the latter part of the eleventh 
 century, a greater ardour for in- university 
 tellectual pursuits began to show of Paris, 
 itself in Europe, which in the twelfth 
 broke out into a flame. This was mani- 
 fested in the numbers who repaired to 
 the public academies or schools of phi- 
 losophy. None of these grew so early 
 into reputation as that of Paris. This 
 cannot, indeed, as has been vainly pre- 
 tended, trace its pedigree to Charle- 
 magne. The first who is said to have 
 read lectures at Paris was Remigius of 
 Auxerre, about the year 900.* For the 
 two next centuries the history of this 
 school is very obscure ; and it would be 
 hard to prove an unbroken continuity, or 
 at least a dependance and connexion 
 of its professors. In the year 1100, we 
 find William of Champeaux teaching 
 logic, and apparently some higher parts 
 of philosophy, with much credit. But 
 this preceptor was eclipsed by his disci- 
 ple, afterward his rival and adversary, 
 Peter Abelard, to whose brilliant Abelard 
 and hardy genius the university 
 of Paris appears to be indebted for its 
 rapid advancement. Abelard was almost 
 ;he first who awakened mankind in the 
 ages of darkness to a sympathy with in- 
 tellectual excellence. His bold theories, 
 not the less attractive perhaps for tread- 
 ing upon the bounds of heresy, his im- 
 pudent vanity, that scorned the regu- 
 arly acquired reputation of older men, 
 allured a multitude of disciples, who 
 would never have listened to an ordinary 
 eacher. It is said, that twenty cardi- 
 lals and fifty bishops had been among 
 lis hearers. f Even in the wilderness, 
 where he had erected the monastery of 
 Paraclete, he was surrounded by enthu- 
 
 the 
 
 iastic admirers, relinquishing the luxu- 
 ies, if so they might be called, of Paris, 
 or the coarse living and imperfect ac- 
 ommodation which that retirement could 
 fford.J But the whole of Abelard's life 
 
 was the shipwreck of genius; and of 
 enius both the source of his own ca- 
 amities and unserviceable to posterity. 
 
 There are few lives of literary men more 
 
 nteresting, or more diversified by suc- 
 ess and adversity, by glory and humili- 
 tion, by the admiration of mankind and 
 le persecution of enemies ; nor from 
 
 which, I may add, more impressive les- 
 ons of moral prudence may be derived, 
 ne of Abelard's pupils was Peter Lom- 
 ard, afterward archbishop of Paris, and 
 
 lief of the cathedral school at Fulda, in the ninth 
 
 ntury. * Crevier, p. 66. 
 
 t Crevier, p. 171. Brucker, p. 677. Tirabos- 
 
 hi, t. iii., p. 275. J Brucker, p. 750. 
 
524 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 author of a work called the Book of Sen- 
 tences, which obtained the highest au- 
 thority among the scholastic disputants. 
 The resort of students to Paris became 
 continually greater ; they appear, before 
 the year 1169, to have been divided into 
 nations ;* and probably they had an elect- 
 ed rector and voluntary rules of disci- 
 pline about the same time. This, how- 
 ever, is not decisively proved; but in 
 the last year of the twelfth century, they 
 obtained their earliest charter from Philip 
 Augustus.! 
 
 The opinion which ascribes the found- 
 University ation of the university of Ox- 
 of oxford. ford to Alfred, if it cannot be 
 maintained as a truth, contains no intrin- 
 sic marks of error. Ingulfus, abbot of 
 Croyland, in the earliest authentic pas- 
 sage that can be adduced to this point,! 
 declares that he was sent from Westmin- 
 ster to the school at Oxford, where he 
 learned Aristotle, and the two first 
 books of Tully's rhetoric. Since a 
 school for dialectics and rhetoric subsist- 
 ed at Oxford, a town of but middling 
 size, and not the seat of a bishop, we are 
 naturally led to refer its foundation to 
 one of our kings ; and none who had 
 reigned after Alfred appears likely to 
 have manifested such zeal for learning. 
 However, it is evident that the school 
 of Oxford was frequented under Edward 
 
 * The faculty of arts in the university of Paris 
 was divided into four nations ; those of France, 
 Picardy, Normandy, and England. These had 
 distinct suffrages in the affairs of the university, 
 and consequently, when united, outnumbered the 
 three higher faculties of theology, law, and medi- 
 cine. In 1169, Henry II. of England offers to re- 
 fer his dispute with Becket to the provinces of the 
 school of Paris. 
 
 f Crevier, t. i., p. 279. The first statute regula- 
 ting the discipline of the university was given by 
 Robert de Coupon, legate of Henorius III., in 
 1215, id., p. 296. 
 
 $ No one probably would choose to rely on a 
 passage found in one manuscript of Asserius, 
 which has all appearance of an interpolation. It 
 is evident, from an anecdote in Wood's History of 
 Oxford, vol. i., p. 23 (Gutch's edition), that Cam- 
 den did not believe in the authenticity of this pas- 
 sage, though he thought proper to insert it in the 
 Britannia. 
 
 () The mention of Aristotle at so early a period 
 might seem to throw some suspicion on this pas- 
 sage. But it is impossible to detach it from the 
 context ; and the works of Aristotle intended by 
 Ingulfus were translations of parts of his logic by 
 Boethius and Victorin. Brucker, p. 678. A pas- 
 sage indeed in Peter of Blois's continuation of In- 
 gulfus, where the study of Averroes is said to 
 have taken place at Cambridge some years before 
 he was born, is of a different complexion, and 
 must of course be rejected as spurious. In the 
 Gesta Comitum Andegavensium, Fulk, count of 
 Aniou, who lived about 920, is said to have been 
 skilled Aristotelicis et Ciceronianis ratiocination- 
 ibus. 
 
 the Confessor. There follows an inter- 
 val of above a century, during which we 
 have, I believe, no contemporary evi- 
 dence of its continuance. But in the 
 reign of Stephen, Vacarius read lectures 
 there upon civil law ; and it is reasona- 
 ble to suppose that a foreigner would 
 not have chosen that city if he had not 
 found a seminary of learning already 
 established. It was probably inconsid- 
 erable, and might have been interrupted 
 during some part of the preceding centu- 
 ry.* In the reign of Henry II., or at 
 least of Richard I., Oxford became a 
 very flourishing university, and in 1201, 
 according to Wood, contained 3000 
 scholars.! The earliest charters were 
 granted by John. 
 
 If it were necessary to construe the 
 word university in the strict university 
 sense of a legal incorporation, of Bologna. 
 Bologna might lay claim to a higher 
 antiquity than either Paris or Oxford. 
 There are a few vestiges of studies pur- 
 sued in that city even in the eleventh 
 century ;J but early in the next, the revi- 
 val of the Roman jurisprudence, as has 
 been already noticed, brought a throng 
 of scholars round the chairs of its profes- 
 sors. Frederick Barbarossa, in 1158, by 
 his authentic or rescript entitled Habita, 
 took these under his protection, and per- 
 mitted them to be tried in civil suits by 
 their own judges. This exemption from 
 the ordinary tribunals, and even from 
 those of the church, was naturally covet- 
 ed by other academies; it was granted 
 to the university of Paris by its earliest 
 charter from Philip Augustus, Encoura?e . 
 and to Oxford by John. From ment given 
 this time the golden age of uni- [ e g iniversi ~ 
 versities commenced ; and it is 
 hard to say whether they were favoured 
 most by their sovereigns or by the see 
 of Rome. Their history indeed is full 
 of struggles with the municipal authori- 
 ties, and with the bishops of their several 
 cities, wherein they were sometimes the 
 aggressors, and generally the conquerors. 
 From all parts of Europe students resort- 
 ed to these renowned seats of learning 
 
 * It may be remarked, that John of Salisbury, 
 who wrote in the first years of Henry II. 's reign, 
 since his Policraticus is dedicated to Becket, be- 
 fore he became archbishop, makes no mention of 
 Oxford, which he would probably have done if it 
 had been an eminent seat of learning at that time. 
 
 f Wood's Hist, and Antiquities of Oxford, p. 
 177. The Benedictins of St. Maur say that, there 
 was an eminent school of canon law at Oxford 
 about the end of the twelfth century, to which 
 many students repaired from Paris. Hist. Litt. de 
 la France, t. ix., p. 216. 
 
 t Tiraboschi, t. iii., p. 259, et alibi. Muratori, 
 Dissert. 43. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 525 
 
 with an eagerness for instruction which 
 may astonish those who reflect how little 
 of what we now deem useful could be 
 imparted. At Oxford, under Henry III., 
 it is said that there were 30,000 scholars ; 
 an exaggeration which seems to imply 
 that the real number was very great.* 
 A respectable contemporary writer as- 
 serts that there were full 10,000 at Bo- 
 logna about the same time.f I have not 
 observed any numerical statement as to 
 Paris during this age ; but there can be 
 no doubt that it was more frequented 
 than any other. At the death of Charles 
 VII., in 1453, it contained 25,000 stu- 
 dents. J In the thirteenth century, other 
 universities sprang up in different coun- 
 tries : Padua and Naples, under the pat- 
 ronage of Frederick II., a zealous and 
 useful friend to letters,^ Toulouse and 
 Montpelier, Cambridge and Salamanca. || 
 Orleans, which had long been distin- 
 guished as a school of civil law, received 
 the privileges of incorporation early in 
 the fourteenth century; and Angers be- 
 fore the expiration of the same age.TJ 
 Prague, the earliest and most eminent 
 of German universities, was founded in 
 1350; a secession from thence of Saxon 
 
 * " But among these," says Anthony Wood, " a 
 company of varlets, who pretended to be scholars, 
 shuffled themselves in, and did act much villany in 
 the university by thieving, whoring, quarrelling, 
 &c. They lived under no discipline, neither had 
 they tutors ; but only, for fashion sake, would some- 
 times thrust themselves into the schools at ordi- 
 nary lectures, and when they went to perform any 
 mischief, then would they be accounted scholars, 
 that so they might free themselves from the juris- 
 diction of the burghers," p. 206. If we allow three 
 varlets to one scholar, the university will still have 
 been very fully frequented by the latter. 
 
 t Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 47. Azarius, about the 
 middle of the fourteenth century, says, the number 
 was about 13,000 in his time. Muratori, Script. 
 Rer. Ital., t. xvi., p. 325. 
 
 t Villaret, Hist, de France, t. xvi., p. 341. This 
 may perhaps require to be taken with allowance. 
 But Paris owes a great part of its buildings on the 
 southern bank of the Seine to the university. The 
 students are said to have been about 12,000 before 
 1480. Crevier, t. iv., p. 410. 
 
 $ Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 43 and 46. 
 
 I! The earliest authentic mention of Cambridge 
 as a place of learning, if I mistake not, is in Mat- 
 thew Paris, who informs us, that in 1209, John 
 having caused three clerks of Oxford to be hanged 
 on suspicion of murder, the whole body of scholars 
 left that city, and emigrated, some to Cambridge, 
 some to Reading, in order to carry on their studies 
 (p. 191, edit. 1684). But it may be conjectured, 
 with some probability, that they were led to a 
 town so distant as Cambridge ^y the previous es- 
 tablishment of academical instruction in that place. 
 The incorporation of Cambridge is in 1231 (15 Hen. 
 III.), so that there is no great difference in the legal 
 antiquity of our two universities. 
 
 f Crevier, Hist, de 1'Universite de Paris, t. ii., p. 
 216; t. iii., p. 140 
 
 students? in consequence of the nation- 
 ality of the Bohemians and the Hussite 
 schism, gave rise to that of Leipsic.* 
 The fifteenth century produced several 
 new academical foundations in France 
 and Spain. 
 
 A large proportion of scholars, in most 
 of those institutions, were drawn by the 
 love of science from foreign countries. 
 The chief universities had their own par- 
 ticular departments of excellence. Paris 
 was unrivalled for scholastic theology; 
 Bologna and Orleans, and afterward 
 Bourges, for jurisprudence ; Montpelier 
 for medicine. Though national prejudi- 
 ces, as in the case of Prague, sometimes 
 interfered with this free resort of for- 
 eigners to places of education, it was in 
 general a wise policy of government, as 
 well as of the universities themselves, to 
 encourage it. The thirty-fifth article of 
 the peace of Bretigni provides for the 
 restoration of former privileges to stu- 
 dents respectively in the French and Eng- 
 lish universities. f Various letters pat- 
 ent will be found in Rymer's collection, 
 securing to Scottish as well as French 
 natives a safe passage to their place of 
 education. The English nation, including 
 however the Flemings and Germans,! 
 had a separate vote in the faculty of arts 
 at Paris. But foreign students were not, 
 I believe, so numerous in the English 
 academies. 
 
 If endowments and privileges are the 
 means of quickening a zeal for letters, 
 they were liberally bestowed in the three 
 last of the middle ages. Crevier enumer- 
 ates fifteen colleges, founded in the uni- 
 versity of Paris during the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, besides one or two of a still earlier 
 date. Two only, or at most three, ex- 
 isted in that age at Oxford, and but one 
 at Cambridge. In the next two centu- 
 ries, these universities could boast, as 
 every one knows, of many splendid 
 foundations; though much exceeded in 
 number by those of Paris. Considered 
 as ecclesiastical institutions, it is not 
 surprising that the universities obtained, 
 according to the spirit of their age, an 
 exclusive cognizance of civil or criminal 
 suits affecting their members. This 
 jurisdiction was, however, local as well 
 as personal, and in reality encroach- 
 ed on the regular police of their cities. 
 At Paris the privilege turned to a flagrant 
 abuse, and gave rise to many scandalous 
 contentions. $ Still more valuable ad- 
 
 * Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique de 1'Hist. de 
 PAllemagne, p. 550, 607. 
 
 t Rymer, t. vi., p. 292. \ Crevier, t ii., p. 398. 
 Crevier and Villaret, passim. 
 
526 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 vantages were those relating to ecclesi- 
 astical preferments, of which a large 
 proportion was reserved in France to 
 academical graduates. Something of 
 the same sort, though less extensive, 
 may still be placed in the rules respect- 
 ing plurality of benefices in our English 
 church. 
 
 This remarkable and almost sudden 
 Causes of transition from a total indiffer- 
 their celeb- ence to all intellectual pursuits 
 rity - cannot be ascribed perhaps to 
 any general causes. The restoration of 
 the civil, and the formation of the canon 
 law, were indeed eminently conducive to 
 it, and a large proportion of scholars in 
 most universities confined themselves 
 to jurisprudence. But the chief attrac- 
 Schoiastic tion to the studious was the 
 philosophy, new scholastic philosophy. The 
 love of contention, especially with such 
 arms as the art of dialectics supplies to 
 an acute understanding, is natural 
 enough to mankind. That of specula- 
 ting upon the mysterious questions of 
 metaphysics and theology is not less so. 
 These disputes and speculations, howev- 
 er, appear to have excited little interest, 
 till, after the middle of the eleventh cen- 
 tury, Roscelin, a professor of logic, re- 
 vived the old question of the Grecian 
 schools respecting universal ideas, the 
 reality of which he denied. This kindled 
 a spirit of metaphysical discussion, which 
 Lanfranc and Anselm, successively arch- 
 bishops of Canterbury, kept alive; and 
 in the next century, Abelard and Peter 
 Lombard, especially the latter, completed 
 the scholastic system of philosophizing. 
 The logic of Aristotle seems to have been 
 partly known in the eleventh century, 
 although that of Augustin was perhaps 
 in higher estimation ;* in the twelfth it 
 obtained more decisive influence. His 
 metaphysics, to which the logic might 
 be considered as preparatory, were intro- 
 duced through translations from the Ara- 
 bic, and perhaps also from the Greek, 
 early in the ensuing century.f This 
 
 * Brucker, Hist. Grit. Philosophise, t. iii., p. 678. 
 
 t Id., ibid. Tiraboschi conceives that the trans- 
 lations of Aristotle made by command of Frederick 
 II. were directly from the Greek, t. iv., p. 145 ; and 
 censures Brucker for the contrary opinion. Buhle, 
 however (Hist, de la Philosophic Moderne, t. i., p. 
 696), appears to agree with Brucker. It is almost 
 certain that versions were made from the Arabic 
 Aristotle : which itself was not immediately taken 
 from the Greek, but from a Syriac medium. Gin- 
 guene, Hist. Litt. de 1'Italie, t. i., p. 212 (on the 
 authority of M. Langles). 
 
 It was not only a knowledge of Aristotle that 
 the scholastics of Europe derived from the Arabic 
 language. His writings had produced in the flour- 
 ishing Mahometan kingdoms a vast number of 
 
 work, condemned at first by the decrees 
 of popes and councils, on account of its 
 supposed tendency to atheism, acquired 
 by degrees an influence, to which even 
 popes and councils were obliged to 
 yield. The Mendicant Friars, establish- 
 ed throughout Europe in the thirteenth 
 century, greatly contributed to promote 
 the Aristotelian philosophy ; and its final 
 reception into the orthodox system of 
 the church may chiefly be ascribed to 
 Thomas Aquinas, the boast of the Do- 
 minican order, and certainly the most 
 distinguished metaphysician of the mid- 
 dle ages. His authority silenced all scru- 
 ples as to that of Aristotle, and the two 
 philosophers were treated with equally 
 implicit deference by the later school- 
 men.* 
 
 This scholastic philosophy, so famous 
 for several ages, has since passed away 
 and been forgotten. The history of liter- 
 ature, like that of empire, is full of revo- 
 lutions. Our public libraries are ceme- 
 teries of departed reputation ; and the 
 dust accumulating upon their untouched 
 volumes speaks as forcibly as the grass 
 that waves over the ruins of Babylon. 
 Few, very few, for a hundred years past, 
 have broken the repose of the immense 
 works of the schoolmen. None perhaps 
 in our own country have acquainted them- 
 selves particularly with their contents. 
 Leibnitz, however, expressed a wish that 
 some one conversant with modern phi- 
 losophy would undertake to extract the 
 
 commentators, and of metaphysicians trained in 
 the same school. Of these, Averroes, a native of 
 Cordova, who died early in the thirteenth century, 
 was the most eminent. It would be curious to 
 examine more minutely than has hitherto been 
 done the original writings of these famous men, 
 which no doubt have suffered in translation. A 
 passage in Al Gazel, which Mr. Turner has ren- 
 dered from the Latin, with all the disadvantage of 
 a double remove from the author's words, appears 
 to state the argument in favour of that class of 
 nominalists, called conceptualists (the only realists 
 who remain in the present age), with more clear- 
 ness and precision than any thing I have seen from 
 the schoolmen. Al Gazel died in 1126, and conse- 
 quently might have suggested this theory to Abe- 
 lard, which however is not probable. Turner's 
 Hist, of England, vol. i., p. 513. 
 
 * Brucker, Hist. Grit. Philosophic, t. iii. I 
 have found no better guide than Brucker. But he 
 confesses himself not to have read the original 
 writings of the scholastics; an admission which 
 every reader will perceive to be quite necessary. 
 Consequently, he gives us rather a verbose decla- 
 mation against their philosophy, than any clear 
 view of its character. Of the valuable works late- 
 ly published in Germany on the history of Philoso- 
 phy, I have only seen that of Buhle, which did not 
 fall into my hands till I had nearly written these 
 pages. Tiedeman and Tenneman are, I believe, 
 still untranslated. 
 

 PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 627 
 
 scattered particles of gold which may be 
 hidden in their abandoned mines. This 
 wish has been at length partially fulfilled 
 by three or four of those industrious stu- 
 dents and keen metaphysicians, who do 
 honour to modern Germany. But most 
 of their works are unknown to me except 
 by repute ; and as they all appear to be 
 formed on a very extensive plan, I doubt 
 whether even those laborious men could 
 afford adequate time for this ungrateful 
 research. Yet we cannot pretend to 
 deny, that Roscelin, Anselm, Abelard, 
 Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thom- 
 as Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, 
 were men of acute and even profound 
 understandings, the giants of their own 
 generation. Even with the slight knowl- 
 edge we possess of their tenets, there 
 appear through the cloud of repulsive 
 technical barbarisms rays of metaphys- 
 ical genius which this age ought not 
 to despise. Thus, in the works of An- 
 selm is found the celebrated argument of 
 Des Cartes for the existence of a Deity, 
 deduced from the idea of an infinitely 
 perfect being. One great object that| 
 most of the schoolmen had in view was 
 to establish the principles of natural the- 
 ology by abstract reasoning. This rea- 
 soning was doubtless liable to great diffi- 
 culties. But a modern writer, who 
 seems tolerably acquainted with the sub- 
 ject, assures us that it would be difficult 
 to mention any theoretical argument to 
 prove the divine attributes, or any objec- 
 tion capable of being raised against the 
 proof, which we do not find in some of 
 the scholastic philosophers.* The most 
 celebrated subjects of discussion, and 
 those on which this class of reasoners 
 were most divided, were the reality of 
 universal ideas, considered as extrinsic 
 to the human mind, and the freedom of 
 will. These have not ceased to occupy 
 the thoughts of metaphysicians; but it 
 will generally be allowed that the preva- 
 lence of the Realists in the former ques- 
 tion does not give a favourable impres- 
 sion of the scholastic system. f 
 
 * Buhle, Hist, de la Philos. Moderne, t. i., p. 
 723. This author raises, upon the whole, a favour- 
 able notion of Anselm and Aquinas ; but he hard- 
 ly notices any other. 
 
 t Mr. Turner has, with his characteristic spirit of 
 enterprise, examined some of the writings of our 
 chief English schoolmen, Duns Scotus and Ock- 
 ham (Hist, of Eng., vol. i.), and even given us some 
 extracts from them. They seem to me very friv- 
 olous, so far as I can collect their meaning. Ock- 
 harn, in particular, falls very short of what I had ex- 
 pected ; and his nominalism is strangely different 
 from that of Berkeley. We can hardly reckon a 
 man in the right, who is so by accident, and through 
 sophistical reasoning. However, a well-known 
 
 But all discovery of truth by means of 
 these controversies was rendered hope- 
 less by two insurmountable obstacles : 
 the authority of Aristotle, and that of the 
 church. Wherever obsequious rever- 
 ence is substituted for bold inquiry, truth, 
 if she is not already at hand, will never 
 be attained. The scholastics did not un- 
 derstand Aristotle, whose original wri- 
 tings they could not read ;* but his name 
 was received with implicit faith. They 
 learned his peculiar nomenclature, and 
 fancied that he had given them realities. 
 The authority of the church did them 
 still more harm. It has been said, and 
 probably with much truth, that their met- 
 aphysics were injurious to their theology. 
 But I must observe in return, that their 
 theology was equally injurious to their 
 metaphysics. Their disputes continually 
 turned upon questions either involving 
 absurdity and contradiction, or at best 
 inscrutable by human comprehension. 
 Those who assert the greatest antiquity 
 of the Roman Catholic doctrine as to the 
 real presence, allow that both the word 
 and the definition of transubstantiation 
 are owing to the scholastic writers. Their 
 subtleties were not always so well re- 
 ceived. They reasoned at imminent 
 peril of being charged with heresy, which 
 Roscelin, Abelard, Lombard, and Ock- 
 ham, did not escape. In the virulent 
 factions that arose out of their metaphys- 
 ical quarrels, either party was eager to 
 expose its adversary to detraction and 
 persecution. The nominalists were ac- 
 cused, one hardly sees why, with redu- 
 cing, like Sabellius, the persons of the 
 Trinity to modal distinctions. The Real- 
 
 article in the Edinburgh Review, No. LIII., p. 
 204, gives, from Tenneman, a more favourable ac- 
 count of Ockham. 
 
 Perhaps I may have imagined the scholastics to 
 be more forgotten than they really are. Within a 
 short time, I have met with four living English 
 writers who have read parts of Thomas Aquinas ; 
 Mr. Turner, Mr. Berington, Mr. Coleridge, and 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer. Still I cannot bring my- 
 self to think that there are four more in this coun- 
 try who could say the same. Certain portions, 
 however, of his writings are still read in the course 
 of instruction of some Catholic universities. 
 
 * Roger Bacon, by far the truest philosopher of 
 the middle ages, complains of the ignorance of 
 Aristotle's translators. Every translator, he ob- 
 serves, ought to understand his author's subject, 
 and the two languages from which and into which 
 he is to render the work. But none hitherto, ex- 
 ept Boethius, have sufficiently known the lan- 
 guages ; nor has one, except Robert Grostete (the 
 famous bishop of Lincoln), had a competent ac- 
 quaintance with science. The rest make egregi- 
 ous errors in both respects. And there is so much 
 misapprehension and obscurity in the Aristotelian 
 writings as thus translated, that no one under- 
 stands them. Opus Majus, p. 45. 
 
528 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 ists, with more pretence, incurred the 
 imputation of holding a language that sa- 
 voured of atheism.* In the controversy 
 which the Dominicans and Franciscans, 
 disciples respectively of Thomas. Aqui- 
 nas and Duns Scotus, maintained about 
 grace and free-will, it was of course still 
 more easy to deal in mutual reproaches 
 of heterodoxy. But the schoolmen were 
 in general prudent enough not to defy the 
 censures of the church ; and the popes, 
 in return for the support they gave to all 
 exorbitant pretensions of the Holy See, 
 connived at this factious wrangling, which 
 threatened no serious mischief, as it did 
 not proceed from any independent spirit 
 of research. Yet, with all their apparent 
 conformity to the received creed, there 
 was, as might be expected from the cir- 
 cumstances, a great deal of real deviation 
 from orthodoxy, and even of infidelity. 
 The scholastic mode of dispute, admit- 
 ting of no termination, and producing no 
 conviction, was the sure cause of skep- 
 ticism ; and the system of Aristotle, 
 especially with the commentaries of 
 Averroes, bore an aspect very unfavour- 
 able to natural religion. f The Aristote- 
 lian philosophy, even in the hands of the 
 master, was like a barren tree, that con- 
 ceals its want of fruit by profusion of 
 leaves. But the scholastic ontology was 
 much worse. What could be more tri- 
 fling than disquisitions about the nature 
 of angels, their modes of operation, their 
 means of conversing, or (for these were 
 distinguished) the morning and evening 
 state of their understandings '?| Into such 
 follies the schoolmen appear to have 
 launched, partly because there was less 
 danger of running against a heresy in a 
 matter where the church had defined so 
 little; partly from their presumption, 
 which disdained all inquiries into the hu- 
 man mind, as merely a part of physics ; 
 and in no small degree through a spirit 
 of mystical fanaticism, derived from the 
 oriental philosophy, and the latter Pla- 
 tonists, which blended itself with the 
 cold-blooded technicalities of the Aristo- 
 
 * Brucker, p. 733, 912. Mr. Turner has fallen 
 into some confusion as to this point, and supposes 
 the nominalist system to have had a pantheistical 
 tendency, not clearly apprehending its characteris- 
 tics, p. 512. 
 
 t Petrarch gives a curious account of the irreli- 
 gion that prevailed among the learned at Venice 
 and Padua, in consequence of their unbounded ad- 
 miration for Aristotle and Averroes. One of this 
 school, conversing with him, after expressing much 
 contempt for the Apostles and Fathers, exclaimed : 
 Utinam tu Averroim pati posses, ut videres quanto 
 ille tuis his nugatoribus major sit! M6m. de Pe- 
 trarque, t. iii., p. 759. Tiraboschi, t. v., p. 162. 
 
 t Brucker, p. 898. 
 
 telian school.* But this unproductive 
 waste of the faculties could not last for 
 ever. Men discovered that they had giv- 
 en their time for the promise of wisdom, 
 and been cheated in the bargain. What 
 John of Salisbury observes of the Paris- 
 ian dialectitians in his own time, that af- 
 ter several years absence he found them 
 not a step advanced, and still employed 
 in urging and parrying the same argu- 
 ments, was equally applicable to the pe- 
 riod of centuries. After three or four 
 hundred years, the scholastics had not 
 untied a single knot, nor added one une- 
 quivocal truth to the domain of philos- 
 ophy. As this became more evident, the 
 enthusiasm for that kind of learning de- 
 clined ; after the middle of the fourteenth 
 century, few distinguished teachers arose 
 among the schoolmen ; and at the revival 
 of letters, their pretended science had 
 no advocates left but among the prejudi- 
 ced or ignorant adherents of established 
 systems. How different is the state of 
 genuine philosophy, the zeal for which 
 will never wear out by length of time or 
 
 * This mystical philosophy appears to have been 
 introduced into Europe by John Scotus, whom 
 Buhle treats as the founder of the scholastic phi- 
 losophy ; though, as it made no sensible progress 
 for two centuries after his time, it seems more nat- 
 ural to give that credit to Roscelin and Anselm. 
 Scotus, or Erigena, as he is perhaps more frequent- 
 ly called, took up, through the medium of a spuri- 
 ous work, ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, 
 that remarkable system, which has from time im- 
 memorial prevailed in some schools of the East, 
 wherein all external phenomena, as well as all 
 subordinate intellects, are considered as emanating 
 from the Supreme Being, into whose essence they 
 are hereafter to be absorbed. This system, repro- 
 duced under various modifications, and combined 
 with various theories of philosophy and religion, 
 is perhaps the most congenial to the spirit of soli- 
 tary speculation, and consequently the most ex- 
 tensively diffused of any which those high themes 
 have engendered. It originated, no doubt, in sub- 
 lime conceptions of Divine omnipotence and ubi- 
 quity. But clearness of expression, or indeed of 
 ideas, being not easily connected with mysticism, 
 the language of philosophers adopting the theory 
 of emanation is often hardly distinguishable from 
 that of the pantheists. Brucker, very unjustly, as 
 I imagine from the passages he quotes, accuses 
 John Erigena of pantheism. (Hist. Crit. Philos., 
 p. 620.) The charge would, however, be better 
 grounded against some whose style might deceive 
 an unaccustomed reader. In fact, the philosophy 
 of emanation leads very nearly to the doctrine of 
 a universal substance, which begot the atheistic 
 system of Spinoza, and which appears to have re- 
 vived \yith similar consequences among the meta- 
 physicians of Germany. How very closely the 
 language of this oriental philosophy, or even of 
 that which regards the Deity as the soul of the 
 world, may verge upon pantheism, will be per- 
 ceived (without the trouble of reading the first 
 book of Cudworth) from two famous passages of 
 Virgil and Lucan. Georg., 1. iv., v. 219 ; and Phar- 
 salia, 1. viii., v. 578. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 629 
 
 change of fashion, because the inquirer, 
 unrestrained by authority, is perpetually 
 cheered by the discovery of truth in re- 
 searches which the boundless riches of 
 nature seem to render indefinitely pro- 
 gressive ! 
 
 Yet, upon a general consideration, the 
 attention paid in the universities to 
 scholastic philosophy may be deemed a 
 source of improvement in the intellectu- 
 al character, when we compare it with 
 the perfect ignorance of some preceding 
 ages. Whether the same industry would 
 not have been more profitably directed, 
 if the love of metaphysics had not in- 
 tervened, is another question. Philolo- 
 gy, or the principles of good taste, de- 
 generated through the prevalence of 
 school logic. The Latin compositions 
 of the twelfth century are better than 
 those of the three that followed ; at 
 least on the northern side of the Alps. 
 I do not, however, conceive that any 
 real correctness of taste or general ele- 
 gance of style was likely to subsist in 
 so imperfect a condition of society. 
 These qualities seem to require a certain 
 harmonious correspondence in the tone 
 of manners, before they can establish a 
 prevalent influence over literature. A 
 more real evil was the diverting studious 
 men from mathematical science. Early 
 in the twelfth century, several persons, 
 chiefly English, had brought into Europe 
 some of the Arabian writings on geome- 
 try and physics. In the thirteenth the 
 works of Euclid were commented upon 
 by Campano ;* and Roger Bacon was 
 fully acquainted with them.f Algebra, 
 
 * Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 150. 
 
 t There is a very copious and sensible account 
 of Roger Bacon in Wood's History of Oxford, vol. 
 i., p. 332 (Gutch's edition). I am a little surprised 
 that Antony should have found out Bacon's merit. 
 It is like an oyster judging of a line-of-battle ship. 
 But I ought not to gibe at the poor antiquary when 
 he shows good sense. 
 
 The resemblance between Roger Bacon and his 
 greater namesake is very remarkable. Whether 
 Lord Bacon ever read the Opus Majus, I know not, 
 but it is singular that his favourite quaint expres- 
 sion, prasrogativas scientiarum, should be found in 
 that work, though not used with the same allusion 
 to the Roman comitia. And whoever reads the 
 sixth part of the Opus Majus, upon experimental 
 science, must be struck by it as the prototype, in 
 spirit, of the Novum Organum. The same san- 
 guine and sometimes rash confidence in the effect 
 of physical discoveries, the same fondness for ex- 
 periment, the same preference of inductive to ab- 
 stract reasoning, pervade both works. Roger Ba- 
 con's philosophical spirit may be illustrated by the 
 following passage: Duo sunt modi cognoscendi; 
 scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Ar- 
 gumentum concludit et facit nos concludere ques- 
 tionem ; sed non certificat neque removet dubita- 
 tionem, ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi 
 L 1 
 
 as far as the Arabians knew it, extending 
 to quadratic equations, was actually in 
 the hands of some Italians at the com- 
 mencement of the same age, and pre- 
 served for almost three hundred years as 
 a secret, though without any conception 
 of its importance. As abstract mathe- 
 matics require no collateral aid, they 
 may reach the highest perfection in 
 ages of general barbarism; and there 
 seems to be no reason why, if the course 
 of study had been directed that way, 
 there should not have arisen a Newton 
 or a La Place, instead of an Aquinas or 
 an Ockham. The knowledge displayed 
 by Roger Bacon and by Albertus Mag- 
 nus, even in the mixed mathematics, 
 under every disadvantage from the im- 
 perfection of instruments and the want 
 of recorded experience, are sufficient to 
 inspire us with regret that their contem- 
 poraries were more inclined to astonish- 
 ment than to emulation. These inqui- 
 ries indeed were subject to the ordeal 
 of fire, the great purifier of books and 
 men; for if the metaphysician stood a 
 chance of being burnt as a heretic, 
 the natural philosopher was in not less 
 jeopardy as a magician.* 
 
 A far more substantial cause of intel- 
 lectual improvement was the cultivation 
 development of those new Ian- of the new 
 guages that sprang out of the lan e ua g es - 
 corruption of Latin. For three or four 
 centuries after what was called the ro- 
 mance tongue was spoken in France, 
 there remain but few vestiges of its em- 
 ployment in writing ; though we cannot 
 draw an absolute inference from our 
 want of proof, and a critic o& much au- 
 thority supposes translations to have 
 been made into it for religious purposes 
 from the time of Charlemagne.! Divi8ion of 
 During this period the Ian- the romance 
 guage was split into two very tongue into 
 separate dialects, the regions tv 
 of which may be considered, though by 
 no means strictly, as divided by the 
 
 earn inveniat via experientiae ; quia multi habent 
 argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non habent experi- 
 entiam, negligunt ea, neque vitant nociva nee 
 persequuntur bona. Si enim aliquis homo, qui nun- 
 quam vidit ignem, probavit per argumenta sufficien- 
 tia quod ignis comburit et laedit res et destruit, nun- 
 quam prqpter hoc quiesceret animus audientis, nee 
 ignem vitaret antequam poneret manum vel rem 
 combustibilem ad ignem, ut per experientiam pro- 
 baret quod argumentum edocebat ; sed assumta ex- 
 perientia combustionis certificatur animus et qui- 
 escit in fulgore veritatis, quo argumentum non suf- 
 ficit, sed experientia, p. 446. 
 
 * See the fate of Cecco d' Ascoli in Tiraboschi, 
 t. v., p. 174. 
 
 t Le Boeuf, Me"m. de 1'Acad. des Inscript., _t. 
 xvii,, p. 711. 
 
 
 
530 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 Loire. These were called the Langue 
 d'Oil and the Langue d'Oc ; or, in more 
 modern terms, the French and Provencal 
 dialects. In the latter of these I know 
 of nothing which can even by name be 
 traced beyond the year 1100. About 
 that time, Gregory de Bechada, a gentle- 
 man of Limousin, recorded the memo- 
 rable events of the first crusade, then re- 
 cent, in a metrical history of great 
 length.* This poem has altogether per- 
 ished ; which, considering the populari- 
 ty of its subject, as M. Sismondi justly 
 remarks, would probably not have been 
 the case if it had possessed any merit. 
 But very soon afterward, a multitude of 
 poets, like a swarm of summer insects, 
 appeared in the southern provinces of 
 Troubadours France. These were the cel- 
 of Provence, ebrated Troubadours, whose 
 fame depends far less on their positive 
 excellence than on the darkness of pre- 
 ceding ages, on the temporary sensation 
 they excited, and their permanent influ- 
 ence on the state of European poetry. 
 From William, count of Poitou, the ear- 
 liest troubadour on record, who died in 
 1126, to their extinction about the end 
 of the next century, there were probably 
 several hundred of these versifiers in the 
 language of Provence, though not al- 
 ways natives of France. Millot has 
 published the lives of one hundred and 
 forty-two, besides the names of many 
 more whose history is unknown ; and a 
 still greater number, it cannot be doubt- 
 ed, are unknown by name. Among 
 those poets are reckoned a king of Eng- 
 land (Richard L), two of Aragon, one of 
 Sicily, a dauphin of Auvergne, a count of 
 Foix, a prince of Orange, many noble- 
 men, and several ladies. One can hard- 
 ly pretend to account for this sudden and 
 transitory love of verse ; but it is mani- 
 festly one symptom of the rapid impulse 
 which the human mind received in the 
 twelfth century, and contemporaneous 
 with the severer studies that began to 
 flourish in the universities. It was en- 
 couraged by the prosperity of Langue- 
 doc and Provence, undisturbed, compara- 
 tively with other countries, by internal 
 
 * Gregorius, cognomento Bechada, de Castro 
 de Turribus, professione miles, subtilissimi ingenii 
 vir, aliquantulum imbutus literis, riorum gesta 
 proeliorum matern lingua rythmo vulgari, ut pop- 
 ulus pleniter intelligerel, ingens volumen decenter 
 composuit, et ut vera et faceta verba proferret, duo- 
 decim annorum spatium super hoc opus operam de- 
 dit. Ne vero vilesceret propter verbum vulgare, non 
 sine prascepto episcopi Eustorgii, et consilio Gau- 
 berti Normanni hoc opus aggressus est. I tran- 
 scribe this from M. Heeren's Essai sur les Croi- 
 sades, p. 447 ; whose reference is to Labbe, Biblio- 
 theca nova MSS., t. ii., p. 296. 
 
 warfare, and disposed by the temper of 
 their inhabitants to feel with voluptuous 
 sensibility the charm of music and am- 
 orous poetry. But the tremendous storm 
 that fell upon Languedoc in the crusade 
 against the Albigeois shook off the flow- 
 ers of Provencal verse ;^ind the final ex- 
 tinction of the fief of Toulouse, with the 
 removal of the counts of Provence to 
 Naples, deprived the troubadours of their 
 most eminent patrons. An attempt was 
 made in the next century to revive them, 
 by distributing prizes for the best compo- 
 sition in the Floral Games of Toulouse, 
 which have sometimes been erroneous- 
 ly referred to a higher antiquity.* This 
 institution perhaps still remains ; but, 
 even in its earliest period, it did not es- 
 tablish the name of any Provencal poet. 
 Nor can we deem those fantastical so- 
 lemnities, styled Courts of Love, where 
 ridiculous questions of metaphysical gal- 
 lantry were debated by poetical advo- 
 cates, under the presidency and arbitra- 
 tion of certain ladies, much calculated 
 to bring forward any genuine excellence. 
 They illustrate, however, what is more 
 immediately my own object, the general 
 ardour for poetry, and the manners of 
 those chivalrous ages.f 
 
 The great reputation acquired by the 
 troubadours, and panegyrics Their poeti- 
 lavished on some of them by cai character. 
 Dante and Petrarch, excited a curios- 
 ity among literary men which has been 
 a good deal disappointed by further ac- 
 quaintance. An excellent French anti- 
 quarian of the last age, La Curne de St. 
 Palaye, spent great part of his life in 
 accumulating manuscripts of Provencal 
 poetry, very little of which had ever been 
 printed. Translations from part of this 
 collection, with memorials of the writers, 
 were published by Millot; and we cer- 
 tainly do not often meet with passages 
 in his three volumes which give us any 
 poetical pleasure. J Some of the original 
 poems have since been published, and 
 the extracts made from them by the re- 
 cent historians of southern literature are 
 
 * De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. i., p. 155. Sis- 
 mondi, Litt. du Midi, t. i., p. 228. 
 
 t For the Courts of Love, see De Sade, Vie de 
 Petrarque, t. ii., note 19. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. 
 i., p. 270. Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie Francoise, 
 p. 94. I have never had patience to look at the 
 older writers who have treated this tiresome sub- 
 ject. It is a satisfaction to reflect, that the coun- 
 try which has produced more eminent and origi- 
 nal poets than any other has never been infected 
 by the fopperies of academies and their prizes. 
 Such an institution as the Society degli Arcndi 
 could at no time have endured public ridicule in 
 England for a fortnight. 
 
 t Histoire Litt. des Troubadours, Paris, 1774. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 531 
 
 rather superior. The troubadours chieflj 
 confined themselves to subjects of love 
 or rather gallantry, and to satires (sir 
 ventes) which are sometimes keen anc 
 spirited. No romances of chivalry, and 
 hardly any tales, are found among thei; 
 works. There seems a general defi 
 ciency of imagination, and especially 01 
 that vivid description which distinguishes 
 works of genius in the rudest period of 
 society. In the poetry of sentiment 
 their favourite province, they seldom at 
 tain any natural expression, and conse- 
 quently produce no interest. I speak, of 
 course, on the presumption that the bes 
 specimens have been exhibited by those 
 who have undertaken the task. It musl 
 be allowed, however, that we cannot 
 judge of the troubadours at a greater dis- 
 advantage than through the prose trans- 
 lations of Millot. Their poetry was en- 
 tirely of that class which is allied to 
 music, and excites the fancy or feelings 
 rather by the power of sound than any 
 stimulancy of imagery and passion. Pos- 
 sessing a flexible and harmonious lan- 
 guage, they invented a variety of metri- 
 cal arrangements, perfectly new to the 
 nations of Europe. The Latin hymns 
 were striking, but monotonous, the metre 
 of the northern French unvaried ; but in 
 Provencal poetry almost every length of 
 verse, from two syllables to twelve, and 
 the most intricate disposition of rhymes, 
 were at the choice of the troubadour. 
 The canzoni, the sestine, all the lyric 
 metres of Italy and Spain, were bor- 
 rowed from his treasury. With such a 
 command of poetical sounds, it was natu- 
 ral that he should inspire delight into 
 ears not yet rendered familiar to the arti- 
 fices of verse ; and even now the frag- 
 ments of these ancient lays, quoted by 
 M. Sismondi and M. Ginguene, seem to 
 possess a sort of charm that has evapo- 
 rated in translation. Upon this harmony, 
 and upon the facility with which mankind 
 are apt to be deluded into an admiration 
 of exaggerated sentiment in poetry, they 
 depended for their influence. And, how- 
 ever vapid the songs of Provence may 
 seem to our apprehensions, they were 
 undoubtedly the source from which poe- 
 try for many centuries derived a great 
 portion of its habitual language.* ^^ 
 
 * Two very modern French writers, M. Gin- 
 guen<$ (Histoire Litteraire d'ltalie, Paris, 1811) and 
 M. Sismondi (Litterature du Midi de 1'Europe, 
 Paris, 1813) have revived the poetical history of the 
 troubadours. To them, still more than to Millot 
 and Tiraboschi, I would acknowledge my obliga- 
 tions for the little I have learned in respect of 
 this forgotten school of poetry. Notwithstanding, 
 however, the heaviness of Millet's work, a fault 
 L12 
 
 It has been maintained by some anti- 
 quaries that the northern ro- Northern 
 mance, or what we properly call French 
 French, was not formed until the P etr y and 
 tenth century, the common dia- prose> 
 lect of all France having previously re- 
 sembled that of Languedoc. This hy- 
 pothesis may not be indisputable; but 
 the question is not likely to be settled, 
 as scarcely any written specimens of 
 romance, even of that age, have sur- 
 vived.* In the eleventh century, among 
 other more obscure productions both in 
 prose and metre, there appears what, if 
 unquestioned as to authenticity, would be 
 a valuable monument of this language ; 
 the laws of William the Conqueror. 
 These are preserved in a manuscript of 
 Ingulfus's History of Croyland, a blank 
 being left in other copies where they 
 should be inserted.! They are written 
 in an idiom so far removed from the 
 Provencal, that one would be disposed 
 to think the separation between these 
 two species of romance of older standing 
 than is commonly allowed. But it has 
 been thought probable that these laws, 
 which in fact were a mere repetition of 
 those of Edward the Confessor, were 
 originally published in Anglo-Saxon, the 
 only language intelligible to the people, 
 and translated, at a subsequent period, 
 
 some Norman monk into French.^ 
 This, indeed, is not quite satisfactory, as 
 t would have been more natural for such 
 a transcriber to have rendered them into 
 Latin ; and neither William nor his suc- 
 cessors were accustomed to promulgate 
 any of their ordinances in the vernacular 
 "anguage of England. 
 
 not imputable to himself, though Ritson, as f re- 
 ~nember, calls him, in his own polite style, "a 
 )lockhead," it will always be useful to the inquirer 
 nto the manners and opinions of the middle ages, 
 rom the numerous illustrations it contains of two 
 general facts ; the extreme dissoluteness of morals 
 among the higher ranks, and the prevailing ani- 
 mosity of all classes against the clergy. 
 
 * Hist. Litt. de la France, t. vii,, p. 58. Le 
 3oeuf, according to these Benedictins, has pub- 
 ished some poetical fragments of the tenth centu- 
 y ; and they quote part of a charter as old as 940 
 n romance, p. 59. But that antiquary, in a me- 
 moir printed in the seventeenth volume of the 
 LCademy of Inscriptions, which throws more light 
 n the infancy of the French language than any 
 hing within my knowledge, says only that the 
 arliest specimens of verse in the royal library are 
 f the eleventh century au plus tard, p. 717. M. 
 e la Rue is said to have found some poems of the 
 leventh century in the British Museum. Roque- 
 ort, Etat de la Posie Franqoise, p. 206. Le 
 Sceuf 's fragment may be found in this work, p. 379 ; 
 ; seems nearer to the Provengal than the French 
 ialect. 
 
 t Gale, xv. Script., t. i., p. 88. 
 
 t Ritson's Dissert'atidn On Rdmance, p. 60. 
 
 
532 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 The use of a popular language be- 
 came more common after the year 1100. 
 Translations of some books of Scripture 
 and acts of saints were made about that 
 time, or even earlier, and there are 
 French sermons of St. Bernard, from 
 which extracts have been published, in 
 the royal library at Paris.* In 1126, a 
 charter was granted by Louis VI. to the 
 city of Beauvais in French.! Metrical 
 compositions are in general the first 
 literature of a nation, and even if no dis- 
 tinct proof could be adduced, we might 
 assume their existence before the twelfth 
 century. There is, however, evidence, 
 not to mention the fragments printed by 
 Le Boeuf, of certain lives of saints trans- 
 lated into French verse by Thibault de 
 Vernon, a canon of Rouen, before the 
 middle of the preceding age. And we 
 are told that Taillefer, a Norman min- 
 strel, recited a song or romance on the 
 deeds of Roland, before the army of his 
 countrymen, at the battle of Hastings in 
 1066. Philip de Than, a Norman subject 
 of Henry I., seems to be the earliest poet 
 whose works as well as name have reach- 
 ed us, unless we admit a French transla- 
 tion of the work of one Marbode upon 
 precious stones to be more ancient.J 
 This de Than wrote a set of rules for 
 computation of time, and an account of 
 different calendars. A happy theme for 
 inspiration, without doubt ! Another per- 
 formance of the same author is a trea- 
 tise on birds and beasts, dedicated to Ad- 
 elaide, queen of Henry 1 4 But a more 
 famous votary of the muses was Wace, 
 a native of Jersey, who, about the begin- 
 ning of Henry, II. 's reign, turned Geof- 
 frey of Monmouth's history into French 
 metre. Besides this poem, called Le 
 Brut d'Angleterre, he composed a series 
 of metrical histories, containing the tran- 
 sactions of the dukes of Normandy, from 
 Rollo, their great progenitor, who gave 
 names to the Roman de Rou, down to 
 his own age. Other productions are as- 
 
 * Hist. Litt, t. ix., p. 149. Fabliaux par Barba- 
 san, vol. i., p. 9, edit. 1808. Mem. de 1'Academie 
 des Inscr., t. xv. and xvii., p. 714, &c. 
 
 t Mabillon speaks of this as the oldest French 
 instrument he had seen. But the Benedictins 
 quote some of the eleventh century. Hist. Litt., t. 
 vii., p. 59. This charter is supposed by the au- 
 thors of Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique to be 
 translated from the Latin, t. iv., p. 519. French 
 charters, they say, are not common before the age 
 of Louis IX. ; and this is confirmed by those pub- 
 lished in Martenne's Thesaurus Anecdotorum, 
 which are very commonly in French from his 
 reign, but hardly ever before. 
 
 I Ravaliere Revol. de la Langue Fran^oise, p. 
 116, doubts the age of this translation. 
 
 $ Archaeologia, vols. xii. and xiii. 
 
 cribed to Wace, who was at least a pro- 
 lific versifier, and, if he seem to deserve 
 no higher title at present, has a claim to 
 indulgence, and even to esteem, as hav- 
 ing far excelled his contemporaries, with- 
 out any superior advantages of knowl- 
 edge. In emulation, however, of his 
 fame, several Norman writers addicted 
 themselves to composing chronicles, or 
 devotional treatises in metre. The court 
 of our Norman kings was to the early 
 poets in the Langue d'Oil, what those of 
 Aries and Toulouse were to the trouba- 
 dours. Henry I. was fond enough of 
 literature to obtain the surname of Beau- 
 clerc ; Henry II. was more indisputably 
 an encourager of poetry ; and Richard I. 
 has left compositions of his own in one 
 or other (for the point is doubtful) of the 
 two dialects spoken in France.* 
 
 If the poets of Normandy had never 
 gone beyond historical and reli- Norman ro- 
 
 glOUS subjects, they WOUld prob- mancesand 
 
 ably have had less claim to our tales- 
 attention than their brethren of Provence. 
 But a different and far more interesting 
 species of composition began to be culti- 
 vated in the latter part of the twelfth 
 century. Without entering upon the 
 controverted question as to the origin of 
 romantic fictions, referred by one party 
 to the Scandinavians, by a second to the 
 Arabs, by others to the natives of Bot- 
 any, it is manifest that the actual stories 
 upon which one early and numerous 
 class of romances was founded are rela- 
 ted to the traditions of the last people. 
 These are such as turn upon the fable of 
 Arthur; for though we are not entitled 
 to deny the existence of such a person- 
 age, his story seems chiefly the creation 
 of Celtic vanity. Traditions current in 
 Britany, though probably derived from 
 this island, became the basis of Geoffrey 
 of Monmouth's Latin prose, which, as 
 has been seen, was transfused into French 
 metre by Wace.f The vicinity of Nor- 
 mandy enabled its poets to enrich their 
 narratives with other Armorican fictions, 
 all relating to the heroes who had sur- 
 rounded the table of the son of Uther. An 
 
 * Millot says that Richard's sirventes (satirical 
 songs) have appeared in French, as well as Pro- 
 ven<jal, but that the former is probably a translation. 
 Hist, des Troubadours, vol. i., p. 54. Yet I have 
 met with no writer who quotes them in the latter 
 language, and M. Ginguene, as well as Le Grand 
 d'Aussy, consider Richard as a trouveur. 
 
 t This derivation of the romantic stories of Ar- 
 thur, which Le Grand d'Aussy ridiculously .attrib- 
 utes to the jealousy entertained by the English of 
 the renown of Charlemagne, is stated in a very 
 perspicuous and satisfactory manner by Mr. Ellis 
 in his| Specimens of Early English Metrical Ro- 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 equally imaginary history of Charlemagne 
 gave rise to a new family of romances. 
 The authors of these fictions were call- 
 ed Trouveurs, a name obviously identical 
 with that of Troubadours. But, except 
 in name, there was no resemblance be- 
 tween the minstrels of the northern and 
 southern dialects. The invention of one 
 class was turned to description, that of 
 the other to sentiment; the first were 
 epic in their form and style, the latter 
 almost always lyric. We cannot per- 
 haps give a better notion of their dissim- 
 ilitude, than by saying that one school 
 produced Chaucer, and the other Pe- 
 trarch. Besides these romances of chiv- 
 alry, the trouveurs displayed their pow- 
 ers of lively narration in comic tales or 
 fabliaux (a name sometimes extended to 
 the higher romance), which have aided 
 the imagination of Boccace and La Fon- 
 taine. These compositions are certainly 
 more entertaining than those of the trou- 
 badours; but, contrary to what I have 
 said of the latter, they often gain by ap- 
 pearing in a modern dress. Their 
 versification, which doubtless had its 
 charm, when listened to around the 
 hearth of an ancient castle, is very lan- 
 guid and prosaic, and suitable enough to 
 the tedious prolixity into which the nar- 
 rative is apt to fall ; and though we find 
 many sallies of that arch and sprightly 
 simplicity which characterizes the old 
 language of France as well as England, 
 it requires, upon the whole, a factitious 
 taste to relish these Norman tales, con- 
 sidered as poetry in the higher sense of 
 the word, distinguished from metrical fic- 
 tion. 
 
 A manner very different from that of 
 Roman de the fabliaux was adopted in the 
 la Rose. Roman de la Rose, begun by 
 William de Loris about 1250, and com- 
 pleted by John de Meun half a century 
 later. This poem, which contains about 
 16,000 lines in the usual octo-syllable 
 verse, from which the early French wri- 
 ters seldom deviated, is an allegorical 
 vision, wherein love, and the other pas- 
 sions or qualities connected with it, pass 
 over the stage, without the intervention, 
 I believe, of any less abstract personages. 
 Though similar allegories were not un- 
 known to the ancients, and, which is more 
 to the purpose, may be found in other 
 productions of the thirteenth century, 
 none had been constructed so elaborate- 
 ly as that of the Roman de la Rose. Cold 
 and tedious as we now consider this spe- 
 cies of poetry, it originated in the crea- 
 tive power of imagination, and appealed 
 to more refined feeling than the common 
 
 metrical narratives could excite. This 
 poem was highly popular in the middle 
 ages, and became the source of those 
 numerous allegories which had not ceas- 
 ed in the seventeenth century. 
 
 The French language was employed in 
 prose as well as in metre. In- works in 
 deed, it seems to have had almost French 
 an exclusive privilege in this re- P rose - 
 spect. The language of Oil, says Dante, 
 in his treatise on vulgar speech, prefers 
 its claim to be ranked above those of Oc 
 and Si (Provencal and Italian), on the 
 ground that all translations or composi- 
 tions in prose have been written therein, 
 from its greater facility and grace ; such 
 as the books compiled from the Trojan 
 and Roman stories, the delightful fables 
 about Arthur, and many other works of 
 history and science.* I have mentioned 
 already the sermons of St. Bernard, and 
 translations from Scripture. The laws 
 of the kingdom of Jerusalem purport to 
 have been drawn up immediately after 
 the first crusade ; and though their lan- 
 guage has been materially altered, there 
 seems no doubt that they were original- 
 ly compiled in French. f Besides some 
 charters, there are said to have been 
 prose romances before the year 1200.J 
 Early in the next age, Ville Hordouin, 
 seneschal of Champagne, recorded the 
 capture of Constantinople in the fourth 
 crusade, an expedition, the glory and re- 
 ward of which he had personally shared, 
 and, as every original work of prior date 
 has either perished, or is of small im- 
 portance, may be deemed the father of 
 French prose. The establishments of 
 St. Louis, and the law treatise of Beau- 
 
 * Prose e Rime di Dante, Venez, 1758, t. iv., p. 
 261. Dante's words, biblia cum Trojanorum Ro- 
 manorumque gestibus compilata, seem to bear no 
 other meaning than what I have given. But there 
 may be a doubt whether biblia is ever used except 
 for the Scriptures ; and the Italian translator ren- 
 ders it, cioe la bibbia, i fatti de iTrojani, e de i Ro- 
 mani. In this case something is wrong in the ori- 
 ginal Latin, and Dante will have alluded to the 
 translations of parts of Scripture made into French, 
 as mentioned in the text. 
 
 f The Assises de Jerusalem have undergone two 
 revisions ; one in 1250, by order of John d'Ibelin, 
 count of Jaffa, and a second in 1369, by sixteen 
 commissioners chosen by the states of the kingdom 
 of Cyprus. Their language seems to be such as 
 might be expected from the time of the former re- 
 vision. 
 
 J Several prose romances were written or trans- 
 lated from the Latin about 1170, and afterward. 
 Mr. Ellis seems inclined to dispute their antiquity. 
 But, besides the authorities of La Ravaliere and 
 Tressan, the latter of which is not worth much, a 
 late very extensively informed writer seems to 
 have put this matter out of doubt. Roquefort Fla- 
 mericourt, Etat de la Poesie Fran<jaise dans les 
 12* et 13me siecles, Paris, 1815, p. 147. 
 
. 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 manoir, fill up the interval of the thir- 
 teenth century, and before its conclusion 
 we must suppose the excellent memoirs 
 of Joinville to have been composed, 
 sinpe they are dedicated to Louis X., in 
 1315, when the author could hardly be 
 less than ninety years of age. Without 
 prosecuting any farther the history of 
 French literature, I will only mention the 
 translations of Livy and Sallust, made in 
 the reign and by the order of John, with 
 those of Cesar, Suetonius, Ovid, and parts 
 of Cicero, which are due to his successor 
 Charles V.* 
 
 I confess myself wholly uninformed as 
 Spanish to the original formation of the 
 language. Spanish language, and as to the 
 epoch of its separation into the two prin- 
 cipal dialects of Castile and Portugal or 
 Gallicia ;f nor should 1 perhaps have al- 
 luded to the literature of that peninsula, 
 were it not for a remarkable poem which 
 shines out among the minor lights of 
 those times. This is a metrical life of 
 the Cid Ruy Diaz, written in a barba- 
 rous style and with the rudest inequality 
 of measure, but with a truly Homeric 
 warmth and vivacity of delineation. It 
 is much to be regretted that the author's 
 name has perished, but its date seems to 
 be not later than the middle of the twelfth 
 century, while the hero's actions were 
 yet recent, and before the taste of Spain 
 had been corrupted by the Provencal 
 troubadours, whose extremely different 
 manner would, if it did not pervert the 
 poet's genius, at least have impeded his 
 popularity. A very competent judge has 
 
 * Villaret, Hist, de France, t. xi., p. 121. De 
 Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. iii., p. 548. Charles V. 
 had more learning than most princes of his time. 
 Christine de Pisan, a lady who has written me- 
 moirs, or rather a eulogy of him, says that his fa- 
 ther le fist introdire en lettres moult suffisamment, 
 et tant que competemment entendoit son Latin, et 
 souffisamment scavoit lesreglesde grammaire ; la 
 quelle chose pleust a dieu qu' ainsi fust accoutu- 
 mee entre les princes. Collect, de Me'm., t. v., p. 
 103, 190, &c, 
 
 t The earliest Spanish that I remember to have 
 seen is an instrument in Martenne, Thesaurus 
 Anecdotorum, t. i., p. 263 ; the date of which is 
 1095. Persons more conversant with the antiqui- 
 ties of that country may possibly go farther back. 
 Another of 1101 is published in Marina's Teoria de 
 las Cortes, t. iii., p. 1. It is in a Vidimus by Peter 
 the Cruel, and cannot, I presume, have been a 
 translation from the Latin. Yet the editors of 
 Nouveau Tr, de Diplom. mention a charter of 
 1243 as the earliest they are acquainted with in 
 the Spanish language, t. iv., p. 525. 
 
 Charters in the German language, according to 
 the same work, first appear in the time of the Em- 
 peror Rodolph, after 1272, and became usual in the 
 next century, p. 523, But Struvius mentions an 
 instrument of 1235 as the -earliest in German. 
 Corp, Hist. Germ,, p. 457. 
 
 pronounced the poem of the Cid to be 
 "decidedly and beyond comparison the 
 finest in the Spanish language." It is at 
 least superior to any that was written in 
 Europe before the appearance of Dante.* 
 A strange obscurity envelops the in- 
 fancy of the Italian language. Earlywri . 
 Though it is certain that gram- ters m the 
 matical Latin had ceased to be Italian - 
 employed in ordinary discourse, at least 
 from the time of Charlemagne, we have 
 not a single passage of undisputed au- 
 thenticity, in the current idiom, for near- 
 ly four centuries afterward. Though Ital- 
 ian phrases are mixed up in the barba- 
 rous jargon of some charters, not an in- 
 strument is extant in that language be- 
 fore the year 1200 ; unless we may reck- 
 on one in the Sardinian dialect (which, I 
 believe, was rather Provencal than Ital- 
 ian), noticed by Muratori.f Nor is there 
 a vestige of Italian poetry older than a 
 few fragments of Ciullo d'Alcamo, a Si- 
 cilian, who must have written before 
 1193, since he mentions Saladin as then 
 living. | This may strike us as the more 
 remarkable, when we consider the polit- 
 ical circumstances of Italy in the elev- 
 enth and twelfth centuries. From the 
 struggles of her spirited republics against 
 the emperors, and their internal factions, 
 we might, upon all general reasoning, an- 
 ticipate the early use and vigorous culti- 
 vation of their native language. Even if 
 it were not yet ripe for historians and 
 philosophers, it is strange that no poet 
 should have been inspired with songs of 
 triumph or invective by the various for- 
 tunes of his country. But, on the con- 
 trary, the poets of Lombardy became 
 troubadours, and wasted their genius in 
 Provencal love-strains at the courts of 
 princes. The Milanese and other Lom- 
 bard dialects were indeed exceedingly 
 rude, but this rudeness separated them 
 more decidedly from Latin ; nor is it pos- 
 sible that the Lombards could have em- 
 ployed that language intelligibly for any 
 public or domestic purpose. And indeed, 
 in the earliest Italian compositions that 
 
 e An extract from this poem was published in 
 1808, by Mr. Southey, at the end of his " Chroni- 
 cle of the Cid," the materials of which it partly 
 supplied, accompanied by an excellent version by 
 a gentleman, who is distinguished, among many 
 other talents, for an unrivalled felicity in expres- 
 sing the peculiar manner of authors whom he 
 translates or imitates. M. Sismondi has given 
 other passages, in the third volume of his essay on 
 Southern Literature. This popular and elegant 
 work contains some interesting and not very com- 
 mon information as to the early Spanish poets in 
 the Provencal dialect, as well as those who wrote 
 in Castilian. 
 
 t Dissert. 32. t Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 340. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 535 
 
 have been published, the new language is 
 so thoroughly formed, that it is easy to 
 infer a very long disuse of that from 
 which it was derived. The Sicilians 
 claim the glory of having first adapted 
 their own harmonious dialect to poetry. 
 Frederick 11. both encouraged their art 
 and cultivated it; among the very first 
 essays of Italian verse we find his pro- 
 ductions and those of his chancellor, 
 Piero delle Vigne. Thus Italy was des- 
 tined to owe the beginnings of her na- 
 tional literature to a foreigner and an 
 enemy. These poems are very short and 
 very few ; those ascribed to St. Francis 
 about the same time are hardly distin- 
 guishable from prose ; but after the mid- 
 dle of the thirteenth century, the Tuscan 
 poets awoke to a sense of the beauties 
 which their native language, refined from 
 the impurities of vulgar speech,* could 
 display ; and the genius of Italian litera- 
 ture was rocked upon the restless waves 
 of the Florentine democracy. Ricordano 
 Malespini, the first historian, and nearly 
 the first prose writer in Italian, left me- 
 morials of the republic down to the year 
 1281, which was that of his death, and it 
 was continued by Giacchetto Malespini 
 to 1286. These are little inferior in pu- 
 rity of style to the best Tuscan authors ; 
 for it is the singular fate of that language 
 to have spared itself all intermediate 
 stages of refinement, and starting the la-st 
 in the race, to have arrived almost in- 
 stantaneously at the goal. There is an 
 interval of not much more than half a 
 century between the short fragment of 
 Ciullo d'Alcamo, mentioned above, and 
 the poems of Guido Guinizzelli, Guitone 
 d'Arezzo, and Guido Cavalcante ; which, 
 in their diction and turn of thought, are 
 sometimes not unworthy of Petrarch. f 
 
 * Dante, in his treatise De vulgar! Eloquentii, 
 reckons fourteen or fifteen dialects, spoken in dif- 
 ferent parts of Italy, all of which were debased by 
 impure modes of expression. But the " noble, prin- 
 cipal, and courtly Italian idiom," was that which 
 belonged to every city, and seemed to belong to 
 none, and which, if Italy had a court, would be the 
 language of that court, p. 274, 277. 
 
 Allowing for the metaphysical obscurity in 
 which Dante chooses to envelop the subject, this 
 might perhaps be said at present. The Florentine 
 dialect has its peculiarities, which distinguish it 
 from the general Italian language, though these are 
 seldom discerned by foreigners, nor always by na- 
 tives, with whom Tuscan is the proper denomina- 
 tion of their national tongue. 
 
 f Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 309377. Ginguen6, vol. 
 i., c. 6. The style of the Vita Nuova of Dante, 
 written soon after the death of his Beatrice, which 
 happened in 1290, is hardly distinguishable by a 
 foreigner from that of Machiavel or Castiglione. 
 Yet so recent was the adoption of this language, 
 that the celebrated master of Dante, Brunetto La- 
 tini, had written his Tesoro in French ; and gives, 
 
 But at the beginning of the next age 
 arose a much greater genius, the 
 true father of Italian poetry, and D 
 the first name in the literature of the 
 middle ages. This was Dante, or Du- 
 rante Alighieri, born in 1265, of a re- 
 spectable family at Florence. Attached 
 to the Guelf party, which had then ob- 
 tained a final ascendency over its rival, 
 he might justly promise himself the nat- 
 ural reward of talents under a free gov- 
 ernment, public trust, and the esteem of 
 his compatriots. But the Guelfs unhap- 
 pily were split into two factions, the Bi- 
 anchi and the Neri, with the former of 
 whom, and, as it proved, the unsuccess- 
 ful side, Dante was connected. In 1300 
 he filled the office of one of the Priori, or 
 chief magistrates at Florence ; and hav- 
 ing manifested in this, as was alleged, 
 some partiality towards the Bianchi, a 
 sentence of proscription passed against 
 him about two years afterward, when it 
 became the turn of the opposite faction 
 to triumph. Banished from his country, 
 and baffled in several efforts of his 
 friends to restore their fortunes, he had 
 no resource but at the courts of the Sea- 
 las at Verona, and othr Italian princes, 
 attaching himself in adversity to the Im- 
 perial interests, and tasting in his own 
 language the bitterness of another's 
 bread.* In this state of exile he finish- 
 ed, if he did not commence, his great 
 poem, the Divine Comedy; a representa- 
 tion of the three kingdoms of futurity, 
 Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, divided 
 into one hundred cantos, and containing 
 about 14,000 lines. He died at Ravenna 
 in 1321. 
 
 Dante is among the very few who 
 have created the national poetry of their 
 country. For notwithstanding the pol- 
 ished elegance of some earlier Italian 
 verse, it had been confined to amorous 
 sentiments ; and it was yet to be seen 
 that the language could sustain for a 
 
 as a reason for it, that it was a more agreeable and 
 usual language than his own. Et se aucuns de- 
 mandoit pourquoi chis livre est ecris en romans, 
 selon la raison de France, pour chose que nous 
 sommes ytalien, je diroie que ch'est pour chose 
 que nous sommes en France : 1'autre pour chose 
 que la parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a 
 toiites gens. There is said to be a manuscript his- 
 tory of Venice down to 1275, in the Florentine li- 
 brary, written in French by Martin de Canale, who 
 says that he has chosen that language, parceque 
 la langue franceise cort parmi le monde, et est la 
 plus delitable a lire et a oir que nulle autre. Gin- 
 guene, vol. i., p. 384. 
 
 * Tu proverai ci (says Cacciaguida to him) 
 
 come sa di sale 
 
 II pane altrui, e come 6 duro calle 
 II scendere e '1 salir per, altrui scale. 
 
 Paradis., cant. 16. 
 

 636 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 greater length than any existing poem 
 except the Iliad, the varied style of nar- 
 ration, reasoning, and ornament. Of al 
 writers he is the most unquestionably 
 original. Virgil was indeed his inspiring 
 genius, as he declares himself, and as 
 may sometimes be perceived in his dic- 
 tion ; but his tone is so peculiar and char- 
 acteristic, that few readers would be wil- 
 ling at first to acknowledge any resem- 
 blance. He possessed, in an extraordi- 
 nary degree, a command of language, the 
 abuse of which led to his obscurity and 
 licentious innovations. No poet ever ex- 
 celled him in conciseness, and in the rare 
 talent of finishing his pictures by a few 
 bold touches ; the merit of Pindar in his 
 better hours. How prolix would the sto- 
 ries of Francesca or of Ugolino have be- 
 come in the hands of Ariosto, or of Tas- 
 so, or of Ovid, or of Spenser ! This ex- 
 cellence indeed is most striking in the 
 first part of his poem. Having formed 
 his plan so as to give an equal length to 
 the three regions of his spiritual world, 
 he found himself unable to vary the ima- 
 ges of hope or beatitude, and the Para- 
 dise is a continual accumulation of de- 
 scriptions, separately beautiful, but uni- 
 form and tedious. Though images deri- 
 ved from light and music are the most 
 pleasing, and can be borne longer in poe- 
 try than any others, their sweetness palls 
 upon the sense by frequent repetition, 
 and we require the intermixture of sharp- 
 er flavours. Yet there are detached pas- 
 sages of great excellence in this third 
 part of Dante's poem ; and even in the 
 long theological discussions which occu- 
 py the greater proportion of its thirty- 
 three cantos, it is impossible not to ad- 
 mire the enunciation of abstract positions 
 with remarkable energy, conciseness, and 
 sometimes perspicuity. The twelve first 
 cantos of the Purgatory are an almost 
 continual flow of soft and brilliant poe- 
 try. The seven last are also very splen- 
 did, but there is some heaviness in the 
 intermediate parts. Fame has justly 
 given the preference to the Inlerno, 
 which displays throughout a more vigor- 
 ous and masterly conception; but the 
 mind of Dante cannot be thoroughly ap- 
 preciated without a perusal of his entire 
 poem. 
 
 The most forced and unnatural turns, 
 the most barbarous licenses of idiom, are 
 found in this poet, whose power of ex- 
 pression is, at other times, so peculiarly 
 nappy. His style is indeed generally 
 free from those conceits of thought 
 which discredited the other poets of his 
 country ; but no sense is too remote for 
 
 a word which he finds convenient for his 
 measure or his rhyme. It seems indeed 
 as if he never altered a line on account 
 of the necessity of rhyme, but forced an- 
 other or perhaps a third into company 
 with it. For many of his faults no suffi- 
 cient excuse can be made. But it is can- 
 did to remember, that Dante, writing al- 
 most in the infancy of a language which 
 he contributed to create, was not to an- 
 ticipate that words, which he borrowed 
 from the Latin and from the provincial 
 dialects, would by accident, or through 
 the timidity of later writers, lose their 
 place in the classical idiom of Italy. If 
 Petrarch, Bembo, and a few more, had 
 not aimed rather at purity than copious- 
 ness, the phrases which now appear bar- 
 barous, and are at least obsolete, might 
 have been fixed by use in poetical lan- 
 guage. 
 
 The great characteristic excellence of 
 Dante is elevation of sentiment, to which 
 his compressed diction and the emphatic 
 cadences of his measure admirably cor- 
 respond. We read him, not as an amu- 
 sing poet, but as a master of moral wis- 
 dom, with reverence and awe. Fresh 
 from the deep and serious, though some- 
 what barren studies of philosophy, and 
 schooled in the severer discipline of ex- 
 perience, he has made of his poem a mir- 
 ror of his mind and life, the register of 
 his solicitudes and sorrows, and of the 
 speculations in which he sought to es- 
 cape their recollection. The banished 
 magistrate of Florence, the disciple of 
 Brunetto Latini, the statesman accus- 
 tomed to trace the varying fluctuations 
 of Italian faction, is for ever before our 
 eyes. For this reason, even the prodi- 
 gal display of erudition, which in an epic 
 poem would be entirely misplaced, in- 
 creases the respect we feel for the poet, 
 though it does not tend to the reader's 
 gratification. Except Milton, he is much 
 the most learned of all the great poets, 
 and, relatively to his age, far more learn- 
 ed than Milton. In one so highly en- 
 dowed by nature, and so consummate by 
 instruction, we may well sympathize 
 with a resentment which exile and pov- 
 erty rendered perpetually fresh. The 
 heart of Dante was naturally sensible, and 
 even tender ; his poetry is full of simple 
 comparisons from rural life ; and the sin- 
 cerity of his early passion for Beatrice 
 3ierces through the vale of allegory 
 which surrounds her. But the memory 
 of his injuries pursues him into the im- 
 mensity of eternal light ;* and, in the com- 
 
 * Paradiso, cant. 16. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 537 
 
 pany of saints and angels, his unforgiving 
 spirit darkens at the name of Florence. 
 
 This great poem was received in Italy 
 with that enthusiastic admiration which 
 attaches itself to works of genius only in 
 ages too rude to listen to the envy of 
 competitors or the fastidiousness of crit- 
 ics. Almost every library in that coun- 
 try contains manuscript copies of the Di- 
 vine Comedy, and an account of those 
 who have abridged or commented upon 
 it would swell to a volume. It was thrice 
 printed in the year 1472, and at least nine 
 times within the fifteenth century. The 
 city of Florence, in 1373, with a magna- 
 nimity which almost redeems her origi- 
 nal injustice, appointed a public professor 
 to read lectures upon Dante ; and it was 
 hardly less honourable to the poet's mem- 
 ory, that the first person selected for this 
 office was Boccaccio. The universities 
 of Pisa and Piacenza imitated this exam- 
 ple; but it is probable that Dante's ab- 
 struse philosophy was often more re- 
 garded in their chairs than his higher ex- 
 cellences.* Italy indeed, and all Europe, 
 had reason to be proud of such a master. 
 Since Claudian, there had been seen for 
 nine hundred years no considerable body 
 of poetry, except the Spanish poem of 
 the Cid, of which no one had heard be- 
 yond the peninsula, that could be said to 
 pass mediocrity ; and we must go much 
 farther back than Claudian to find any 
 one capable of being compared with 
 Dante. His appearance made an epoch 
 in the intellectual history of modern na- 
 tions, and banished the discouraging sus- 
 picion which long ages of lethargy tend- 
 ed to excite, that nature had exhausted 
 her fertility in the great poets of Greece 
 and Rome. It was as if, at some of the 
 ancient games, a stranger had appeared 
 upon the plain, and thrown his quoit 
 among the marks of former casts, which 
 tradition had ascribed to the demigods. 
 But the admiration of Dante, though it 
 gave a general impulse to the human 
 mind, did not produce imitators. I am 
 unaware at least of any writer, in what- 
 ever language, who can be said to have 
 followed the steps of Dante ; I mean not 
 so much in his subject as in the charac- 
 ter of his genius and style. His orbit is 
 still all his own, and the track of his 
 wheels can never be confounded with 
 that of a rival. f 
 
 * Velli, Vita di Dante. Tiraboschi. 
 
 t The source from which Dante derived the 
 scheme and general idea of his poem has been a 
 subject of inquiry in Italy. To his original mind 
 one might have thought the sixth JEneid would 
 have sufficed. But besides several legendary vis- 
 
 In the same year that Dante was ex- 
 pelled from Florence, a notary, 
 by name Petracco, was involved p 
 in a similar banishment. Retired to 
 Arezzo, he there became the father of 
 Francis Petrarch. This great man shared 
 of course, during his early years, in the 
 adverse fortune of his family, which he 
 was invincibly reluctant to restore, ac- 
 cording to his father's wish, by the pro- 
 fession of jurisprudence. The strong 
 bias of nature determined him to polite 
 letters and poetry. These are seldom 
 the fountains of wealth'; yet they would 
 perhaps have been such to Petrarch, if 
 his temper could have borne the sacrifice 
 of liberty for any worldly acquisitions. 
 At the city of Avignon, where his parents 
 had latterly resided, his graceful appear- 
 ance and the reputation of his talents at- 
 tracted one of the Colonna family, then 
 bishop of Lombes in Gascony. In him, 
 and in other members of that great 
 house, never so illustrious as in the four- 
 teenth century, he experienced the union 
 of patronage and friendship. This, how- 
 ever, was not confined to the Colonnas. 
 Unlike Dante, no poet was ever so liber- 
 ally and sincerely encouraged by the 
 great ; nor did any, perhaps, ever carry 
 to that perilous intercourse a spirit more 
 irritably independent, or more free from 
 interested adulation. He praised his 
 friends lavishly, because he loved them 
 ardently ; but his temper was easily sus- 
 ceptible of offence, and there must have 
 been much to tolerate in that restlessness 
 and jealousy of reputation, which is per- 
 haps the inevitable failing of a poet.* 
 
 ions of the 12th and 13th centuries, it seems prob- 
 able that he derived hints from the Tesoretto of his 
 master in philosophical studies, Brunette Latini. 
 Ginguene, t. ii., p. 8. 
 
 * There is an unpleasing proof of this quality in 
 a letter to Boccaccio on Dante, whose merit he 
 rather disingenuously extenuates ; and whose pop- 
 ularity evidently stung him to the quick. De Sade, 
 t. iii., p. 512. Yet we judge so ill of ourselves, that 
 Petrarch chose envy as the vice from which of all 
 others he was most free. In his dialogue with St. 
 Augustin, he says ; Quicquid libuerit, dicito ; modo 
 me non accuses invidiae. AUG. Utinam non tibi 
 magis superbia quam invidia nocuisset : nam hoc 
 crimine, me judice, liber es. De Contemptu Mun- 
 di, edit. 1581, p. 342. 
 
 I have read in some modern book, but know not 
 where to seek the passage, that Petrarch did not 
 intend to allude to Dante in the letter to Boccaccio 
 mentioned above, but rather to Zanobi Strata, a 
 contemporary Florentine poet, whom, however for- 
 gotten at present, the bad taste of a party in criti. 
 cism preferred to himself. Matteo Villani men- 
 tions them together as the two great ornaments of 
 his age. This conjecture seems probable, for some 
 expressions are not in the least applicable to Dante, 
 But, whichever was intended, the letter equally 
 shows the irritable humour of Petrarch. 
 
538 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 But every thing was forgiven to a man 
 who was the acknowledged boast of his 
 age and country. Clement VI. conferred 
 one or two sinecure benefices upon Pe- 
 trarch, and would probably have raised 
 him to a bishopric, if he had chosen to 
 adopt the ecclesiastical profession. But 
 he never took orders, the clerical tonsure 
 being a sufficient qualification for holding 
 canonries. The same pope even afforded 
 him the post of apostolical secretary, and 
 this was repeated by Innocent VI. I 
 know not whether we should ascribe to 
 magnanimity, or to a politic motive, the 
 behaviour of Clement VI. towards Pe- 
 trarch, who had pursued a course as vex- 
 atious as possible to the Holy See. For 
 not only he made the residence of the 
 supreme pontiffs at Avignon, and the 
 vices of their court, the topic of invec- 
 tives, too well founded to be despised, 
 but he had ostentatiously put himself for- 
 ward as the supporter of Nicola di Rien- 
 zi in a project which could evidently have 
 no other aim than to wrest the city of 
 Rome from the temporal sovereignty of 
 its bishop. Nor was the friendship and 
 society of Petrarch less courted by the 
 most respectable Italian princes ; by Rob- 
 ert, king of Naples, by the Visconti, the 
 Correggi of Parma, the famous doge of 
 Venice, Andrew Dandolo, and the Carrara 
 family of Padua, under whose protection 
 he spent the latter years of his life. Sto- 
 ries are related of the respect shown to 
 him by men in humbler stations which 
 are perhaps still more satisfactory.* But 
 the most conspicuous testimony of pub- 
 lic esteem was bestowed by the city of 
 Rome, in his solemn coronation as lau- 
 reate poet, in the capitol. This ceremony 
 took place in 1341 ; and it is remarkable 
 that Petrarch had at that time composed 
 no works which could, in our estimation, 
 give him pretensions to so singular an 
 honour. 
 
 The moral character of Petrarch was 
 formed of dispositions peculiarly calcula- 
 ted for a poet. An enthusiast in the 
 emotions of love and friendship, of glo- 
 
 * A goldsmith of Bergamo, by name Henry Ca- 
 pra, smitten with an enthusiastic love of letters 
 and of Petrarch, earnestly requested the honour of 
 a visit from the poet. The house of this good 
 tradesman was full of representations of his person, 
 and of inscriptions with his name and arms. No 
 expense had been spared in copying all his works 
 as they appeared. He was received by Capra with 
 a princely magnificence; lodged in a chamber 
 hung with purple, and a splendid bed on which no 
 one before or after him was permitted to sleep. 
 Goldsmiths, as we may judge by this instance, 
 were opulent persons ; yet the friends of Petrarch 
 dissuaded him from this visit, as derogatory to his 
 own elevated station. De Sade, t. iii., p. 496. 
 
 ry, of patriotism, of religion, he gave the 
 rein to all their impulses ; and there is 
 not perhaps a page in his Italian writing 
 which does not bear the trace of one or 
 other of these affections. By far the 
 most predominant, and that which has 
 given the greatest celebrity to his name, 
 is his passion for Laura. Twenty years 
 of unrequited and almost unaspiring love 
 were lightened by song ; and the attach- 
 ment, which, having long survived the 
 beauty of its object,* seems to have at 
 one time nearly passed from the heart to 
 the fancy, was changed to an intenser 
 feeling, and to a sort of celestial adora- 
 tion, by her death. Laura, before the 
 time of Petrarch's first accidental meet- 
 ing with her, was united in marriage with 
 another; a fact which, besides some 
 more particular evidence, appears to me 
 deducible from the whole tenour of his 
 poetry. f Such a passion is undoubtedly 
 not capable of a moral defence ; nor 
 
 * See the beautiful sonnet, Erano i capei d' oro 
 all' aura sparsi. In a famous passage of his Con- 
 fessions, he says ; Corpus illud egregium morbis et 
 crebris partubus exhaustum, multurn pristini vigo- 
 ris amisit. Those who maintain the virginity of 
 Laura are forced to read perturbationibus instead of 
 partubus. Two manuscripts in the royal library at 
 Paris have the contraction ptbus, which leaves the 
 matter open to controversy. De Sade contends 
 that " crebris" is less applicable to " perturbationi- 
 bus" than to "partubus." I do not know that 
 there is much in this ; but I am clear that corpus 
 exhaustum partubus is much the more elegant 
 Latin expression of the two. 
 
 t The Abbe de Sade, in those copious memoirs 
 of the life of Petrarch, which illustrate in an agree- 
 able though rather prolix manner the civil and lite- 
 rary history of Provence and Italy in the fourteenth 
 century, endeavoured to establish his own descent 
 from Laura, as the wife of Hugues de Sade, and 
 aorn in the family de Noves. This hypothesis has> 
 since been received with general acquiescence by 
 iterary men ; and Tiraboschi in particular, whose 
 talent lay in these petty biographical researches, 
 and who had a prejudice against every thing that 
 came from France, seems to consider it as deci- 
 sively proved. But it has been called in question 
 n a modern publication by the late Lord Wood- 
 louselee. (Essay on the Life and Character of 
 Petrarch, 1810.) I shall not offer any opinion as 
 to the identity of Petrarch's mistress with 'Laura 
 de Sade ; but the main position of Lord W.'s essay, 
 hat Laura was an unmarried woman, and the ob- 
 ect of an honourable attachment in her lover, 
 seems irreconcilable with the evidence that his 
 writings supply. 1. There is no passage in Pe 
 rarch, whether of poetry or prose, that alludes to 
 he virgin character of Laura, or gives her the usu- 
 al appellations of unmarried women, puella in 
 Latin, or donzella in Italian ; even in the Trionfo 
 della Castita, where so obvious an opportunity oc- 
 curred. Yet this was naturally to be expected 
 from so ethereal an imagination as that of Petrarch, 
 always inclined to invest her with the halo of ce- 
 estial purity. We know how Milton took hold 
 of the mystical notions of virginity ; notions 
 more congenial to the religion of Petrarch than his 
 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 639 
 
 would I seek its palliation so much in the 
 prevalent manners of his age, by which, 
 however, the conduct of even good men 
 is generally not a little influenced, as in 
 the infirmity of Petrarch's character, 
 which induced him both to obey and to 
 justify the emotions of his heart. The 
 lady too, whose virtue and prudence we 
 are not to question, seems to have tem- 
 pered the light and shadow of her coun- 
 tenance so as to preserve her admirer 
 from despair, and consequently to pro- 
 long his sufferings and servitude. 
 
 The general excellences of Petrarch 
 are his command over the music of his 
 native language, his correctness of style, 
 scarcely two or three words that he has 
 used having been rejected by later wri- 
 ters, his exquisite elegance of diction, 
 improved by the perpetual study of Vir- 
 gil ; but, far above all, that tone of pure 
 and melancholy sentiment, which has 
 something in it unearthly, and forms a 
 strong contrast to the amatory poems of 
 antiquity. Most of these are either li- 
 centious or uninteresting ; and those of 
 Catullus, a man endowed by nature with 
 deep and serious sensibility, and a poet, 
 in my opinion, of greater and more va- 
 
 Quod tibi perpetuus pudor, et sine labe juventas 
 Pura fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas, 
 En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores. 
 
 Epitaphium Damonis. 
 
 2. The coldness of Laura towards so passionate 
 and deserving a lover, if no insurmountable obsta- 
 cle intervened during his twenty years of devotion, 
 would be at least a mark that his attachment was 
 misplaced, and show him in rather a ridiculous 
 light. It is not surprising, that persons believing 
 Laura to be unmarried, as seems to have been the 
 case with the Italian commentators, should have 
 thought his passion affected and little more than 
 poetical. But, upon the contrary supposition, a 
 thread runs through the whole of his poetry, and 
 gives it consistency. A love on the one side, in- 
 stantaneously conceived, and retained by the sus- 
 ceptibility of a tender heart and ardent fancy ; 
 nourished by slight encouragement, and seldom 
 presuming to hope for more ; a mixture of prudence 
 and coquetry on the other, kept within bounds ei- 
 ther by virtue or by the want of mutual attachment, 
 yet not dissatisfied with fame more brilliant and 
 flattery more refined than had ever before been the 
 lot of woman these are surely pretty natural cir- 
 cumstances, and such as do not render the story- 
 less intelligible. Unquestionably, such a passion is 
 not innocent. But Lord Woodhouselee, who is so 
 much scandalized at it, knew little, one would 
 think, of the fourteenth century. His standard is 
 taken not from Avignon, but from Edinburgh, a 
 much better place, no doubt, and where the moral 
 barometer stands at a very different altitude. In 
 one passage, p. 188, he carries his strictness to an 
 excess of prudery. From all we know of the age 
 of Petrarch, the only matter of astonishment is the 
 persevering virtue of Laura. The troubadours 
 boast of much better success with Provencal ladies 
 3. But the following passage from Petrarch's dia- 
 logues with St. Augustin, the work, as is well 
 
 ried genius than Petrarch, are contami- 
 nated, above all the rest, with the most 
 degrading grossness. Of this there is 
 lot a single instance in the poet of Vau- 
 3luse ; and his strains, diffused and ad- 
 mired as they have been, may have con- 
 ferred a benefit that criticism cannot es- 
 timate, in giving elevation and refinement 
 to the imaginations of youth. The great 
 defect of Petrarch was his want of strong 
 original conception, which prevented him 
 from throwing off the affected and over- 
 strained manner of the Provencal trouba- 
 dours, and of the earlier Italian poets. 
 Among his poems, the Triumphs are per- 
 haps superior to the Odes, as the latter 
 are to the Sonnets; and of the latter, 
 those written subsequently to the death 
 of Laura are in general the best. But 
 that constrained and laborious measure 
 cannot equal the graceful flow of the can- 
 zone, or the vigorous compression of the 
 terza rima. The Triumphs have also a 
 claim to superiority, as the only poetical 
 composition of Petrarch that extends to 
 any considerable length. They are in 
 some degree, perhaps, an imitation of the 
 dramatic Mysteries, and form at least the 
 earliest specimens of a kind of poetry 
 not uncommon in later times, wherein 
 
 known, where he most unbosoms himself, will 
 leave no doubt, I think, that his passion could not 
 have been gratified consistently with honour. At 
 mulier ista Celebris, quam tibi certissimam ducem 
 fingis, ad superos cur non haesitantem trepidumque 
 direxerit, et quod caecis fieri solet, manu apprehen- 
 sum non tenuit, quo et gradiendum foret admonu- 
 it ? PETR. Fecit hoc ilia quantum potuit. Quid 
 enim aliud egit, cum nullis mota precibus, nullis 
 victa blanditiis, muliebrem tenuit decorem, et ad- 
 versus suam semel et meam aetatem, adversus 
 multa et varia, quae flectere adamantium spiritum 
 debuissent, iriexpugnabilis et firma permansit ? 
 Profecto animus iste foemineus quid virum decuit 
 admonebat, prsestabatque ne in sectando pudicitiae 
 studio, ut verbis utar Senecae, aut exemplum ant 
 convitmm deesset; postremo cum lorifragum ac 
 praecipitem videret, deserere maluit potius qu&m 
 sequi. AUGUST. Turpe igitur aliquid interdurn 
 voluisti, quod supra negaveras. At iste vulgatus 
 amantium, vel, ut dicam verius, amentium furor 
 est, ut omnibus merito dici possit : volo nolo, nolo 
 volo. Vobis ipsis quid velitis, aut nolitis, ignotum 
 est. PET. Invitusinlaqueum offendi. Si quid ta- 
 men olim aliter forte voluissem, amor aetasque co#- 
 gerunt ; mmc qiiid velim et cupiam scio, firmavique 
 jam tandem animum labentem ; contra autem ilia 
 propositi tenax et semper una permansit, quare 
 constantiam foemineam quo magis intelligo, magis 
 admiror : idque sibi consilium fuisse, si unquam 
 debuit, gaudeo nunc et gratias ago. AUG. Semel 
 fallenti, non facile rursus fides habenda est : tu 
 prius mores atque habitum, vitamque mutavisti, 
 quam animum mutasse persuadeas ; mitigatur forte 
 si tuus leniturque ignis, extinctus non est. Tu 
 vero qui tantum dilectioni tribuis, non animadvertis, 
 illam absolvendo, quantum te ipse condemnas ; 
 illam fateri libet fuisse sanctissimam, dum te insa- 
 num scelestumque fateare. De Contemptu Mundi, 
 Dialog. 3, p. 367, edit. 1581. 
 
 
540 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 real and allegorical personages are in- 
 termingled in a masque or scenic repre 
 sentation. 
 
 None of the principal modern Ian 
 English guages was so late in its forma- 
 language. tion, or in its application to the 
 purposes of literature, as the English. 
 This arose, as is well known, out of the 
 Saxon branch of the great Teutonic 
 stock, spoken in England till after the 
 conquest. From this mother dialect, our 
 English differs less in respect of etymolo- 
 gy, than of syntax, idiom, and flexion. 
 In so gradual a transition as probably 
 took place, and one so sparingly marked 
 by any existing evidence, we cannot well 
 assign a definite origin to our present 
 language. The question of identity is 
 almost as perplexing in languages as in 
 individuals. But, in the reign of Henry 
 II., aversion of Wace's poem of Brut, by 
 one Layamon, a priest of Ernly upon 
 Severn, exhibits, as it were, the chrysalis 
 of the English language, in which he 
 can as little be said to have written, as 
 Early in Anglo-Saxon.* Very soon af- 
 writers. terward, the new formation was 
 better developed; and some metrical 
 pieces, referred by critics to the earlier 
 part of the thirteenth century, differ but 
 little from our legitimate grammar.! 
 About the beginning of Edward I.'s 
 reign, Robert, a monk of Glocester, com- 
 posed a metrical chronicle from the his- 
 tory of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which he 
 continued to his own time. This work, 
 with a similar chronicle of Robert Man- 
 ning, a monk of Brunne (Bourne) in Lin- 
 colnshire, nearly thirty years later, stand 
 at the head of our English poetry. The 
 romance of Sir Tristrem, ascribed to 
 Thomas of Erceldoune, surnamed the 
 Rhymer, a Scottish minstrel, has recent- 
 ly laid claim to somewhat higher antiqui- 
 ty. In the fourteenth century, a great 
 number of metrical romances were trans- 
 lated from the French. It requires no 
 small portion of indulgence to speak fa- 
 vourably of any of these early English 
 productions. A poetical line may no 
 doubt occasionally be found ; but in gen- 
 eral the narration is as heavy and pro- 
 lix as the versification is unmusical. J 
 
 * A sufficient extract from this work of Layamon 
 has been published by Mr. Ellis, in his specimens 
 of early English poetry, vol. i., p. 61. It contains, 
 he observes, no word which we are under the ne- 
 cessity of ascribing to a French origin. 
 
 f Warton's Hist, of English Poetry. Ellis's 
 Specimens. 
 
 t Warton printed copious extracts from some of 
 these. Ritson gave several of them entire to the 
 press. And Mr. Ellis has adopted the only plan 
 which could render them palatable, by intermin- 
 
 The first English writer who can be read 
 with approbation is William Langland, 
 the author of Piers Plowman's Vision, a 
 severe satire upon the clergy. Though 
 his measure is more uncouth than that 
 of his predecessors, there is real energy 
 in his conceptions, which he caught not 
 from the chimeras of knight-errantry, 
 but the actual manners and opinions of 
 his time. 
 
 The very slow progress of the Eng- 
 lish language, as an instrument cause of 
 of literature, is chiefly to be its slow 
 ascribed to the effects of the P ro s ress - 
 Norman conquest, in degrading the na- 
 tive inhabitants, and transferring all 
 power and riches to foreigners. The 
 barons, without perhaps one exception, 
 and a large proportion of the gentry, 
 were of French descent, and preserved 
 among themselves the speech of their 
 fathers. This continued much longer 
 than we should naturally have expected ; 
 even after the loss of Normandy had 
 snapped the thread of French connex- 
 ions, and they began to pride themselves 
 in the name of Englishmen, and in the 
 inheritance of traditionary English priv- 
 ileges. Robert of Glocester has a re- 
 markable passage, which proves that, in 
 his time, somewhere about 1270, the su- 
 perior ranks continued to use the French 
 language.* Ralph Higden, about the 
 early part of Edward III.'s reign, though 
 his expressions do not go the same 
 length, asserts, that "gentlemen's chil- 
 dren are taught to speak French from 
 the time they are rocked in their cradle ; 
 and uplandish (country) or inferior men 
 will liken themselves to gentlemen, and 
 learn with great business for to speak 
 French, for to be the more told of." 
 Notwithstanding, however, this predom- 
 inance of French among the higher 
 class, I do not think that some modern 
 critics are warranted in concluding that 
 they were in general ignorant of the 
 English tongue. Men living upon their 
 estates among their tenantry, whom they 
 welcomed in their halls, and whose as- 
 sistance they were perpetually needing 
 in war and civil frays, would hardly have 
 permitted such a barrier to obstruct 
 their intercourse. For we cannot, at 
 
 gling short passages, where the original is rather 
 above its usual mediocrity, with his own lively 
 analysis. 
 
 * The evidences of this general employment 
 and gradual disuse of French in conversation and 
 writing are collected by Tyrwhitt, in a dissertation 
 on the ancient English language, prefixed to the 
 fourth volume of his edition of Chaucer's Canter- 
 y Tales ; and by Ritson, in the preface to his 
 Metrical Romances, vol. i., p. 70. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 641 
 
 the utmost, presume that French was so 
 well known to the English commonalty 
 in the thirteenth century, as English is 
 at present to the same class in Wales 
 and the Scottish Highlands. It may be 
 remarked, also, that the institution of 
 trial by jury must have rendered a 
 knowledge of English almost indispen- 
 sable to those who administered justice. 
 There is a proclamation of Edward I. 
 in Rymer, where he endeavours to ex- 
 cite his subjects against the King of 
 France by imputing to him the intention 
 of conquering the country, and abolish- 
 ing the English language (linguam de- 
 lere anglicanam), and this is frequently 
 repeated in the proclamations of Edward 
 III.* In his time, or perhaps a little be- 
 fore, the native language had become 
 more familiar than French in common 
 use, even with the court and nobility. 
 Hence the numerous translations of met- 
 rical romances, which are chiefly refer- 
 red to his reign. An important change 
 was effected in 1362, by a statute, which 
 enacts that all pleas in courts of justice 
 shall be pleaded, debated, and judged in 
 English. But Latin was, by this act, to 
 be employed in drawing the record ; for 
 there seems to have still continued a 
 sort of prejudice against the use of Eng- 
 lish as a written language. The earliest 
 English instrument known to exist is 
 said to bear the date of 1343. f And 
 there are not more than three or four 
 entries in our own tongue upon the rolls 
 of parliament before the reign of Henry 
 VI., after whose accession its use be- 
 comes very common. Sir John Mande- 
 vile, about 1350, may pass for the father 
 of English prose, no original work being 
 so ancient as his travels. But the trans- 
 lation of the Bible and other writings by 
 Wicliffe nearly thirty years afterward, 
 taught us the Copiousness and energy of 
 which our native dialect was capable ; 
 and it was employed in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury by two writers of distinguished 
 merit, Bishop Peacock and Sir John 
 Fortescue. 
 
 But the principal ornament of our Eng- 
 lish literature was Geoffrey Chau- 
 r< cer, who, with Dante and Pe- 
 trarch, fills up the triumvirate of great 
 poets in the middle ages. Chaucer was 
 born in 1328, and his life extended to the 
 last year of the fourteenth century. That 
 rude and ignorant generation was not 
 likely to feel the admiration of native ge- 
 nius as warmly as the compatriots of Pe- 
 
 * T. v., p. 490 ; t. vi., p. 642, et alibi. 
 t Ritson, p. 80. There is one in Rymer of the 
 year 1385. 
 
 trarch ; but he enjoyed the favour of Ed- 
 ward III., and, still more conspicuously, 
 of John, duke of Lancaster ; his fortunes 
 were far more prosperous than have 
 usually been the lot of poets ; and a rep- 
 utation was established beyond competi- 
 tion in his lifetime, from which no suc- 
 ceeding generation has withheld its sanc- 
 tion. 1 cannot, in my own taste, go 
 completely along with the eulogies that 
 some have bestowed upon Chaucer, who 
 seems to me to have wanted grandeur, 
 where he is original, both in conception 
 and in language. But in vivacity of im- 
 agination and ease of expression, he is 
 above all poets of the middle time, and 
 comparable perhaps to the greatest of 
 those who have followed. He invented, 
 or rather introduced from France, and 
 employed with facility the regular iambic 
 couplet ; and though it was not to be ex- 
 pected that he should perceive the capa- 
 cities latent in that measure, his versifi- 
 cation, to which he accommodated a very 
 licentious and arbitrary pronunciation, is 
 uniform and harmonious.* It is chiefly, 
 indeed, as a comic poet, and a minute 
 observer of manners and circumstances, 
 that Chaucer excels. In serious and 
 moral poetry he is frequently languid and 
 diffuse ; but he springs like Antaeus from 
 the earth, when his subject changes to 
 coarse satire or merry narrative. Among 
 his more elevated compositions, the 
 Knight's Tale is abundantly sufficient to 
 immortalize Chaucer, since it would be 
 difficult to find anywhere a story better 
 conducted, or told with more animation 
 and strength of fancy. The second place 
 may be given to his Troilus and Cres- 
 eide, a beautiful and interesting poem, 
 though enfeebled by expansion. But 
 perhaps the most eminent, or at any rate 
 the most characteristic, testimony to his 
 genius will be found in the prologue to 
 his Canterbury Tales ; a work entirely 
 and exclusively his own, which can sel- 
 dom be said of his poetry, and the vivid 
 delineations of which perhaps very few 
 writers but Shakspeare could have equal- 
 led. As the first original English poet, 
 if we except Langland, as the inventor 
 of our most approved measure, as an im- 
 prover, though with too much innovation, 
 of our language, and as a faithful witness 
 to the manners of his age, Chaucer would 
 deserve our reverence, if he had not also 
 
 * See Tyrwhitt's essay on the language and ver- 
 sification of Chaucer, in the fourth volume of his 
 edition of the Canterbury Tales. The opinion of 
 this eminent critic has lately been controverted by 
 Dr. Nott, who maintains the versification of Chau- 
 cer to have been wholly founded on accentual and 
 not syllabic regularity. 
 
542 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 intrinsic claims for excellences which 
 do not depend upon any collateral con 
 siderations. 
 
 The last circumstance which I shall 
 Revival of mention as having contributed to 
 ancient restore society from the intellect- 
 ual degradation into which it had 
 fallen during the dark ages, is the revival 
 of classical learning. The Latin languag 
 indeed, in which all legal instruments 
 were drawn up, and of which all ecclesi- 
 astics availed themselves in their episto- 
 lary intercourse, as well as in their more 
 solemn proceedings, had never ceased to 
 be familiar. Though many solecisms 
 and barbarous words occur in the wri- 
 tings of what were called learned men, 
 they possessed a fluency of expression 
 in Latin which does not often occur at 
 present. During the dark ages, howev- 
 er, properly so called, or the period from 
 the sixth to the eleventh century, it is 
 unusual to meet with quotations, except 
 from the Vulgate or from theological 
 writers. The study of Rome's greatest 
 authors, especially her poets, was almost 
 forbidden. But a change took place in 
 in the the course of the twelfth cen- 
 tweifth een- tury. The polite literature, as 
 well as the abstruser science of 
 antiquity, became the subject of cultiva- 
 tion. Several writers of that age, in dif- 
 ferent parts of Europe, are distinguished 
 more or less for elegance, though not ab- 
 solute purity, of Latin style ; and for 
 their acquaintance with those ancients 
 who are its principal models. Such 
 were John of Salisbury, the acute and 
 learned author of the Policraticus, Will- 
 iam of Malmsbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, 
 Roger Hoveden, in England ; and in for- 
 eign countries, Otho of Frisingen, Saxo 
 Grammaticus, and the best perhaps of all 
 I have named as to style, Falcandus, the 
 historian of Sicily. In these we meet 
 with frequent quotations from Livy, Ci- 
 cero, Pliny, and other considerable wri- 
 ters of antiquity. The poets were now 
 admired, and even imitated. All metri- 
 cal Latin before the latter part of the 
 twelfth century, so far as I have seen, is 
 extremely bad ; but at this time, and ear- 
 ly in the succeeding age, there appeared 
 several versifiers, who aspired to the re- 
 nown of following the steps of Virgil and 
 Statius in epic poetry. Joseph Iscanus, 
 an Englishman, seems to have been the 
 earliest of these ; his poem on the Tro- 
 jan war, containing an addres to Henry 
 II. He wrote another, entitled Antiochus, 
 on the third crusade, most of which has 
 perished. The wars of Frederick Barba- 
 rossa were celebrated by Gunther in his 
 
 Ligurinus ; and not long afterward, Guil- 
 lelmus Brito wrote the Philippis, in hon- 
 our of Philip Augustus, and Walter de 
 Chatillon the Alexandreis, taken from 
 the popular romance of Alexander. None 
 of these poems, I believe, have much in- 
 trinsic merit ; but their existence is a 
 proof of taste that could relish, though 
 not of genius that could emulate antiqui- 
 ty.* 
 
 In the thirteenth century there seems 
 to have been some decline of classical 
 literature, in consequence prob- miid, more 
 ably of the scholastic philoso- intiiefour- 
 phy, which was then in its great- te 
 est vigour; at least we do not find so 
 many good writers as in the preceding 
 age. But about the middle of the four- 
 teenth, or perhaps a little sooner, an ar- 
 dent zeal for the restoration of ancient 
 learning began to display itself. The 
 copying of books, for some ages slowly 
 and sparingly performed in monasteries, 
 had already become a branch of trade ;f 
 and their price was consequently invention 
 reduced. Tiraboschi denies that of linen 
 the invention of making paper paper> 
 from linen rags is older than the middle 
 
 * Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. i., Dis 
 sertation II. Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie Fraii- 
 caise du douzieme Siecle, p. 18. The following 
 lines from the beginning of the eighth book of the 
 Philippis seem a fair, or rather a favourable speci- 
 men of these epics. But I am very superficially 
 acquainted with any of them. 
 Solverat interea zephyris melioribus annum 
 Frigore depulso veris tepor, et renovari 
 Coeperat et viridi gremio juvenescere tellus ; 
 Cum Rea laeta Jovis rideret ad oscula mater 
 Cum jam post tergum Phryxi vectore relicto 
 Solis Agenorei premeret rota terga juvenci. 
 The tragedy of Eccerinus (Eccelin da Romano), 
 by Albertmus Mussatus, a Paduan, and author of 
 a respectable history, deserves some attention, as 
 the first attempt to revive the regular tragedy. It 
 was written soon after 1300. The language by no 
 means wants animation, notwithstanding an un- 
 skilful conduct of the fable. The Eccerinus is 
 printed in the tenth volume of Muratori's collection, 
 f Booksellers appear in the latter part of the 
 twelfth century. Peter of Blois mentions a law- 
 book which he had procured a quodam- publico 
 mangone librorum. Hist. Litteraire de la France, 
 t. ix., p. 84. In the thirteenth century there were 
 many copyists by occupation in the Italian univer- 
 sities. Tiraboschi, t. iv., p. 72. The number of 
 these at Milan before the end of that age is said to 
 have been fifty, ibid. But a very small proportion 
 of their labour could have been devoted to purpo- 
 ses merely literary. By a variety of ordinances, 
 the first of which bears date in 1275, the booksel- 
 lers of Paris were subjected to the control of the 
 university. Crevier, t. ii., p. 67, 286. The pretext 
 of this was, lest erroneous copies should obtain cir- 
 culation. And this appears to have been the origi- 
 nal of those restraints upon the freedom of publi- 
 cation, which, since the invention of printing, have 
 so much retarded the diffusion of truth by means 
 of that great instrument. 
 
 ' 
 

 PART It.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 543 
 
 of that century ; and although doubts may 
 be justly entertained as to the accuracy 
 of this position, yet the confidence with 
 which so eminent a scholar advances it 
 is at least a proof that paper manuscripts 
 of an earlier date are very rare.* Prin- 
 ces became far more attentive to litera- 
 ture when it was no longer confined to 
 metaphysical theology and canon law. 
 I have already mentioned the translations 
 from classical authors, made by command 
 of John and Charles V. of France. These 
 French translations diffused some ac- 
 quaintance with ancient history and learn- 
 ing among our own countrymen. f The 
 public libraries assumed a more 
 a ' respectable appearance. Louis 
 IX. had formed one at Paris, in which it 
 does not appear that any work of elegant 
 literature was found. J At the beginning 
 of the fourteenth century, only four clas- 
 sical manuscripts existed in this collec- 
 tion; of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan, and Boe- 
 thius. The academical library of Ox- 
 ford, in 1300, consisted of a few tracts 
 kept in chests under St. Mary's church. 
 That of Glastonbury Abbey, in 1240, con- 
 
 * Tiraboschi, t. v., p. 85. On the contrary side 
 are Montfaucon, Mabillon, and Muratori ; the lat- 
 ter of whom carries up the invention of our ordi- 
 nary paper to the year 10QO. But Tiraboschi con- 
 tends that the paper used in manuscripts of so 
 early an age was made from cotton rags, and, ap- 
 parently, from the inferior durability of that mate- 
 rial, not frequently employed. The editors of Nou- 
 veau Traite de Diplomatique are of the same opin- 
 ion, and doubt the use of linen paper before the 
 year 1300, t. i., p. 517, 521. Meerman, well known 
 as a writer upou the antiquities of printing, offered 
 a reward for the earliest manuscript upon linen 
 paper, and, in a treatise upon the subject, fixed 
 the date of its invention between 1270 and 1300. 
 But M. Schwandner, of Vienna, is said to have 
 found in the imperial library a small charter bear- 
 ing the date of 1243 on such paper. Macpherson's 
 Annals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 394. Tiraboschi, 
 if he had known this, would probably have main- 
 tained the paper to be made of cotton, which he 
 says it is difficult to distinguish. He assigns the 
 invention of linen paper to Pace da Fabiano of 
 Treviso. But more than one Arabian writer as- 
 serts the manufacture of linen paper to have been 
 carried on at Samarcand early in the eighth cen- 
 tury, having been brought thither from China. 
 And, what is more conclusive, Casiri positively de- 
 clares many manuscripts in the Escurial of the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries to be written on 
 that substance. Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispanica, t. 
 ii., p. 9. This authority appears much to outweigh 
 the opinion of Tiraboschi in favour of Pace da Fa- 
 biano, who must perhaps take his place at the ta- 
 ble of fabulous heroes with Bartholomew Schwartz 
 and Flavio Gioja. But the material point, that 
 paper was very little known in Europe till the lat- 
 ter part of the fourteenth century, remains as be- 
 fore. 
 
 t Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. ii., 
 p. 122. 
 
 | Velly, t. v., p. 202. Crevier, t. ii., p. 36. 
 
 $ Warton, vol. i., Dissert. II. 
 
 tained four hundred volumes, among 
 which were Livy, Sallust, Lucan, Virgil, 
 Claudian, and other ancient writers.* 
 But no other, probably, of that age was 
 so numerous or so valuable. Richard of 
 Bury, the chancellor of England, and Ed- 
 ward III., spared no expense in collect- 
 ing a library, the first perhaps that any 
 private man had formed. But the scar- 
 city of valuable books w^as still so great, 
 that he gave the abbot of St. Alban's fifty 
 pounds weight of silver for between 
 thirty and forty volumes. f Charles V. 
 increased the royal library at Paris to 
 nine hundred volumes, which the Duke 
 of Bedford purchased and transported to 
 London.J His brother Humphrey, duke 
 of Glocester, presented the university of 
 Oxford with six hundred books, which 
 seem to have been of extraordinary value, 
 one hundred and twenty of them having 
 been estimated at one thousand pounds. 
 This indeed was in 1440, at which time 
 such a library would not have been 
 thought remarkably numerous beyond 
 the Alps,$ but England had made com- 
 paratively little progress in learning. 
 Germany, however, was probably still 
 less advanced. Louis, Elector Palatine, 
 bequeathed in 1421 his library to the uni- 
 versity of Heidelberg, consisting of one 
 hundred and fifty-two volumes. Eighty- 
 nine of these related to theology, twelve 
 
 * Warton, vol. i.. Dissert. II. 
 
 t Ibid. Fifty-eight books were transcribed in 
 this abbey under one abbot, about the year 1300. 
 Every considerable monastery had a room, called 
 Scriptorium, where this work was performed. 
 More than eighty were transcribed at St. Albans 
 under Whethamstede, in the time of Henry VI., 
 ibid. See also Du Cange, v. Scriptores. Never- 
 theless we must remember, first, that the far 
 greater part of these books were mere monastic 
 trash, or at least useless in our modern apprehen- 
 sion ; secondly, that it depended upon the charac- 
 ter of the abbot whether the scriptorium should be 
 occupied or not. Every head of a monastery was 
 not a Whethamstede. Ignorance and jollity, such 
 as we find in Bolton Abbey, were their more usual 
 characteristics. By the account-books of this 
 rich monastery, about the beginning of the four- 
 teenth century, three books only appear to have 
 been purchased in forty years. One of those was 
 the Liber Sententiarum of Peter Lombard, which 
 cost thirty shillings, equivalent to near forty 
 pounds at present. Whitaker's Hist, of Craven, 
 p. 330. 
 
 Ibid. Villaret, t. xi.,p. 117. 
 Niccolo Niccoli, a private scholar, who con- 
 tributed essentially to the restoration of ancient 
 learning, bequeathed a library of eight hundred vol- 
 umes to the republic of Florence. This Niccoli 
 hardly published any thing of his own ; but earned 
 a well-merited reputation by copying and correcting 
 manuscripts. Tiraboschi, t. vi., p. 114. Shep- 
 herd's Poggio, p. 319. In the preceding centurv, 
 Colluccio Salutato had procured as many as eight 
 hundred volumes, ibid. p. 32. Roscoe's Lorenzo 
 de' Medici, p. 55. 
 
544 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 to canon and civil law, forty-five to med- 
 icine, and six to philosophy.* 
 
 Those who first undertook to lay open 
 Transcrip- the stores of ancient learning 
 tion of man- found incredible difficulties from 
 the scarcity of manuscripts. So 
 gross and supine was the ignorance of 
 the monks, within whose walls these 
 treasures were concealed, that it was 
 impossible to ascertain, except by inde- 
 fatigable researches, the extent of what 
 had been saved out of the great ship- 
 wreck of antiquity. To this inquiry Pe- 
 trarch devoted continual attention. He 
 spared no pains to preserve the remains 
 of authors, who were perishing from 
 neglect and time. This danger was by 
 no means past in the fourteenth centu- 
 ry. A treatise of Cicero upon Glory, 
 which had been in his possession, was 
 afterward irretrievably lost.f He de- 
 clares that he had seen in his youth the 
 works of Varro ; but all his endeavours 
 to recover these and the second Decad 
 of Livy were fruitless. He found, how- 
 ever, Quintilian, in 1350, of which there 
 was no copy in Italy.! Boccaccio, and 
 a man of less general fame, Colluccio 
 Salutato, were distinguished in the same 
 honourable task. The diligence of these 
 scholars was not confined to searching 
 for manuscripts. Transcribed by slovenly 
 monks, or by ignorant persons who made 
 copies for sale, they required the con- 
 tinual emendation of accurate critics. 
 Though much certainly was left for the 
 more enlightened sagacity of later times, 
 we owe the first intelligible text of the 
 Latin classics to Petrarch, Poggio, and 
 their contemporary labourers in this 
 vineyard for a hundred years before the 
 invention of printing. 
 
 What Petrarch began in the fourteenth 
 industry of centur y was carried on by a 
 the fifteenth new generation with unabating 
 century. industry. The whole lives of 
 Italian scholars in the fifteenth century 
 were devoted to the recovery of manu- 
 scripts and the revival of philology. For 
 this they sacrificed their native language, 
 which had made such surprising shoots 
 in the preceding age, and were content 
 to trace, in humble reverence, the foot- 
 steps of antiquity. For this too they 
 lost the hope of permanent glory, which 
 can never remain with imitators, or such 
 as trim the lamp of ancient sepulchres. 
 
 * Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. v., p. 520. 
 
 f He had lent it to a needy man of letters, who 
 pawned the book, which was never recovered. De 
 Sade, t. i., p. 57. 
 
 I Tiraboschi, p. 89. 
 
 $ Idem, t. v., p. 83. De Sade, t. i., p. 88. 
 
 No writer perhaps of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, except Politian, can aspire at pres- 
 ent even to the second class, in a just 
 marshalling of literary reputation. But 
 we owe them our respect and gratitude 
 for their taste and diligence. The dis- 
 covery of an unknown manuscript, says 
 Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the 
 conquest of a kingdom. The classical 
 writers, he adds, were chiefly either found 
 in Italy, or at least by Italians ; they 
 were first amended and first printed in 
 Italy, and in Italy they were first col- 
 lected in public libraries.* This is sub- 
 ject to some exception when fairly con- 
 sidered ; several ancient authors were 
 never lost, and therefore cannot be said 
 to have been discovered; and we know 
 that Italy did not always anticipate other 
 countries in classical printing. But her 
 superior merit is incontestable. Poggio 
 Bracciolini, who stands perhaps at Po g gio 
 the head of the restorers of learn- 
 ing in the earlier part of the fifteenth 
 century, discovered in the monastery of 
 St. Gall, among dirt and rubbish, in a 
 dungeon scarcely fit for condemned crim- 
 inals, as he describes it, an entire copy 
 of Quintilian, and part of Valerius Flac- 
 cus. This was in 1414 ; and soon after- 
 ward he rescued the poem of Silius Ital- 
 icus, and twelve comedies of Plautus, in 
 addition to eight that were previously 
 known; besides Lucretius, Columella, 
 Tertullian, Ammianus Marcellinus, and 
 other writers of inferior note.f A bishop 
 of Lodi brought to light the rhetorical 
 treatises of Cicero. Not that we must 
 suppose these books to have been univer- 
 sally unknown before; Quintilian, at 
 least, is quoted by English writers much 
 earlier. But so little intercourse pre- 
 vailed among different countries, and the 
 monks had so little acquaintance with 
 the riches of their conventual libraries, 
 that an author might pass for lost in Italy, 
 who was familiar to a few learned men 
 in other parts of Europe. To the name 
 of Poggio we may add a number of oth- 
 ers, distinguished in this memorable res- 
 urrection of ancient literature, and united, 
 not always indeed by friendship, for their 
 bitter animosities disgrace their profes- 
 sion, but by a sort of common sympathy 
 in the cause of learning ; Filelfo, Lauren- 
 tius Valla, Niccolo Niccoli, Ambrogio 
 Traversari, more commonly called II 
 Camaldolense, and Leonardo Aretino. 
 From the subversion of the Western 
 
 " * Tiraboschi, p. 101. 
 
 t Idem, t. vi., p, 104 ; and Shepherd's Life of 
 Poggio, p. 106, 110. Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Med- 
 ici, p. 38. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 545 
 
 Greek lan- Empire, or at least from the 
 guage un- time when Rome ceased to pay 
 known in obedience to the exarchs of Ra- 
 esu venna, the Greek language and 
 literature had been almost entirely for- 
 gotten within the pale of the Latin church. 
 A very few exceptions might be found, 
 especially in the earlier period of the 
 middle ages, while the Eastern emperors 
 retained their dominion over part of 
 Italy.* Thus Charlemagne is said to 
 have established a school for Greek at 
 Osnaburg.f John Scotus seems to have 
 been well acquainted with the language. 
 And Greek characters may occasionally, 
 though very seldom, be found in the wri- 
 tings of learned men ; such as Lanfranc 
 or William of Malmsbury.J It is said 
 that Roger Bacon understood Greek ; and 
 his eminent contemporary, Robert Gros- 
 tete, bishop of Lincoln, had a sufficient 
 
 * Schmidt, Hist, des Allemands, t. ii., p. 374. 
 Tiraboschi, t. iii., p. 124, et alibi. Bede extols 
 Theodore, primate of Canterbury, and Tobias, bish- 
 op of Rochester, for their knowledge of Greek. 
 Hist. Eccles., c. 9 and 24. But the former of these 
 prelates, if not the latter, was a native of Greece. 
 
 t Hist. Litteraire de la France, t. iv., p. 12. 
 
 j Greek characters are found in a charter of 943, 
 published in Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdot., t. i., 
 p. 74. The title of a treatise, ircpt ffiweuv uepurpu, 
 and the word deoroKos, occur in William of Malms- 
 bury, and one or two others in Lanfranc's Constitu- 
 tions. It is said that a Greek psalter was written 
 in an abbey at Tournay about 1105. Hist. Litt. de 
 la France, t. ix., p. 102. This was, I should think, 
 a very rare instance of a Greek manuscript, sacred 
 or profane, copied in the western parts of Europe 
 before the fifteenth century. But a Greek psalter, 
 written in Latin characters at Milan in the ninth 
 century, was sold some years ago in London. John 
 of Salisbury is said by Crevier to have known a lit- 
 tle Greek, and he several times uses technical 
 words in that language. Yet he could not have 
 been much more learned than his neighbours ; 
 since having found the word atria in St. Ambrose, he 
 was forced to ask the meaning of one John Sara- 
 sin, an Englishman, because, says he, none of our 
 masters here (at Paris) understand Greek. Paris, 
 indeed, Crevier thinks, could not furnish any Greek 
 scholar in that age except Abelard and Heloise, 
 and probably neither of them knew much. Hist, 
 de 1'Univers. de Paris, t. i., p. 259. 
 
 The ecclesiastical language, it maybe observed, 
 was full of Greek words Latinized. But this pro- 
 cess had taken place before the fifth century ; and 
 most of them will be found in the Latin dictiona- 
 ries. A Greek word was now and then borrowed, 
 as more imposing than the correspondent Latin. 
 Thus the English and other kings sometimes called 
 themselves Basileus instead of Rex. 
 
 It will not be supposed that I have professed to 
 enumerate all the persons of whose acquaintance 
 with the Greek tongue some evidence may be 
 found ; nor have I ever directed my attention to the 
 subject with that view. Doubtless the list might 
 be more than doubled. But, if ten times the num- 
 ber could be found, we should still be entitled to say 
 that the language was almost unknown, and that 
 it could have had no influence on the condition of 
 literature. 
 
 M m 
 
 intimacy with it to write animadversions 
 upon Suidas. Since Greek was spoken 
 with considerable purity by the noble 
 and well educated natives of Constanti- 
 nople, we may wonder that, even as a 
 living language, it was not better known 
 by the western nations, and especially in 
 so neighbouring a nation as Italy. Yet 
 here the ignorance was perhaps even 
 more complete than in France or Eng- 
 land. In some parts indeed of Calabria, 
 which had been subject to the eastern 
 empire till near the year 1100, the liturgy 
 was still performed in Greek ; and a con- 
 siderable acquaintance with the language 
 was of course preserved. But for the 
 scholars of Italy, Boccaccio positively 
 asserts, that no one understood so much 
 as the Greek characters.* Nor is there 
 probably a single line quoted from any 
 poet in that language from the sixth to 
 the fourteenth century. 
 
 The first to lead the way in restoring 
 Grecian learning in Europe Itg study rc . 
 were the same men who had vives in the 
 revived the kindred muses of f urt eenth 
 Latium, Petrarca and Boccac- 
 cio. Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, during 
 an embassy from the court of Constantino- 
 ple in 1335, was persuaded to become the 
 preceptor of the former, with whom he 
 read the works of Plato. f Leontius Pi- 
 latus, a native of Thessalonica, was en- 
 couraged some years afterward by Boc- 
 caccio to give public lectures upon 
 Homer at Florence. J Whatever might 
 be the share of general attention that he 
 excited, he had the honour of instructing 
 both these great Italians in his native 
 language. Neither of them perhaps 
 reached an advanced degree of profi- 
 ciency ; but they bathed their lips in the 
 fountain, and enjoyed the pride of being 
 the first who paid the homage of a new 
 posterity to the father of poetry. For 
 some time little fruit apparently resulted 
 from their example ; but Italy had im- 
 bibed the desire of acquisitions in a 
 new sphere of knowledge, which, after 
 some interval, she was abundantly en- 
 abled to realize. A few years before 
 the termination of the fourteenth century, 
 
 * Nemo est qui Grsecas literas norit ; at ego in 
 hoc Latinitati compatior, quae sic omnino Graeca ab- 
 jecit studia, ut etiam non noscamus characteres 
 literaruin. Genealogiae Deorum, apud Hodium de 
 Graecis Illustribus, p. 3. 
 
 t M6m. de Pe"trarque, t. i., p. 407. 
 
 i Idem, t. i., p. 447 ; t. iii., p. 634. Hody, de 
 Graecis Illust, p. 2. Bpccace speaks modestly 
 of his own attainments in Greek ; etsi non satis 
 plene perceperim, percepi tamen quantum potui ; 
 nee dubium, si permansisset homo ille vagus diu- 
 tius penes nos, quin plenius percepisBem, id., p. 4. 
 
 
546 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 Emanuel Chrysoloras, whom the Empe- 
 ror John Palaeologus had previously sent 
 into Italy, and even as far as England, 
 upon one of those unavailing embassies 
 by which the Byzantine court strove to 
 obtain sympathy and succour from Eu- 
 rope, returned to Florence as a public 
 teacher of Grecian literature.* His school 
 was afterward removed successively to 
 Pavia, Venice, and Rome; and during 
 nearly twenty years that he taught in 
 Italy, most of those eminent scholars 
 whom I have already named, and who 
 distinguish the first half of that century, 
 derived from his instruction their knowl- 
 edge of the Greek tongue. Some, not 
 content with being the disciples of Chry- 
 soloras, betook themselves to the source 
 of that literature at Constantinople ; and 
 returned to Italy not only with a more 
 accurate insight into the Greek idiom 
 than they could have attained at home, 
 but with copious treasures of manuscripts, 
 few, if any, of which probably existed 
 previously in Italy, where none had abil- 
 ity to read or value them; so that the 
 principal authors of Grecian antiquity 
 may be considered as brought to light by 
 these inquiries, the most celebrated of 
 whom are Guarino of Verona, Aurispa, 
 and Filelfo. The second of these brought 
 home to Venice in 1423 not less than two 
 hundred and thirty-eight volumes. f 
 
 The fall of that eastern empire, which 
 state of had so long outlived all other 
 learning in pretensions to respect that it 
 ece> scarcely retained that founded 
 upon its antiquity, seems to have been 
 providentially delayed till Italy was ripe 
 to nourish the scattered seeds of litera- 
 ture that would have perished a few ages 
 earlier in the common catastrophe. From 
 the commencement of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, even the national pride of Greece 
 could not blind her to the signs of ap- 
 proaching ruin. It was no longer possi- 
 ble to inspire the European republic, dis- 
 tracted by wars and restrained by calcu- 
 lating policy, with the generous fanati- 
 cism of the crusades ; and at the council 
 of Florence, in 1439, the court and church 
 of Constantinople had the mortification 
 of sacrificing their long-cherished faith, 
 without experiencing any sensible return 
 of protection or security. The learned 
 Greeks were perhaps the first to antici- 
 pate, and certainly not the last to avoid, 
 
 * Hody places the commencement of Chrysolo- 
 ras's teaching as early as 1391, p. 3. But Tirabos- 
 chi, whose research was more precise, fixes it at 
 the end of 1396 or beginning of 1397, t. vii., p. 126. 
 
 t Tiraboschi, t. vi, p. 102. Roscoe's Lorenzo 
 de' Medici, vol. i., p. 43. 
 
 their country's destruction. The council 
 of Florence brought many of them into 
 Italian connexions, and held out at least 
 a temporary accommodation of their con- 
 flicting opinions. Though the Roman 
 pontiffs did nothing, and probably could 
 have done nothing effectual, for the em- 
 pire of Constantinople, they were very 
 ready to protect and reward the learning 
 of individuals. To Eugenius IV., to 
 Nicolas V., to Pius II., and some other 
 popes of this age, the Greek exiles were 
 indebted for a patronage which they re- 
 paid by splendid services in the restora- 
 tion of their native literature throughout 
 Italy. Bessarion, a disputant on the 
 Greek side in the council of Florence, 
 was well content to renounce the doc- 
 trine of single procession for a cardinal's 
 hat ; a dignity which he deserved for his 
 learning, if not for his pliancy. Theo- 
 dore Gaza, George of Trebizond, and Ge- 
 mistus Pletho, might equal Bessarion in 
 merit, though not in honours. They all, 
 however, experienced the patronage of 
 those admirable protectors of letters, Nic- 
 olas V., Cosmo de' Medici, or Alfonso, 
 king of Naples. These men emigrated 
 before the final destruction of the Greek 
 empire ; Lascaris and Musurus, whose 
 arrival in Italy was posterior to that 
 event, may be deemed perhaps still more 
 conspicuous ; but as the study of the 
 Greek language was already restored, it 
 is unnecessary to pursue the subject any 
 farther. 
 
 The Greeks had preserved, through 
 the course of the middle ages, their share 
 of ancient learning with more fidelity 
 and attention than was shown in the 
 west of Europe. Genius indeed, or any 
 original excellence, could not well exist 
 along with their cowardly despotism and 
 their contemptible theology, more cor- 
 rupted by frivolous subtleties than that 
 of the Latin church. The spirit of per- 
 secution, naturally allied to despotism 
 and bigotry, had nearly, during one period, 
 extinguished the lamp, or at least reduced 
 the Greeks to a level with the most igno- 
 rant nations of the west. In the age of 
 Justinian, who expelled the last Platonic 
 philosophers, learning began rapidly to 
 decline ; in that of Heraclius, it had 
 reached a much lower point of degrada- 
 tion; and for two centuries, especially 
 while the worshippers of images were 
 persecuted with unrelenting intolerance, 
 there is almost a blank in the annals of 
 Grecian literature.* But about the mid- 
 
 * The authors most conversant with Byzantine 
 learning agree in this. Nevertheless, there is one 
 manifest difference between the Greek writers of 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 die of the ninth century it revived pretty 
 suddenly, and with considerable success.* 
 Though, as I have observed, we find in 
 very few instances any original talent, 
 yet it was hardly less important to have 
 had compilers of such erudition as Pho- 
 tius, Suidas, Eustathius, and Tzetzes. 
 With these certainly the Latins of the 
 middle ages could not place any names 
 in comparison. They possessed, to an 
 extent which we cannot precisely appre- 
 ciate, many of those poets, historians, 
 and orators of ancient Greece, whose 
 loss we have long regretted, and must 
 continue to deem irretrievable. Great 
 havoc, however, was made in the libraries 
 of Constantinople at its capture by the 
 Latins ; an epoch from which a rapid de- 
 cline is to be traced in the literature of 
 the eastern empire. Solecisms and bar- 
 barous terms, which sometimes occur in 
 the old Byzantine writers, are said to de- 
 form the style of the fourteenth and fif- 
 teenth centuries.f The Turkish ravages 
 
 
 547 
 
 the worst period, such as the eighth century, and 
 those who correspond to them in the west. Syn- 
 cellus, for example, is of great use in chronology, 
 because he was acquainted with many ancient his- 
 tories now no more. But Bede possessed nothing 
 which we have lost ; and his compilations are con- 
 sequently altogether unprofitable. The eighth cen- 
 tury, the saeculum iconoclasticum of Cave, low as 
 
 I it was in all polite literature, produced one man, 
 St. John Damascenus, who has been deemed the 
 founder of scholastic theology, and who at least set 
 i the example of that style of reasoning in the East. 
 This person, and Michael Psellus, a philosopher 
 I of the eleventh century, are the only considerable 
 I men as original writers in the annals of Byzantine 
 literature. 
 
 * The honour of restoring ancient or heathen lit- 
 erature is due to the Cesar Bardas, uncle and min- 
 ister of Michael II. Cedrenus speaks of it in the 
 
 following terms : ETTeneXrj&r] 6e xai rrjg c|w ao<pias (f/v 
 yap K troAAou ^povov irapappvEiaa, teat irpos TO firj^Ev 
 6Xwj ^wpjycraffu rj rwv Kparovvrbtv apyta Kai a/jiaOia), 
 itarpiBas f'/caarjj rwv tiriarfipuv a0opi<raff, rwv I*EV aXXoov 
 
 aura TO I3aai\ia EV TTJ Mayvaupa" *cai oiiru si- EKEIVOV 
 avijdaaKEiv at STrtor^ai rjp^avTO, K. r. X. Hist. By- 
 
 zant. Script. (Lutet.), t. x., p. 547. Bardas found 
 out and promoted Photius, afterward patriarch of 
 Constantinople, and equally famous in the annals 
 of the church and of learning. Gibbon passes per- 
 haps too rapidly over the Byzantine literature, 
 chap. 53. In this, as in many other places, the 
 masterly boldness and precision of his outline, 
 which astonish those who have trodden parts of 
 the same field, are apt to escape an uninformed 
 reader. 
 
 t Du Cange, Prsefatio ad Glossar. Graecitatis 
 Medii JEvi. Anna Comnena quotes some popular 
 lines, which seem to be the earliest specimen ex- 
 tant of the Romaic dialect, or something approach- 
 ing it, as they observe no grammatical inflection, 
 and bear about the same resemblance to ancient 
 Greek that the worst law charters of the ninth and 
 tenth centuries do to pure Latin. In fact, the 
 Greek language seems to have declined much in 
 the same manner as the Latin did, and almost at 
 a* early a period. In the sixth century, Damas- 
 Mm 2 
 
 and destruction of monasteries ensued; 
 and in the cheerless intervals of immedi- 
 ate terror, there was no longer any en- 
 couragement to preserve the monuments 
 of an expiring language, and of a name 
 that was to lose its place among nations.* 
 That ardour for the restoration of clas- 
 sical literature which animated Italy in 
 
 cius, a Platonic philosopher, mentions the old lan- 
 guage as distinct from that which was vernacular, 
 Trjv ap%aiav yXwrrav vitEp rrjv iSidiTTjv n\ETovffi. Du 
 Cange, ibid., p. 11. It is well known that the pop- 
 ular, or political verses of Tzetzes, a writer of the 
 twelfth century, are accentual ; that is, are to be 
 read, as the modern Greeks do, by treating every 
 acute or circumflex syllable as long, without re- 
 gard to its original quantity. This innovation, 
 which must have produced still greater confusion 
 of metrical rules than it did in Latin, is much older 
 than the age of Tzetzes ; if, at least, the editor of 
 some notes subjoined to Meursius's edition of the 
 Themata of Constantino Pprphyrog'enitus (Lug- 
 duni, 1617) is right in ascribing certain political 
 verses to that emperor, who died in 959. These 
 verses are regular accentual trochaics. But I be- 
 lieve they have since been given to Constantine 
 Manasses, a writer of the eleventh century. 
 
 According to the opinion of a modern traveller 
 (Hobhouse's Travels in Albania, letter 33), the 
 chief corruptions which distinguish the Romaic 
 from its parent stock, especially the auxiliary verbs, 
 are not older than the capture of Constantinople by 
 Mahomet II. But it seems difficult to obtain any 
 satisfactory proof of this ; and the auxiliary verb is 
 so natural and convenient, that the ancient Greeks 
 may probably, in some of their local idioms, have 
 fallen into the use of it; as Mr. H. admits they did 
 with respect to the future auxiliary SeAu. See 
 some instances of this in Lesbonax rcpi a^/xarwv, 
 ad finern Ammonii, cura Valckenaer. 
 
 * Photius (I write on the authority of M. Heeren) 
 quotes Theopompus, Arrian's history of Alexan- 
 der's Successors, and of Parthia, Ctesias, Agathar- 
 cides, the whole of Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, 
 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, twenty lost ora- 
 tions of Demosthenes, almost two hundred of Lys- 
 ias, sixty-four of Isaeus, about fifty of Hyperides. 
 Heeren ascribes the loss of these works altogether 
 to the Latin capture of Constantinople, no writer 
 subsequent to that time having quoted them. 
 Essai sur les Croisades, p. 413. It is difficult, how- 
 ever, not to suppose that some part of the destruc 
 tion was left for the Ottomans to perform. ^Eneas 
 Sylvius bemoans, in his speech before the diet of 
 Frankfort, the vast looses of literature by the re- 
 cent subversion of the Greek empire. Quid de li- 
 bris dicam, qui illic erant innumerabiles, nondum 
 Latinis cogniti !..... Nunc ergo, et Homero et 
 Pindaro et Menandro et omnibus illustrioribus poe- 
 tis, secunda mors erit. But nothing can be infer- 
 red from this declamation, except, perhaps, that he 
 did not know whether Menander still existed or 
 not. JEn. Syl., Opera, p. 715; also p. 881. Har- 
 ris's Philological Inquiries, part iii., c. 4. It is a 
 remarkable proof, however, of the turn which Eu- 
 rope, and especially Italy, was taking, that a pope's 
 legate should, on a solemn occasion, descant so se- 
 riously on the injury sustained by profane literature. 
 A useful summary of the lower Greek literature, 
 taken chiefly from the Bibliotheca Gr?ca of Fabri- 
 cius, will be found in Berington's Literary History 
 of the Middle Ages, Appendix I. ; and one rather 
 more copious in Schoell, Abreg de la Literature 
 Grecque (Paris, 1812). 
 
548 
 
 EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 [CHAP. IX. 
 
 Literature the first part of the fifteenth 
 fmproved century, was by no means corn- 
 beyond rnon to the rest of Europe. Nei- 
 Itlay - ther England, nor France, nor 
 Germany seemed aware of the approach 
 ing change. We are told that learn- 
 ing, by which I believe is only meant 
 the scholastic ontology, had begun to 
 decline at Oxford from the time of 
 Edward III.* And the fifteenth centu- 
 ry, from whatever cause, is particularly 
 barren of writers in the Latin language. 
 The study of Greek was only introduced 
 by Grocyn and Linacer under Henry VII., 
 and met with violent opposition in the 
 university of Oxford, where the unlearned 
 party styled themselves Trojans, as a 
 pretext for abusing and insulting the 
 scholars. f Nor did any classical work 
 proceed from the respectable press of 
 Caxton. France, at the beginning of the 
 fifteenth age, had several eminent theo- 
 logians; but the reigns of Charles VII. 
 and Louis XI. contributed far more to 
 her political than her literary renown. 
 A Greek professor was first appointed at 
 Paris in 1458, before which time the lan- 
 guage had not been publicly taught, and 
 was little understood. J Much less had 
 Germany thrown off her ancient rude- 
 ness. JEneas Sylvius indeed, a deliber- 
 ate flatterer, extols every circumstance 
 in the social state of that country ; but 
 Campano, the papal legate at Ratisbon in 
 1471, exclaims against the barbarism of 
 a nation where very few possessed any 
 learning, none any elegance.^ Yet the 
 progress of intellectual cultivation, at 
 least in the two former countries, was 
 uniform, though silent ; libraries became 
 more numerous, and books, after the 
 happy invention of paper, though still 
 very scarce, might be copied at less ex- 
 pense. Many colleges- were founded in 
 the English as well as foreign universi- 
 ties during the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries. Nor can I pass over institu- 
 
 * Wood's Antiquities of Oxford, vol. i., p. 537. 
 
 t Roper's Vita Mori, ed. Hearne, p. 75. 
 
 J Crevier, t. iv., p. 243 ; see too p. 46. 
 
 $ Incredibilis ingeniorum barbaries est ; rarissimi 
 literas norunt, nulli elegantiam. Papiensis Epis- 
 tolae. p. 377. Campano's notion of elegance was 
 ridiculous enough. Nobody ever carried farther 
 the pedantic affectation of avoiding modern terms 
 in his latinity. Thus, in the life of Braccio da Mon- 
 tone, he renders his meaning almost unintelligible 
 by excess of classical purity. Braccio boasts se 
 nunquam deorum immortalium templa violasse. 
 Troops committing outrages in a city are accused 
 virgines vestales incestasse. In the terms of 
 treaties, he employs the old Roman forms ; exerci- 
 tum trajicito oppida pontificis sunto, &c. And 
 with a most absurd pedantry, the ecclesiastical 
 state is called Romanum imperium. Campani 
 Vita Braccii, in Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital., t. xix. 
 
 tions that have so eminently contributed 
 to the literary reputation of this country, 
 and that still continue to exercise so con- 
 spicuous an influence over her taste and 
 knowledge, as the two great schools of 
 grammatical learning, Winchester and 
 Eton; the one founded by William of 
 Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1373 ; 
 the other, in 1432, by King Henry the 
 Sixth.* 
 
 But while the learned of Italy were ea- 
 gerly exploring their recent ac- invention 
 quisitions of manuscripts, deci- of printing 
 phered with difficulty, and slowly circula- 
 ted from hand to hand, a few obscure Ger- 
 mans had gradually perfected the most im- 
 portant discovery recorded in the annals 
 of mankind. The invention of printing, so 
 far from being the result of philosophical 
 sagacity, does not appear to have been 
 suggested by any regard to the higher 
 branches of literature, or to bear any 
 other relation than that of coincidence to 
 their revival in Italy. The question, why 
 it was struck out at that particular time, 
 must be referred to that disposition of 
 unknown causes which we call accident. 
 Two or three centuries earlier, we cannot 
 but acknowledge the discovery would 
 have been almost equally acceptable. 
 But the invention of paper seems to have 
 naturally preceded those of engraving 
 and printing. It is generally agreed, 
 that plavina^trarHs^ which have been 
 traCea far back in the fourteenth century, 
 gave the first notion of taking off impres- 
 sions from engraved figures upon wood. 
 The second stage, or rather second appli- 
 cation of this art, was the representation 
 of saints and other religious devices, sev- 
 eral instances of which are still extant. 
 Some of these are accompanied with an 
 entire page of illustrative text, cut into 
 the same wooden block. This process 
 is indeed far removed from the invention 
 that has given immortality to the names 
 of Fust, Schoeffer, and Guttenburg, yet it 
 probably led to the consideration of 
 means whereby it might be rendered less 
 operose and inconvenient. Whether 
 moveable wooden characters were ever 
 employed in any entire work is very ques- 
 tionable ; the opinion that referred their 
 use to Laurence Coster of Haarlem not 
 
 A letter from Master William Paston at Eton 
 (Paston Letters, vol. i., p. 299) proves that Latin 
 versification was taught there as early as the be- 
 ginning of Edward I V.'s reign. It is true that the 
 specimen he rather proudly exhibits does not much 
 differ from what we denominate nonsense verses. 
 But a more material observation is, that the sons 
 of country gentlemen living at a considerable dis- 
 tance were already sent to public schools for gram* 
 matical education. 
 
PART II.] 
 
 STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 549 
 
 having stood the test of more accurate 
 investigation. They appear, however, 
 in the capital letters of some early print 
 ed books. But no expedient of this kind 
 could have fulfilled the great purposes 
 of this invention, until it was perfected 
 by founding metal types in a matrix or 
 mould, the essential characteristic of 
 printing, as distinguished from other arts 
 that bear some analogy to it. 
 
 The first book that issued from the 
 presses of Fust and his associates at 
 Mentz was an edition of the Vulgate, 
 commonly called the Mazarine Bible, a 
 copy having been discovered in the li- 
 brary that owes its name to Cardinal 
 Mazarin at Paris. This is supposed to 
 have been printed between the years 
 1450 and 1455.* In 1457 an edition of 
 the Psalter appeared, and in T;his the in- 
 vention was announced to the world in a 
 boasting colophon, though certainly not 
 unreasonably bold.f Another edition of 
 the Psalter, one of an ecclesiastical book, 
 Durand's account of liturgical offices, one 
 of the Constitutions of Pope Clement V., 
 and one of a popular treatise on general 
 science, called the Catholicon, fill up the 
 interval till 1462, when the second Mentz 
 Bible proceeded from the same printers. J 
 This, in the opinion of some, is the ear- 
 liest book in which cast types were em- 
 ployed ; those of the Mazarine Bible hav- 
 ing been cut with the hand. But this is 
 a controverted point. In 1465, Fust and 
 Scho2ffer published an edition of Cicero's 
 Offices, the first tribute of the new art to 
 polite literature. Two pupils of their 
 school, Sweynheim and Pannartz, mi- 
 grated the same year into Italy, and 
 printed Donatus's grammar, and the works 
 of Lactantius, at the monastery of Subi- 
 aco in the neighbourhood of Rome. 
 
 * De Bure, t. i., p. 30. Several copies of this 
 book have come to light since its discovery. 
 
 t Idem, t. i., p. 71. 
 
 i M6m. de 1'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xiv., p. 
 265. Another edition of the Bible is supposed to 
 have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg in 1459. 
 
 $ Tiraboschi, t. vi., p. 140. 
 
 Venice had the honour of extending her 
 patronage to John of Spira, the first who 
 applied the art on an extensive scale to 
 the publication of classical writers.* 
 Several Latin authors came forth from 
 his press in 1470; and during the next 
 ten years, a multitude of editions were 
 published in various parts of Italy. 
 Though, as we may judge from their 
 present scarcity, these editions were by 
 no means numerous in respect of impres- 
 sions, yet, contrasted with the dilatory 
 process of copying manuscripts, they 
 were like a new mechanical power in 
 machinery, and gave a wonderfully ac- 
 ce^erated impulse to the intellectual cul- 
 tivation of mankind. From the era of 
 these first editions proceeding from the 
 Spiras, Zarot, Janson, or Sweynheim, 
 and Pannartz, literature must be deemed 
 to have altogether revived in Italy. The 
 sun was now fully above the horizon, 
 though countries less fortunately circum- 
 stanced did not immediately catch his 
 beams ; and the restoration of ancient 
 learning in France and England cannot 
 be considered as by any means effectual 
 even at the expiration of the fifteenth 
 century. At this point, however, I close 
 the present chapter. The last twenty 
 years of the middle ages, according to 
 the date which I have fixed for their ter- 
 mination in treating of political history, 
 might well invite me by their brilliancy 
 to dwell upon that golden morning of 
 Italian literature. But, in the history of 
 letters, they rather appertain to the mod- 
 ern than the middle period ; nor would it 
 become me to trespass upon the ex- 
 hausted patience of my readers by re- 
 peating what has been so often and so re- 
 cently told, the story of art and learning 
 that has employed the comprehensive re- 
 search of a Tiraboschi, a Ginguene, and 
 a Roscoe. 
 
 * Sanuto mentions an order ,of the senate in 
 1469, that John of Spira should p*mt the epistles 
 of Tully and Pliny for five years, arM that no one 
 else should do so. Script. Rerum Italic., t. xxii., 
 p. 1189. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 ABBASSIDKS, khaliffs of the dynasty of, 253; de- 
 cline of their power, ib. 
 
 Abelard (Peter), biographical notice of, 523. 
 
 Acre, commercial prosperity of, 479, and note. 
 
 Acts of parliament, an ill-digested mass of legisla- 
 tive enactments, 348, 349 ; consent of both houses 
 of parliament necessary to pass them, 376. 
 
 Adrian IV. (pope), insolent conduct of, 286; the 
 only Englishman that ever sat in the papal chair, 
 ib. 
 
 Adventurers (military), companies of, formed, 180; 
 and organized by Guarnieri, ib. ; ravages of the 
 great company, ib. ; account of the company of 
 St. George, 182. 
 
 Advocates of the church, their office, 88 ; to con- 
 vents, their powers and functions, ib. 
 
 Agnes Sorel (mistress of Charles VII.), not such 
 probably at the siege of Orleans, 54, note. 
 
 Agriculture, wretched state of, in the dark ages, 
 471 ; particularly in England, 495, 496 ; in some 
 degree, however, progressive, 494, 495 ; its con- 
 dition in France and Italy, 496, 497. 
 
 Aids (feudal), in what cases due, 80; when due 
 and how levied in England, under the Norman 
 kings, 338, 339 ; not to be imposed without the 
 consent of parliament, 342. 
 
 Albans (St.), when first represented in parliament, 
 367, 368. 
 
 Albert, archduke of Austria, oppresses the Swiss, 
 246 ; his death, ib. 
 
 Albert II. (emperor of Germany), reign of, 237. 
 
 Albigeois, crusade against, 29 ; their tenets, 504, 
 505, and notes. 
 
 Alfonso of Aragon, adopted by Joanna II., queen of 
 Naples, 189 ; ascends the throne, 190; forms an 
 alliance with Milan, ib. ; joins the quadruple 
 league of 1455, 191 ; his death and character, ib. 
 
 Alfred the Great, extent of his dominions, 319 ; 
 was not the inventor of trial by jury, 325327 ; 
 nor of the law of frankpledge, 327, 328. 
 
 Alice Ferrers (mistress of Edward III.), parliament- 
 ary proceedings against, 380 ; repealed, ib. ; again 
 impeached, 381. 
 
 Alienation of lands, fines on, 78, 79. 
 
 Alienations in mortmain, restrained in various parts 
 of Europe, 301. 
 
 Aliens, liable for each other's debts, 483. 
 
 Allodial lands, nature of, 65 ; when changed into 
 feudal tenures, 72. 
 
 Alvaro de Luna, power and fall of, 205. 
 
 Amalfi (republic of), notice of, 479; the mariner's 
 compass not invented there, 481 ; the Pandects, 
 whether discovered there, 520. 
 
 Anglo-Norman government of England, tyranny of, 
 337 ; its exactions, 338 ; general taxes, ib. ; rights 
 of legislation, 339 ; laws and charters of the An- 
 glo-Norman kings, 340; state of the constitution 
 under Henry III., 342; courts of justice, 315 
 347. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, historical sketch of, 319, 320 ; influ- 
 ence of provincial governors, 321 ; distribution 
 
 of the people into thanes and ceorls, ib. ; their 
 wittenagemot, 322, 323 ; judicial power, 323 ; di- 
 vision into counties, hundreds, and tithings, ib. ; 
 their county court, and suits therein, 324, 325 ; 
 trial by jury, 325 ; law of frankpledge, 327 ; 
 whether the system of feudal tenures was known 
 to the Anglo-Saxons, 329332. 
 
 Andrew (king of Naples), murder of, 187. 
 
 Anjou. See Charles (count of Anjou). Anne 
 (dutchess of Bntany) married by Charles VIII. 
 of France, 63. 
 
 Antrustions, leudes, or fideles, of the Frank empire, 
 rank and dignity of, 68 ; were considered as no- 
 ble, 70. 
 
 Appanages, nature of, 57. 
 
 Appeals for denial of justice in France, account of, 
 110 ; the true date of, ib., note. 
 
 Appeals to the Roman see, when established, 271, 
 272. 
 
 Arabia, state of, at the appearance of Mahomet, 249. 
 
 Aragon (kingdom of), when founded, 198 ; its pop- 
 ulation, 219, note; its constitution, 218; origi- 
 nally a sort of regal aristocracy, ib. ; privileges 
 of the ricos hombres or barons, ib. ; of the lower 
 nobility, ib. ; of the burgesses and peasantry, ib. ; 
 liberties of the Aragonese kingdom, ib. ; general 
 privilege of 1283, 219; privilege of union, ib. ; 
 when abolished, 229 ; office of justiciary, when 
 established, ib. ; office and power of the justicia- 
 ry, 220, 221, 223; rights of legislation and taxa- 
 tion, ib. ; cortes of Aragon, 224; popular repre- 
 sentation more ancient in Aragon than in any 
 other monarchy, ib., note; police, 225; union of 
 this kingdom with Castile, ib. 
 
 Arbitration, determination of suits by, prevalent in 
 the church, 265, 266. 
 
 Archenfeld (manor of), private feuds, allowed in by 
 custom, 352, note. 
 
 Archers (English), superiority of, 41, 42 ; their pay, 
 52 ; were employed by William the Conqueror, 
 183. 
 
 Architecture (civil), state of, in England, 488 490 ; 
 in France, 490 ; in Italy, ib. 
 
 Architecture (ecclesiastical), state of, 492494. 
 
 Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, elected king of Italy, 127. 
 
 Aristotle, writings of, first known in Europe 
 through the Spanish Arabs, 526, note ; his wri- 
 tings ill understood and worse translated by the 
 schoolmen, 527 ; irreligion the consequence of 
 the unbounded admiration of his writings, 528, 
 and note. 
 
 Armagnacs, faction of, 49 ; their proceedings, 49, 50. 
 
 Armorial bearings, origin of, 85, 86. 
 
 Armorican republic, existence of, questionable, 17, 
 and notes. 
 
 Arms (defensive), of the fifteenth century, 182, 183. 
 
 Army (English), pay of, in the fourteenth century, 
 52, 122, note, 
 
 Army (French). A standing army first established 
 by Charles VII., 122, 123. 
 
 Asia, invasion of, by the Karismians and Moguls, 
 
 Assemblies. See Legislative Assemblies. 
 
552 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Assize, justices of, when instituted, 346; their 
 
 functions and powers, 346, 347. 
 Augustine (St.), specimen of the barbarous poetry 
 
 of, 457, note. 
 
 Aulic council, powers and jurisdiction of. 242. 
 Auspicius (bi.shop of Toul), specimen of the Latin 
 
 poetry of, 458, note. 
 
 Auxiliary verb (active), probable cause of, 456, 457. 
 Avignon, Roman see removed to, 304 ; rapacity of 
 
 the Avignon popes, 306, 307. 
 Azincourt, battle of, 51, and note. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon (Roger), singular resemblance between him 
 and Lord Bacon, 529, note ; specimen of his phi- 
 losophical spirit, ib. 
 
 Baltic trade, state of, 477 ; origin and progress of 
 the Hanseatic league, 477, 478. 
 
 Banking, origin of, 484 ; account of various Italian 
 banks, 485. 
 
 Bagdad, khalifs of, account of, 252, 253. 
 
 Barbarians, inroads of, one cause of the decline of 
 literature in the latter periods of the Roman em- 
 pire, 453, 454. 
 
 Bardas (Cesar), efforts of, to revive classical liter- 
 ature in Greece 547, note. 
 
 Barnstaple (borough of), when first represented in 
 parliament, 368, 369. 
 
 Baronies (English), inquiry into the nature of, 357 ; 
 theory of Selden, that tenants in chief by knight- 
 service were parliamentary barons by reason of 
 their tenure, ib. ; theory of Madox, that they were 
 distinct, ib. ; observations on both, 357, 358 ; 
 whether mere tenants in chief attended parlia- 
 ment under Henry III., 358, 359. 
 
 Barons (Aragonese), privileges of, 218. 
 
 Barons of France, right of private war exercised 
 by them, 94 ; legislative assemblies occasionally 
 held by them, 99 ; account of their courts of 
 justice, 108, 109 ; trial by combat allowed in cer- 
 tain cases, 109, 110. 
 
 Barrister, moderate fees of, in the fifteenth centu- 
 ry, 500. 
 
 Basle, proceedings of the council of, 311. 
 
 Bedford (duke of), regent of France during the mi- 
 nority of Henry VI., 52 ; his character, ib. ; causes 
 of his success, ib. ; his progress arrested by the 
 siege of Orleans, 53. 
 
 Belgrade, siege of, 245. 
 
 Benedict XIII. (pope), contested election of, 308, 
 309 ; deposed at the council of Pisa, 309. 
 
 Benefices, grants of land so called, 70 ; their ex- 
 tent, 7072. 
 
 Benefices (ecclesiastical), gross sale of in the elev- 
 enth century, 279 ; Boniface, marquis of Tusca- 
 ny, flogged by an abbot for selling benefices, 280, 
 note ; presentation to them in all cases claimed 
 by the popes, 295. 
 
 Benevolences, when first taken in England, 449. 
 
 Bernard, king of Italy, put to death by Louis the 
 Debonair, 23. 
 
 Bianchi, a set of enthusiasts, notice of, 464. 
 
 Bills in parliament, power of originating claimed by 
 the house of commons, 402 404. 
 
 Bishops, ecclesiastical jurisdiction of, 265; their 
 political power, 266 ; their pretensions in the 
 ninth century, 268, 269 ; remarks on the suppo- 
 sed concession of the title of universal bishop to 
 the bishops of Rome, 271, 272, notes ; encroach- 
 ments of the popes on the bishops, 274 ; how 
 elected in the early ages, 279 ; were nominated 
 by the Merovingian French kings, and by the 
 emperors of Germany of ths house of Saxony, ib., 
 and note ; in England were appointed in the wit- 
 tenagemot before the conquest, and afterward by 
 consent of parliament, ib; in France received 
 
 investiture from the Emperor Charlemagne, 280 ; 
 bishops of Rome elected by the citizens and con- 
 firmed by the emperors, ib. ; not allowed to ex- 
 ercise their functions until confirmed by the 
 popes, 285 ; papal encroachments on the freedom 
 of episcopal elections, 294 ; right of to a seat in 
 parliament considered, 355 ; have a right to be 
 tried by the peers, ib., note; had a right to vote 
 in capital cases, though that right is now abro- 
 gated by non-claim and contrary precedents, 356, 
 note. 
 
 Boccanegra (Simon), elected the first doge of Ge- 
 noa, 171. 
 
 Bocland, nature of, 329 ; analogy between it and 
 freehold land, ib. ; to what burdens subject, 330. 
 
 Bohemia, account of the constitution of, 243 ; no- 
 tice of the kings of the house of Luxembourg, 
 ib. ; war with the Hussites in that country, 244. 
 
 Bologna university, account of, 524. 
 
 Bond of fellowship, abstract of a curious one, 363, 
 note. 
 
 Boniface (St.), the apostle of Germany, devotion of 
 to the see of Rome, 272. 
 
 Boniface VIII. (pope), character of, 301 ; his dis- 
 putes with Edward I., king of England, 302 ; and 
 with Philip the Fair, king of France, ib. ; is ar- 
 rested by him, 304 ; his death, ib. ; the papal 
 power declines after his decease, ib. 
 
 Books, scarcity of, in the dark ages, 460 ; account 
 of the principal collections of, 543 ; notices of 
 early printed books, 549. 
 
 Booksellers, condition of, during the middle ages, 
 542, note. 
 
 Boroughs, cause of summoning deputies from, 370 ; 
 nature of prescriptive boroughs, 406, 407 ; power 
 of the sheriff to omit boroughs, 407, 408 ; reluc- 
 tance of boroughs to send members, 408 ; who 
 the electors in boroughs were, 409. 
 
 Bourgeoisies, how distinguished from communities, 
 117, note. 
 
 Braccio di Montone, rivalry of, with Sforza, 185. 
 
 Brethren of the White Caps, insurrection of, 464. 
 
 Bretigni, peace of, 43 ; rupture of it, 45. 
 
 Britany (dutchy of), state of, at the accession of 
 Charles VIII. to the throne of France, 62 ; Anne, 
 dutchess of Britany, married by Charles VIII. of 
 France, 63. 
 
 Britons (native), reduced to slavery by the Saxoni, 
 322. 
 
 Bruges, state of, in the fourteenth century, 475. 
 
 Burgesses, state of, in Aragon, 218; in England, 
 363 ; charters of incorporation granted to them, 
 364, 365 ; were first summoned to parliament in 
 the 49th of Henry III., 366; whether St. Albans 
 sent representatives before that time, 367 ; or 
 Barnstaple, 368 ; causes of summoning burgess- 
 es, 370 ; rates of their wages, and how paid, 408. 
 
 Burgesses, why and when chosen to serve in par- 
 liament, 406, 407. 
 
 Burgundy and Orleans, factions of, 49; the 'Duke 
 of Orleans murdered by the faction of Burgun- 
 dy, ib. ; civil wars between the parties, ib. ; as- 
 sassination of the Duke of Burgundy, 50. 
 
 Burgundy (house of), its vast acquisitions, 58 ; 
 character and designs of Charles, duke of Bur- 
 gundy, 59 ; insubordination of the Flemish cities, 
 part of his territory, ib. 
 
 C. 
 
 Calais (citizens of), their wretchedness, 43, note; 
 treaty of, ib. 
 
 Calixtines, account of, and of their tenets, 244. 
 
 Calixtus II. (pope), concordat of, respecting inves- 
 titures, 283. 
 
 Canon law, origin and progress of, 290. 
 
 Capet (Hugh), ascends the throne of France, 2-1 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 553 
 
 antiquity of this family, ib., note ; state of the 
 country at that time, ib. ; extent of his dominion 
 and power, 26, 27. 
 
 Capitular elections, when introduced, 284. 
 
 Caraccioli, the favourite of Joanna, queen of Na- 
 ples, 189; assassinated, 190, note. 
 
 Carlovingian dynasty, accession of, to the throne 
 of France, 17 ; decline of this family, 24. 
 
 Castile (kingdom of), when founded, 199 ; finally 
 united with the kingdom of Leon, 201 ; civil dis- 
 turbances of Castile, 203; reign of Peter the 
 Cruel, 203, 204; of the house of Trastamare, 
 204; reign of John II., ib. ; of Henry IV., 205 ; 
 constitution of Castile, 206 ; succession to the 
 crown, ib. ; national councils, ib. ; admission of 
 deputies from towns, ib. ; spiritual and temporal 
 nobility in cortes, 207 ; right of taxation, 208 ; 
 control of the cortes over the expenditure, 210 ; 
 forms of the cortes, 211 ; their rights in legisla- 
 tion, ib. ; other rights of the cortes, 212 ; council 
 of Castile, 213 ; administration of justice, ib. ; 
 violent actions of some of the kings of Castile, 
 214; confederacies of the nobility, 215; union 
 of Castile with Aragon, 225; papal encroach- 
 ments restrained in that kingdom, 314. 
 
 Castles, Roman, traces of in Britain, 488 ; descrip- 
 tion of the baronial castles, ib. ; successive im- 
 provements in them, ib. ; account of castellated 
 mansions, 489. 
 
 Castruccio Castracani, notice of, 151. 
 
 Catalonia (principality), government of, 224, 225 ; 
 state of its commerce and manufactures, 480. 
 
 Catharists, tenets and practices of, 506. 
 
 Caursini, a tribe of money dealers, notice of, 484, 
 note. 
 
 Cavalry, practice of, to dismount in action, 183. 
 
 Centenanus, or hundredary, functions of, 107. 
 
 Ceorls, condition of, under the Anglo-Saxons, 321 ; 
 identity of them with the villani and bordarii of 
 Domesday Book, 322. 
 
 Cerda (Dominic de), justiciary of Aragon, intrepid 
 conduct of, 222 ; and of Juan de Cerda, 222, 223. 
 
 Charlemagne (king of France), conquers Lombar- 
 dy, 20; part of Spain, ib. ; and Saxony, 21 ; ex- 
 tent of his dominion's, ib. ; his coronation*^ em- 
 peror, ib: ; character, 22 ; legislative assemblies 
 held by him,' 97 ; account of the scheme of juris- 
 diction established by him,,107 ; established pay- 
 ment of tithes in France, 263 ; vigorously main- 
 tainecTthe supremacy of the state over the church, 
 267 ; couhT not write, 459, and note ; established 
 public schools, 523. 
 
 Charles IV. (king of France), 39. 
 
 Charles the Fat (king of France), insolent treat- 
 ment of, by Pope John VIII., 277. 
 
 Charles V. (king of France), restores that country 
 from her losses, 46 ; expels the English thence, 
 ib. 
 
 Charles VI., accession of, to the throne of France, 
 46 ; state of the country during his minority, 47 ; 
 gross misapplication of the revenue, 48 ; reme- 
 dial ordinance of, 105 ; assumes the full power, 
 
 48 ; his derangement, ib. ; factions and civil wars, 
 49; calamitous state of France during the re- 
 mainder of his reign, 50, 51 ; his death, 52. 
 
 Charles VII., accession of, to the throne of France, 
 52 ; character of, 53 ; engages Scottish auxilia- 
 ries at a high rate, 52, 53 ; retrieves his affairs, 
 54 ; is reconciled to the Duke of Burgundy, ib. ; 
 state of France during the latter part of his reign, 
 55 ; subsequent events of his reign, 55, 56 ; states- 
 general convoked by him, 105 ; his pretensions 
 upon Italy, 196. 
 
 Charles VIII. ascends the throne of France, 62 ; 
 marries the Dutchess of Britany, 63; and con- 
 solidates France into one great kingdom, ib. ; his 
 pretensions to the kingdom of Naples, 196, 197. 
 
 Charles the Bad (king of Navarre), unprincipled 
 character and conduct of, 42. 
 
 Charles (count of Anjou), conquers Naples and 
 Sicily, 149 ; aspires to the kingdom of Italy, ib. ; 
 rebellion of Sicily against him, 186 ; war in con- 
 sequence, 187. 
 
 Charles IV. (emperor of Germany}, reign of, 236 ; 
 account of the golden bull issued by him, ib. 
 
 Charles (duke of Burgundy), character of, 59 ; in- 
 subordination of his Flemish subjects, ib. ; his 
 ambitious projects, 60 ; invades Swisserland, and 
 is twice defeated, ib. ; his death, ib. ; his dutchy 
 of Burgundy claimed by Louis XI., ib. 
 
 Chartered towns, when first incorporated in France, 
 116; their privileges, 116, 117, notes; causes of 
 their incorporation, 117; circumstances attend- 
 ing the charter of Laon, ib. ; extent of their priv- 
 ileges, 118; their connexion with the King of 
 France, ib. ; independence of the maritime towns, 
 119 ; account of the chartered towns or commu- 
 nities in Spain, 200 ; progress of them in Eng- 
 land, 362365 ; particularly London, 365, 366. 
 
 Charters of the Norman kings, account of, 340 ; 
 abstract of Magna Charta, 341, 342; confirma- 
 tion of charters by Edward I., 354. 
 
 Chatelains, rank of, 87. 
 
 Chaucer, account of, 541 ; character of his poetry, 
 ib. 
 
 Chief justiciary of England, power and functions 
 of, 345, note. 
 
 Children, crusade of, 463, note. 
 
 Childeric III., king of France, deposed by Pepin, 
 and confined in a convent, 20. 
 
 Chimneys, when invented, 491. 
 
 Chilperic (king of the Franks), literature of, 458. 
 
 Chivalry, origin of, 509 ; its connexion with feudal 
 
 I services, 511 ; that connexion broken, ib. ; effects 
 //of the crusades on chivalry, ib. ; connexion of 
 Y chivalry with religion, ib. ; and with gallantry, V 
 512; the morals of chivalry not always the most 
 pure, 513 ; virtues deemed essential to chivalry, 
 514 ; resemblance between chivalrous and east- 
 ern manners, 515 ; evils produced by the spirit 
 of chivalry, ib. ; circumstances tending to pro- 
 mote it, 516 ; regular education, ib. ; encourage- 
 ment of princes, ib. ; tournaments, 516, 517 ; 
 privileges of knighthood, 517 ; connexion of 
 chivalry with military services, 518 ; decline of 
 chivalry, 519. 
 
 Christianity, embraced by the Saxons, 21. 
 
 Chroniclers (old English), notice of, 540. 
 
 Church, wealth of, under the Roman empire, 261 ; 
 increased after its subversion, 261, 262; some- 
 times improperly acquired, 262 ; when endowed 
 with tithes, 263, 264 ; spoliation of church prop- 
 erty, 264 ; pretensions of the hierarchy in the 
 ninth century, 268. 
 
 Church lands, exempted from ordinary jurisdic- 
 tion, 108. 
 
 Cinque Ports, represented in parliament in 1246, 
 367, note. 
 
 Circles instituted in Germany, and why, 242. 
 
 Civil law, revival of, 520; cultivated throughout 
 Europe, 521 ; its influence on the laws of France 
 and Germany, ib. ; its introduction into England, 
 522 ; the elder civilians little regarded, ib. ; the 
 science itself on the decline, ib. 
 
 Civil wars of the Lancastrians and Yorkists, 447 ; 
 did not materially affect national prosperity, 478. 
 
 Classic authors neglected by the church during the 
 dark ages, 453, 542 ; account of the revival of 
 classical literature, 542 ; causes that contributed 
 to its diffusion, 542544 ; efforts of Cesar Bar- 
 das in reviving classical literature in Greece, 547, 
 note. 
 
 Clement V. (pope), removes the papal court to 
 Avignon, 304. 
 
554 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Clement VII. (pope), contested election of, 308. 
 
 CJergy, state of, under the feudal system, 68 ; their 
 wealth under the Roman empire, 261 ; increased 
 after its subversion, 261, 262 ; sometimes improp- 
 erly acquired, 262 ; sources of their wealth, 263 ; 
 spoliation of church property, 264 ; extent of 
 their jurisdiction, 265 ; their political power, 266 ; 
 were subject to the supremacy of the state, espe- 
 cially of Charlemagne, 267 ; pretensions of the 
 hierarchy in the ninth century, 268 ; corruption 
 of their morals in the tenth century, 277 ; neglect 
 of celibacy, 278 ; their simony in the eleventh 
 century, 282 ; taxation of them by the popes, 296 ; 
 state of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the twelfth 
 century, 297 ; immunities claimed by the clergy, 
 298 ; endeavours made to repress ecclesiastical 
 tyranny in England, 299 ; were less vigorous in 
 France, 300 ; restraints on alienations in mort- 
 main, 301 ; ecclesiastical jurisdiction restrained, 
 316 ; originally had a right to sit in the house of 
 commons, 389, note ; ignorance of the clergy du- 
 ring the dark ages, 460 ; their vices, 467, 468. 
 See also Bishops, Popes. 
 
 Clovis, king of the Franks, invades and conquers 
 Gaul, 17 ; embraces Christianity, 18 ; his victo- 
 ries, ib. ; his descendants, ib. ; their degeneracy, 
 19 ; they are deposed by Pepin, 20 ; provincial 
 government of the French empire during the 
 reign of Clovis, 67 ; his limited authority, 68. 
 
 Coin, changes in the value of, 497500. 
 
 Coining of money, a privilege of the vassals of 
 France, 93 ; regulations of various sovereigns 
 concerning this right, ib. 
 
 Combat (trial by), in what cases allowed, 109 ; how 
 fought, 110 ; decline of this practice, 111, 112. 
 
 Comines ^Philip de), his character of Louis XI., 62. 
 
 Commendation (personal), origin and nature of, 74 ; 
 distinguished from feudal tenure, ib. 
 
 Commerce, progress of, in Germany, 474 ; of Flan- 
 ders, ib. ; of England, 475, 476-478 ; the Baltic 
 trade, 477 ; commerce of the Mediterranean Sea, 
 479. 
 
 Commerce (foreign), state of, in the dark ages, 473. 
 
 Commission of reform, in the reign of Richard II., 
 proceedings of, 385387. 
 
 Commodian, a Christian writer of the third centu- 
 ry, specimens of the versification of, 457, note. 
 
 Common law (English), origin of, 347, 348. 
 
 Common Pleas, court of, when instituted, 347. 
 
 Commons. See House of Commons. 
 
 Communities, when first incorporated in France, 
 116; their progress, 116, 117; in Spain, 116, 117, 
 note, 200 ; in England, 364, 365, and notes. 
 
 Commutation of penances, 468, 469. 
 
 Companies of ordonnance, instituted by Charles 
 VII., 56, 122, 123 ; their design, 56. 
 
 Compass. See Mariner's Compass. 
 
 Compositions for murder, antiquity of, 94, note 
 prevailed under the feudal system, 66. 
 
 Concordats of Aschaffenburg, account of, 313, 314. 
 
 Condemnation (illegal), instances of, rare in Eng- 
 land, 428, 429. 
 
 Condottieri or military adventurers in Italy, notice 
 of, 181, 182. 
 
 Conrad I., emperor of Germany, 227. 
 
 Conrad II., surnamed the Salic, elected emperor, 
 128, 228 ; edict of, 74. 
 
 Conrad III. elected emperor, 230. 
 
 Conrad I.V., accession of, to the imperial throne, 
 
 143 ; his death, ib. 
 
 Conradin (son of Conrad IV., king of Naples), cru- 
 elly put to death by Charles, count of Anjou, 149. 
 Conscription (military), oppressive under Charle- 
 magne, 24. 
 Consolato del Mare, a code of maritime laws, ori- 
 
 gtn and date of, 481, 482, note. 
 Constable of England, jurisdiction of, 225, 226. 
 
 Constance (council at), proceedings of, 309311. 
 
 Constantinople, situation and state of, in the sev- 
 enth century, 254 ; captured by the Latins, 256 ; 
 recovered by the Greeks, 257 ; its danger from 
 the Turks, 259 ; its fall, ib. ; alarm excited by it 
 in Europe, 259, 260. 
 
 Constitution of France, 97, 114; of Castile, 206, 
 215 ; of Aragon, 218, 219 ; of Germany, 235, 236, 
 240, 243 ; of Bohemia, 243 ; of Hungary, 245 ; 
 of Switzerland, 247249 ; of England, during the 
 Anglo Saxon government, 318 332; Anglo-Nor- 
 man constitution of England, 332346; on the 
 present constitution of England, 354450. 
 ontinental wars of English sovereigns, effects of, 
 on the English constitution, 429, 430. 
 opyholders, origin of, 437. 
 
 orruption of morals in the clergy in the tenth cen- 
 tury, 277. 
 
 Corruption of the Latin language, observations on, 
 454, 455. 
 
 Cortes of Aragon, powers of, 224. 
 
 Cortes of Castile, constitution of, 206 ; deputies 
 when admitted from towns, ib. ; spiritual and 
 temporal nobility in cortes, 207; their control 
 over expenditure, 210 ; forms of the Castilian 
 cortes, 211 ; their rights in legislation, ib. ; other 
 rights of the cortes, 212. 
 
 Corvinus. See Mathias Corvinus. 
 
 Councils (ecclesiastical), of Lyons, 142, 231 ; of 
 Frankfort, 272 ; of Pisa, 309 ; of Constance, 309 
 311 ; of Basle, 311, 312 ; considerations on the 
 probable effects of holding periodical ecclesiasti- 
 cal councils, 312. 
 
 Councils (national and political) : powers of the 
 royal council of the third race of French kings, 
 98, 112 ; of Castile, 207 213 ; jurisdiction of the 
 ordinary council of the kings of England, 419 
 422. 
 
 Counsellors of parliament, how appointed in France, 
 114. 
 
 Counts Palatine, jurisdiction of, 108 ; their juris 
 diction in England, 352, 353, note. 
 
 Counts of Paris, power of, 24 ; rank and power of 
 the provincial counts, 67 ; this office originally 
 temnorary, ib., note ; their usurpations, 72. 
 
 Coumrcs, division of (in England), its antiqui'.y, 
 323 ; jurisdiction of county courts, 324 ; process 
 of a suit in a county court, ib. ; importance of 
 these co'urts, 325 ; representatives of counties, by 
 whom chosen, 406; county elections badly at- 
 tended, 410 ; the influence of the crown upon 
 them, 410, 411. 
 
 Cours plenieres, or parliaments, when held in 
 France, 99 ; business transacted in them, ib. 
 
 Court-baron, jurisdiction of, 352, note. 
 
 Court of peers, when established in France, 112. 
 
 Courts of justice in England, under the Norman 
 kings : the king's court, 345 ; the exchequer, 
 346 ; of justices of assize, ib. ; the court of com- 
 mon pleas, 347. 
 
 Cross-bow, when introduced, 183. 
 
 Crown, succession to, in Castile, 206 ; of Aragon, 
 218 ; among the Anglo-Saxons, 320 ; hereditary 
 right to, when established in England, 349 ; cases 
 of dispensing power, claimed and executed by 
 the English kings, 395 ; influence of, on county 
 elections, 410, 411. 
 
 Crusade against the Albigeois, 29 ; the first crusade 
 against the Saracens, or Turks, 31, 255 ; means 
 resorted to to promote it, 32 ; its result, 33 ; the 
 second crusade, 34 ; the third cfusade, 35 ; the 
 two crusades of St. Louis, ib. ; another attempt- 
 ed by Pope Pius, 260 ; crusade of children in 
 1211, 463, note ; immorality of the crusaders, 460 i 
 their effects on chivalry, 511. 
 Curia Regis and Curia Parium, not different from 
 the Concilium Regium, 98, note. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 
 555 
 
 D. 
 
 Damascus, account of the khalifs of, 252. 
 
 Dante, sketch of the life of, 535 ; review of his po- 
 etical character, 535, 536 ; popularity of his Di- 
 vine Comedy, 537 ; its probable source, ib., note. 
 
 Dauphine (province of), historical notice of, 63, note. 
 
 Decanus, functions of, 107. 
 
 Decretals forged in the name of Isidore, 273, 274, 
 and note. 
 
 Decretum of Gratian, notice of, 290. 
 
 Degeneracy of the popes in the ninth century, 277. 
 
 Degradation of morals in the dark ages, 502, 503. 
 
 Denina's Rivoluzioni d'ltalia, observations on, 125, 
 note. 
 
 Depopulation of England by William the Con- 
 queror, 354. 
 
 Diet of Roncaglia, 133 ; proceedings of the diet of 
 Worms, 240, 241 ; remarks thereon, 283 ; diet of 
 Frankfort, established the independence of the 
 German empire, 305. 
 
 Dispensations of marriage, a source of papal power, 
 292, 293 ; dispensations granted by the popes from 
 the observance of promissory oaths, 293, 294. 
 
 Dispensing power of the crown, instances of, 395. 
 
 Disseisin, forcible remedy for, 432, note. 
 
 Dissensions, sanguinary, in the cities of Lombardy, 
 146, 147. 
 
 Divorce practised in France at pleasure, 292. 
 
 Domain, the term explained, 115, note. 
 
 Dominican order, origin and progress of, 291, 292. 
 
 Duelling, origin of, 462, 463, note. 
 
 Dukes of provinces in France, their rank and power, 
 67; their office originally temporary, ib., note; 
 their usurpations, 72 ; their progress slower in 
 Germany than in France 228 ; partitioned their 
 dutchies in Germany, ib. 
 
 E. 
 
 Earl, original meaning of, 321, note. 
 
 Earl marshal of England, jurisdiction of, 425. 
 
 Eccelin da Romano, tyranny and cruelty of, 141, 
 note. 
 
 Ecclesiastical power, history of, during ttyj middle 
 ages. See Clergy, Popes. 
 
 Edessa, principality of, its extent, 33, note. 
 
 Edicts (royal), when registered in the parliament 
 of Paris, 113. 
 
 Edward the Confessor, laws of, 340. 
 
 Edward I. (king of England), accession of, 353 ; 
 disputes of, with Pope Boniface VIII., 301 ; con- 
 firms the charters, 354. 
 
 Edward III. (king of England), unjust claim of, to 
 the crown of France, 39 ; prosecutes his claim 
 by arms, 40 ; causes of his success, ib. ; charac- 
 ter of him, and of his son, ib. ; his resources, 41 ; 
 and victories, 41, 42 ; concludes the peace of 
 Bretigni, 43 ; and the treaty of Calais, 44 ; re- 
 marks on his conduct, 44, 45 ; renews the wars 
 with France, 46 ; his death, ib. ; dissuaded by 
 Pope Benedict XII. from taking the title and 
 arms of France, 40, note ; memorable proceedings 
 of parliament in the 50th year of his reign, 379, 
 380; by his wise measures promoted the com- 
 merce and manufactures of England, 476, 477. 
 
 Edward IV. invades France, 58 ; but is persuaded 
 to return, ib. ; character of his reign, 448, 449 ; 
 the first monarch who levied benevolences, 449. 
 
 Elections (episcopal), freedom of, papal encroach- 
 ments on, 294. 
 
 Elections of members of parliament, contested, 
 how determined, 405 ; right of electing knights, 
 in whom vested, 406 ; elections of burgesses, 
 how anciently conducted, ib. ; irregularity of 
 county elections, 410 ; influence of the crown 
 upon them, 410, 411. 
 
 Electors (seven) of the German empire, their priv- 
 ileges, 232, 233 ; their privileges augmented by 
 the Golden Bull, 236. 
 
 Elgiva, queen or mistress of King Edwy, case of, 
 considered, 269, note. 
 
 Emanation, system of, 528, note. 
 
 Emperors of Germany. See Germany. 
 
 Enfranchisement. See Manumission. 
 
 England, effects of the feudal system in, 123 ; arro- 
 gant tyranny of the hierarchy there, in-the ninth 
 century, 269 ; attempts made to deprefs it, 299, 
 300. 
 
 constitution of, during the Anglo-Saxon 
 
 government, 318 ; sketch of the Anglo-Saxon 
 history of England, 318320; influence of pro- 
 vincial governors, 321 ; distribution into thanes 
 and ceorls, 32 1,322; British natives, 322 ; slaves, 
 ib. ; the wittenagemot, 322, 323 ; judicial power, 
 323 ; division into counties, hundreds, and tith- 
 ings, ib. ; county court, and suits therein, 324 ; 
 trial by jury, 325 ; law of frankpledge, 327 ; feu- 
 dal tenures, whether known in England before 
 the conquest, 329332. 
 
 constitution of, during the Anglo-Norman 
 
 government, 332 ; conquest of England by Will- 
 iam, duke of Normandy, ib. ; his conduct at first 
 moderate, 333 ; afterward more tyrannical, ib. ; 
 degraded condition of the English, ib. ; confisca- 
 tion of their property, 334 ; devastation and de- 
 population of their country, 334, 335 ; riches of 
 the conqueror, 335 ; his mercenary troops, ib. ; 
 feudal system established in England, ib. ; differ- 
 ence between it and the feudal policy in France, 
 336 ; hatred of the Normans by the English, 337 ; 
 tyranny of the Norman government, ib. ; exac- 
 tions, 338 ; general taxes, ib. ; right of legislation, 
 339 ; laws and charters of Norman kings, 340 ; 
 Magna Charta, 341 ; state of the constitution un- 
 der Henry III., 342 ; the king's court, 345 ; the 
 court of exchequer, 346 ; institution of justices 
 of assize, ib. ; the court of common pleas, 347 ; 
 origin of the common law, ib. ; character and 
 defects of the English law, 348 ; hereditary right 
 of the crown established, 349; English gentry 
 destitute of exclusive privileges, 350 ; causes of 
 the equality among freemen in England, 351. 
 
 on the present constitution of England, 
 
 353 ; accession of Edward I., ib. ; confirmation 
 of the charters, 354 ; the constitution of parlia 
 ment, 355 ; the spiritual peers, ib. ; the lay peers, 
 earls, and barons, 356 ; whether tenants in chief 
 attended parliament under Henry III., 358 ; ori- 
 gin and progress of parliamentary representation, 
 359 ; whether the knights were elected by free 
 holders in general, 360 ; progress of towns, 362 , 
 towns let in fee-farm, 363 ; charters of incorpo 
 ration, 364 ; prosperity of English towns, partic- 
 ularly London, 365 ; towns, when first summon- 
 ed to parliament, 366 ; cause of summoning dep- 
 uties from boroughs, 370 ; parliament, when di- 
 vided into two houses, 371 ; petitions of parlia- 
 ment during the reign of Edward II., 372; sev- 
 eral rights established by the commons in the 
 reign of Edward III., 373 ; remonstrances against 
 levying money without consent, 373, 374 ; the 
 concurrence of both houses in legislation neces- 
 sary, 376 ; statutes distinguished from ordinances, 
 ib. ; advice of parliament required on matters of 
 war and peace, 378 ; right of the commons to 
 inquire into public abuses, 379 ; proceedings of 
 the parliament in the 50th year of Edward III., 
 379, 380 ; great increase of the power of the 
 commons in the reign of Richard II., 381 ; his 
 character, 384 ; proceedings of parliament in the 
 10th year of Richard It., 385 ; commission of re- 
 form, 385, 386 ; answers of the judges to Rich- 
 ard's question's, 387 ; subsequent revolution, ib. ; 
 

 556 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 greater harmony between the king and parlia- 
 ment, 388 ; disunion among some leading peers, 
 ib. ; arbitrary measures of the king, 389, 390 ; 
 tyranny of Richard, 391 ; he is deposed and suc- 
 ceeded by Henry- IV., ib. ; retrospect of the pro- 
 gress of the constitution under Richard II., 393 ; 
 its advances under the house of Lancaster, ib. ; 
 appropriation of supplies, 394 ; attempt to make 
 supply depend on redress of grievances, ib. ; le- 
 gislative rights of the commons established, 395 ; 
 dispensing power of the crown, ib. ; interference 
 of parliament with the royal expenditure, 397 ; 
 parliament consulted on all public affairs by the 
 kings of England, 399 ; impeachment of minis- 
 ters, 400 ; privilege of parliament, 400, 401 ; con- 
 tested elections how determined, 405 ; in whom 
 the right of voting for knights vested, 406 ; elec- 
 tion of burgesses, ib. ; power of the sheriff to 
 omit boroughs, 407; reluctance of boroughs to 
 send members, 408 ; who the electors in bor- 
 oughs were, 409 ; number of members fluctua- 
 ting, ib. ; irregularity of elections, 410 ; influence 
 of the crown upon them, 410, 411 ; constitution 
 of the house of lords, 411 ; baronial tenure re- 
 quired for lords spiritual, 411,412 ; barons called 
 by writ, 412 ; bannerets summoned to the house 
 of lords, 413 ; creation of peers by statute, 415 ; 
 and by patent, ib. ; clergy summoned to parlia- 
 ment, 416 ; jurisdiction of the king's ordinary 
 council, 419 ; character of the Plantagenet gov- 
 ernment, 423 ; prerogative, 423, 424 ; its excesses, 
 424, 425 ; Sir John Fortescue's doctrine as to the 
 English constitution, 426, 427 ; erroneous views 
 of Hums respecting the English constitution, 
 427 ; instances of illegal condemnation rare, 428 ; 
 causes tending to form the constitution, 429 ; its 
 state about the time of Henry VI.'s reign, 441 ; 
 historical instances of regencies, 441 444 ; men- 
 tal derangement of Henry II ., 444 ; Duke of York 
 made protector, ib. ; his claim to the crown, 146 ; 
 war of the Ljyacastrians and Yorkists, 447 ; reign 
 of Edward IV., 448 ; general review of the Eng- 
 lish constitution, 450. 
 
 England. State of the commerce and manufac- 
 tures of England, 475, 476 ; singularly flourishing 
 state of its commerce in the reiens of Edward II., 
 Richard II., Henry IV. and VI.; and Edward IV., 
 478. 
 
 , increase of domestic expenditure in, du- 
 ring the fourteenth century, 486 ; inefficacy of 
 sumptuary laws, 486, 487; state of civil architec- 
 ture from the time of the Saxons, 488, 491, 492 ; 
 furniture of houses, 491, 492 ; state of ecclesias- 
 tical architecture, 492 494 ; wretched state of 
 agriculture, 495497 ; civil law, when introdu- 
 ced into England, 522 ; state of literature, 540, 
 541. 
 
 English language, slow progress of, accounted for, 
 540. 
 
 Enthusiasts, risings of, in various parts of Europe, 
 during the dark ages, 463, 464. 
 
 Equality of civil rights in England, causes of, 351, 
 352. 
 
 Erigena, a celebrated schoolman, no pantheist, 528, 
 note. 
 
 Escheats, nature of, in the feudal system, 80. 
 
 Escuage, nature of, and when introduced, 120 ; not 
 to be levied without the consent of parliament, 
 342 ; when it became a parliamentary assessment 
 in England, 338, 339. 
 
 Esquires, education of, 516. 
 
 Establishments of St. Louis, account of, 110, 111. 
 
 Estates of the realm, number of, determined, 403, 
 404, note. 
 
 Ethelwolf established payment of tithes in Eng- 
 land, 264, note. 
 
 Europe, state of society in, during the middle ages, 
 450, et se<j. 
 
 Exactions of the Norman king* of England, 338. 
 339. 
 
 Exchequer, court of, when instituted, 346 ; its pow- 
 ers and jurisdiction, ib. 
 
 Excommunication, original nature of, 275 ; punish- 
 ments and disabilities of excommunicated per- 
 sons, ib., and note, 276, note; greater and lesser 
 excommunications, 276 ; burial denied to the ex- 
 communicated, ib. 
 
 Expenditure (royal) controlled by the English par- 
 liament, 397. 
 
 Expenditure (domestic), increase of, in Italy, du- 
 ring the fourteenth century, 485, 486; and in 
 England, 486. 
 
 F. 
 
 Falconry, prevalence of, 470. 
 
 False decretals of Isidore, 273, 274. 
 
 Fealty, nature of, in conferring fiefs, 76. 
 
 Ferdinand (king of Naples), turbulent reign of, 191. 
 
 Ferdinand (king of Aragon) marries Isabella of 
 Castile, and unites the two kingdoms, 225 ; con- 
 quers Granada, 225, 226 ; subsequent events of 
 his reign, 226. 
 
 Feuds, divided into proper and improper, 81, 82. 
 
 Feudal system, history of, especially in France, 64 - r 
 gradual establishment of feudal tenures, 70 72 ; 
 change of allodial into feudal tenures, 73 ; cus- 
 tom of personal commendation, 73, 74 ; the prin- 
 ciples of a feudal relation investigated, 75 ; cere- 
 monies of homage, fealty, and investiture, 76 ; 
 account of feudal incidents, viz. : reliefs, 77 ; 
 fines on the alienation of lands, 78 ; escheats and 
 forfeiture, 80 ; aids.ib. ; wardship, ib. ; marriage, 
 81 ; analogies to the feudal system, 83, 84 ; its 
 local extent, 84 ; view of the different orders of 
 society during the feudal ages, 8592 ; privileges 
 of the French vassals, 93 ; suspension of legis- 
 lative authority during the prevalence of the feu- 
 dal system, 96; feudal courts of justice, 109; 
 trial by combat, ib. ; causes of the decline of the 
 feudal system, 113; especially in France, 115; 
 the acquisition of power by the crown, ib. , aug- 
 mentation of the royal domain, ib. ; the institu- 
 tion of free and chartered towns, 116; the con- 
 nexion of free towns with the king, 118 ; the in- 
 dependence of maritime towns, ib. ; the commu- 
 tation of military feudal service for money, 120 ; 
 the employment of mercenary troops, 121 ; and 
 the establishment of a regular standing army, 
 122 ; general view of the advantages and disad- 
 vantages of the feudal cystem, 123, 124 ; inquiry 
 whether feudal tenures were known in England 
 before the conquest, 329 332; this system es- 
 tablished in England by the Anglo-Norman kings, 
 335 ; difference between the feudal policy in Eng- 
 land and in France, 336, 337 ; influence of the 
 manner in which feudal principles of insubordi- 
 nation and resistance were modified by the pre- 
 rogatives of the early Norman kings on the Eng- 
 lish constitution, 430432 ; instances of the abu- 
 ses of feudal rights in England, 424, 425 ; con- 
 nexion of the feudal services with chivalry, 511 ; 
 that connexion broken, ib. 
 
 Fief, essential principles of, 75 ; ceremonies used 
 in conferring a fief, 76 ; nature of fiefs of office, 82. 
 
 Field-sports, passion for, in the dark ages, 470, 471. 
 
 Fines payable on the alienation of lands under the 
 feudal system, 78, 79. 
 
 Firearms, when invented, 184 ; improvements in, 
 185. 
 
 Firma del derecho, nature of the process of, in the 
 law of Aragon, 221, and note. 
 
 Fiscal lands, nature of, 70. 
 
 Flagellants, superstitious practices of, 464. 
 
 Flemings, rebellion of, against their sovereign, 47 ; 
 its causes, ib., note ; their insubordination to the 
 
INDEX. 
 
 house of Burgundy, 59 ; paid no taxes without 
 the consent of the three estates, ib. ; their inde- 
 pendent spirit, ib., note ; flourishing state of their 
 commerce and manufactures, 474 ; especially at 
 Bruges and Ghent, 475 ; inducements held out 
 to them to settle in England, 476, note. 
 
 Florence (republic of), reluctantly acknowledges 
 the sovereignty of the emperors of Germany, 153, 
 note; revolution there in the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centuries, 156 ; its government, ib. ; the 
 commercial citizens divided into companies, or 
 arts, ib. ; civil and criminal justice, how admin- 
 istered in the thirteenth century, ib. ; change in 
 its constitution in the fourteenth century, 157 , 
 the gonfaloniers of justice when introduced, 158 ; 
 rise of the plebeian nobles, 159 ; Walter de Bri- 
 enne, duke of Athens, appointed signior of Flor- 
 ence, ib. ; his tyranny, 160 ; he abdicates his 
 signiory, ib. ; subsequent revolution in that city, 
 160, 161 ; feuds of the Guelfsand Ghibelins, 161, 
 162; the tyranny of the Guelfs subverted by a 
 sedition of the ciompi or populace, 162, 163; Mi- 
 chel de Lando elected signior, 16J ; his wise 
 government, ib. ; revolution affected by Alberti 
 Stvozzi and Scala, 164; acquisitions of territory 
 by Florence, 165 ; revenues of the republic, ib. ; 
 population, 166, note; conquers Pisa, ib. ; state 
 of Florence in the fifteenth century, 192, 193 ; 
 rise of the family of Medici, 193. 
 
 Folkland, nature of, 329. 
 
 Forest laws, sanguinary, of William the Conqueror, 
 334, 335 ; jurisdiction of, 425. 
 
 Fortescue (Sir John), doctrine of, concerning the 
 constitution of England, 426, 427. 
 
 France, invaded by Clovis, 17 ; his victories, 18 ; 
 partitions his dominions, ib. ; sketch of the reigns 
 of his descendants, 18, 19; their degeneracy, 19 ; 
 are held in subjection by the mayors of the pal- 
 ace, 19, 69 ; change in the Merovingian dynasty, 
 20 ; accession of Pepin, ib. ; his victories, ib. ; 
 reign and exploits of Charlemagne, 20, 21 ; ex- 
 tent of his dominions, 21 ; his coronation as em- 
 peror, ib. ; his character, 22 ; reign and misfor- 
 tunes of Louis the Debonair, 23, 24 ; decline of 
 the Carlovingian family, 24 ; dismemberment of 
 the empire, and accession of Hugh Capet, ib. ; 
 state of the people at. that time, 24, 25 ; his im- 
 mediate successors, 27 ; reisns of Louis VI., ib. ; 
 of Louis VII., 28 ; of Philip Augustus, 28, 29 ; 
 of Louis VIII., 29, 30; of Louis IX., 30, 31, 35. 
 36 ; of Philip the Bold, 36 ; of Philip the Fair, 
 ib. ; aggrandizement of the French monarchy 
 under his reign, 36, 37; of Louis X., 37; and 
 Philip V., ib. ; of Charles IV. and Philip of Va- 
 lois, 39; unjust pretensions of Edward III. to 
 the throne of France, ib. ; causes of his success 
 in war against France, 40; characters of the 
 kings Philip VI. and John, 40, 41 ; wretched 
 condition of France after the battle of Poitiers, 
 42, 43 ; the English lose all their conquests, 46 ; 
 state of France during the minority of Charles 
 VI., 47 ; his assumption of full regal power, 48 ; 
 factions and civil wars, 48 50; calamitous state 
 of France during the remainder of his reign, 50, 
 51 ; invaded by Henry V., 51 ; reign of Charles 
 VII., 52 54; the English lose all their conquests, 
 55 ; state of France during the second English 
 wars, 55, 56 ; reign of Louis XL, 5662 ; of 
 Charles VIII., 6264. 
 
 , constitution of the ancient Frank mon- 
 archy, 67 ; limited power of the king, 68 ; grad- 
 ual increase of the regal power, ib. ; different 
 classes of subjects, ib. ; degeneracy of the royal 
 family, 69 ; power of the mayors of the palace, 
 19, 69 ; origin of nobility in France, 69 ; and of 
 sub-infeudation, 72 ; usurpation of the provincial 
 governors, ib. ; comparative state of France and 
 
 Germany at the division of Charlemagne's em- 
 pire, 92 ; privileges of the French vassals, 93, et 
 seq. ; legislative assemblies, 96 ; privileges of the 
 subjects, 98 ; royal council of the third race, ib. ; 
 occasional assemblies of barons, 99 ; cours pleni- 
 eres, ib. ; limitations of the royal power in legis- 
 lation, ib. ; first measures of general legislation, 
 100; legislative power of the crown increases, 
 ib. ; convocation of the states-general by Philip 
 the Fair, 101 ; theuvrights, 102 ; states-general 
 of 1355 and 1356, 103 ; states-general under 
 Charles VII., 105; provincial states, 106, 107; 
 successive changes in the judicial polity of 
 France, 107 114; papal authority restrained in 
 that country, 314, 315 ; liberties of the French 
 church, 315. 
 
 France, state of civil architecture there during the 
 middle ages, 490 ; account of the literature of 
 France, 531534 ; French language why prefer- 
 red by the early Italian historians, 535, note. 
 
 Francibcan order, origin and progress of, 291 ; 
 schism in, 306, and note. 
 
 Franconia, emperors of the house of, viz., Conrad 
 II, 127, 228; Henry III., 228; Henry IV., ib. ; 
 Henry V., 229 ; extinction of the house of Fran- 
 conia, ib. 
 
 Frankleyn, condition of, in England, 429, and note. 
 
 Frankfort, council of, 272 ; remarks on its proceed- 
 ings, 273. 
 
 Franks invade Gaul, 17; effects of this invasion, 
 65 ; succession of the Frank monarchy, 67. 
 
 Frank-pledge (law of) not invented by Alfred the 
 Great, 327 ; origin and progress of, 328, 329. 
 
 Frederick Barbarossa ascends the throne of Ger- 
 many, 132, 230 ; ruins Henry the Lion, duke of 
 Saxony, 230; invades Lombardy, 132, 133; con- 
 quers Milan, 133; violates the capitulation he 
 had granted the Milanese, ib. ; defeats them again, 
 and destroys their city, 134 ; the league of Lom- 
 bardy formed against him, ib. ; is himself defeat- 
 ed at the battle of Legnano, 135 ; and compelled 
 to acknowledge the independence of the Lom- 
 bard republics, ib. 
 
 Frederick IK (emperor), turbulent reign of, 139 
 142; he is formally deposed at the council of 
 Lyons, 143, 231] consequences of that council, 
 231. 
 
 Frederick III. (emperor), reign of, 237 ; his singular 
 device, ib., note. 
 
 Free cities of Germany, origin and progress of, 238^ 
 their leagues, 239. 
 
 Freeholders, different classes of, among the Anglo- 
 Saxons, 321,322; whether the English freehold- 
 ers in general elected knights to serve in parlia- 
 ment, 360362 ; the elective franchise when re- 
 stricted to freeholders of forty shillings per an- 
 num, 406 ; freeholders in soccage, whether liable 
 to contribute towards the wages of knights of 
 counties, 408, note. 
 
 Freemen, rank and privileges of, in the feudal sys- 
 tem, 88; more numerous in Provence than in 
 any other part of France, 116, note ; their privi- 
 leges in England under Magna Charta, 342; 
 causes of the equality among freemen in Eng- 
 land, 351. 
 
 Free towns, institution of, in France, 116; origin 
 of them, 117 ; circumstances attending the char- 
 ter of Laon, ib. ; extent of their privileges, 118; 
 their connexion with the king, ib. ; the maritime 
 towns particularly independent, 119 ; could con- 
 fer freedom on runaway serfs, ib., note. 
 
 French language, long prevalence of, in England, 
 540, 541 ; why preferred by the early Italian his- 
 torians, 535, note. 
 
 Frerage, nature of, 79, 80. 
 
 Friendly society, account of one at Exter, 364, 
 note. 
 
558 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fulk, count of Anjou, saucy reproof of his sover- 
 eign by, 459, note. 
 
 Furniture of houses in the fifteenth century, curi- 
 ous inventories of 491, 492, and notes. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gallican church, liberties of, 315. 
 
 Gardening, state of, in the fourteenth century, 497. 
 
 Gamier (the historian of France), character of, 63, 
 64, note. 
 
 Gaul invaded by Clovis, 17; effects of its conquest 
 by the Franks, 65; condition of the Roman na- 
 tives of Gaul, 65, 66. 
 
 Genoa (republic), commercial prosperity of, 167, 
 479 ; war with Venice, 167, 168 ; decline of her 
 power, 169 ; government of Genoa, 170; election 
 of the first doge, ib. ; subsequent revolutions, 
 171 ; state of, in the fifteenth century, 192; ac- 
 count of the bank of St. George there, 485. 
 
 Gentlemen, rank of, in the feudal system, 85 ; gen- 
 tility of blood, how ascertained, ib. ; character 
 of, succeeded that of knights, 519, 520. 
 
 Gentry (English) destitute of exclusive privileges 
 under the Anglo-Norman kings, 350, 351. 
 
 Germany (ancient), political state of, 64; lands 
 how partitioned by the Germans in conquered 
 provinces, ib. ; fiefs not inheritable by women, 
 82, note ; comparative state of France and Ger- 
 many at the division of Charlemagne's empire, 92. 
 
 Germany, when separated from France, 227 ; the 
 sovereignty of its emperors recognised by the 
 cities of Lombardy, 132; election of Conrad I., 
 227 ; election of the house of Saxony, ib. ; of 
 Otho I., or the Great, 126, 227; of Henry II., 
 127, 228 ; the house of Franconia : election of 
 Conrad II., 128, 228; power of Henry III., 228 ; 
 unfortunate reign of Henry IV., 228, 229; he is 
 excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII., 229 ; and 
 deposed, ib. ; reign of Henry VI., 231 ; extinction 
 of the house of Franconia, and election of Lo- 
 thaire, 229 ; house of Swabia : election of Con- 
 rad III., 230; and of Frederick Bajjbarossa, ib. ; 
 he ruins Henry the Lion, duke of^Saxony, ib. ; 
 defeats the Milanese, 132, 133 ; violates the ca- 
 pitulation, 133 ; is defeated by the confederated 
 cities of Lombardy, 135 ; reign of Philip, 231 ; 
 and of Otho IV., 139, 231 ; turbulent reign of 
 Frederick II., 139142; he is formally deposed 
 
 at the council of Lyons, 142,231 ; consequences 
 of that council, 231 ; accession and death of 
 Conrad IV., 143 ; relation of the emperors with 
 Italy, 172, 173; grand interregnum, 232 ; Rich- 
 ard, earl of Cornwall, chosen emperor, ib. ; his 
 character, ib. ; state of the Germanic constitution 
 at this time, 232234; election of Rodolph, 
 count of Hapsburg, 234 ; his character, ib. ; he 
 invests his son Albert with the dutchy of Austria, 
 ib. ; state of the empire after the death of Ro- 
 dolph, 235 ; reigns of the emperors of the house 
 of Luxembourg, Henry VII. and Charles IV., 
 236; golden bull of Charles IV., ib. ; deposition 
 of Wenceslaus, 236, 237 ; accession of the house 
 of Austria, 237 ; reign of Albert II., ib. ; of Fred- 
 erick III., ib. ; progress of free imperial cities, 
 238 ; their leagues, 239 ; provincial states of the 
 empire, ib. ; alienation of the imperial domain, 
 239, 240 ; accession of Maximilian, and the diet 
 of Worms, 240 ; establishment of public peace, 
 ib. ; institution and functions of the imperial 
 chamber, 241, 242 ; establishment of circles, 242 ; 
 of the aulic council, ib. ; limits of the empire, 
 243 ; account of the constitution of Bohemia, 
 ib. ; of the kingdom of Hungary, 244, 245 ; of 
 Svfcsserland and its confederacy, 246249 ; em- 
 perors of Germany anciently confirmed the elec- 
 tion of popes, 280 ; their election afterward claim- 
 
 ed to be confirmed by the popes, 286, 289 ; inde- 
 pendence of the empire established at the diet of 
 Frankfort, 305. 
 
 Ghent, state of, in the fourteenth century, 475 ; its 
 population, ib., note. 
 
 Ghibelins (faction of), origin of, 230 ; formed to 
 support the imperial claims against the popes, 
 138, 139 ; duration of this faction, 139, note ; their 
 decline, 149, 150; and temporary revival, 151. 
 
 Giano della Bella, change effected by, in the gov- 
 ernment of Florence, 158. 
 
 Giovanni di Vicenza, character and fate of, 148. 
 
 Glass windows, when first used, 491. 
 
 Godfrey of Boulogne, king of Jerusalem, notice of, 
 33, 34, and note. 
 
 Gold passed chiefly by weight in the first ages of 
 the French monarchy, 93. 
 
 Golden Bull, account of the enactments of, 236. 
 
 Gothic architecture, origin of, 493, 494, and notes. 
 
 Grand sergeantry, tenure by, explained, 82, note. 
 
 Gratian's Decretum, account of, 290. 
 
 Greece, state of literature in, during the fifteenth 
 century, 546, 547. 
 
 Greek language unknown in the west of Europe 
 during the dark ages, with a few exceptions, 545 ; 
 its study revived in the fourteenth century, 545, 
 546. 
 
 Greek provinces of southern Italy, state of, in the 1 
 ninth and tenth centuries, 128. 
 
 Greek empire, state of, at the rise of Mahometan- 
 ism, 251, 252 ; its revival in the seventh century, 
 254; crusades in its behalf against the Turks, 
 255 ; progress of the Greeks, 256 ; conquest of 
 Constantinople by the Latins, ib. ; partition of 
 the Greek empire, 257 ; the Greeks recover Con- 
 stantinople, ib. ; declining state of the Greek 
 empire, 257, 258 ; danger of Constantinople from 
 the Turks, 259 ; its fall, ib. ; alarm excited by it 
 in Europe, 259, 260. 
 
 Gregory of Tours (St.), pious falsehoods of, 468, 
 and note. 
 
 Gregory I. (pope), manoeuvres of, to gain power, 
 271 ; established the appellant jurisdiction of the 
 see of Rome, ib., and note. 
 
 Gregory VII. (Hiklebrand), pope, differences of, 
 witli the emperor, Henry IV., 281 ; excommuni- 
 cates and deposes him, 229, 282 ; his humiliating 
 treatment of the emperor, 282 ; driven from Rome 
 by Henry IV., 283 ; and dies in exile, ib. ; his 
 general conduct considered, 285, 286. 
 
 Gregory XII. (pope), contested election of, 308, 
 309 ; deposed at the council of Pisa, 309. 
 
 Guardianship in chivalry, nature of, 80. 
 
 Guelfs, faction of, origin of the name, 230 ; support 
 of the claims of the papal see, 138, 139 See 
 Ghibelins. 
 
 Guesclin (Bernard du), character of, 46. 
 
 Guiennc, insurrection in, 56 ; its cause, ib., note. 
 
 Guilds or fraternities, under the Anglo-Norman 
 government, account of, 364, and note. 
 
 Guiscard (Robert), conquests of, in Italy. 129. 
 
 Guiscard (Roger) conquers Sicily, 129 ; is created 
 by Pope Innocent II. king of Sicily, ib. 
 
 Gunpowder, when and by whom invented, 184, and 
 
 H. 
 
 Hanseatic union, origin of, 239, 4Jl4-ks progress, 
 478. 
 
 Hapsburg, emperors of the house of: Rodolph, 
 234; his successors, 235; Albert II., 237; Fred- 
 erick III., ib. 
 
 Hastings (lord), a pensioner of France, 58. 
 
 Hawkwood (Sir John), an English military adven- 
 turer, account of, 181 ; military tactics improved 
 by him, ib. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Haxey (Thomas), prosecuted by Richard II. for 
 proposing an obnoxious bill in parliament, 389 ; 
 and condemned for high treason, ib. ; his life why 
 spared, ib., and note ; his judgment afterward re- 
 versed, ib., note. 
 
 Henry II. elected emperor of Germany, 127, 228. 
 
 Henry III. (emperor of Germany), power of, 228. 
 
 Henry I V. (emperor of Germany), unfortunate reign 
 of, 228, 229 ; differences of, with Pope Gregory 
 VII., 281 ; he is excommunicated and deposed, 
 229, 282; his deep humiliation, 282; drives the 
 pope into exile, 283. 
 
 Henry V. (emperor of Germany), reign of, 229 ; 
 compromises the question of ecclesiastical inves- 
 titures with Calixtus, 283. 
 
 Henry VII. (emperor of Germany), reign of, 236. 
 
 Henry I. (king of England), laws of, not compiled 
 till the reign of Stephen, 348. 
 
 Henry III. (king of England), state of the constitu- 
 tion during his reign, 342344 ; imprudently ac- 
 cepts the throne of Sicily for his son Edmund, 
 344 ; subsequent misery of his kingdom, ib. ; the 
 royal prerogative limited during his reign, 345 ; 
 the commons first summoned to parliament in his 
 reign, 366369. 
 
 Henry (duke of Hereford), quarrel of, with the 
 Duke of Norfolk, 391 ; banished for ten years, ib. ; 
 deposes Richard II., ib. ; and ascends the throne 
 of England by the title of 
 
 Henry IV., 392; claims the throne by right of con- 
 quest, ib. ; reflections on his conduct, 392, 393 ; 
 memorable petition of the house of commons to j 
 him, 396 ; his reply, ib. ; his expenditure con- 
 trolled by the house of commons, 397, 398. 
 
 Henry V., character of, at his accession to the Eng- 
 lish throne, 399 ; invades France, 51 ; gains the 
 battle of Azincourt, ib., and notes; his further 
 progress, ib. ; treaty of Troyes, ib. 
 
 Henry VI., accession of, to the English throne, 52 ; 
 causes of the success of the English, ib. ; disas- 
 trous events of his reign, 441 ; his mental de- 
 rangement, 444 ; Duke of York made protector, 
 ih. ; deposed, 447. 
 
 Henry the Lion (duke of Saxony), fall of, 230. 
 
 Henry, count of Trastamare (king of Castile), reign 
 of, 204. 
 
 Henry IV. (king of Castile), reign of, 205. 
 
 Heptarchy (Saxon), notice of, 319. 
 
 Heraldic devices, origin of, 85, 86, and note. 
 
 Heresy, statute against, in the fifth of Richard II., 
 not passed by the house of commons, 395. 
 
 Heriots of the Anglo-Saxons, equivalent with the 
 feudal reliefs, 331. 
 
 Hierarchy, papal encroachments on, 274. 
 
 Hilary (bishop of Aries) deposed by Pope Leo, 271, 
 note. 
 
 Hildebrand, archdeacon of Rome, character of, 281 ; 
 elected pope, ib. See Gregory VII. 
 
 Homage, ceremony of, 76 ; difference between 
 homage per peragium and liege homage, ib. note ; 
 and between liege homage and simple homage, ib. 
 
 Homme de pooste, synonymous to villein, 88, 89, 
 and note. 
 
 House of Commons, when constituted a separate 
 house, 371 ; knights of the shire, when first cho- 
 sen for, 358360 ; and by whom, 360362 ; bur- 
 gesses, when summoned, 366369 ; how elect- 
 ed, 406 ; causes of their being summoned, 370, 
 371 ; proper business of the house, 371, 372 ; pe- 
 tition for redress of grievances in the reign of 
 Edward II., 372 ; their assent pretended to the 
 deposition of Edward II., 373 ; establish several 
 rights during the reign of Edward III., ib. ; re- 
 monstrate against levying money without con- 
 sent, 373, 376 ; their consent necessary in legis- 
 lation, 376 ; their advice required in matters of 
 war and peace, 378, 379 ; their right to inquire 
 
 into public abuses, 379 ; great increase of their 
 power during the minority of Richard II., 381 ; 
 account of their remonstrances, 381383; re- 
 flections on their assumption of power during his 
 reign, 384 ; request the king to appoint a com- 
 mission of reform, 385, 386 ; remarks on this pro- 
 ceeding, 386, 387; claim the right of granting 
 and appropriating supplies, 394 ; attempt to make 
 supply depend on redress of grievances, ib. ; le- 
 gislative rights of this house established, 395 ; 
 resist infringements of that right, 395, 396 ; be- 
 gan to concern themselves with petitions to the 
 lords or to the council in the reign of Henry V., 
 397; interfere with the royal expenditure, ib. ; 
 consulted on all public affairs, 399 ; impeach the 
 king's ministers for malfeasance, 400 ; establish 
 the privilege of parliament, 400, 401 ; and the 
 right of determining contested elections, 405, 406 ; 
 fluctuations in the number of its members, 409. 
 
 House of Lords, constituent members of : spirit- 
 ual peers, 355 ; lay peers, earls, and barons, 356, 
 357 ; when formed into a separate house, 371 ; 
 their consent necessary in legislation, 37S ; their 
 advice required in questions of war and peace, 
 378, 379 ; claimed a negative voice in questions 
 of peace, 379 ; declared that no money can be 
 levied without the consent of parliament, 393. 
 
 Houses (English) chiefly built with timber, 489; 
 when built with bricks, ib. ; meanness of the or- 
 dinary mansion-houses, 489, 490; how built in 
 France and Italy, 490. 
 
 Hume (Mr.), mistakes of, concerning the English 
 constitution, corrected, 427, 428, and note, 429. 
 
 Hundreds, division of, 323, 324 ; whether they com- 
 prised free families rather than free proprietors, 
 324. 
 
 Hungarians, ravages of, in France and Germany, 25. 
 
 Hungary, sketch of the history of, 244, 245 ; reigns 
 of Sigismund and Uladislaus, 245 ; of Ladislaus 
 and the regency of Hunniades, ib. ; of Matthias 
 Corvinus, 246. 
 
 Hungerford (Sir Thomas), speaker of the house of 
 commons-, 381. 
 
 Hunniades (John), regent of Hungary, account of, 
 245, note ; and of his administration, ib. ; his 
 death, ib. 
 
 Huss (John), remarks on the violation of his safe 
 conduct, 312, note. 
 
 Hussite war in Bohemia, account of, 244. 
 
 Hussites of Bohemia, tenets of, 508, 509. 
 
 Ignorance prevalent in Europe in consequence of 
 the disuse of Latin, 459, 460. 
 
 Imilda de' Lambertazzi, melancholy fate of, 147. 
 
 Immunities claimed by the clergy, 298 ; attempts 
 to repress them in England, 299, 300 ; less vig- 
 orous in France, 300, 301. 
 
 Imperial chamber, origin, powers, and jurisdiction 
 of, 241, 242. 
 
 Impeachment (parliamentary), first instance of, in 
 Lord Latimer, 385 ; of the Earl of Suffolk, ib. ; 
 of ministers, when fully established, 400. 
 
 Imperial cities of Germany, origin and progress of, 
 238, 239 ; account of the leagues formed by them, 
 239. 
 
 Imperial domains, alienation of, 239, 240. 
 
 Incidents (feudal). See Aids, Escheats, Fines, 
 Marriages, Reliefs, Wardships. 
 
 Innocent III. (pope), character of, 137; conquers 
 the ecclesiastical state, 138 ; the league of Tus- 
 cany formed to support the claims of the see of 
 Rome, ib. ; success of, 287 ; his extraordinary 
 pretensions, ib. ; sometimes exerted his influence 
 beneficially, 2S8 instances of his tyranny, 288. 
 289. 
 
560 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Insurance (marine), why permitted, 485, note. 
 
 Interdicts (papal), origin and effects of, 276. 
 
 Interest of money, high rates of, 483, 484. 
 
 Investitures, different kinds of, 76 ; nature of eccle- 
 siastical investitures, 280 ; contests respecting 
 such investitures between the popes and empe- 
 rors of Germany, 281, 282; these disputes com- 
 promised by the concordat of Calixtus, 283 ; simi- 
 lar termination of these disputes in England, 284. 
 
 Isidore, false decretals of, 273, 274, and notes. 
 
 Italy, northern part of, invaded by the Lombards, 
 20 ; history of Italy from the extinction of the 
 Carlovingian emperors to the invasion of Naples 
 by Charles VIII., 125 ; state of that country after 
 the death of Charles the Fat, at the close of the 
 ninth century and the former part of the tenth, 
 125, 126 ; coronation of Otho the Great, 126 ; in- 
 ternal state of Rome, ib. ; Henry II. and Ardoin, 
 127 ; election of Conrad II., 128 ; Greek provin- 
 ces of Southern Italy, ib. ; settlement of the Nor- 
 mans at Aversa, ib. ; conquests of Robert Guis- 
 card, 129 ; papal investitures of Naples, ib. ; prog- 
 ress of the Lombard cities, ib. ; their acquisi- 
 tions of territory, 131 ; their mutual animosities, 
 132; sovereignty of the emperors, ib. ; Frederick 
 Barbarossa, ib. ; diet of Roncaglia, 133 ; capture 
 and destruction of Milan, 134 ; league of Lom- 
 bardy against Frederick, ib. ; battle of Legnano, 
 135 ; peace of Constance, ib. ; affairs of Sicily, 
 136 ; Innocent III., 137 ; bequest of the Countess 
 Matilda, ib. ; ecclesiastical state reduced by In- 
 nocent III., 137, 138; league of Tuscany, 138; 
 factions of the Guelfs and Ghibelins, ib. ; reign 
 of Otho IV., 139; of Frederick II., ib. ; his wars 
 with the Lombards, 140, 141 ; arrangement of 
 the Lombard cities, 141 ; council of Lyons, 142 ; 
 accession of Conrad IV., 143 ; causes of the suc- 
 cess of the Lombard cities, ib. ; their internal 
 governments, 144; and dissensions, 146; notice 
 of Giovanni di Vicenza, 148 ; state of Italy after 
 the extinction of the house of Swabia, 149 ; con- 
 
 3uest of Naples by Charles, count of Anjou, ib. ; 
 ecline of the Ghibelin party, 149, 150 ; the Lom- 
 bard cities become severally subject to princes or 
 usurpers, 150, 151 ; the kings of Naples aim at 
 the command of Italy, 151 ; relations of the em- 
 pire with Italy, 152; cession of Romagna to the 
 popes, 153; internal state of Rome, 153 155; 
 state of the cities of Tuscany, especially of Flor- 
 ^nce, 156166; and of Pisa, 166; state of Ge- 
 noa, 167; and of Venice, 167 177; state of 
 Lombardy at the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 177, 178 ; wars of Milan and Venice, 178 ; 
 change in the military system of Italy, ib. ; mer- 
 cenary soldiers and military adventurers employ- 
 ed, 178181 ; school of Italian generals, 181, 182 ; 
 defensive arms of the Italian armies in the fif- 
 teenth century, 182 184; change in the mili- 
 tary system of Europe by the invention of gun- 
 powder, 184; rivalry of Sforza and Braccio, 185, 
 186 ; affairs of Naples, 186 ; rebellion of Sicily 
 against Charles of Anjou, ib. ; Robert, king of 
 Naples, 187 ; disputed succession to the throne, 
 and the civil wars in consequence, 187, 188 ; state 
 of Italy in the latter part of the fifteenth century, 
 192 ; rise of the family of Medici, 193 ; Lorenzo 
 de' Medici, 194 ; pretensions of France upon Na- 
 ples, 196 ; decline of the papal influence in Italy, 
 317, 318 ; increase of domestic expenditure du- 
 ring the fourteenth century, 485, 486 ; state of 
 domestic manners during the same period, 487 ; 
 state of agriculture, 496, 497 ; and gardening, 
 497 ; state of Italian literature, 534539. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jacquerie (or peasantry), insurrection of, 43. 
 
 Janizaries, account of the institution of, 260. 
 
 Jerusalem, kingdom of, military force of, 34 ; sub- 
 verted by Saladin, 34, 35 ; singular custom there 
 relative to the marriage of vassals, 81. 
 
 Jews, exactions from, by the kings of France, 95 ; 
 their usury, ib. ; ordinance against them, 100 ; 
 expelled from France, 95 ; persecutions of them 
 in the dark ages, 468, 484 ; account of their money 
 dealings, 484, 485 ; causes of their decline, 484. 
 
 Joanna (queen of Naples) suspected of murdering 
 her husband Andrew, 187; her unhappy reign, 
 188 ; deposed and put to death, ib. 
 
 Joanna II. (queen of Naples), 189 ; adopts Alfonso 
 of Aragon for her successor, ib. ; revokes the 
 adoption in favour of Louis of Anjou, 190 ; her 
 death, ib. 
 
 John (king of England) loses Normandy, 28, 29 ; 
 his exactions and tyranny, 341, and note; the 
 great charter of liberties extorted from him, ib. ; 
 abstract of its provisions, 341, 342. 
 
 John (king of France), character of, 40, 41 ; con- 
 cludes the treaty of Calais, 43, 44. 
 
 John II. (king of Castile), reign of, 204. 
 
 John of Luxembourg, cruelty of, 55. 
 
 John of Procida successfully plots the rebellion of 
 Sicily from Charles of Anjou, 186. 
 
 John VIII. (pope), insolent conduct of, to Charles 
 the Fat, king of France, 277 ; pretends a right 
 of choosing the emperor, ib. 
 
 Jubilee, when first celebrated at Rome, 302 ; its 
 origin and nature, ib., note. 
 
 Judges, answers of, to certain questions proposed 
 by Richard II., 387; punished for the same by 
 parliament, ib. ; their answers pronounced to be 
 just and legal by a subsequent parliament, 390. 
 
 Judicial polity of France, successive changes of, 
 107 ; original scheme of jurisdiction in the time 
 of Charlemagne, ib. ; this supplanted by the feu- 
 dal territorial jurisdiction, 108 ; its divisions and 
 administration, 109 ; trial by combat, ib. ; estab- 
 lishments of St. Louis, 110; royal tribunals, and 
 progress of their jurisdiction, 111 ; royal council 
 or court of peers, 112 ; parliament of Paris, 112 
 114. 
 
 Jurisdiction (ecclesiastical), progress of, 265 ; arbi- 
 trative, ib. ; coercive over the clergy in civil mat- 
 ters, ib. ; and also in criminal suits, 266 ; its rapid 
 progress in the twelfth century, 297, 298; re- 
 strained in the fourteenth century, 316 ; account 
 of some particular territorial jurisdictions in 
 England, 352, 353, note. 
 
 Jury, origin and progress of trial by, among the 
 Anglo-Saxons, 325327. 
 
 Jurisfirma. See Firma de derecho. 
 
 Justice (administration of) in Castile, 213, 214 ; fre- 
 quently violated by some of the kings, 214. 
 
 (in England), venal, under the Norman 
 
 kings, 337 339 ; prohibited to be sold by Magna 
 Charta, 342. 
 
 Justices of assize, when instituted, 346 ; their func- 
 tions, ib. 
 
 Justiciary of Aragon, office of, when instituted, 
 220 ; his power, 220223 ; duration of his office, 
 223 ; responsibility of this magistrate, ib. 
 
 Justinian's institutes and pandects universally stud- 
 ied, 521, 522. 
 
 K. 
 
 Karismians invade Asia, 257. 
 
 Khalifs of Damascus, account of, 252 ; of Bagdad, 
 
 252, 253. 
 
 Kings of Aragon, power of, limited, 218, 219. 
 King's court in England, jurisdiction and powers 
 
 of, 345, 346 ; what offences cognizable there, 352, 
 
 353, note. 
 Kings of France, anciently elected, 97 ; their reve- 
 
nues, 9496 ; their limited power, 68 ; especially 
 in legislation, 99 ; gradual increase of their pow- 
 er, 68 ; legislative assemblies held by them, 96 ; 
 royal council of the kings of the third race, 98 ; 
 cours plenieres held by them, 99 ; subsequent in- 
 crease of the legislative power of the crown, 100 ; 
 states-general convoked by various kings, 101 
 107; royal tribunals established by them, 111 ; 
 progress of them, 112 ; augmentation of their do- 
 mains, 115. 
 
 Knighthood, privileges of, 517. 
 
 Knights banneret, and knights bachelors, 518, 519. 
 
 Knights, when summoned to parliament, 359, 360 ; 
 whether elected by freeholders in general 360, 
 361. 
 
 Knights of shires, by whom chosen for parliament, 
 406 ; amount of their wages, and how paid, 407, 
 408. 
 
 Knights' fees, divisions of lands into, invented by 
 William the Conqueror, 77, note; their value, ib. 
 
 Knights-templars, institution of the order of, 35 ; 
 their pride and avarice, ib. ; the kingdom of Ara- 
 gon bequeathed to them, 201. 
 
 L. 
 
 Labourers, hired, when first mentioned in the Eng- 
 lish statute-book, 438 ; their wages regulated, 
 ib. ; were sometimes impressed into the royal 
 service, 424 ; better paid in England in the four- 
 teenth century than now, 500, 501. 
 
 Lancaster (house of), progress of the English con- 
 stitution under, 393410. 
 
 Lancastrians, civil wars of, with the Yorkists, 447. 
 
 Lances, mode of reckoning cavalry by, 179. 
 
 Lands, possession of, constituted nobility in the 
 empire of the Franks, 69, 70 ; inalienable under 
 the feudal system, without the lord's consent, 78 ; 
 partition of, in Gaul, &c., 64 ; in Germany, 235 ; 
 descent of lands in England during the Anglo- 
 Saxon and Anglo-Norman kings, 347. 
 
 Lands. See Allodial, Salic, and Fiscal, Benefices, 
 Alienation. 
 
 Landwehr, or insurrectional militia, antiquity of, 
 120, note. 
 
 Languedoc, affairs of, in the twelfth century, 29 ; de- 
 vastated by the crusade against the Albigeois, ib. 
 
 Laon, circumstances attending the charter of. 117, 
 118. 
 
 Latimer (lord), the first person impeached by par- 
 liament, 385, 386. 
 
 Latin language, the parent of French, Spanish, and 
 Italian, 454 ; its extent, ib., note ; its ancient pro- 
 nunciation, 454, 455; corrupted by the populace, 
 455 ; and the provincials, ib. ; its pronunciation 
 no longer regulated by quantity, 457 ; change of 
 Latin into Romance, 458 ; its corruption in Italy, 
 459 ; ignorance consequent on its disuse, 459, 460. 
 
 Latins, conquests of, in Syria, 33 ; decline of the 
 Latin principalities in the east, 34. 
 
 Laura, the mistress of Petrarch, account of, 538, 
 539, and notes. 
 
 Law-books (feudal), account of, 82, 83. 
 
 Laws, distinctions of, in France and Italy, 66, 67 ; 
 of the Anglo-Norman kings, 340 ; character and 
 defects of the English laws, 348, 349. See Feu- 
 dal, Ripuarian, and Salique Law. 
 
 League of the public weal formed in France, 57 ; 
 of Lombardy, 134 ; of Tuscany, 138 ; quadruple 
 league of 1455, 191 ; of the free imperial cities of 
 Germany, 239. 
 
 Learning. See Literature. 
 
 Legates (papal), authority of, 286 ; insolence of, ib. 
 
 Legislation (general), first measures of, in France, 
 100. 
 
 Legislation, right of, in the Norman kings of Eng- 
 land, 339. 
 Nn 
 
 INDEX. 561 
 
 Legislative assemblies^ original, in France, 96 ; 
 held by Charlemagne, 97 ; mode of proceeding 
 at them, ib. ; royal council of the kings of the 
 third race, 98 ; occasional assemblies held by the 
 barons, 99; states-general convoked by Philip 
 the Fair, 101 ; states-general of 1355 and 1356, 
 103 ; states-general under Charles VII., 105 ; pro- 
 vincial states^ 106 ; states-general of Tours, 106, 
 107. 
 
 Legislative authority in France, substitutes for, 99 j 
 of the crown, increase of, 100. 
 
 Leon (kingdom of), when founded, 198 ; finally uni- 
 ted with that of Castile, 201. 
 
 Liberi homines, whether different from thaini, 321, 
 note. 
 
 Liberties of England purchased by money rather 
 than with the blood of our forefathers, 430. 
 
 Liberty of speech claimed by the house of com- 
 mons, 402. 
 
 Libraries, account of the principal, in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries, 543, and notes. 
 
 Linen paper, when and where invented, 542, 543, 
 and note, 
 
 Literature, causes of the decline of, in the latter 
 period of the Roman empire, 451 ; neglect of 
 heathen literature by the Christian church, 453 ; 
 the spread of superstition, ib. ; inroads of the bar- 
 barous nations, 453, 454 ; corruption of the Latin 
 language, 454 ; ignorance consequent on the dis- 
 use of Latin, 459 ; want of eminent literary men, 
 461 ; literature preserved by religion, ib. ; influ- 
 ence of literature in the improvement of society 
 considered, 520; civil law, ib. ; public schools 
 and universities, 523 ; scholastic philosophy, 526 ; 
 cultivation of the new languages, 529, 530 ; po- 
 etical character of the troubadours, 530 ; north- 
 era French poetry and prose, 531 ; Norman ro* 
 mances and tales, 532 ; Spanish language and 
 literature, 534 ; Italian literature, ib. ; English 
 literature, 540 ; revival of ancient learning, 542 ; 
 state of learning in Greece, 546 ; literature not 
 much improved beyond Italy, 548 ; promoted by 
 the invention of printing, 548, 549. 
 
 Liveries anciently given to the retainers of noble 
 families, 432, 433, note. 
 
 Lollards, tenets and practices of, 508. 
 
 Lombards, invade Italy, 20 ; reduce the exarchate 
 of Ravenna, ib. ; are defeated by Pepin, king of 
 France, ib. ; their kingdom conquered by Charle- 
 magne, ib. ft 
 
 Lombard bankers, account of, 484, 485. 
 
 Lombard cities, progress of, towards republics, 129 
 131 ; their acquisitions of territory, 131 ; their 
 mutual animosities, 132 ; recognised the nominal 
 sovereignty of the emperors of Germany, ib. ; the 
 league of Lombardy formed, 134; the confedera- 
 ted cities defeat the Emperor Frederick Barba- 
 rossa, 135 ; secure their liberties by the peace of 
 Constance, ib. ; arrangement of the Lombard 
 cities according to the factions they supported, 
 141, 142 ; causes of their success, 143 ; their 
 population, ib. ; mode of warfare which then ob* 
 tained, 144 ; their internal government, 144 146 ; 
 and dissensions, 146 148; Lombard cities be- 
 come severally subject to princes or usurpers, 
 150 ; state of Lombardy in the middle of the four- 
 teenth century, 151, 152 ; and at the beginning 
 of the fifteenth century, 177, 
 
 Longchamp (William), bishop of Ely, banished 
 from England by the barons, 341. 
 
 London, state of, before the Norman conquest, 365 ; 
 power and opulence of its citizens subsequent to 
 that event, 365, 366 ; conjectures respecting its 
 population in the fourteenth century, 366, note. 
 
 Lord and vassal, mutual duties of, 75 ; consent of 
 the lord necessary to enable a vassal to alienate 
 lands, 78. 
 
562 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Lords. See House of Lords. 
 
 Lothaire, elected emperor of Germany, 229, 230 ; 
 excommunicated by Pope Gregory IV., 275; ab- 
 solved by Adrian II., ib. 
 
 Louis of Bavaria (emperor of Germany), contests 
 of, with the popes, 304, 305. 
 
 Louis the Debonair, ascends the throne of France, 
 23 ; his misfortunes and errors, 23, 24 ; partitions 
 the empire among his sons, 24. 
 
 Louis IV. (king of France) reproved for his igno- 
 rance, 459, note. 
 
 Louis VI., reign of, 27. 
 
 Louis VII., reign of, 28. 
 
 Louis VIII., conquers Poitou, 29; takes the cross 
 against the Albigeois, ib. ; ordinance of, against 
 the Jews, 100. 
 
 Louis IX. (St.), reign of, 30 ; review of his charac- 
 terits excellences, ib. ; defects, 31; supersti- 
 tion and intolerance, ib. ; his crusades against the 
 Turks, 35 ; his death, ib. ; account of his estab- 
 lishments, 110, 111 ; provisions of his pragmatic 
 sanction, 295. 
 
 Louis X., short reign of, 37 ; state of France at his 
 death, ib. 
 
 Louis XL, character of, 56, 57; crushes the less 
 powerful vassals, 57, 58 ; avoids a war with Eng- 
 land, 58 ; claims the succession of Burgundy, 60 ; 
 his conduct on this occasion, 60, 61 ; sickness 
 and wretched death, 61 ; instances of his super- 
 stition, 61, note, and 62. 
 
 Louis (duke of Anjou) invades Naples, 188. 
 
 Lower classes, improvements in the condition of, 
 502. 
 
 Luxembourg, emperors of the house of, Henry VII., 
 236; Charles IV., ib.; Wenceslaus, 236, 237. 
 
 Lyons, council of, depose the emperor Frederick II., 
 142, 143 ; consequences of that council, 231,232. 
 
 M. 
 
 Madox (Mr.), theory of, on the nature of baronies, 
 357 ; observations thereon, 357, 358. 
 
 Magna Charta, notice of the provisions of, 341, 342 ; 
 confirmed by various sovereigns, 343. 
 
 Mahomet II. captures Constantinople, 259. 
 
 Maintenance of suits, 432. 
 
 Mandats (papal), nature of, 294, 295. 
 
 Manorial jurisdiction, extent and powers of, 352, 
 353, note. 
 
 Mbnichees, tenets of, 503 ; their tenets held by the 
 Albigenses, 504, 505, and notes. 
 
 Manifestation, nature of the process of, in the law 
 of Aragon, 221, 222, and notes. 
 
 Manners (domestic) of Italy in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 486, 487; France and Germany, 487; re- 
 semblance between chivalrous and oriental man- 
 ners, 515. 
 
 Manufactures, state of, in the middle ages, 472 ; of 
 Flanders, 474 ; of England, 476 ; of the northern 
 provinces of France, 477 ; of Germany, ib. ; of 
 Italy, 479, 480. 
 
 Manumission of serfs or slaves, progress of, 90, 91 ; 
 and of villeins in England, 440. 
 
 Manuscripts, transcription of, in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury promoted the revival of literature, 544 ; in- 
 dustry of Petrarch, Poggio, and others in finding 
 and copying them, ib. 
 
 Marc (St.), observations on the Italian history of, 
 125, note. 
 
 Margaret (queen of Henry VI.), violent conduct of, 
 446. 
 
 Mariner's compass, when and by whom invented, 
 481, and notes. 
 
 Maritime laws during the middle ages, account of, 
 481483. 
 
 Marriage, custom relative to, in the feudal system, 
 81 ; prohibited to the clergy, 278 ; but continued, 
 
 especially in England, in defiance of the papal 
 prohibitions, ib. ; account of the papal dispensa- 
 tion of marriage, 292 ; within what degrees pro- 
 hibited, ib. 
 
 Marshal. See Earl Marshal. 
 
 Martel (Charles), king of France, defeats the Sara- 
 cens, 19. 
 
 Martin V. (pope) dissolves the council of Con- 
 stance, 310. 
 
 Mary (the Virgin), superstitious devotion to, 465, 
 466, and notes. 
 
 Mary of Burgundy, territories of, claimed by Louis 
 XL, 60; his conduct towards her, 60, 61 ; mar- 
 ries Maximilian of Austria, 61. 
 
 Matthias Corvinus (king of Hungary), reign of, 246. 
 
 Matilda (countess), bequest of, to the see of Rome, 
 137. 
 
 Maximilian (emperor of Germany), reign of, 240 
 242. 
 
 Mayors of the palace of the French kings, their 
 power, 19, 69. 
 
 Medici family, rise of, 193 ; Cosmo de' Medici, the 
 first citizen of Florence, ib. ; his administration, 
 194; government of Lorenzo de' Medici, ib. ; his 
 character, 195; and government, 195, 196. 
 
 Mediterranean, origin of English trade with, 478, 
 and note; nature of the intercourse between the 
 Mediterranean traders and England, 479 ; ac- 
 count of the principal trading towns on the Med- 
 iterranean, ib. 
 
 Members of parliament, wages of, and how paid, 
 407, 408 ; numbers of, irregular, 409, 410. See 
 also Election, Privilege of Parliament. 
 
 Mendicant orders, origin and progress of, 291 ; a 
 chief support of the papal supremacy, 291, 292. 
 
 Mercenary troops, when first employed, 121 ; em- 
 ployed both in the French and English armies, 
 122 ; their wages, ib., note ; employed by the Ve- 
 netians, 178 ; and other states of Italy, 178, 179 ; 
 account of the "companies of adventure" formed 
 by them, 180 ; Italian mercenary troops formed 
 in the fourteenth century, 182; employed by the 
 republics of Florence and Venice, ib. 
 
 Merchants, encouragements given to, by Edward 
 III., 476; instances of their opulence, 478. 
 
 Merovingian dynasty, successions of, 18; their de- 
 generacy, 19 ; deposed by the mayors of the pal- 
 ace, ib. 
 
 Middle ages, the term defined, 451. 
 
 Milan, civil feuds in, 151 ; finally subdued by the 
 Visconti, ib. ; erected into a dutchy, 152; wars 
 of the dukes of Milan with the republic of Ven- 
 ice, 178 ; is conquered by Francisco Sforza, 185. 
 
 Milanese, refused to acknowledge bishops whom 
 they disliked, 130, and note ; their city besieged 
 and captured by Frederick Barbarossa, 133 ; who 
 violates the capitulation he had given them, ib. ; 
 they renew the war, are defeated, and their city 
 destroyed, 133, 134. 
 
 Military orders, when instituted, 201 ; account of 
 those instituted in Spam, ib. 
 
 Military service, limitations of, under the feudal 
 system, 77 ; who were excused from it, ib. ; rates 
 of pecuniary compensation established for default 
 of attendance, ib. ; military service of feudal ten- 
 ants commuted for money, 120 ; connexion of 
 military services with knighthood, 518. 
 
 Ministers of the kings of England impeached by 
 parliament, 400. 
 
 Miracles (pretended) of the church of Rome, 465 ; 
 mischiefs arising from, ib. 
 
 Missi regii, functions of, 108, and note. 
 
 Mocenigo (doge of Venice), dying advice of, to hi 
 countrymen, 177. 
 
 Moguls of Timur, incursions of, 258. 
 
 Mahomet, first appearance of, 249 ; causes of hw 
 success, 249, 250 ; principles of the religion taught 
 
INDEX, 
 
 563 
 
 by him, 219 251 ; conquests of his followers. 
 251. 
 
 Monarchy (French), how far anciently elective. 
 97, 98. 
 
 Monasteries, mischiefs of, 466, 467 ; ignorance and 
 jollity their usual characteristics, 543, note. 
 
 Money, privilege of coining, enjoyed by the French 
 vassals, 93 ; little money coined except for small 
 payments, ib., note ; regulations of various kings 
 concerning the exercise of this privilege, ib. ; the 
 right of debasing money claimed by Philip the 
 Fair, ib., and note ; debasing money a source of 
 the revenue of the kings of France, 95, 96. 
 
 Money, levying of, in England, prohibited without 
 the consent of parliament, 393, 394 ; changes in 
 the value of, 497500. 
 
 Money-bills, power of originating, vested in the 
 house of commons, 402, 404. 
 
 Monks, not distinguished for their charity in the 
 dark ages, 466, note ; their vices, 467, 468 ; im- 
 morality of the monkish historians, 468, note. 
 
 Montfort (Simon de), character of, 29. 
 
 Moors of Spain, gradually lose their conquests in 
 that country, 198201; their expulsion, why 
 long delayed, 202. 
 
 Morals, degraded state of, in the dark ages, 469, 
 470 ; improved state of the moral character of 
 Europe towards the close of that period, 501 ; the 
 morals of chivalry not always the most pure, 513. 
 
 Mortmain, alienations of land in, restrained, 301. 
 
 Muratori, observations on the historical works of, 
 125, 126, notes. 
 
 Murder, commuted for pecuniary consideration in 
 the feudal system, 66; when made capital, ib., 
 note; antiquity of compositions for murder, 94, 
 note. 
 
 N. 
 
 Naples, investiture of the kingdom of, conferred by 
 the popes, 129; conquered by Charles of Anjou, 
 149 ; disputed succession to the throne on the 
 death of Charles II., 187 ; murder of Andrew, 
 king of Naples, ib. ; reign of Joanna, 187, 188 ; 
 Naples invaded by Louis, duke of Anjou, 188 ; 
 reign of Ladislaus, 189 ; of Joanna II., ib. ; she 
 adopts Alfonso of Aragon for her heir, ib. ; re- 
 vokes the appointment, and adopts Louis of An- 
 jou, 190 ; Alfonso of Aragon, king of Naples, ib. ; 
 he is succeeded by his son Ferdinand, 191 ; pre- 
 tensions of Charles VIII. upon the kingdom of 
 Naples, 196, 197. 
 
 Navarre (kingdom of) when founded, 198. 
 
 New Forest, devastated by William the Conqueror, 
 334. 
 
 Nicolas II. (pope), decree of, respecting the elec- 
 tion of pontiffs, 281. 
 
 Nobility (Aragonese), privileges of, 218. 
 
 Nobility, origin of, in France, 69 ; was founded on 
 the possession of land or civil employment, 69, 
 70 ; different classes of, 85, 86 ; their privileges, 
 86, 93, et neq. ; how communicated, 85 ; letters 
 of nobility when first granted, 87 ; different orders 
 of, ib. ; pride and luxury of the French nobility, 
 43, note. 
 
 (Castilian), confederacies of, for obtaining 
 redress of grievances, 215. 
 
 (English), influence of, from the state of 
 
 manners, 432 ; patronised robbers, 433, 434. 
 
 (German), state of, in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, 231. 
 
 Norfolk (Mowbray, duke of), quarrel of, with the 
 Duke of Hereford, 391 ; banished for life, ib. 
 
 Normans, ravages of, in England and France, 25, 
 
 26 ; finally settled in the province of Normandy, 
 
 26; settlement of at Aversa, in Italy, 128 ; they 
 
 conquer Apulia and Sicily, 129 ; account of the 
 
 N n2 
 
 Norman romances and tales, 532 ; effects of the 
 Norman conquest on the English language, 540. 
 Normandy (dukes of), their pnde and power, 28 ; 
 this province conquered by Philip Augustus, 
 king of France, ib. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oleron, laws of, 482. 
 
 Ordeal, trial by, in use in the time of Henry I., king 
 of England, 347, and note. 
 
 Ordinances, in what respects different from stat- 
 utes, 376, 377. 
 
 Orleans, siege of, by the English, 53 ; raised by 
 Joan of Arc, ib. ; her cruel death, ib. 
 
 , duke of, murdered by the Duke of Burgun- 
 dy, 49 ; civil wars between the two factions, 49, 
 50. 
 
 Otho the Great elected emperor, 126, 227. 
 
 IV., reign of, 139,231. 
 
 Ottoman dynasty, account of, 258. 
 
 Oxford University, account of, 524. 
 
 P. 
 
 Palestine, accounts of the crusades against, 31 36. 
 
 Pandects, whether discovered at Amain", 520. 
 
 Papal power. See Popes. 
 
 Paper from linen, when and where invented, 542, 
 543, and note. 
 
 Paper credit, different species of, 484, note. 
 
 Papyrus, manuscripts written on, 460, 461, and 
 note. 
 
 Parchment, scarcity of, 460, 461. 
 
 Pardons, anciently sold by the English kings, 433, 
 434, and note. 
 
 Paris (counts of), their power, 24. 
 
 (city), seditions at, 47, 104; subdued by 
 
 Charles VI., 47. 
 
 (university of), account of, 523. 
 
 Parliaments, or general meetings of the barons, in 
 England and France, account of, 99. 
 
 Parliament (English), constitution of, 355 ; spirit- 
 ual peers, ib. ; lay peers, 356 ; origin and prog- 
 ress of parliamentary representation, 359, 360 ; 
 parliament, when divided into two houses, 371 ; 
 petitions of parliament in the reign of Edward II., 
 372, 373 ; the concurrence of both houses of par- 
 liament necessary in legislation, 376 ; proceed- 
 ings of the English parliament in the tenth year 
 of Richard II., 385; interference of parliament 
 with the royal expenditure, 397; consulted by 
 the kings of England on all public affairs, 399 ; 
 privilege of parliament, 400, 401. See House of 
 Commons and House of Lords. 
 
 Parliament of Paris, when instituted, 112; prog- 
 ress of its jurisdiction, 113; royal edicts when 
 enregistered in it, ib. ; counsellors of parliament, 
 how appointed, 114; notice of some provincial 
 parliaments, 114, 115, note. 
 
 Parliament Rolls of Henry VII., inaccuracy of, con- 
 sidered, 449, note. 
 
 Partition of lands in Gaul, &c., how made, 64, 65 ; 
 effects of, in Germany, 235. 
 
 Pastoureaux (a sect of enthusiasts), insurrection 
 of, 464. 
 
 Patriarchate of Rome, extent of, 270. 
 
 Patrician, rank and office of, in France, 67, note. 
 
 Patronage, encroachments of the popes on the right 
 of, 294. 
 
 Paulicians, tenets and practices of, 503, 504, and 
 notes. 
 
 Peace, conservators of, their office, 434. 
 
 Peasantry (Aragonese), state of, 218. 
 
 Peasantry (English), nature of their villanage, and 
 its gradual abolition, 435441. 
 
 Peers of England (spiritual), right of, to a seat in 
 
564 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 parliament considered, 355, 356, and notes ; nom- 
 inate a protector during the mental derangement 
 of Henry VI., 444, 445. 
 
 Peers (lay), how created, 415 ; their right to a seat 
 in parliament, 355358. 
 
 Peers of France, the twelve, when established, 1 13. 
 
 Pembroke (William, earl of), his reason for making 
 an inroad on the royal domains, 431. 
 
 Penances, commutations of, 468, 469. 
 
 Pepin, raised to the French throne, 20 ; conquers 
 the exarchate of Ravenna, which he bestows on 
 the pope, ib. 
 
 Pestilence, ravages of, in 1348, 42 ; its progress in 
 other countries, 42, 43, note. 
 
 Peter the Cruel, king of Castile, reign of, 203, 204. 
 
 Peter the Hermit, preaching of, 32. 
 
 Peter de la Mare, speaker of the house of commons, 
 381. 
 
 Petition, memorable, of the house of commons to 
 King Henry IV., 398. 
 
 Petrarch, mistake of, corrected, 155, note ; caressed 
 by the great, 537, 538 ; review of his moral char- 
 acter, 538 ; his passion for Laura considered, 
 538, 539, and note ; character of his poetry, 539. 
 
 P fan] burger, or burgesses of the palisades, who 
 they were, 239. 
 
 Philip Augustus (king of France), character of, 28 ; 
 conquers Normandy, ib. ; royal courts of justice 
 first established by him, 111. 
 
 Philip III. (king of "France), reign of, 36 ; war of, 
 with the King of Aragon on the succession to Si- 
 cily, 187. 
 
 Philip the Fair, or JV. (king of France), 36 ; ag- 
 grandizement of the French monarchy during his 
 reign, 36, 37 ; is defeated by the Flemings at the 
 battle of Courtray, 37 ; regulations of, concern- 
 ing the coining of money by the vassals of France, 
 93, and note ; debased the coin of his realm, 95; 
 states-general convoked by him, 101 ; represen- 
 tations of the towns first introduced by him, 101, 
 102, and note ; his probable motives in taking this 
 step, 102 ; his disputes with Pope Boniface VIII., 
 302, 303 ; causes him to be arrested, 304. 
 
 VI. (king of France), character of, 40, 41 ; 
 
 his title disallowed by Edward III., 41, and note. 
 
 Pickering (Sir James), speaker of the house of 
 commons, protest of, in the name of the house, 
 381. 
 
 Piers Plowman's vision, character of, 501. 
 
 Pilgrimages, mischiefs of, 469. 
 
 Piracy, frequency of, 482. 
 
 Pisa (republic), naval power of, 166 ; conquers Sar- 
 dinia, ib. ; defeated by the Genoese, 167 ; falls 
 under the dominion of Florence, ib. ; account of 
 her commercial prosperity, 479, 480. 
 
 (council at), proceedings of, 309. 
 
 Pius II. (pope), character of, 260, note ; endeavours 
 to raise a crusade against the Turks, ib. 
 
 Podesta, power of, in the free Lombard cities, 145 ; 
 how appointed, 145, 146. 
 
 Poetry of the troubadours, account of, 530; of 
 Northern France, 531 ; of the Normans, 532, 
 533; of the Italians, 534539. 
 
 Poggio Bracciolini, successful researches of, in 
 finding ancient manuscripts, 544. 
 
 Pole (Michael de la, earl of Suffolk), impeached by 
 the English parliament, 385. 
 
 Police, state of, improved towards the close of the 
 dark ages, 502. 
 
 Polygamy obtained in France during the reign of 
 Charlemagne, 292, and note. 
 
 Popes, commencement of their power, 269 ; patri- 
 archate of Rome, 270; their gradual assumption 
 of power, ib. ; character of Gregory I., 271 ; false 
 decretals ascribed to the early popes, 273 ; en- 
 croachments of the popes on the hierarchy, 274 ; 
 and upon civil governments, 274, 275 > excom- 
 
 munications, 275 ; interdicts, 276 ; further usur- 
 pations of the popes, 276, 277 ; their degeneracy 
 in the tenth century, 277 ; corruption of morals, 
 ib. ; neglect of the rules of celibacy, 278 ; simony, 
 279 ; investitures, 280 ; imperial confirmation of 
 popes, ib. ; decree of Nicolas II., 28J ; character 
 of Hildebrand, or Gregory VII., ib. ; his differ- 
 ences with the Emperor Henry IV., ib. ; com- 
 promised by a concordat of Calixtus, 283 ; gen- 
 eral conduct of Gregory VII., 285; authority of 
 the papal legates, 286 ; Adrian IV., ib. ; Innocent 
 III., 287 ; his extraordinary pretensions, ib. ; the 
 supremacy claimed by the popes, supported by 
 promulgating the canon law, 290; by the mendi- 
 cant orders, 291 ; by dispensations of marriage, 
 292 ; and by dispensations from promissory oaths, 
 293, 294 ; encroachments of the popes on the free- 
 dom of ecclesiastical elections, 294; by mandats 
 or requests for the collation of inferior benefices, 
 ib. ; by provisions, reserves, &c., 295 ; their tax- 
 ations of the clergy, 296 ; disaffection thus pro- 
 duced against the church of Rome, 297 ; disputes 
 of Boniface VIII. with the King of England, 302 ; 
 and of France, ib. ; contest of popes with Louis 
 of Bavaria, 304 ; spirit of resistance to papal 
 usurpations, 305 ; rapacity of the Avignon popes, 
 306 ; return of the popes to Rome, 307, 308 ; con- 
 tested election of Urban VI. and Clement VII., 
 308; of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., 308, 
 309 ; both deposed by the council of Pisa, 309 ; 
 John XXIII. deposed by the council of Constance, 
 ib. ; real designs of these councils as they re- 
 spected the popes, 310; council of Basle, 311; 
 concordats of Aschaffenburg, 313, 314 ; papal en- 
 croachments on the church of Castile, 314 ; 
 checks on the papal authority in France, ib. ; 
 their usurpations checked in the Gallican church, 
 ib. ; decline of the papal influence in Italy, 317, 
 318. 
 
 Population of the free cities of Lombardy during 
 the middle ages, 143, 144 ; of Aragon, 219, note ; 
 of Florence, 166, note; of London, 365, note ; of 
 Bruges, 475. 
 
 Poulains, or mongrel Christians of Syria, 34, note. 
 
 Pragmatic sanction of St. Louis, provisions of, 295. 
 
 Prerogative (royal), defined, 423, 424 ; limited in 
 England during the reign of Henry III., 345; no- 
 tice of its abuses, 424, 425. 
 
 Priests, rapacity of, in the dark ages, 467, 468. 
 
 Principalities (petty) in Germany, origin of, 235. 
 
 Printing, account of the invention of, 548 ; notices 
 of early printed books, 549. 
 
 Private war, right of, a privilege of the vassals of 
 France, 93, 94; attempts of Charlemagne and 
 other sovereigns to suppress it, ib. ; prevails in 
 Aragon, 225 ; and in Germany, 240 ; suppressed 
 by the diet of Worms, ib. ; was never legal in 
 England, 352. 
 
 Privilege of parliament, when fully established, 
 400405. 
 
 Privilege of union in Aragon, account of, 219 ; when 
 abolished, 220. 
 
 Privileges of knighthood, 517. 
 
 Promissory oaths, dispensations of, granted by the 
 popes, 293, 294. 
 
 Pronunciation of the Latin language, 454459. 
 
 Protests in parliament, when first introduced, 378. 
 
 Provence (county of), historical notice of, 63, note ; 
 account of the troubadours of, 530. 
 
 Provincial governors, influence of, in England du- 
 ring the Anglo-Saxon government, 321. 
 
 Provincial states in France, 106 ; in the German 
 empire, 239. 
 
 Provisions (papal), notice of, 295. 
 
 Provisors (statute of), observations on, 312, 313. 
 
 Purveyance, a branch of the ancient royal preroga- 
 tive in England, 424 ; its abuses, ib. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 565 
 
 R. 
 
 Rapacity of the Avignon popes, 306. 
 
 Rapine, prevalent habit of, in England, during the 
 middle ages, 433. 
 
 Ravenna (exarchate of), conquered by the Lorn 
 bards, 20 ; reconquered by Pepin, and conferred 
 upon the pope, ib. 
 
 Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, disasters of, 29, 
 30. 
 
 Redress of grievances, attempted to be made a con 
 dition of granting supplies by the house of com 
 mons, 394. 
 
 Regency in England, historical instances of, 441 
 during the absences of the kings in France, ib. ; 
 at the accession of Henry III., ib. ; of Edward I., 
 ib. ; and Edward III., 442 ; of Richard II., ib. ; 
 of Henry VI., 442445. 
 
 Regency in France, right of the presumptive heir 
 to, 48, note. 
 
 Reliefs, origin of, 77, 78 ; their nature, 78 ; and 
 value, ib. ; equivalent to the heriots of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, 331. 
 
 Religion, contributed to the preservation of litera- 
 ture during the dark, ages, 461, 462; connexion 
 of, with chivalry, 511. 
 
 Representation (parliamentary), origin and prog- 
 ress of, 359 ; a probable instance of, in the reign 
 of William the Conqueror, ib. ; a more decided 
 example in the fifteenth year of John, 359, 360 ; 
 another in the ninth year of Henry III., 360 ; and 
 in the thirty-eighth of Henry III., ib. ; especially 
 in the forty-ninth of Henry III., ib. ; burgesses 
 and citizens, when first summoned to parliament, 
 366, 367 ; causes of summoning them, 370. 
 
 Reprisal, law of, 482. 
 
 Retainers, custom of having, in noble families, 
 432. 
 
 Revenues of the church, under the Roman empire, 
 261 ; increased after its subversion, 261, 262 ; 
 were sometimes improperly acquired, ib. ; other 
 sources of revenues tithes, 263. 
 
 Revenues of the kings of France, sources of, 94 ; 
 augmented by exactions from the Jews, 95 ; by 
 debasing the coin, ib. ; direct taxation, 96 ; of the 
 various sovereigns of Europe in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 192, note. 
 
 Revolution in England, of 1399 and 1688 parallel 
 between, 392, 393. 
 
 Richard I. (Coeur de Lion), crusade of, 35 ; refused 
 to abolish the right of private war, 94, note. 
 
 Richard II., disputes between, and the parliament 
 of England, 381384 ; sketch of his character, 
 384; acquires more power on his majority, ib. ; 
 proceedings of parliament in the tenth year of 
 his reign, 385 ; appoints a commission of reform, 
 385, 386 ; wretched state of the country during 
 his reign, 386 ; remarks on the conduct of the 
 king, 386, 387 ; answers of the judges to certain 
 questions proposed by him, 387 ; subsequent rev- 
 olution, ib. ; greater harmony between the king 
 and parliament, 388; disunion among the lead- 
 ing peers, ib. ; prosecution of Haxey for propo- 
 sing in the house of commons an obnoxious libel, 
 389 ; arbitrary measures of the king, 389, 390 ; 
 appoints a commission to sit after parliament had 
 been dissolved, 390 ; tyranny of Richard, 391 ; 
 necessity for deposing him, ib. ; retrospect of the 
 progress of the constitution under Richard JI.,393. 
 
 Richard (earl of Cornwall), elected emperor of 
 Germany, 232 ; his character, ib. 
 
 Richard (duke of York), made protector of Eng- 
 land during the mental derangement of Henry 
 VI., 444 ; claims the crown, 446 ; civil wars of 
 the Lancastrians and Yorkists, 447. 
 
 Richemont (the count de), retrieves the affairs of 
 France, 53 54. 
 
 Ricos hombres, or great barons of Aragon, privileges 
 of, 218. 
 
 Rienzi (Nicola de), revolution effected by, at Rome, 
 154, 155; his death, 155. 
 
 Ripuary law, difference between it and the Salique- 
 law, 65. 
 
 Robbery, when made a capital offence in France, 
 66, note ; prevalence of, in England, 433 ; robbers 
 there frequently purchased pardons, 433, 434. 
 
 Rochelle, fidelity of the citizens of, to the King of 
 France, 45. 
 
 Rodolph, count of Hapsburg, elected Emperor of 
 Germany, 234 ; invests his son with the dutchy 
 of Austria, ib. ; state of the empire after his 
 death, 235. 
 
 Romagna, province of, ceded to the popes, 153. 
 
 Roman empire, subversion of, 17 ; partitioned among 
 various barbarous nations, ib. ; state of the church 
 under the empire, 261 ; causes of the decline of 
 learning in it, 451460. 
 
 Roman de la Rose, account of, 533. 
 
 Romance language, gradual change of Latin into, 
 458 ; divided into two dialects, 529, 530 ; account 
 of the Provengal dialect, 530 ; and of the French 
 or northern romance dialect, 531. 
 
 Rome, state of, at the close of the ninth century, 
 126, 127 ; internal state of, in the middle ages, 
 153, 154; power of the senators, 154; revolution 
 effected there by the tribune Rienzi, ib. ; subse- 
 quent affairs of, 155. 
 
 (bishops of), nature of their primacy, 269, 270 ; 
 originally were patriarchs, 270. See Popes. 
 
 Roye (town), singular clause in the charter of, 119, 
 
 S. 
 
 Salique-law, whether it excluded women from the 
 throne of France, 38 ; excluded them from pri- 
 vate succession in some cases, 65 ; question ari- 
 sing out of this law, 37 ; date of the Salique-law, 
 65, note. 
 
 Sanctuary, privilege of, accorded to monasteries, 
 467. 
 
 Saracens, first conquests of, in the east, 251 ; and 
 in Africa, ib. ; they invade France, and are de- 
 feated by Charles Martel, 19 ; ravage that coun- 
 try again, 25 ; driven out of Italy and Sicily by 
 the Normans, 128, 129; the probable inventors 
 of gunpowder, 184; Spain conquered by them, 
 198, 25) ; decline of the Saracens, 252 ; separa- 
 tion of Spain and Africa from them, 253 ; decline 
 of the khalifs in the east, 253, 254 ; Saracenic 
 architecture, not the parent of Gothic architec- 
 ture, 493, note. 
 
 Saragosa (city of), captured from the Moors, 199. 
 
 Sardinia (island), conquered by the Pisans, 166 ; 
 from whom it was taken by the King of Aragon, 
 167. 
 
 Saxons, savage state of, before their conquest of 
 England, 327, 328. 
 
 conquered by Charlemagne, 21. 
 
 Saxony, emperors of the house of, viz., Otho I., 
 
 126, 227 ; Henry II., 127, 228. 
 Scabini, a species of judges, jurisdiction of, 108. 
 Scandinavian sea-kings, notice of, 319. 
 Scholastic philosophy, derived from the Arabs, 526, 
 
 note; account of the principal schoolmen and 
 
 their principles, 526529. 
 Schools (public), first established by Charlemagne, 
 
 523. 
 Scriptures, versions of, made in the eighth and 
 
 ninth centuries, 507,508; the general reading of 
 
 them not prohibited until the thirteenth century, 
 
 508. 
 
 Sects, religious, sketch of, during the dark agee, 
 03 M anichees, ib. ; Paulicians, their tenets and 
 
666 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 persecutions, 504, and notes ; the Albigenses, 504, 
 505 ; proofs that they held Manichean tenets, 
 505, and notes ; origin of the Waldenses, ib., and 
 note, 507, note ; their tenets, 506, and note ; the 
 Catharists, ib. : other anonymous sects of the 
 same period, 507, 508; the Lollards of England, 
 508 ; Hussites of Bohemia, 508, 509. 
 
 Selden (Mr.), theory of, concerning the nature of 
 baronies, 357 ; observations thereon, 357, 358. 
 
 Serfs, state of, in the feudal system, 89 92 ; pre- 
 dial servitude not abolished in France until the 
 revolution, 91, note ; became free by escaping to 
 chartered towns, 119, note. See Villeins. 
 
 Sforza Attendolo, rivalry of, with Braccio di Mon- 
 tone, 185. 
 
 Sforza (Francesco) acquires the dutchy of Milan, 
 185. 186. 
 
 Sheriff, power of, in omitting boroughs that had 
 sent members to parliament, 407. 
 
 Sicily (island of), conquered by the Normans under 
 Roger Guiscard, 129; whom Leo IX. creates 
 King of Sicily, ib. ; state of affairs after his death, 
 136; rebellion of the Sicilians against Charles, 
 count of Anjou, 186; massacre of the French, 
 called the Sicilian vespers, ib. 
 
 Sigismund (king of Hungary), reign of, 245. 
 
 Silk, manufacture of, when introduced into Italy, 
 480. 
 
 Silver passed chiefly by weight in the first ages of 
 the French monarchy, 93. 
 
 Simony of the clergy in the eleventh century, 
 282. 
 
 Sismondi (M.), observations on his Histoire des 
 Republiques Italiennes, 125, 126, note. 
 
 Sithcundman or petty gentleman, rank of, among 
 the Anglo-Saxons, 331. 
 
 Slave-trade carried on during the dark ages, 473. 
 
 Soccage and soccagers, probable derivation of the 
 terms, 352, 353, and notes ; the question consid- 
 ered whether freeholders in soccage were liable 
 to contribute to the wages of knights in parlia- 
 ment, 408, note. 
 
 Society, different classes of, under the feudal sys- 
 tem, 85 ; nobility, 8587 ; clergy, 88 ; freemen, 
 ib. ; serfs or villeins, 89 92 ; moral state of, im- 
 proved by the feudal system, 124, 125 ; ignorance 
 of all classes, 459461 ; their superstition and 
 fanaticism, 462 ; degraded state of morals, 469 ; 
 love of field-sports, 470 ; state of internal trade, 
 472 ; and of foreign commerce, 473. 
 
 , general view of the degraded state of, from 
 
 the decline of the Roman empire to the end of 
 the eleventh century, 450474 ; commercial im- 
 provement of society, 474485; refinement in 
 manners, 485 501 ; improvement of the moral 
 character of Europe, 501 ; its causes elevation 
 of the lower ranks, 502 ; improved state of the 
 police, ib. ; religious sects, 503; institution of 
 chivalry, 509520 ; the encouragement of litera- 
 ture, 520541 ; particularly by the revival of an- 
 cient learning, 542 ; the invention of linen paper, 
 542, 543 ; and the invention of the art of print- 
 ing, 548, 549. 
 
 Soldiers. See Mercenary troops. 
 
 Spain, northern part of, conquered by Charle- 
 magne, 21 ; extent of the feudal system in, 84. 
 
 , history of, to the conquest of "Granada, 197 ; 
 
 kingdom of the Visigoths, ib. ; conquered by the 
 Saracens, 198; decline of the Moorish empire, 
 ib. ; formation of the kingdom of Leon, ib. '; of 
 " Navarre, ib. ; of Aragon, J99 ; and of Castile, ib. ; 
 capture of Toledo and Saragosa, ib. ; mode of 
 settling the new conquests, ib. ; chartered towns 
 or communities, 200, 201 ; military orders insti- 
 tuted, 201 ; final union of the kingdoms of Leon 
 and Castile, ib. ; conquest of Andalusia and Va- 
 lencia, ib. ; expulsion of the Moors, why long de- 
 
 layed, 202 ; civil disturbances of Castile, 203 ; 
 reign of Peter the Cruel, ib. ; house of Trasta- 
 mare, 204; John II., ib. ; Henry IV., 205; con- 
 stitution of Castile, 206 ; succession of the crown, 
 ib. ; national councils, ib. ; the cortes, 207; right 
 of taxation, 208, 209 ; forms of the cortes, 211 ; 
 their rights in legislation, ib. ; council of Castile, 
 2J3 ; administration of justice, 213, 214 ; violent 
 actions of some of the kings of Castile, 21 4 ; con- 
 federacies of the nobility, 215 ; affairs of Aragon, 
 ib. ; disputed succession to the crown after the 
 death of Martin, 216; constitution of Aragon, 
 218 ; liberties of the Aragonese kingdom, 218, 
 219 ; office of the justiciary, 220 ; rights of legis- 
 lation and taxation, 223 ; cortes of Aragon, 224 ; 
 government of Valencia and Catalonia, ib. ; un- 
 ion of Castile and Aragon. 225; conquest of 
 Granada, 225, 226 ; notice of Spanish literature 
 during the dark ages, 534. 
 
 States-general, convoked by Philip the Fair, 101, 
 102 ; representatives from the towns introduced 
 by him, 101, and note ; motives for this conduct, 
 102 ; the rights of the states-general as to taxa- 
 tion, ib. ; states-general of 1355 and 1356, 103, 
 104 ; never possessed any legislative power, 103, 
 note ; under Charles VII., 105 ; proceedings of 
 states-general of Tours, 106, 107. 
 
 Statute of treasons explained, 76, notes. 
 
 Statute law (English), observations on, 348, 349. 
 
 Statutes, distinction between them and ordinances, 
 376, 377 ; were sometimes left to be drawn up 
 by the judges after a dissolution of parliament, 
 395; fraudulently altered in consequence, 396. 
 
 Stephen, wretched state of England during the 
 reign of, 338. 
 
 Stratford (archbishop), case of, 355, 356, notes. 
 
 Students, number of, at the universities of Oxford, 
 Bologna, and Paris, 524. 
 
 Subinfeudation, origin of, 72. 
 
 Subsidies (parliamentary), by whom assessed, 360 ; 
 how granted, 430. See Supply. 
 
 Succession to the throne, in Castile, 206; in Ara- 
 gon, 218 ; among the Anglo-Saxons, 320 ; hered- 
 itary succession established during the Anglo- 
 Norman reign, 349, 350. 
 
 Sumptuary laws, observation on, 486, 487. 
 
 Superstition of the dark ages, one cause of the de- 
 cline of learning in the Roman empire, 462 ; sin- 
 gular instances of superstition, ib. ; mischiefs 
 thence arising, 465 ; yet not unattended with 
 good, 466. 
 
 Supplies, granting of, claimed by the house of com- 
 mons, 393 ; application of, directed by that house, 
 394 ; attempt of the house to make supply de- 
 pend on redress of grievances, ib. 
 
 Supremacy of the state maintained by the sover- 
 eigns of Europe, 267 ; especially by Charle- 
 magne, ib. ; progress of the papal supremacy, 
 274290 ; review of the circumstances which 
 favoured it, 290299 ; endeavours made to re- 
 press it in England, 299301. 
 
 Surnames, when first used, 85. 
 
 Swabia (house of), emperors of: Conrad III., 
 230 ; Frederick Barbarossa, ib. ; Philip, 231 ; 
 Otho, 139, 231 ; Frederick If., 139142. 
 
 Swisserland, sketch of the early history of, 246 ; 
 insurrection of the Swiss against the tyranny of 
 Albert, archduke of Austria, 246, 247 ; formation 
 of the Swiss confederacy, 247, 248; excellence 
 of the Swiss troops, 248 ; the independence of 
 the Swiss confederacy ratified, 248, 249. 
 
 Swords, when first generally worn, 463, note. 
 
 T. 
 
 Tactics (military), of the fourteenth century, ac- 
 count of, 182, 183; invention of gunpowder and 
 
INDEX. 
 
 567 
 
 firearms, 184, 165 ; use of infantry not fully es- 
 tablished until the sixteenth century, 185. 
 
 Taille, perpetual, when imposed in France, 56. 
 
 Tallage, oppressive, of the Norman kings of Eng- 
 land, 339. 
 
 Tartars of Timur, incursions of, in Asia and Eu- 
 rope, 258. 
 
 Taxation, excessive, effects of, 47 ; taxation origi- 
 nated in the feudal aids, 80 ; immunity from tax- 
 ation claimed by the nobles of France, 94 ; direct 
 taxation a source of the royal revenues, 96 ; 
 rights of the states-general as to taxation, 102 ; 
 last struggle of the French nation against arbi- 
 trary taxation. 107 ; right of taxation in Castile, 
 in whom vested, and in what manner regulated, 
 208210 ; taxation of the clergy by the popes, 
 296, 297. 
 
 Taxes, levied without convoking the states-general 
 by John and Charles V., 105 ; remedial ordinance 
 concerning them by Charles VI., ib. ; levied by 
 his own authority by Louis XL, 106 ; what taxes 
 levied in England under the Norman kings, 338, 
 339. 
 
 Tenants in chief by knight's service, whether par- 
 liamentary barons by virtue of their tenures, 357, 
 358 ; whether they attended parliament under 
 Henry Iff., 358, 359. 
 
 Tenures (feudal), gradual establishment of, 69 
 73 ; nature of tenure by grand sergeantry, 190, 
 note. 
 
 Terence, observations on the versification of, 455. 
 
 Territorial jurisdiction, origin and progress of, in 
 France, 108, 109 ; its division and administra- 
 tion, 109. 
 
 Thanes, two classes of, among the Anglo-Saxons, 
 321 ; were judges of civil controversies, 325 ; for- 
 feited their military freeholds by misconduct in 
 battle, 330 ; the term synonymous in its deriva- 
 tion to vassal, 330, 331. 
 
 Tithes, payment of, when and in what manner -es- 
 tablished, 263, 264. 
 
 Toledo (city of) captured from the Moors, 199. 
 
 Torture never known in England, nor recognised 
 to be law, 428, and note. 
 
 Tournaments, influence of, on chivalry, 516, 517. 
 
 Tours, proceedings of the states-general of, 106, 
 
 Towns, progress of, in England, to the twelfth cen- 
 
 tury, 362, 363 ; when let in fee-farm, 363, 364 ; 
 charters of incorporation granted to them, 364, 
 365 ; their prosperity in the twelfth century, 365. 
 
 Trade (internal), state of, in the dark ages, 472, 473. 
 
 Trade (foreigrt>. See Commerce. 
 
 Treaty of Bretigni, 43 ; of Calais, 44 ; of Troyes, 51. 
 
 Trial by combat. See Combat. 
 
 Trial by jury. See Jury. 
 
 Troubadours of Provence, account of, 530; their 
 poetical character considered, 530, 531. 
 
 Turks, progress of, 255 ; first crusade against them, 
 ib. ; they conquer Constantinople, 259 ; suspen- 
 sion of their conquests, 260, 261. 
 
 Tuscany, league of, formed to support the see of 
 Rome, 138 ; state of, in the middle ages, espe- 
 cially the cities of Florence, 156; and of Pisa, 
 166. 
 
 Tyranny of the Norman government in England, 
 "337, 338. 
 
 Ty thing, real nature of, 328, 329. 
 
 Tything-man, cowers of, 324. 
 
 U. 
 
 Uladislaus, king of Hungary, reign of, 245. 
 
 Universities, when first established, 523 ; account 
 of the university of Paris, ib. ; Oxford, 524 ; of 
 Bologna, ib. ; encouragement given to universi- 
 ties, ib. ; causes of their celebrity, 526529. 
 
 Urban VI. (pope), contested election of, 308. 
 
 Usurpations (papal), account of, 274 277. 
 
 Usury of the Jews, account of, 95, ordinance 
 against it, 100 ; sentiments and regulations con- 
 cerning it, 484, 485, and note. 
 
 V. 
 
 Valencia (kingdom of), constitution of, 224, 225. 
 
 Varlets, education of, 516. 
 
 Vassal and lord, mutual duties of, 75; particular 
 obligations of a vassal, 76 ; he could not alienate 
 his lands without his lord's consent, 78. 
 
 Vavassors, rank of, 87. 
 
 Vel, the Latin particle, used instead of et, 96, note 
 
 Velly (the historian of France), character of, 63, 64, 
 note. 
 
 Venice (republic of), origin of, 171 ; her dependance 
 on the Greek empire, 172 ; conquest of Dalmatia, 
 ib. ; acquisitions in the Levant, ib. ; form of gov 
 eminent, 173 ; powers of the doge, ib. ; and of 
 the great council, ib. ; other councils, 174 ; re- 
 strictions of the ducal power, ib. ; tyranny of the 
 council of ten, 175; reflections on the govern 
 ment of Venice, 175, 176. 
 
 , war of this republic with Genoa, 168 170 ; 
 
 the Genoese besieged in Chioggia, and obliged 
 to surrender, 169, 170 ; territorial acquisitions of 
 Venice, 177; her wars with Milan, 178; account 
 of her commercial prosperity, 4g9, 4gO; traded 
 with the Crimea, 'and with China, 480, and note. 
 
 Versification of the ancient Latin poets, observa- 
 tions on, 455. 
 
 Vienna, description of, in the fifteenth century, 
 487, 488, note. 
 
 Villaret (the French historian), character of, 63, 64, 
 note. 
 
 Villanage, prevalence of, 89 ; causes of it, 89, 90 ; 
 its gradual abolition, 91, 92; nature of the vil- 
 lanage of the English peasantry, and its gradual 
 extinction, 435 441 ; was rare in Scotland, 440, 
 note. 
 
 Villeins, different classes of, 89; their condition 
 and duties, 90, 91 ; enfranchised by testament, 
 91, note ; but not without the superior lord's con- 
 sent, ib., note; in what cases they could or could 
 not be witnesses, ib., note; their condition by the 
 laws of William the Conqueror, 322 ; and during 
 subsequent reigns, 435441. 
 
 Villein tenure oflands, 92. 
 
 Virgin, superstitious devotions to, 465, 466, and 
 notes. 
 
 Virtues deemed essential to chivalry, 514. 
 
 Visconti family, acquire sovereign power at Milan, 
 151 ; their sovereignty gradually acknowledged, 
 151, 152; created dukes of Milan, 152; tyranny 
 of several princes of this family, 165. 
 
 Visigoths, kingdom of, in Spain, 197. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wages of members of parliament, rates of, and how 
 raised, 408, and notes ; of labourers in England, 
 better in the reign of Edward III. than now, 500, 
 501. 
 
 Waldenses, origin of, 505, 506, and note ; their te- 
 nets, 506, and note. 
 
 Wales, ancient condition of, and its inhabitants, 
 434, note ; members of parliament, when sum 
 moned from that country, ib. 
 
 Walter de Brienne (duke of Athens), notice of, 159, 
 160 ; elected signior of Florence, 159 ; his tyran- 
 nical government, 160 ; abdicates his office, ib. 
 
 Wamba (king of the Visigoths), whether deposed 
 by the bishops, 268, note. 
 
 Wardship, custom of, explained, 80. 
 
 Warna, notice of the battle of, 245. 
 
568 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Weavers (Flemish) settle in England, 475, note, 
 476, note. 
 
 Wenceslaus (emperor of Germany) deposed, 236, 
 237. 
 
 Weregild, or commutation for murder, rates of, 66 ; 
 amount of thanes or nobles among the Anglo- 
 Saxons, 321 ; for a ceorl or peasant, ib. 
 
 Whitelocke, observation of, on the bulk of our stat- 
 ute law, 349, note; his mistake concerning the 
 three estates of the realm determined, 403, 404, 
 notes. 
 
 Wicliffe (John), influence of the principles of, in 
 restraining the power of the clergy in England, 
 313 ; their probable influence in effecting the abo- 
 lition of villanage, 439. 
 
 William (duke of Normandy), conquers England, 
 332; his conduct at first moderate, 333; after- 
 ward more tyrannical, ib. ; confiscates English 
 property, 334; devastates Yorkshire and the New 
 Forest, ib. ; his domains, 335 ; his mercenary 
 troops, ib. ; establishes the feudal system in Eng- 
 land, ib. ; preservation of public peace during his 
 reign, 336 ; account of his laws, 340. 
 
 Wmton, statute of, 434. 
 
 Wisbuy, ordinances of, 482. 
 
 Wittenagemot, or assembly of wise men, how com- 
 posed, 322, 323 ; qualifications for a seat in that 
 council, 323. 
 
 Women, excluded from the throne of France by 
 the Salique-law, 38; and from inheriting the 
 lands assigned to the Salian Franks on their con- 
 quest of Gaul, 65; but not from lands subse- 
 quently acquired, ib. ; how treated by the ancient 
 Germans, ib., note ; did not inherit fiefs, 82, note. 
 
 Wool (unwrought), exported from England, 475 
 476; penalties on such exportation, 476, 477, 
 note. 
 
 Woollen manufactures of Flanders, 474; causes of 
 their being carried into England, 474, 475, note ; 
 introduced there by the Flemings, 475, note; 
 progress of the English woollen manufactures, 
 476 ; regulations concerning their export, ib. 
 
 Worms. See Diet of Worms. 
 
 Writing, an accomplishment possessed by few in 
 the dark ages, 459. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yorkists, civil wars between, and the Lancastri- 
 ans, 447. 
 
 Yorkshire devastated by William the Conqueror, 
 334. 
 
 Zisca (John), character and achievements of, 244 
 
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